First-Year Seminar
FYS 100 My Music: Writing Musical Lives (4 Credits)
This first-year seminar begins with an exploration of students' own musical lives. What does the particular constellation of material that ones calls "My Music" tell us about who one is, where one comes from, and how one relates to the world? After analyzing and comparing musical lives within the class, students read selected case studies and collaboratively design a musical biography project. Each student curates one person’s musical life story, gathering data through one-on-one interviews, weaving together their interlocutor’s words with their own interpretations, and ultimately reflecting on what they have learned from the experience. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 102 Psychology and Comic Books: The American Experience (4 Credits)
What do autobiographical, fantasy, horror, romance, superhero and war comics tell us about the human condition? Students read scholarship in psychology and the humanities to set the stage for exploring various topics in comic art and storytelling. How might psychoanalysis explain the popularity of superhero and romance comic books? Is there a link between pressures to conform and countercultural interest in horror comics? How might psychological theories of development inform our understanding of autobiographical graphic novels? Students use graphic novels and comic books as raw material to make sense of life in America in the 20th and 21st centuries. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 104 Philosophical Problems of the Self (4 Credits)
This course uses philosophical questions about personal identity and the self as a lens for developing critical reading, thinking, and writing skills. Students examine classic and contemporary texts that ask what makes a person the same over time, whether there is a true self, what matters in survival, and how identity is shaped by social, political, and ethical commitments. Through careful analysis of these texts, students learn how philosophers construct arguments, respond to objections, and revise their views. The course culminates in a sustained argumentative research-based essay about a philosophical problem concerning the self or personal identity. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {M}
Fall, Variable
FYS 105 Local Traditions, Migration, and the Global Imagination: Fiddler on the Roof (4 Credits)
How did Yiddish stories about a traditional Jewish father and his rebellious daughters become a global cultural phenomenon? This course traces how the Yiddish Tevye stories set in smalltown Ukraine became the international Broadway sensation and Hollywood film Fiddler on the Roof. Students read the original stories (in English!), explore their historical and cultural context, and examine how they inspired later literature, visual art, theater, and film. The course also considers the continuing significance of these works in today’s Yiddish cultural revival and asks how stories rooted in local traditions shape the global imagination. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {L}
Fall, Variable
FYS 106 Learning and Thriving in a Labyrinth of Technology (4 Credits)
How does technology learn? How do humans learn? How does technology assist human learning and how does it shape the world? This course explores the rapid advancement of technology and AI, examining its effects on learning and everyday life. From automation and job displacement to deepfakes and data privacy, the course analyzes both the benefits and risks of emerging technologies. Class activities and assignments are designed to enable students to improve their ability to communicate effectively through writing and speaking, and hone their analytical and reasoning skills. By the end of the semester, students gain a deeper understanding of how technology influences them as learners and the world around them. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI
Fall, Variable
FYS 109 Exobiology: Origins of Life and the Search for Life in the Universe (4 Credits)
This course explores interdisciplinary approaches to the search for life in the Universe by using the Earth as a natural laboratory. The class addresses fundamental questions surrounding the formation of the solar system and the first appearance of life, the definition of life and how it can searched for elsewhere, and the biases introduced by using Earth as a model system. The goal of this class is to present a multidisciplinary view of exobiology by integrating geology, chemistry, biology, astronomy and physics. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 110 A Century of Revolutions in Latin America (4 Credits)
This first-year seminar offers a multidisciplinary study of three major revolutionary processes in Latin America’s past century. Through the examination of the Mexican Revolution (1910), the Cuban Revolution (1959) and Sendero Luminoso’s insurrection (1980), this course explores regional trajectories of failed modernizations, social unrest, state transformations and post-revolutionary reconfigurations. Discussion are of bibliography and the analysis of primary sources, including documents, fiction writings, visual arts, films, music and other materials. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 111 The Art of Travel (4 Credits)
Why do people travel? This course explores how journeys—both literal and metaphorical—shape identity, perception, and place. The course begins with travel narratives from The Grand Tour to Kerouac’s On the Road, giving particular attention to themes of home, exile, language, migration, and belonging. How does travel transform people? How does it shape their understanding of foreign landscapes and home? What ethical responsibilities do travelers have? While especially valuable for students considering study abroad, this course is open to all who seek to explore the timeless urge to roam. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Annually
FYS 112 #FlipTheScript: Hot Topics in African Feminism(s) Today (4 Credits)
Does affirmative action in politics improve human rights conditions for African women or lead to tokenism? Are the decisions of religious African feminists to submit to their husbands or wear head coverings, choices that display female agency or choices steeped in oppression? This course considers some of the most controversial and hotly debated topics relevant to feminism in Africa today. In doing so, it aims to teach students how to identify both the core issues and points of divergence underpinning these debates and to be able to analyze and articulate their own positions on controversial issues. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 113 Mineral Resources and Sustainability (4 Credits)
