First-Year Writing Seminars - Spring 2025
SPRING 2025 Writing Seminars
The following seminars will be offered in Spring Quarter. Click on the ">" in front of a title to read the course description. Please confirm class days and times in Caesar, as there may be some changes. When you have identified the ten seminars that most interest you and work with the rest of your schedule, log in to your Dossier to submit your list.
| Title | Day | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Instructor(s): Paul Gillingham Description: | TTh | 2pm-3:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Ty Blakeney Description: | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Sylvester Johnson Description: This undergraduate first-year writing course is designed to teach essential writing skills that will empower students to communicate successfully and support their achievements as college students and beyond, as career professionals. This course devotes central attention to the intersection of race and technology, particularly as examined in Black Studies scholarship. Students will learn about systemic racial forms and impacts of AI technology, explore the rapidly changing world of generative AI technology, and comprehend AI’s risks, relevance, and benefits for scholarly communication. Students will discover methods to apply generative AI to advance research, analyze data, and effectively communicate insights. This course will also engage human creativity, combining it with AI-assisted ideation to elevate student’s capacity for creative writing. Designed to nurture circumspect and curious learners, this course invites students to engage with the uncharted future of AI, race, and humanity, cultivating socio-technical analysis, scholarly communication, and ethical frameworks for implementation. Join us on this exciting journey to enhance writing skills, harness the potential of AI for written expression, and study the pivotal role of race and AI for the future of humanity. | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Jesse Yeh Description: Law is everywhere in our daily lives, even when it’s invisible to many of us. What does it mean for a person when their most salient identity is that they are against the law, outside the law, or illegible under the law? How does it structure how they live their lives? Who gets to tell their stories? In this course, we examine personal and social scientific writings of three groups: over-policed Black Americans, undocumented immigrants, and transgender children. Through these writings, we will explore the relationships between law and stigma, surveillance, and recognition. The primary objective for this first-year seminar is to develop your ability to produce evidence-supported and effectively-organized academic writing. The main components of this course will be writing assignments and essays. | MW | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Kevin Hunter Description: | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Elisabeth Elliott Description: Is Kashubian (Cassubian; kaszëbsczi jãzëk; or in Polish język kaszubski) a dialect of Polish or a separate West Slavic language closely related to Polish? In Ukraine are Russian-speaking Ukrainians Ukrainians? Are German-speaking Turks in Germany Germans? Are Sorbian-speaking Germans in Germany Germans? Are Czech and Slovak the same or different languages? In Estonia if you only speak Russian can you be Estonian? This course explores the deep connections among language, identity, and power in a region shaped by shifting borders, political upheavals, linguistic diversity, and cultural and dialectal continua. We’ll examine how language is used as a tool of identity and nation marking and building, resistance, and exclusion to the point of often denying identity. Topics to be examined include: language myths, language vs. dialect, language policies, language planning, language and identity, language rights. As the final paper for this course, students will work on any geopolitical area in the world and examine the sociolinguistic issues particular to that region or linguistic variety. Some previous papers, for example, have looked at: the role of Japanese in Korea; Koreans in Japan and language discrimination issues; the languages of South Africa; the status of African-American English (or African-American Vernacular English, or Black English) in the US and the controversy surrounding it in the 1990s in the Oakland, CA school district; US language change and the Internet and social media; Celtic in Ireland; the successful revival of a dead language, e.g., Hebrew, as the official language of Israel; the successful revival of a dying language, e.g., Native American/Amerindian languages, Hawai’ian, etc.; language rights in the EU; American Indian/Amerindian languages; bilingualism in the US or Canada; ASL (American Sign Language); Kurdish language discrimination in Turkey; and other topics. | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Martin Naunov Description: This course examines the nature of discrimination and socio-political inequalities, with a focus on American politics and society. Through readings in political science, psychology, sociology, and economics, as well as contemporary news articles, we will explore key questions such as: Why do inequalities persist in society? How do biases—implicit or explicit—shape the way people perceive and respond to others based on race, gender, sexuality, and other social identities? What does it mean to "discriminate," and how does discrimination relate to or differ from stereotypes, prejudice, and