As part of the General Education Program, we are proud to offer all first-year students the opportunity to explore in depth academic topics selected by professors representing a variety of disciplines
Acclimating to RIC and Academia
These First-Year Seminars (FYS), limited to twenty students each, are designed to provide an introduction to the academic world and to our community, and to help students advance with confidence as Rhode Island College scholars.
Fall 2026 First-Year Seminars
FYS 100-01: Cultivating Attention: Mindfulness, Movement, and Meaning (Johnson)
M/W 2-3.50pm
In this course, we explore connections among our minds, emotions, and bodies–and to our surroundings and moments of unexpected delight. Through mindful movement, on-campus field trips, and reflective writing, this hands-on course develops practices of contemplation, curiosity, and joy that support academic focus and personal well-being.
FYS 100-02: Exploring Cultural Landscapes: Seeing with Visual Data (Dixon)
T/Th 2-3.50pm
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; the same visual literacy that is used to understand, analyze, and critique pictures is needed as we examine places and cultures. In this course, students will explore symbolism and meaning embedded in cultural landscapes, both everyday places close to home and internationally iconic landscapes. We will also begin to explore digital spaces as places of cultural creation and community formation. We will evaluate the world around us as scholars with an array of tools including maps and satellite imagery that utilize big data and develop qualitative skills to visually analyze a cultural landscape so we can understand places, make sense of changes, and know our place within this complex, changing world.
FYS 100-03: Leadership Study Through the Biography (Kunkel)
M/W 8-9.50am
This course will look at the dimensions of leadership primarily through the study of biographies and biographical portraits. The class will explore qualities of various leaders through online sources, print and media. For final projects, students will conduct research as well as read a biography of their choice and share portraits of their subject based on their original research.
FYS 100-04: Technological Design and Innovation (McLaughlin)
T/Th 8-9.50am
Technology! We are surrounded by it, but do we understand it? Technology is one of the greatest liberating forces in human history. We are consumers of technology without equal, but we have a certain lack of knowledge about the materials and processes used to make the things we use on a daily basis. During this seminar, we will research historical technological design and innovations that make our lives better. The class activities will require us explore the processes of innovation and invention, designing, prototyping, and building simple products. This course will contribute to our understanding of technology.
FYS 100-05: Performance in First Person: This is Me! (Pennell)
M/W 6-7.50pm
You are a Primary Resource! Your life stories and experiences are unique, interesting and exciting. This class will explore a variety of methods of journaling, personal narrative/memoire writing and storytelling. It will also involve theatre exercises and methods for presentation.
FYS 100-06: Podcast Perspectives (Hewins)
M/W 10-11.50am
Podcasting Perspectives examines the history, genres, and influence of podcasts, exploring their impact on society and how they at times blend truth and fiction. Student will work together to analyze diverse podcasts, reflect on ethical issues, discuss regulation and generate their own podcasts. Assignments foster critical thinking and creative engagement with this contemporary communication medium.
FYS 100-08: From Star Trek to Star Wars: Understanding Your World Through Science Fiction (Allard)
M/W 2-3.50pm
In this seminar, we will seek to understand the world that we live in through an exploration of science fiction. Sci-fi is much more than entertainment: through utopian or dystopian visions of humanity, this genre often offers a social commentary on human nature, culture, history as well as current issues and anxieties. In this course, we will explore how various science-fiction media (novels, short stories, tv-shows, movies) tackle and reimagine contemporary issues through workshop activities, group discussions, oral presentations, informal and formal writing assignments, and undertaking a research project and a creative “world-building” project. You do not need to be a sci-fi fan to enjoy this course, just bring your interest in exploring new worlds!
FYS 100-09: Black Cinema (Bery)
T/Th 2-3.50pm
In this course we explore Black films across multiple genres, including narrative fiction, horror, Afrofuturism, comedy, musicals, and documentaries. Black Cinema explores Black life from diverse perspectives. These cinematic representations foreground what is silenced and made invisible by dominant mainstream cinema. Through creativity and imagination Black films create new ways of seeing and knowing. Our weekly screenings, discussions and collaborative work will be guided by interviews with Black filmmakers, critical film reviews, and readings on the Black experience.