Where do cell phone batteries come from? This first-year seminar explores a variety of mineral resources, their uses in modern society and their impacts on the environment. Minerals have always held economic and social value, but as society works to switch to green technologies the need for mineral resources, such as rare earth metals for batteries and turbines, has increased. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach applying geology, economics, policy, human health and environmental sciences to the lifecycle of mineral resources. The goal of this class is to build a fundamental understanding of ore deposits, evaluate the impacts of mineral extraction on the environment and to society and consider how society’s need for minerals can be regarded as sustainable. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {N}
Variable
FYS 114 Ordaining Women in America (4 Credits)
In the 1970s, many Christian, Jewish and Buddhist communities in America began ordaining women as ministers, rabbis, priests and teachers. This change in policy provided women long-denied vocational paths, necessitated new theological self-understandings and ritual forms, and served as a proxy for larger culture war divisions in America. While focused on the last fifty years, this course provides a wider historical narrative for these developments, from the bold revivalism of colonial-era women preachers to anti-racist activism by contemporary Zen senseis. As part of a class project, students conduct interviews with ordained women and construct podcast episodes from these interviews. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 117 The Bible and the American Public Square (4 Credits)
This course examines what the Bible (and to some extent the broader Jewish and Christian traditions) have to say about controversial issues that have divided Americans in the past (e.g., slavery) and present (e.g., abortion). The aim is to give students the skills to assess critically various arguments that invoke the Bible or religious tradition and authority, wherever they come from on the political spectrum. Students are introduced to the Bible and biblical scholarship, as well as learn about different understandings of biblical authority and views of applying the Bible to contemporary political and ethical debates. This course counts toward the Jewish studies and religion majors. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 118 Curry: Gender, Race, Sexuality and Empire (4 Credits)
As one early currency in the global trade of food, the spices in curry have sustained empires and built hybrid cultures. The circulation of food and food cultures has shaped normative gender and sexual relations and influenced how work is racialized. In South Asia, environmental questions about how to cultivate foods sustainably and how to distribute food equitably are vital components of the food security movement. In this course, students study histories of curry in Empire, watch comedy sketches, read novels, and investigate social movements around agriculture and food allocation in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. This course counts toward the study of women and gender major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 119 Performance and Film Criticism (4 Credits)
An introduction to the elements, history, and functions of criticism. How do reviewers form their critical responses to theatre performances as well as to films? The students attend live performances and film and video screenings, and write their own reviews and critical responses. This course counts toward the theatre major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {A}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 120 Philosophical Explorations of Humor and Laughter (4 Credits)
Closely examining texts from a variety of philosophical perspectives, this course explores some of the ethical, social and political issues raised by humor and laughter. Humor can be a forceful instrument, often deployed by the powerful in their attempts to control the powerless and by the powerless to topple the powerful. Humor tends to operate in such a way as to include some and exclude others. Its effects, intended or unintended, can be benign or hurtful. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {M}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 121 Remix, Revise, Revolt: Introduction to Translation (4 Credits)
This course combines creative writing and seminar discussions to explore translation as a transformative artistic and political practice. Alongside literary translation, students engage a wide range of artistic practices such as erasure poetry and musical remixes that are produced through revision and rewriting. The class discusses the nature of originals and copies, the conflict between preservation and reinvention, and the political stakes of turning old texts into new forms. Readings include personal reflections by translators; prominent theoretical approaches; and the creative work of translators, music producers, poets, and filmmakers. Through writing exercises and workshops, students produce their own translations and critical reflections on the process of translation. Knowledge of a foreign language is not required. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 123 Horse-Lords of the Ancient Steppes: The Indo-European Diaspora (4 Credits)
Around 3,000 BCE, pastoral peoples living in southern Russia domesticated wild horses and invented wheeled vehicles, innovations that allowed them to move vast distances--from China in the east to Ireland in the west. They also developed cultural institutions that enabled them to introduce their language to other communities, a lost tongue that has been partially reconstructed from its surviving daughter languages, including those of India and Iran, Europe, and America. This course explores what is known or surmised about this ancient people and reasons for their remarkable success using several kinds of evidence--linguistic, literary, archaeological, ecological, and genomic. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 124 Detectives Without Borders (4 Credits)