social stratification? As scholars, how have we—and how should we—measure the prevalence of discrimination and disparities, as well as their effects? And, finally, what strategies might be effective at curtailing biases, discrimination, and inequalities? By engaging with these and related questions, this course is designed to guide students through the process of becoming better researchers and writers. | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Meaghan Fritz Description: Get hungry! This course explores the art of composition through writing, reading, and talking about food. From reflecting on personal food memories to crafting arguments about how and why we eat what we do, this course will hone your writing skills in areas crucial to college level writing. Class Materials: | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Amy Partridge Description: Coalitional Politics--Case studies from Chicago and beyond: archiving the past for the present In this seminar, we explore several 1970s-era projects in Chicago and beyond that exemplify a coalitional feminist politics and consider the usefulness of this history in an increasingly polarized present. We will read histories of this period and memoirs by movement participants, but our focus will be on engaging in collective archival research and, ultimately curating collections of (10-12) documents that aid us in recuperating these instances of successful coalition building across movements, as well as the intersectional politics that informed these collaborative projects. The seminar will introduce students to the practice of archival research as well as the remarkable range of archival materials housed in Special Collections, which might form the basis for research projects during your four years at Northwestern. Our final class project will be to collectively curate an online exhibition of our findings. Over the course of the quarter, we will also host several class visitors to explore current coalitions and projects that build on this legacy. Cases include: Gay liberation and lesbian/feminism in Chicago; Chicago’s “Rainbow Coalition” and the People’s Revolutionary Constitutional Convention; Welfare rights and the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO); Reproductive rights: Clergy Consultation Service and the Jane Collective; Chicago free clinics/health projects: Black Panther Party, Young Lords Organization, Rising Up Angry, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union & Chicago Women’s Health Center. | MW | 11am-12:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Staff Description: Growing up is hard to do—whether surrounded by the turbulence and poverty of post-war Naples, the violence of war-torn Vietnam, the devastation of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, or the more genteel decline of an American auto town in the 1970’s. This course will explore coming-of-age stories and some of the challenges presented both by difficult and complicated relationships, and by the social and political forces that shape the worlds in which the protagonists are raised. What role do friendships and family play in creating identity, and how might betrayal be a part of growing up? How are the stakes different and higher for some, and how do gender, race, and class play a role in narrowing a person’s choices? We’ll begin by considering the novel and tv series, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, looking in particular at the female friendship at its center; then we’ll examine some of the ways that coming of age is represented in film, looking at Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, Sophia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides, and Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird; we’ll think about the way that graphic memoirs can capture both the personal and the historical, considering Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do; and finally, we’ll consider how films like Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Jordan Peele’s Get Out might make us think differently about what it means to come of age and help us consider the question: How do we push against the life stories that have been chosen for us? | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Alicia Caticha Description: | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Germán Campos-Muñoz Description: The topic of exile—the forced abandonment of the place and world one calls home—captured the imagination of peoples across the ancient Mediterranean. The Greek Odyssey and Roman Aeneid, famous accounts of the predicaments of classical exile, were by no means isolated instances. These renowned poems were in conversation with narratives that circulated widely among neighboring Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylonian, Phoenician, and other ancient communities, in stories which not only produced echoes among themselves, but very likely borrowed from each other. In this seminar, we will read and discuss representative accounts of exile from the ancient Mediterranean world, highlighting their historical and geographical specificity but also reflecting on their treatment of common concerns and themes—such as homelessness and hospitality, longing and belonging, identity and otherness, hosts and guests, refugees and havens, pain and nostalgia, presence and absence, etc. While the seminar will highlight the historical and archaeological coordinates of those narratives, we will also reflect upon their relevance in discussing the very current reality of exile life in today’s world. As a first-year seminar, this course is meant to hone your abilities in the practice of academic writing. The activities for the seminar address this goal by implementing peer-review processes and exploring different writing techniques and sequences. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Vicky Kalogera Description: This course introduces students to the transformative world of artificial intelligence through the lens of its impact on science, society, and the way we think. We will explore the foundational concepts of AI, its applications in diverse fields, and the ethical dilemmas and societal challenges it presents. From understanding how machines learn to examining AI’s role in reshaping industries, culture, and human interactions, this course encourages critical thinking about the promises and perils of AI. Students will develop a nuanced understanding of AI’s past, present, and future, while honing their ability to critically evaluate its implications for the world. No prior technical experience is required—just a curiosity to explore how AI is changing what it means to live and think in the 21st century. | TTh | 9am-10:20am |
| Instructor(s): Jorg Kreienbrock Description: Fetishism is usually understood as the attribution of non-material value or powers to an inanimate object. It was Friedrich Nietzsche's famous characterization of German 19th century culture as a crass “fetish-being,” which introduced the notion of the fetish into the vocabulary of cultural analysis. Since its origin in the ethnographic writings of the enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century, and therefore deeply rooted in the European colonial exploitation of Africa, the fetish appears in many different incarnations in such heterogeneous discourses as theology, Marxism, sociology, psychoanalysis, the clinical psychiatry of sexual deviance, modernist aesthetics, popular culture, and anthropology. This class will give a historical survey of these transformations by focusing on crucial representations of fetishism in literature, philosophy, and film exploring the nexus of colonialism, political economy, and sexual deviancy. | MWF | 10am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Penelope Deutscher Description: | MW | 5pm-6:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Benjamin Frommer Description: | TTh | 3:30-4:50 |
| Instructor(s): Carole LaBonne Description: This seminar explores the milestones of biological science through the stories of scientists and their discoveries. Students will engage with pivotal discoveries that have shaped our understanding of life, from the theory of evolution to advances in genetics and molecular biology and medicine. Through guided discussions, critical readings, and collaborative projects, participants will learn about the impact of these breakthroughs on science, society, and the future of biology. The course encourages reflective dialogue on the interplay between science and human curiosity, fostering a deeper appreciation for the biological sciences and the process of discovery. Required text: The Story of Life: Great Discoveries in Biology, Sean B Carroll ISBN 0393631567 | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Ashish Koul Description: ‘Islam' is often believed to be a religion which justifies oppression of women and regulation of their public lives in theological terms. In this seminar, we will learn about various intellectual movements that have shaped the interaction of religion and gender in Muslim societies from the nineteenth century to the present. To contextualize our understanding of these intellectual currents, we will focus on South Asia—home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations today—as a site for examining the historical evolution of Islamic perspectives on gender issues. This seminar is an opportunity to reflect on the historical intersections among Islam, modernity, and colonialism, using South Asia as a regional site and gender as an analytical category. The course is divided into two unequal parts. Part One focuses on ideological responses to historical transformations in various parts of the Muslim world. Part Two shifts to South Asia and examines how these ideas of change manifested in this region. Based on texts composed by Muslim women and Muslim male theologians, we will consider the following issues: reformist education, marriage and divorce, gender segregation, property ownership, and Muslim women's political participation. In analyzing these questions, we will elucidate the complexity of Islamic intellectual traditions and emphasize their historical dynamism, especially in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Simultaneously, we will discover the ways in which Muslim women have become agents of their own change while compromising with and negotiating multiple forms of social authority in Muslim societies. | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Santiago Molina Description: | TTh | 2pm-3:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Nitasha Sharma Description: | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Megan Baker Description: | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Rio Bergh Description: The United States has always thought of itself in relation to the frontier. From early colonial contact to the Cold War space race, writers have seized on “the frontier” as an essentially American place. Before the existence of the United States, pilgrims imagined taming the “wilderness” to create a “garden,” a new Eden in a new world. Across the 19th century, the iconic figure of the American cowboy