First-Year Writing Seminar - ENG 1111

Fall - 3 Credits

In First-Year Writing Seminars students learn to write in ways that emphasize clarity, coherence, intellectual force, and stylistic control. All seminars pursue this common aim through small classes, with a maximum of sixteen students, and adherence to a program-wide set of guidelines. The seminars require at least six formal essays, totaling ca. 25-30 pages of polished prose. The essays go through a process of development under the instructor's guidance (e.g. revision, peer review, responses to readings, etc.). Reading assignments are kept under 75 pages per week to permit regular, concentrated work on writing. All students meet in at least two individual conferences with the instructor.

English 1168 - Health in the age of AI: Exploring the nexus of medicine, society and technology

Krystyna Golkowska, PhD, Professor of English

This course uses a socio-cultural perspective to explore the interface between medicine and technology. Discussions of multi-genre texts revolve around issues of agency, ethical decision making, and challenges to the wellbeing of patients and health care providers. Since this is a writing intensive seminar, you will be required to submit 4 formal essays in addition to shorter assignments.


English 1111 - Beyond the Bones: Taking the Pulse of Literature and Society

Rodney Sharkey, PhD, Professor of English

This course will engage with global writing that resists limitations on person, place and individual liberty. This is because much of the literature we will study is fueled by social upheaval and political turbulence and the authors in question have used writing as a tool to prompt social change. As a result, we will be able to take the “pulse of society” through literature that makes the pulse race, through literature that succeeds in provoking a desire for regeneration in the lives of otherwise dispossessed and/or oppressed people. Moreover, just as bodies are made up of blood and bones, skin and muscles, ligaments tendons and much more, so in this course you too will move “beyond the bones” to build a body of written work that will shape, develop and define your abilities as a writer.

English 1111 - Philosophy of Medicine

Adam H. Larson, EdD, Assistant Professor of English as a Second Language

Few modern institutions are as important as medicine. While its aims are practical, medicine takes for granted certain theoretical assumptions, relies on causal hypotheses supported by inductive inferences, and unfolds within complex social, political, and economic contexts. For these reasons and many more, medicine is a prime subject for philosophical study. In this writing seminar, you will explore essential questions like: What does it mean to be healthy or sick? Should doctors treat the whole person or the diseased part? What is the “evidence” in evidence-based medicine? How does clinical judgment work? Does the commercialization of medical research influence objectivity? Is alternative medicine valid? Through a sequence of essay assignments, you will reflect on the philosophical questions underlying contemporary medicine while enhancing your critical thinking and writing skills.

English 1168 - Poetry, History, and Culture

Alan Weber, PhD, Professor of English

The course will explore history, culture, religion, and society through world poetry in English and other languages. Through close analysis of individual poems and poets, students will increase their historical and cultural competence, practice standard academic writing and critical / analytical skills, and learn vocal performance techniques used by singers and public speakers to perform successfully before audiences. The course will additionally improve your enjoyment of poetry through greater understanding of sound patterns, aesthetics, and the formal elements of poetry such as rhyme, meter, symbolism and imagery.