REASONING and DISCOURSE IGEC Category: GRD

Fall2012

FRESHMAN SEMINAR PROGRAM

UNCG College of Arts and Sciences

REASONING AND DISCOURSE IGEC category: GRD

Also carries credit equivalent to ENG 101. You may not receive credit for both FMS 115 and ENG 101.

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS 115-01 / M, W, F
10:00-10:50 a.m.
TBA / What Writing Is: An Introduction to Argument & Invention. This course is designed to prepare you for writing and thinking at the university level. We focus on developing your understanding of issues of rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. We examine and interpret various kinds of writing and use the strategies and approaches in these texts to construct our own arguments and essays. We will consider aspects of academic and non-academic writing, including issues of style, genre, form and argumentation. Much of our class is devoted to the practical matter of improving your writing by applying to it the techniques of drafting, peer review and revision. / Greg
Brown
FMS
115-02 / M, W, F
12:00-12:50 p.m. / See FMS 115-01 for course description. / Greg
Brown

REASONING AND DISCOURSE IIGEC category: GRD

Also carries credit equivalent to ENG 102. You may not receive credit for both FMS 116 and ENG 102.

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS 116-01 / SI / T,R
11:00-12:15 p.m
TBA. / Drama, Scandal, and Rhetoric in American Life. Be the star lawyer or key witness in a gripping court battle; use cunning arguments to win the minds of a jury of your peers. Fill the shoes of a community leader who makes decisions that affect thousands; further your own political agenda while protecting your scandalous secrets. In this course, we will use large-scale role-playing activities to explore the ethical challenges that face modern democratic societies. The course will begin with philosophical readings and discussion of concepts in moral and political theory, apply those concepts in a series of role-playing mock legal trials where your character will try to persuade a jury, and conclude with a three-week-long role-playing game where you will fight for your character’s agenda and try to uncover the secrets of your rivals. / Chris
Metivier

LITERATURE GEC category: GLT

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS
120-01 / WI / T, R
12:30-1:45 p.m.
TBA / Vanishing Points. This course applies Jean Baudrillard’s “aesthetics of disappearance” to assess the features of music, image, literature, and film that depict the theme of the Road: its freedom of movement, its dangers of disorientation, and its threat of strangers. The course examines the speed of media through televised images, film projections across empty space, and the succession of signs that advertise the consumerist ideology infiltrating our subconscious / Todd
Atchison
FMS
120-02 / WI / M, W
2:00-3:15 p.m.
TBA / A Tarheel Born and a Tarheel Read. How does North Carolina look through the eyes of its local contemporary novelists? How do writers build a convincing sense of place in the worlds they build with their words? In this course, we will read from the mountains to the beach, sampling work from Fred Chappell, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Jill McCorkle, Michael Parker and Ron Rash. During our tour, we’ll consider what it means to be a North Carolina novelist and how language, place, and truth interact.
Nancy Bucknall has lived, worked, and read in North Carolina for 25 years, which makes her a naturalized Tarheel. She enjoys North Carolina’s mountains and its beaches, and longs to visit the Great Dismal Swamp, to see if it’s really all that dismal. / Nancy
Bucknall
FMS
120-03 / WI / T, R
9:30-10:45 a.m. / Re-imagining Shakespeare’s Women. Shakespeare created some of the most memorable female characters in literature. Yet other writers of the Renaissance and beyond offer differing portrayals of Shakespeare’s female characters. This writing-intensive freshman seminar focuses on four of the Bard’s most popular female characters as found in Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, and Othello. Reading Shakespeare alongside Renaissance and some of our own contemporary texts, we will trace how writers, especially women writers, respond to Shakespeare’s women. Ultimately, the course poses two main questions, “How does Shakespeare represent female characters and gender relations?” and “How can other writers’ responses to his work enlarge our understanding of representing gender then and now?” / Lauren
Shook
FMS
120-04 / WI / T, R
11:00-12:15 p.m. / Re-imagining Shakespeare’s Women.
See FMS 120-03 for course description. / Lauren
Shook
FMS
120-05 / WI / T, R
9:30-10:45 a.m.
TBA / Reading Daniel Boone. Who was Daniel Boone: Patriot or Tory? Indian killer or Indian lover? Solitary wanderer or family man? And what was it really like to live in the North Carolina and Kentucky backcountries, 250 years ago? This class considers these questions by asking what fiction can possibly teach us about history. We will read a biography of Daniel Boone and historical documents; we also will consider poem, novels, TV, and films such as The Last of the Mohicans. Students may write about historical documents or on one historical novel of their own choosing. / Hope
Hodgkins

FINE ARTSGEC category: GFA

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS
130-01 / WI / T,R
3:30-4:45 p.m. / Modern American Art through Controversy. The history of modern American art has been shaped by themes and issues that have reappeared over the course of the 20th century, frequently becoming highly publicized controversies. The rapid sequence of styles and movements (Realism to Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art to “art off the easel”) are woven together by an aesthetic of independence and individualism. American artists of the 20th century simultaneously embraced and challenged standards of public taste. This course will examine many of the controversies that shaped modern American art, including the role of art critics, outsider art, public funding, and the role of museums. / Jennifer
Reich
FMS
130-02 / WI / M, W, F
10:00-10:50 a.m.
TBA / After the Fall: American Drama in Response to September 11, 2001
In this course we will read, analyze, and discuss eight plays that respond to (or, in one case predict) the attacks of September 11th.
Theatre is a mirror held up to life and these plays look at how our lives have been irrevocably changed since that morning. Class activities will include play and character analysis, reading from the scripts, and seeing local and UNCG theatre performances
/ Jeff
West
FMS
131-01 / WI / T,R
11:00-12:15 p.m.
TBA / History and Art of Animation. Animation is an art form that brings fanciful imaginings to vivid realization. As a popular form of entertainment for children and adults, animation captivates our imagination and influences our way of perceiving the world. In this class we will look at the historical progression of animation techniques, the social characterizations presented in popular cartoons, and the artistic brilliance of animators from around the world. / Eleanor
Cowen

PHILOSOPHICAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLESGEC category: GPR

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS
142-01 / WI / MWF
10:00-10:50 a.m / Telling Her Story: Women, Autobiography and Islam. Muslim women today are recording their lives in unprecedented numbers. The memoirs that have emerged are often controversial, sometimes irreverent, rarely boring. This class will examine several contemporary autobiographical accounts by women living in Iran, Egypt and Morocco with the goal of answering the following questions: How do these women portray themselves and their worlds? What role does Islam play in their lives and how did it help to shape the historical circumstances in which they find themselves? How do these narrations contradict or otherwise challenge popular stereotypes about the “oppressed” Muslim woman? Finally, can we speak of an Islamic for of autobiography? A variety of genres will be explored, including film, the graphic novel, poetry, and memoir. Assignments will include book reviews, oral presentations, weekly response papers, and a final research paper. / Alyssa
Gabbay

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: Pre-Modern GEC/CAR category: GHP/GPM

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS 151-01 / WI / T,R
9:30-10:45 a.m.
TBA / The (Not-So) Dark Ages. The years between 500 and 1050 CE have a terrible reputation. Often called ‘the Dark Ages,’ this time frame is described as the low point in European civilization, when barbarism, warfare, raping, pillaging, illiteracy, and superstition ran rampant. But was it really that bad? In this course, we’ll look at early medieval society in detail – were Vikings really men in horned hats? Did kings really murder their relatives? Did people really worship bones? - to decide if the ‘Dark Ages’ were really all that dark. / Caitlin
Saraphis

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: Modern GEC/CAR category: GHP/GMO

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor

FMS 160-01

/ WI / canceled / History and Identity in American Popular Music. American popular music continues to evolve everyday as new styles emerge and others disappear. And yet as they disappear they leave an indelible mark on American history, culture, and identity. This class investigates the interaction of American popular music with American history and both personal and community identity development. Throughout the semester we will attempt to answer a series of historical questions as we read about and listen to American popular music. How do artists draw on the past to create vibrant new musical styles? How do Americans’ visions of “authentic” musical roots reflect their ideas about race, class, and identity? In this course, we will look at and listento case studies in blues, rock, rap, jazz, folk, and country, and how these styles have helped shaped our identities and our sense of history. / Kevin
Greene
FMS
160-02 / WI / canceled / See FMS 160-01 for course description. / Kevin
Green
FMS
160-03 / WI / MWF
10:00-10:50 a.m.
Mary Foust 128 / "Been in the Storm So Long:” The Long Road of the American Civil Rights Movement.Pick up any high school history book, and the story of 20th century America is always the same: a War, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, another war, then another war, this one of a different kind, affluence, and then, all of the sudden, by the way, POOF! The Civil Rights movement comes out of nowhere. The real story is much more deeply embedded in American History, with its roots at the very beginning. As with all history, the civil rights movement did not up and occur one day, so we will look at each event in its larger historical context, finding the roots of each.
This class is cross-listed with Ashby Residential College; 11 spaces are reserved for Residential College. / Christine
Flood

SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL STUDIES GEC category: GSB

Course / Days/Time/Place / Course Title/Description / Instructor
FMS 170-01 / WI / M,W,F
11:00-11:50 a.m.
TBA / Fans, Athletes, and Sports in Modern Society. This course investigates the place of sport in society with a special emphasis on identity. Social identities are clearly an important factor in how a person understandings his or her sense of self and place in society—and identities formed in and around the issue of sport are becoming increasingly important in late modern societies. As such we’ll be looking at how these identities are achieved and disengaged for both athletes and fans. Central to this discussion will be issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. / Steve
O’Boyle
FMS 170-02 / WI / T, R
9:30-10:45 a.m.
TBA / War and Conflict. It has been estimated that there has been a war somewhere in the world 94% of the time
since the dawn of civilization. Why does mankind periodically organize himself for armed conflict and
warfare? This course will begin by asking these questions and try to answer them through an examination of
the United States’ involvement in war and conflict over the last hundred years. / A. Leigh
Sink
FMS
170-03 / WI / T,R
11:00-12:15 p.m.
TBA / Creating and Communicating the Self. How do you know who you are? How do others know who you are? We'll be exploring the ways we create, interpret, and share our identities through discourse, nonverbal, and mediated communication. Do we create ourselves as members of society or does society create us? Could both be true? We will examine theoretical perspectives on human identity, focusing on communicative processes. / Jessica
Digh
FMS 170-04 / WI / M,W,F
1:00-1:50 p.m. / Fans, Athletes, and Sports in Modern Society.
See FMS 170-01 for course description. / Steve
O’Boyle