Why is detective fiction so popular? What explains the continuing multiplication of mystery novels despite the seemingly finite number of available plots? This course explores the worldwide fascination with this genre beginning with European writers before turning to more distant detective stories from around the world. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Annually
FYS 128 Ghosts (4 Credits)
This course explores what Toni Morrison in Beloved calls "the living activity of the dead": their ambitions, their desires, their effects. Often returning as figures of memory or history, ghosts raise troubling questions as to what it is they, or readers, have to learn. The course surveys a variety of phantasmagorical representations in poems, short stories, novels, films, spiritualist and scientific treatises, and spirit photography. This course counts toward the English major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 129 Tierra y Vida: Land and the Ecological Imagination in U.S. Latino/a Literature (4 Credits)
Tierra y Vida explores the ecological imagination of U.S. Latinos/as as expressed in narratives from the early 20th to the 21st centuries. Expanding beyond dominant tropes of land/farm worker as the core of Latino/a ecological experience, students consider a range of texts that depict the land as a site of indigenous ecological knowledge; spiritual meaning; and ethnic, racial and gendered belonging. In dialogues between Latino/a writers and theorists students also explore the possibilities of ecological futures rooted in emancipation and liberation as alternatives to ecological imaginaries still fraught with colonial desires. Students in this course participate in a digital atlas and story-mapping project. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 131 Paris: City of Light (4 Credits)
Urban, architectural and cultural history of Paris, from its founding some 2,000 years ago through the twentieth century. This course explores the layout of streets and parks; the provisioning of infrastructure (water, sewers, public transportation); building typologies; châteaux and country houses in the capital's environs; the social, economic, political and aesthetic contexts of architectural patronage; and how the built environment carries decipherable symbolic meaning. Paris as a subject in the visual arts––in the Impressionist era in particular––is examined, as is the city's status as a perennial crucible of fashion, avant-gardism and modernism. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {A}{H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 132 Girls Leaving Home (4 Credits)
This course explores how literary writers from various times and places have addressed the topic of girls leaving home. What are the risks and benefits for young (usually single) women who leave a place of origin, temporarily or permanently, with or without families, to make new lives? What do they flee or seek? How do gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, class complicate their stories? How is "home" understood or redefined in these narratives? Readings include Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and immigrant American narratives The Road from Coorain, The Woman Warrior and Americanah. Our primary methodology is literary analysis. Recommended for students considering the English major. This course counts toward the English major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 133 Fairy Tales (4 Credits)
This course explores the structure, function, and global reach of fairy tales as well as their lasting impact on popular culture. Many fairy tales covered in this course are by the Brothers Grimm, but texts of different national traditions and historical periods, including U.S. movie adaptations, are included as well. This class engages students in critical as well as creative thinking, fosters awareness of different genre conventions, and enhances skills for literary analysis and academic research, thereby supporting academic and everyday literacy development. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 134 Satire (4 Credits)
This course examines the myriad forms satire has taken in the West, from the mists of antiquity (when satire meant a form of verse that could actually kill or maim its victims) until recent times. Students hone their skills in close reading and writing about literature. Though some satires (especially in the tradition of Juvenal) simply and straightforwardly bludgeon their targets--so violent did these become in 1590s England that for six years publication of satire was illegal--the course focuses on the more enjoyable ironic varieties-- more enjoyable but also more demanding, since these make readers do most of the interpretive work. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Alternate Years
FYS 136 The Literary Art of Gossip (4 Credits)
“No gossip, no interiority,” writes novelist Cynthia Ozick, who provocatively reminds readers of word-of-mouth’s close relationship to storytelling. People know that gossip can be toxic, immature, and dangerous—but can it have other, more complex purposes and effects? Using the tools of close reading and literary analysis, this course examines inside jokes, open secrets, call outs, and speculation in literature, art, music, film, and popular culture. From novels about manners and the sustaining (or tearing down) of communities, to chatty, genre-defying poetry, films, and song lyrics, the course engages in a wide-ranging meditation on gossip as an art, a weapon, and an imaginative inter-relational tool. This course counts toward the English major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Alternate Years
FYS 137 Writing Women's Lives in China, Japan, and Korea (4 Credits)
This course examines biographies and autobiographies written about and by women in twentieth-century China, Japan, and Korea. The course considers the forces that shaped East Asian women’s lives and ask how they understood their worlds. What kinds of choices did women make? What do their individual lives say about larger historical narratives? Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Variable
FYS 138 Democracy in America: From the Revolution to Today (4 Credits)
This course explores the history of democracy in America. Students examine how political leaders and social movements have fought to expand the bounds of democratic citizenship ever since the American Revolution, and how others have fought to restrict it. Students trace the evolution of both defenses and critiques of democratic self-governance and consider how polarization, inequality and globalization strain modern democracy. The class reflects critically on what exactly democracy has looked like -- and can look like -- not only in formal politics, but also in economic and social life more broadly. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 139 Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (4 Credits)
This course delves deep into Tolkien’s Middle-earth, focusing on The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and The Hobbit (1937), which the course considers as a nexus of multiple literary traditions, a repository for cultural criticism, a laboratory for linguistic experimentation, an environment for philosophical exploration, and a paradigm for multi-media worldbuilding. Tolkien’s distant mirror provides a visionary realm in which fears and uncertainties, ideals and failures can be examined in sharper definition, transporting the reader into an imaginary past, far (but not too far) away from the confusions of the current political passions and the constraints of the contemporary cultural blinders. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 141 Reading, Writing and Placemaking: Landscape Studies (4 Credits)
Landscape studies is the interdisciplinary consideration of how humans view, define and use the land, whether it be a backyard, a moonscape or a national park. How does land become a landscape? How does space become a place? Scientists study and manipulate landscapes as do politicians, builders, hunters, children, artists and writers, among others. In this course, students examine how writers, in particular, participate in placemaking, and how the landscape influences and inhabits literary texts. The course includes some landscape history and theory, visits by people who study landscape from nonliterary angles, and the discovery of how landscape works in texts in transforming and surprising ways. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 142 Reacting to the Past (5 Credits)
In this course, students learn by taking on roles, in elaborate games set in the past; they learn skills--speaking, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and teamwork--in order to prevail in complicated situations. Reacting roles do not have a fixed script and outcome. While students adhere to the intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they have been assigned, they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas in papers, speeches or public presentations. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors guide students and grade their oral and written work. It draws students into the past, promotes engagement with big ideas and improves intellectual and academic skills. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 24. WI {H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 144 Science and Society (4 Credits)
The importance science plays in the health of humans and of this planet has never been more urgent. Unfortunately, the complex language of science has made its presumed accuracy a weapon against those unable to interpret scientific truths. This course explores four main areas where science and society meet for better or worse. Students study and write about the science of superheroes, abortion policies, climate change, and the pandemic. Students maintain a personal journal, write in diverse styles, and use quantitative information. A final project serves to educate an audience outside of smith college. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Alternate Years
FYS 145 Life in the Classroom-Narratives of Teachers and Students in Context (4 Credits)
This course inquires into the day-to-day lives of teachers and students in U.S. K-12 classrooms, specifically through the lens of narratives. Students engage with works of ethnography and portraiture that reflect a range of school settings and student developmental levels. Further insights are derived from guest speakers, classroom observations, documentaries and other resources. Course readings, discussions and assignments facilitate in-depth explorations of real-world school contexts–considering the implications of these past and present accounts for the future. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}
Fall, Spring, Alternate Years
FYS 147 Power Lunch: The Archaeology of Feasting (4 Credits)
Throughout history, food and dining have formed some of the most fundamental expressions of cultural identity--in a very real sense, people are what they eat, and how they eat. This cross-cultural examination of the topic begins by exploring the various roles that feasting played in the world of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly the cultures of Greece and Rome. The class examines comparative material from contemporary societies. How does food define and create culture? In what ways does dining express or reinforce inequalities? These and other questions are tackled through the use of primary literature, anthropological studies and archaeological material, along with hands-on approaches. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 148 Pleasures, Politics and Power: Food in Literature and Culture (4 Credits)
This first-year seminar examines the pleasures, passions, politics, economics and toxicities of food through the works of writers, chefs, artists and critics who celebrate and critique how food heals, harms, nourishes and pleases. Food plays a critical and dynamic role in fiction, poetry, mystery, memoir, film and recipe books. This course analyzes literary portrayals of and engagements with a range of foods, including fast food, desserts, holiday feasts, haute cuisine, street food and “junk food,” as well as issues involving abundance, scarcity and nutrition. Through study of food in literature and culture, this course also considers concerns central to critical food studies, including power, colonialism, capitalism, identity and the environment. This course counts toward the English major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {A}{H}{L}
Fall
FYS 149 The Big Bang and Beyond (4 Credits)
What is all the stuff in the night sky, and where did all this stuff come from? How old is the universe? Is it going to be here forever? How do astronomers know all of this? These are some of the questions this course explores in “The Big Bang and Beyond,” an introduction to what is known about the universe and how it is known. The course requires no math or physics background. Students practice reading and writing about scientific ideas. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {N}