FYS 100-10: Critical Issues in American Education (Kunkel)
M/W 10-11.50am
This seminar provides an overview of critical issues in 21st century public school education policy. Current issues include: vouchers, gender, equity in school finance, reading, integration, affirmative action, critical thinking, multicultural education, national curriculum, values, business, testing, teacher empowerment, mainstreaming, academic freedom, unions, private schooling, and school violence.
FYS 100-12: Make Music from Trash (Sumerlin)
M/W 10-11.50am
Explore the sound potential of discarded objects or materials. Bang on a can? Strum a window blind? See what others are doing with junk that can sound like alternative music, and then find and make your own. No written music or experience required: only play by ear what your own instrument can do. Then join with your classmates in small groups and work out how to play together. The final is a concert.
FYS 100-13: Science, Technology and Humanity of Energy (Padmanabhan)
M/W 2-3.50pm
Come, learn the science behind the Earth’s interconnected systems and human energy usage. Special focus will be placed on understanding the basics of energy, energy consumption and renewable energy technologies. You will also examine these topics through the lenses of economics and policy. You will work with your peers to formulate relevant questions, analyze data, understand numbers and engage in the process of developing solutions.
FYS 100-14: Where Is Everybody? (Gullapalli)
M/Th 12-1.50pm
Are we alone in the universe? The fact that we live in a vast universe with many planets has led to speculations about the possible existence of aliens. There is ongoing exploration of our solar system for indications of life, while others have claimed that alien intervention in human societies has already happened. In this course we tackle the question of alien life in three ways. We will explore the ways that alien life has been imagined; we will analyze and evaluate the evidence for past and current visitations by aliens; and we will become familiar with what current explorations of the solar system and beyond reveal about the possibility of alien life.
FYS 100-16: Mountains of Culture and Power (Little)
T/Th 10-11.50am
Mountains are powerful. They are places of spirituality and worship. They are the focus of sport and adventure. Mountains are primary sources of fresh water for our world’s growing population. Mountains are also sites of mining, resource extraction, and cultural resistance. Mountains are places of power and danger, nourishment and surprise, peace and resistance. Mountains are awesome! Let’s explore their awesomeness!
FYS 100-17: Talkies and More: The Social Lens for American Films and Web Series (Chaudhuri)
M/W 2-3.50pm
In this course we look at recent Hollywood films/web series and how their storytelling is relevant to an American way of life in 2026. Based on a select list of films (students can propose a limited season web series), concepts including but not limited to race, gender, social class, crime and deviance, family, religion, globalization (among other themes) will be addressed in class. In the process we try to figure whether films are pure entertainment or a medium that plays an important role in informing us to look at society.
FYS 100-18: Shock Therapy: Drama as Action (Abbotson)
T/Th 8-9.50am
Throughout history, rulers have viewed the communal opportunity offered by theater as a dangerous form of communication, and have striven to censor anything perceived as threatening the social order. Students will explore socio-cultural boundaries enforced and broken by drama from the Greeks to contemporary works, as playwrights provoked attention toward a variety of inequities and wrongs. Protest drama is by its very nature shocking, but can it go too far, does it still work, and can we create some of our own?
FYS 100-20: Drawing and Writing Nature (Baker)
T/Th 10-11.50am
Most of us move through the natural world without really seeing it. A leaf is just a leaf, a forest just a bunch of trees — until you sit down with a notebook and commit your observations to paper. Details emerge, patterns reveal themselves, and ordinary things become surprising. This class uses nature journaling to deepen that attention through three core practices: writing, drawing, and quantifying. You don't need to be a writer or an artist; you just need curiosity and a willingness to really see the world around you.
FYS 100-22: Reggeaton and Rise of Latine Music (Torres)
T/Th 2-3.50pm
Latine music's rise has been meteoric. Bad Bunny's superbowl show in 2026 was testament to the explosive popularity of Reggeaton music. Using Reggaeton as the main case study, this course looks at the rise of Latine music through the music itself and the cultural and historical context that gave rise to its development. Together we will ask what is it about Reggeaton music that captivates its fans? Is it that it is a genre that grew out of migration and cross-cultural exchange? Or are fans captivated by the Reggeaton artists themselves? The class will be taught in "Spanglish." Working knowledge (not fluency) of English and Spanish is helpful.
FYS 100-24: Perspectives on Life, Death, and Meaning (Im)
T/Th 2-3.50pm
What makes life meaningful and how do individuals create purpose in a complex world? How have different people grappled with these questions and what can we learn from them? Through texts, literature, film, and reflective discussion, students examine diverse perspectives on mortality, happiness, identity, relationships, work, and human flourishing. In this course we consider both personal and social dimensions of meaning, including how careers, vocations, and economic systems shape our lives. Students will develop skills in critical thinking, interpretation, dialogue, and self-reflection while exploring what it means to live a meaningful life.
FYS 100-25: Medieval Clickbait: Scandals and Surprises (Hawk)
T/Th 10-11.50am
Political intrigue, the Black Death, giants, plagues of the undead, penis trees, human sacrifice, werewolves, magic spells—these are the scandalous, the surprising, the utterly bizarre... and the completely historical. This class will explore a range of real texts from the global Middle Ages (roughly 500 CE to 1500 CE), all of which record weird and fantastical tales. We'll be reading about ancient Irish curses, Italian ghosts, untranslatable Austrian manuscripts, a French dog that was granted sainthood, a Tibetan trickster who teases Buddhist monks, and more. Along the way, we will consider the connections, disjunctions, and oddities between stories of the past and stories we tell in the present.
FYS 100-27: Bill Nye the Science Guy, Norman Lear, Sesame Street, EE and Me (Galvez)
T/Th 12-1.50pm
An exploration of how we learn, and what we learn through popular media. Themes associated with early childhood development, health communication, and social justice will be examined.
FYS 100-28: Never Again? The Holocaust and Its Legacies (Merritt)
M/Th 12-1.50pm
At the end of World War II, the global community was shocked by the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews, declaring that they would “never again” allow such a genocide to occur. In this class, we will consider the ways that “never again” might remain relevant for us today. We will explore how political movements mobilize around bigotries (both old and new); how segregation and repression are implemented by governments and experienced by victims; why some people choose to participate in violence, stand by and do nothing, or stand up and help victims; and the representation of genocide in movies, politics, and public memory.
FYS 100-30: Mountains of Culture and Power (Little)
T/Th 12-1.50pm
Mountains are powerful. They are places of spirituality and worship. They are the focus of sport and adventure. Mountains are primary sources of fresh water for our world’s growing population. Mountains are also sites of mining, resource extraction, and cultural resistance. Mountains are places of power and danger, nourishment and surprise, peace and resistance. Mountains are awesome! Let’s explore their awesomeness!
FYS 100-31: Leadership Study Through the Biography (Kunkel)
T/Th 12-1.50pm
This course will look at the dimensions of leadership primarily through the study of biographies and biographical portraits. The class will explore qualities of various leaders through online sources, print and media. For final projects, students will conduct research as well as read a biography of their choice and share portraits of their subject based on their original research.
FYS 100-32: Coca-Cola, Culture and Globalization (Auger)
M/W 4-5.50pm
This seminar introduces students to the history of Coca Cola and its effect on national, international, and pop culture. Second only to ‘okay” as the most commonly understood word in the world, Coke’s brand has worldwide influence. Through film, Coca Cola’s website, and a textbook we will explore Coke’s responsiveness to changes in society from the patent medicine era to current concerns about the links between soft drinks and obesity.
FYS 100-33: Perspectives on Life, Death, and Meaning (Im)
MW 4-5.50pm
What makes life meaningful and how do individuals create purpose in a complex world? How have different people grappled with these questions and what can we learn from them? Through texts, literature, film, and reflective discussion, students examine diverse perspectives on mortality, happiness, identity, relationships, work, and human flourishing. In this course we consider both personal and social dimensions of meaning, including how careers, vocations, and economic systems shape our lives. Students will develop skills in critical thinking, interpretation, dialogue, and self-reflection while exploring what it means to live a meaningful life.
FYS 100-35: Never Again? The Holocaust and Its Legacies (Merritt)
T/Th 10-11.50am
At the end of World War II, the global community was shocked by the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews, declaring that they would “never again” allow such a genocide to occur. In this class, we will consider the ways that “never again” might remain relevant for us today. We will explore how political movements mobilize around bigotries (both old and new); how segregation and repression are implemented by governments and experienced by victims; why some people choose to participate in violence, stand by and do nothing, or stand up and help victims; and the representation of genocide in movies, politics, and public memory.
