First-Year Program Course Descriptions

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Making a Difference: The Role of Active Citizenship in a Democracy (CBL)

What should a thriving democracy look like? In an era of economic crisis, perhaps now more than ever we should be reflecting upon how well our democratic institutions meet the needs of a diverse citizenry and what role citizens should play in ensuring the health of these institutions. What does it mean to be a member of a society that proclaims a “government of the people, by the people, for the people?” As we wrestle with these questions, we’ll examine America’s founding principles and the fundamental debates over our core values as a nation.

Stories Connecting (dream)Worlds

Storytelling and story reading make up the backbone of this course. Using various media including graphic novels, animation, film, radio and literature, we will explore this fundamental human activity.

Paths, Pilgrimages and Perspectives: A Study of Personal Narrative

What defines a journey?  Movement?  Travel?  If we stay in the same physical place, do we not, nevertheless, still experience an internal journey? In all our commonalities, we come from different places and yet have all arrived here at St.

Coldest Cold War Flicks: Cold War History, Cold War Film

This course will examine the earliest and coldest days of the Cold War, a period extending from the end of World War II in 1945 to the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, through a sampling of historical texts and American movies made during that time. Movies are often more than just mindless escapism: the stories and texts continually recast by our culture not only entertain but also can provide a window into who we are, and were.

The Power of Place

Congratulations, you took first place! There’s no place like home. My place, or yours? I felt so out of place.

Simultaneously, people define and are defined by “place.” Throughout time and across cultures, the importance of place has been central to how people understand their world and interact with the environment.

Paranormal Phenomena and Science: Experiencing and Analyzing the Inexplicable

That humans are constantly making new discoveries and inventing new techniques for interacting with the world implies that there are ever more things to discover and endless ways to do so.  By examining phenomena that cannot easily be reconciled with or explained by present scientific knowledge, this course questions both skepticism and belief as responses to the anomalous.  Some phenomena we’ll study are drawn from cultural systems outside the modern West, while others have already been subjected to scientific experimentation in modern labs.  In all cases, we’ll analy

Children’s Literature and Its Life-long Lessons: A Cross-Continent Collaboration (CBL)

Stories exert a profound influence on humans by engaging our imaginations and teaching us life lessons while entertaining us.  From economics to advertising to the inspiration to follow your dreams, chances are, it was a piece of children’s literature that led to your initial understanding of the concepts and themes now guiding your young adult life.  As we explore the power of storytelling, this class will learn to identify the many life lessons we first encountered as children and to also consider the importance “setting” plays in both literature and our own lives. 

Finding a Voice: Creativity, Community and Performance

Each of us is moved in a unique, individual way by the beauty of the artistic expression that we see, hear or produce, but the meaning we draw from art is shaped as well by the experiences and ideals that we share within communities. This college will both investigate, and be invigorated by, the power of the social act of performance. We will learn, in part by regularly becoming performers ourselves, ways in which an artist, whether poet, dancer, actor or musician, can clearly communicate with an audience.

Human Development Personalized – Who are you, and why?

How did you change from a cell into a baby?  How does your DNA determine your traits?  How much of your identity is molded by choice, versus things that are out of your control?  How do your interactions with others change you?  This course will clarify the influence our biology, environment, past experiences, relationships, and thought processes exert on our development.  Weekly experiential workshops will focus on healthy individual and group development.  This course is highly participatory.

Sherlock Holmes and the Art and Science of Reasoning

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!"  This is a famous maxim of Sherlock Holmes, a rule used to reason through crimes and solve mysteries.

Blues People: Race, History, and Music in the U.S.

This FYP approaches the issue of U.S. race relations through the prism of African/American music and history.

Literature of the Local

There is no single definition of "local" in common use today. It means many things to many people.  Local food, for example, in many regions can mean within 10 miles, whereas in the North Country it often means within 200 miles.  Is it just the University campus or the Adirondacks to Lake Champlain that represents a local experience for SLU students?

Back to the Land: Simple Life in a High-Tech World

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to own a hobby farm or a homestead or live as part of a self-sustaining community? What is the allure of such a lifestyle? Would you be able to do it? Recent history is full of examples of individuals and communities that have returned “to the land” to seek the simplicity of life in harmony with the natural world. What does this lifestyle entail? How do these practices impact the local economies? More importantly, is it a life worth living?

Deconstructing Apocalyptic Narratives (CBL)

This course will review the historical, philosophical and religious roots of modern apocalyptic thought and examine some of the pressing “apocalyptic” issues of our time.  These issues will include shortages of critical resources, natural disasters, global warming, war, pandemics, and debt.   Are our fears of imminent doom justified?   Is history simply repeating itself?   Is a sense of existential dread engrained in our human nature?  Is there anything we can do about these life-threatening problems?  As part of our exploration of the human

The Creative Experience of Leadership: What Makes a Leader? (CBL)

Leadership is the art and science of inspiring others to work together toward a tangible goal. Are the visionary imagination, oratorical skills, and confidence of an effective leader intrinsic qualities, or is being a leader really about being adaptable and observant, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy suggested when he observed, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”   There are many philosophies on leadership.

Reason and Debate in Scientific Controversies

What is science? What makes a scientist? How do scientists communicate—with each other and non-scientists--and why? This course is designed to deepen your interest in science by examining controversies, both within science and between the scientific community and the larger society. Controversies we will consider include: were some dinosaurs warm-blooded? Should scientists believe in atoms? What is the relationship between vaccinations and autism? Is it possible to re-create human intelligence? How vulnerable is the electric grid to space-weather?

Identity and Belonging in the St. Lawrence Valley

What does it mean to live on or near an international border, specifically one created by the natural landscape, such as the St. Lawrence River? How do these political and geographical borders shape the identities of people living there? Your university sits in the St. Lawrence River Valley, which has occupied an important place in the history of North America since the pre-contact period between First Peoples and Europeans. It has served simultaneously as a place of residence, transportation route, conduit of commerce, and sometimes national symbol.

Connections and Intersections: Identity, Relationships, Culture

Though we have a tendency to think of the “self” as fixed and immutable, the reality is that identity is a set of social constructs and practices. We all create, communicate, and perform the multiple facets of our selves (or have them constructed for us by others) every single day. Using communication theories, acting/performance analyses, and embodied practice in classroom interaction and performance, we will explore the means by which we create our various selves, while also examining the idea that none of these selves are "natural" or singular.

Murder and Mayhem: Using Liberal Arts Disciplines to Solve Crime

Victims and villains, sleuths and scenarios, destruction and deduction… from the Victorian parlor to the modern-day movie-plex, audiences have long been fascinated by stories of murder and mayhem. These stories, however, do a lot more than entertain.  Every mystery is an intellectual invitation to construct a narrative that makes order from chaos.

The Creative Process

Creativity seems to be the buzzword of the decade, a trait valued not just in the arts, but in science, business, therapeutic modalities, and in our most prized self-images. Like the children of fictional Lake Wobegon, we all hope that we possess creativity in levels “greater than average.” But what is creativity?  What is going on in the mind and body when one is producing a creative work or solution?