Fall, Variable
FYS 150 Writing and Power in China (4 Credits)
This course examines the many ways in which writing has been used to gain, maintain, and overturn power throughout Chinese history, from the prognosticating power of oracle bone script to the activist potential of social media. The course examines writing as a tactic of agency, a force for social change, and an instrument of state power; analyzes the changing role of literature; and considers the physical forms of writing and the millennia-long history of contemporary issues like censorship and writing reform. Finally, students work to make their own writing as powerful as possible. No knowledge of Chinese required. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 151 Our Mill River (4 Credits)
The Mill River flows through campus and connects the landscapes upstream and downstream of Smith. From its headwaters in Goshen, MA, to its mouth where it joins the Connecticut River on the Northampton/Easthampton line, the Mill River defines a region of communities that are all here as a result of its waters. Students gain important insight into Smith’s context by exploring and reflecting on the natural and cultural landscape of the Mill River. Weekly field experiences are complemented by readings, map work, historical collections, a sampling of local delicacies, guest experts and class discussions. This course is writing intensive and based in field experiences. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 153 The Muslim World in the Age of the Crusades: Encounters, Influences and Lasting Legacies (4 Credits)
This course explores the religious, political, social and cultural impacts of the Crusades on the Muslim World from 1095 CE until today. Special attention is given to the variety of Muslim reactions to the Crusades, including cross-cultural interactions and influences. It also considers the Crusades’ enduring legacy and effect on Islamic history and religious thought. Materials used include religious and historical texts, travelogues and biographies, films, novels, etc. The course concludes with an examination of how the exploitation of history by hate groups (such as White Supremacy and Islamic Jihadism) continues to shape political and social realities today. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Variable
FYS 154 The World of Anna Karenina (4 Credits)
This course explores the social, cultural, and political history of late imperial Russia through Leo Tolstoy's iconic novel Anna Karenina. Students learn about the production of the novel but also focus on such themes as modernization and industrialization, gender and sexuality, social construction of family and marriage, empire, and colonialism. They also study the rise of realism in art and the ways in which the Russian educated classes used the new style as a form of social critique. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 158 Conspiracy, Protest, and Mass Media: The Dreyfus Affair as a World Event (4 Credits)
How did the case of Alfred Dreyfus (1859- 1935), a French Jewish army officer falsely convicted of being a German spy in 1894, become a global media sensation? What did people from Egypt to Algeria to Russia to the United States make of this military conspiracy and the violence and antagonism it provoked? This course explores how what came to be called the Dreyfus affair was made possible by the emergence of the modern press and mass media; how the Dreyfus case influenced politics, violence, and social relations in France, colonial Algeria, and beyond; and how the affair and its aftermath have shaped how people have thought about political identities, equality, and discrimination. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Variable
FYS 160 The End of the World as We Know It: The Post-Apocalyptic Novel (4 Credits)
This course explores apocalyptic scenarios in literary novels that depict the collapse of civilization in the wake of plague, famine, fire, and war (think: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse)—but there is much more to these books than depictions of collapse. “Apocalypse” means “unveiling,” and the works students read are not just about disasters, but about revelation and the re-discovery of meaning. In these books, the veil is finally lifted from life, from death, and meaning comes out of destruction. Some works the course explores include Station Eleven, The Parable of the Sower and The Road, plus three or four more. This course counts toward the English major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 162 Ambition and Adultery: Individualism in the 19th-Century Novel (4 Credits)
This course looks at a series of great 19th-century novels to explore a set of questions about the nature of individual freedom, and of the relation of that freedom--transgression, even--to social order and cohesion. The books are paired--two French, two Russian; two that deal with a woman's adultery, and two that focus on a young man’s ambition--Balzac's Père Goriot; Flaubert's Madame Bovary; Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. There are some additional readings in history, criticism and political theory. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 163 Poison or Wonder Drug? A History of Medicine in China (4 Credits)
“Traditional Chinese medicine” is described as an alternative or complementary medicine. But what is meant by Chinese medicine—and how did it come to take the forms seen today? This interdisciplinary course explores the history of Chinese medicine to understand how societies make sense of the body, illness, and care. Spanning early medical texts to contemporary practice, the course highlights Chinese medicine as both a historical tradition and a living, globally circulating form of knowledge. Topics include healing with poisons; alchemy and immortality; demon exorcism; medical specialization; barefoot doctors and modern pharmaceuticals; and responses to epidemics, including COVID-19. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Variable
FYS 165 Childhood in African Literature (4 Credits)