emerged—a rugged, masculine individualist obeying his own moral code, not the letter of the law. In the 1960s, space figured as a “final frontier,” prompting book, film, and television production. In a bizarre mashup of tropes, Jeff Bezos wore a cowboy hat on his flight into space on Blue Origin. Together, we will investigate representations of the “frontier” across its many forms in American cultural production. Readings will feature excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) and Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913). Film and television include the science fiction drama of alien contact, Arrival (2016), and selections from the futuristic space Western Cowboy Bebop (1998 and 2021). As a group, we will supplement these materials based on class interest—I will provide descriptions of additional possible texts. Along the way, we will ask: What is the appeal of the “frontier”? How do frontiers stretch how people think of themselves? Why imagine a place beyond the rule of law? What is our relationship to artificial intelligence as an emerging frontier? Throughout our exploration of the theme of the frontier, we will write short papers, building into a draft and revision of a formal essay. In doing so, we will aim to meet the learning goals of Weinberg College for the first-year seminar: to learn how to pose interesting questions; to research and gather evidence; to organize that evidence into a convincing argument; and to develop an engaging voice and style. | MW | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Sara Broaders Description: | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Angad Singh Description: | MW | 11am-12:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Lily Stewart Description: Why are so many horror movies about religion? How does religion help people through experiences of horror? How does religion create and normalize horror in everyday lives? How does horror help us construct and understand the differences between “other people” and “other people’s religions” and our own selves and religious worlds? This class explores these and other questions about the relationship between religion and horror. We will consider how horror as a genre can be a meaningful way for people to think through their experiences of religious trauma, and how religion has likewise been a meaningful way to heal from the horrors of war, loss, and violence. In the first half of the course, will consider how the languages of horror, monstrosity, and the unknown have been used to construct the bodies and ideologies of “other people” from ancient world cultures to modern ones. We will analyze how processes of fear and hate, like racism and xenophobia, draw from (and reproduce) strange and frightening constructions of religious “others.” We will watch movies like the 2019 hit Midommar, read monster theory, and explore the histories of giants, zombies, and vampires. The second half of the class will turn towards the self, and explore how filmmakers, authors, and theorists have used horror to think about their own religions and religious experiences. We will consider why images of violence and bloodshed are often experienced as holy within devotional practices, how love comes to be associated with sacrifice and suffering, and how bodies are marked concurrently as cites of horror, disgust, and transcendence. We will watch the 1973 classic The Exorcist, read medieval visions of hell, explore tales of hungry ghosts, spirits, and revenants, analyze encounters with demons, jinn, and dybbuks, and ask whether frightening fictionalized worlds can help people reflect on and heal from experiences of religious abuse. As a first-year writing seminar, students will be asked to introduce their own areas of interest into course discussions and assignments as they develop analytical writing projects that grapple with questions of religion and horror. Students will develop skills in analytical writing, creative thinking, academic question asking, and classroom collaboration. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Thomas Gaubatz Description: Overview This course is an introduction to academic writing in the humanities. More than technical skills and stylistic norms, we will focus on understanding how academic writing at the university level differs from that taught in high school. Students will be taught to approach academic writing as a practice of knowledge production aimed at communicating original ideas to an informed audience. We will develop these skills through an introduction to game studies--the academic study of video games--and the genre of the Japanese role-playing game (JRPG). Learning Objectives As a First Year Writing Seminar, this course focuses on developing skills of academic writing. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to do the following: In addition to writing skills, this course also offers an introduction to game studies and to the genre of the JRPG. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to do the following: | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Lingyi Xu Description: Who is Jane Eyre? As one of the most iconic figures of modern womanhood in Western literary history, Jane Eyre has captivated many generations of readers around the world. A novel of brilliant idealism and forbidden love, Jane Eyre has also encouraged readers of different cultural, national, and racial identities to imagine themselves as like her, or not. How do we read this novel today, and why should we care about her almost two hundred years after her invention? How have adaptations of it over the years addressed its problematic feminism and its subtly racialized romance? In addition to Charlotte Brontë’s original Jane Eyre, we will look at two novelistic adaptations of the novel, Jean Rhys’s postcolonial classic Wide Sargasso Sea and Patricia Park’s contemporary trans-Pacific novel Re Jane. We will also look at one film adaptation of the novel: Carey Fukunaga’s brooding Jane Eyre. Teaching Method(s): Discussion, Short Lecture Evaluation Method(s): Analytical Writing Texts include: Jane Eyre (ISBN 9780141441146), Wide Sargasso Sea (ISBN 9780393352566), and Re Jane(ISBN 9780143107941). | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Jeff Rice Description: | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Danielle Gilbert Description: Hostage taking is a global, costly, and complex problem for domestic and international politics. Throughout history and around the world, perpetrators from the smallest gangs to the most powerful empires have taken humans captive for leverage. In this first-year writing seminar, students will explore contemporary and historical hostage crises to grapple with the intractable dilemmas of hostage politics: What makes someone a hostage? How does media coverage affect hostage situations? Should governments make concessions to bring hostages home? To explore these dilemmas and delve into real-world hostage crises, students will read scholarship and commentary, watch films, and hear from former hostages, advocates, and the government officials who specialize in hostage recovery. As a writing seminar, the course will prioritize the process and purpose of writing. Using the dilemmas of hostage politics, students will practice asking important questions, making compelling arguments, marshalling and organizing relevant evidence, and developing their own distinct writing style. Please note that the subject matter of this course entails depictions and discussions of violence. | MW | 2pm - 3:20 pm |
| Instructor(s): Stephanie Knezz Description: Biased interpretations of scientific results have been used to justify racial and gender oppression for centuries. It was often argued that people of different races and different genders were fundamentally different, and as such their roles in society should differ as well. Today, many people reject the claim that race and gender have substantial effect on a person\'s abilities or capacity, but how did we get here? More importantly, how did science help facilitate these claims in the first place? In this course, we will explore the role of science in historical oppression based on race and gender. We will identify key scientific studies and their subsequent legacy to reveal the precarious nature of scientific interpretation in the hands of biased individuals. We will discuss how power structures can infiltrate scientific integrity and propose safeguards to prevent this kind of infiltration in the future. | 11am-12:20pm | TTh |
| Instructor(s): Tessie Liu Description: | TTh | 2pm-3:20pm |
| Instructor(s): Brendan O'Kelly Description: From viral podcasts to streaming documentaries, True Crime has become an increasingly popular genre of media in the 21st century. This course traces its evolution from 19th-century crime writing to modern investigative journalism, films, TV shows, podcasts, and online communities. We’ll explore how True Crime balances storytelling, ethics, and activism—sometimes sensationalizing crime, other times exposing flaws in the justice system. Through critical academic and pop cultural readings, we will examine the genre’s legal, ethical, and social ramifications, questioning why True Crime captivates audiences and how it impacts our understanding of justice. Class Materials: | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
| Instructor(s): Julia Oliver Rajan Description: | MWF | 2pm-2:50pm |
| Instructor(s): Avey Rips Description: What does it mean to "write home" – write of home, write to home – when you can no longer return to that home, whether by force, choice, or circumstance? How do poems reach across oceans and continents, in and out of exile? How does one find or make a poetic "home" within a diaspora (a word that refers to the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland)? How do poetic depictions of home carry within them the enormous histories, memories, and experiences of a distant or absent homeland? Together we will explore these questions as we read a wide range of poems about the experiences of being in exile, in diaspora, and at home. At the same time, we will read about and discuss the political and philosophical stakes of being a diasporic subject in our current moment, as the consequences of climate change, war, and political repression have created a global refugee crisis of previously unimaginable scale. Concurrently, we will also seek to answer questions about poetry itself: how do poems written in diaspora imagine – or reimagine – home? Are there unique ways in which diasporic poetry makes meaning? What can diasporic poetry teach us about reading and writing poetry in general? We will be reading works about exile, home, and homeland by poets from a variety of diasporic traditions around the world, as well as critical texts in diaspora studies and de- and post-colonial theory. Throughout, you'll also be honing your skills as a writer, learning to pose questions, fashion arguments, and develop your own authorial voice. Teaching Method(s): Discussion, Short Lecture. Evaluation Method(s): Discussion, Analytical Writing. Texts include: all available via pdf. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |