Course Descriptions

For a full listing of Fall 2009 FYP courses visit: http://www.stlawu.edu/fyp/fall09/main.htm

Fall 2009:

Advocacy & Activism

Thoreau Lives!
Jon Rosales & Natalia Singer

When Henry David Thoreau published his memoir in 1854 about a year spent living alone and close to the land in a cabin in New England, he probably had no inkling that Walden would inspire the environmental movement of the twentieth century.  He certainly would not have predicted the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, when young people fled the cities and suburbs to take up a lifestyle of subsistence farming and voluntary simplicity in rural regions of America, including Upstate New York, the North Country: a movement which lives on today as ordinary citizens participate in community supported agriculture, “buy local,” and seek home-grown sources of energy.  Nor could he have foreseen that his cranky, individualistic essay, “Civil Disobedience,” would inspire the action and thoughts of political leaders and activists, authors, and citizens across the globe wishing to resist the forces of global capitalism, consumerism, war, environmental plunder, and the fossil fuel-based economy.  In this course we’ll begin with a study of Thoreau and then bring him up to date, studying twentieth and twenty-first environmental writers and note how the seeds of that prickly New Englander’s thought continue to bear fruit and offer hope for the future.  We will visit with North Country citizens who have found ways to “live deliberately,” as Thoreau wrote, in a culture that tells us it is our patriotic duty to consume and consume and spend and spend.  To finish, we will push Thoreau into the future, to ask ourselves, as individuals, how it is that we wish to live, in what kind of community, and in what kind of world. (syllabus)

Community-Based Learning

Making a Difference: The Role of Active Citizenship in a Thriving Democracy
Jenny Hansen & Liz Regosin

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 our 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. We will look at concerns about the wealth gap, racial tensions, a broken criminal justice system, a faltering public education system, and a disconnected citizenry. To enhance our engagement with these questions and to assume our role as active citizens, all of us will be volunteering in the local community throughout the fall semester. We hope this experience will push all of us to ask: Should we make a difference?  If so, how? (syllabus)

Democratic & Decentered

Lifestyles: Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow
Jodi Canfield and Cheryl Stuntz

This course will examine historical, cultural, social, and psychological predictors of lifestyle behaviors, with a focus on physical activity and food choices.  Statistics imply that Americans may be in the midst of an obesity epidemic. By understanding the various factors influencing our lifestyle behaviors (including the mass media, age, gender, socioeconomic status, technology), we can hopefully devise ways to “get us out of this mess.” We will investigate changes in food sources, food production, and work/family life to understand our own and others’ food and activity choices within a broader historical context. We will also examine the social and global implications of these lifestyle decisions.  Students will be partnering with groups in the local Canton community which promote responsible physical activity- and food-related lifestyle choices. (syllabus)

Reflective Journaling

Representations of the American Family
Cathy Crosby-Currie and Sarah Gates

The American family has taken a variety of forms over the last 200 years—from extended families living under a single roof to single-parent families living on the street, from families brought together by poverty to families brought together by love.  Given all this variety, what do we wish families would do, imagine that they should do, or fear that they actually do—to and for their members and their communities?  How are families shaped by their members and their communities and how do they in turn shape the individuals within them?  And finally, how have these wishes and fears evolved as family formations have changed in the last couple of centuries?  This course will explore these questions by examining fictional representations of families, in literary and popular works, from the Victorian period to the 21st century and beyond.  Our examination will be informed by readings from a variety of disciplines, such as history, psychology, and anthropology. (syllabus)