A study of the theme of childhood in modern African literature. The course explores how representations of childhood in African literature are tied to gendered social, political and cultural histories; and to questions of self and of national identity. Discussions are informed by several questions: How do African narratives of childhood help to understand the shifting historical, political and cultural landscapes in contemporary Africa? How does the enforced acquisition of colonial languages and cultures affect children as they attempt to master the codes of alien tongues and cultures? How do narratives told from the point of view of children represent and deal with such complex issues? What are the relationships between childhood narratives and autobiographies? Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 166 Mammalian Reproduction: A Female Perspective (4 Credits)
This course explores the diversity of reproduction in mammals from genetics to environmental adaptations, but all from the perspective of female mammals. How does the female perspective change the way one things about reproduction? For instance, conception vs. fertilization; embryo rejection vs. miscarriage. The course covers basic concepts as well as the biases and assumptions present in the study of mammalian reproduction. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 167 Viking Diaspora (4 Credits)
The Norse colonies of Iceland and Greenland and the attempted settlement of Vinland in North America were the first European societies of the New World, revealing patterns of cultural conflict and adaptation that anticipated British colonization of the mid-Atlantic seaboard seven centuries later. This course compares the strengths and weaknesses of the medieval Icelandic Commonwealth, founded in 930, with the 1787 Constitution of the United States, both political systems facing serious crises within two generations. Sources for these experimental communities are the oral memories of founding families preserved in the later Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders) of the 13th century. This course counts toward the world literatures, English and medieval studies majors. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 168 Damaged Gods: Myth and Religion of the Vikings (4 Credits)
A reading of poems and sagas about the Old Norse gods and their cults during the Viking Age (ca. 800-1100 CE) as these were preserved mainly in Icelandic manuscripts of the 13th century, but also in Arabic, Latin, Old High German and Anglo-Saxon texts and runic inscriptions. This course explores the dark world-view and desperate religion of the Vikings from the creation of the world to the end of time, including relations between living and dead, male and female, animals and humans, gods and giants, Æsir and Vanir--a crowded universe of trolls, elves, witches, dwarfs, valkyries, berserks, shapeshifters and various kinds of human being. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 170 Queer Jewish Lives and Culture (4 Credits)
What does it mean to be Jewish and queer? What does Jewish tradition have to say about gender and sexuality? How do those ideas continue to impact queer Jewish lives today? How have artists--particularly literary writers and film directors--represented the intersections between Jewishness and queerness? These are just a few of the questions this course explores through Biblical texts and their commentaries, memoirs, biographies, documentaries, films, literature, and theoretically engaged scholarly works. Students also attend a Pride Tour at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA. These sources introduce multidisciplinary approaches to the intersections between queerness and Jewishness, queer Jews’ lived experiences, and cultural representations of queer Jews. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {H}{L}
Fall, Variable
FYS 171 Literatures of Black Girlhoods (4 Credits)
From the colonial era to the present, Black girls’ presence in the Black literary archive – as inaugurators and cultivators of a literary tradition, and as central personages in a Black literary tradition – is clear. Organized thematically, this course presents students with a survey of Black literatures that feature and center, in critical ways, Black girls. Select poems, short stories, novels, memoirs, and essays are accompanied by theoretical and historical texts to ground understanding of the literatures by Black girls and of Black girlhoods across space and time. Students read the literatures of Black girlhoods literarily and practice writing about the literatures of Black girlhoods literarily and in interdisciplinary ways, true to the discipline of Africana Studies. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 173 For the Love of Freedom: Social Justice Movements from Civil Rights to Immigrant Rights (4 Credits)
How have the last few generations organized for freedom and justice? This course explores this history from the 1950s to today, with a focus on working-class and poor women of color organizing in racial justice movements, including civil rights, welfare & labor rights, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant justice, and feminism. Students also study the local and global histories that gave rise to these social movements, including shifts in capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, race, and gender, and the rise of mass migration, criminalization, incarceration, and deportation. Course materials include a combination of documentary film, oral history, memoir, art, music, archival materials, and historical scholarship. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Alternate Years
FYS 176 Existentialism (4 Credits)
The term "existentialism" refers to a nexus of twentieth-century philosophical and literary explorations focused on themes including human freedom, responsibility, temporality, ambiguity and mortality. Existentialists Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre oppose a longstanding philosophical view that human beings flourish by understanding themselves and the cosmos in rational terms. In addition to exploring assigned readings in depth, the course addresses broader questions: "Are there insights involving existentialist themes that literary works are in a distinctive position to convey?" "Is there an existentialist ethics?" and "Do existentialists’ realizations about living well continue to have resonance today?" Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 177 The Roots of Animal Rights: Greek and Roman Encounters with the Non-Human (4 Credits)
In his book Totemism, Claude Lévi Strauss wrote, “species are chosen not because they are good to eat, but because they are good to think with.” This course takes up this issue in the context of ancient Greece and Rome, examining how ancient ideas about non-human animals inform current ideas. Beginning with Homer, the course considers animals as they appear in various Greek and Latin texts as foods, friends, tools, symbols, and more. Ancient texts are supplemented with modern scholarship as the course explores how humans and animals have been both distinguished and connected, as well as why thinking about animals is so crucial to human culture. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 179 Rebellious Women (4 Credits)
This course introduces students to the trailblazing women who have changed the American social and political landscape through reform, mobilization, cultural interventions and outright rebellion. The course uses a variety of texts: No Turning Back by Estelle Freedman, primary sources from the archives and the SCMA, films, a walking tour and local events. The intention of this seminar is threefold: (1) to provide an overview of feminist ideas and action throughout American history, (2) to introduce students to primary documents and research methods, and (3) to encourage reflection and discussion on current gender issues. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 180 Japan Less Known: Heterogeneous Japan?! (4 Credits)
Japan is portrayed as a homogeneous country where “Japanese people” live and speak the “Japanese language”. This course aims to challenge this perception of Japan as monoethnic, monolingual and monocultural. The course examines everyday language and cultural practices through various texts such as popular media, manga, films, linguistic landscapes and academic papers. The course is conducted in English, and knowledge of Japanese is not necessary. Cannot be taken S/U. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 181 Screening Shakespeare (4 Credits)
This course focuses on plays by Shakespeare, and what people have made for the screen from his plays. Students read five of Shakespeare’s plays. After reading and discussing each play, the class watches multiple screen works created from that play. The course investigates the choices made by directors, adapters, actors, designers and other artists involved. What matters to them about the play? What doesn’t? Do they approach Shakespeare with reverence? Do they admit to their source? How do politics, ideology, period, national or international film and television traditions, genre and individual artistry change, uphold, re-alchemize the original material? Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Variable
FYS 182 Fighting the Power: Black Protest and Politics Since 1970 (4 Credits)
This course examines the various forms of black "politics," broadly conceived, that emerged and developed in the wake of the modern civil rights movement to the present time. Major topics of concern include: black nationalism and electoral politics, black feminism, resistance to mass incarceration, the war on drugs, black urban poverty, the rise of the black middle class, reparations, the Obama presidency, Black Lives Matter and other contemporary social movements. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 183 Geisha, Wise Mothers, and Working Women (4 Credits)
This course examines images of Japanese women that are prevalent in the West, and to some extent Japan. The focus is on three key figures considered definitive representations of Japanese women: the geisha, the good wife/wise mother and the working woman. The class reads popular treatments including novels, primary sources and scholarly articles. The task is to sort through these images, keeping in mind the importance of perception versus reality and change over time. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 184 Dissected Frogs and Talking Dogs: Science Through the Lens of Russian and Soviet Literature (4 Credits)
“A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,” claims a character in Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Children. This provocation invites questions as urgent today as they were in the nineteenth century: What can the “two cultures” of the sciences and the humanities learn from one another? How do language, metaphor, and storytelling impact the pursuit of natural knowledge? How are scientific ideas shaped by public discourse and social context? The case study is Russian and Soviet literature: its scientist-hero protagonists, engagement with Darwin, and concern for how seeking scientific knowledge shapes world and self alike. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {H}{L}
Fall, Variable
FYS 185 Making Natural Knowledge: Collecting, Display, and Visuality in Science and Medicine (4 Credits)
What does collecting have to do with scientific innovation? Why have specimens and their display in museums, zoos, and botanical gardens been essential to the development of disciplines like natural history, botany, or biology? What role does visual representation play in making medical arguments? This course explores practices of collecting and display, as well as the central place of images, objects, and human, plant, and animal bodies, in scientific and medical knowledge production, and the larger social and ethical consequences of these practices, exploring key debates from fields like science and technology studies, the health humanities, visual and material culture studies, art history, and museum studies. Students engage Smith’s own histories of scientific and medical collecting in the Special Collections and the Lyman Plant House. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Alternate Years
FYS 187 Do Microscopes Have Politics (4 Credits)
Do microscopes have politics? This course introduces students to feminist science and technology studies (STS), an interdisciplinary field that examines how scientific knowledge, tools, and spaces are shaped by power, identity, and culture. Through foundational texts by scholars such as Donna Haraway, Helen Longino, and Max Liboiron, students investigate how dimensions of gender, race, sexuality, and ability shape scientific knowledge production, access, instrument design, datasets, and histories. Through a series of case studies, students are invited to connect key feminist STS frameworks to pressing contemporary scientific issues of their choosing. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {A}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 188 Indigenous Peoples and the Environment: Myth and Reality (4 Credits)
This course examines the stereotype of the “ecological Indian”—a racial trope that has perpetuated the idea that Native North Americans are naturally closer to nature or are natural conservationists. The class looks at how this stereotype has shaped non-Native ideas about Indigenous peoples in what is now the United States and has affected Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. This course also examines the varied ways Indigenous peoples have thought about ecological relationships and the strategies they developed to live in relation with the environment. The class critically examines the relationship between settler colonialism and the environment and considers contemporary and historical case studies in which Indigenous peoples have fought to protect and care for their lands and waters in the face of the ongoing violence of settler colonialism. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {H}
Fall, Variable
FYS 189 Data and Social Justice (4 Credits)
Students examine sociopolitical forces that impact the availability, structure and governance of data regarding various social justice issues. Students learn techniques for presenting data in ways that foreground the contexts of data production and remain accountable to diverse communities. Datasets about health equity, housing justice, environmental justice and carceral justice are studied, analyzed and visualized. Students identify institutions and stakeholders involved in data production, unpack the vested interests animating data semantics, consider what people and problems get erased in data structuring and evaluate ethical tradeoffs that data scientists grapple with as they plan for data presentation. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 190 Borders, Identity, and Justice (4 Credits)
As the mobility of information, goods, capital and people has increased worldwide, so has the backlash against migration. This course examines contemporary bordering principles and practices in, and asks moral questions about citizenship, mobility and identity. The class investigates principles of inclusion and exclusion and asks how borders define moral status. The class then investigates bordering practices through social theory, ethnography, human geography and art. Should democratic societies adopt more open or closed policies toward immigration? How should nations conceive of the rights of climate refugees? Should territorial bordering practices be subject to international law and scrutiny? Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 191 Riot Grrrl & Revolution: Feminism in the 1990s (4 Credits)
This course looks at Gen X feminism through the zines, music, and activism of Riot Grrrl. The course explores how that early-nineties movement intersected with and contributed to queer theory, reproductive justice, women's liberation, and trans-feminism. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI {L}
Fall, Variable
FYS 192 America in 1925 (4 Credits)
Readings, discussions and student projects explore the transformation of a "Victorian" America into a "modernist" one by focusing on forms of expression and sites of conflict in 1925—the year of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Bessie Smith’s "St. Louis Blues," Alain Locke’s The New Negro (the foundational text of the Harlem Renaissance), Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, the Scopes evolution trial, and the emergence of powerful new ideas in the social sciences--to cite just a few examples. This course counts toward the English major. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {H}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 193 Worldbuilding: Creating Dynamic Worlds for Games, Animation and Other Media (4 Credits)
In this course, students develop a cohesive, organized written foundation for a created world of their own, which can serve as a basis for diverse projects in time-based media, game design, visual narrative, interactive play, and creative writing, through a series of interconnected, smaller writing projects that are put through the process of iterative development through feedback, culminating in a final standalone World Book. Worldbuilding provides a rich, dynamic canvas on which to develop characters, obstacles, motivations, macro- and micro-level issues, and conflicts and resolutions. Such practice allows for more robust and consistent worlds in which to set singular or serial events in linear and non-linear ways. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. (E) WI
Fall, Variable
FYS 197 On Display: Museums, Collections and Exhibitions (4 Credits)
Why do people collect things and what do they collect? Students explore these questions by focusing on local museums and exhibitions. From a behind-the-scenes look at the Smith College Museum of Art to an examination of hidden gems like the botanical sciences herbarium collection or that cabinet of curiosities which is Mount Holyoke’s Skinner Museum, students research the histories of these collections and analyze the rationale of varying systems for ordering objects. By learning the critical skills of visual analysis and by grappling with the interpretations of art historians, anthropologists and psychologists, students attempt to come to an understanding of how knowledge is constructed in the context of display and how visual juxtapositions can generate meaning. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI
Fall, Spring, Variable
FYS 198 The Coming Apocalypse (4 Credits)
It’s boom time for the End Times. Millennialists state with confidence that the world’s final hour is approaching: the signs are everywhere, for those who know how to see them. Eschatological scenarios abound, ranging from climate change desolation and nuclear annihilation to alien invasions and zombie uprisings. Every ending also heralds a new beginning, though; every apocalypse gives way to a post- apocalypse. By focusing on apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories across a variety of media and genres, this course considers the significance of the human predilection for telling stories about the end of humanity. Restrictions: First-years only; students are limited to one first-year seminar. Enrollment limited to 16. WI {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable