First-Year Humanities Seminar

The First-Year Humanities Seminar (FHS) Program explores the great variety of human experiences over time and around the world. The Humanities power our imagination and create a foundation for communication, connection, and understanding across generations and cultures. Through a wide and varied range of sections, outlined in the course descriptions below, the FHS program reflects a shared commitment to fostering intellectual community and engaging with broad questions that spark curiosity. Whichever section they choose, students will engage in highly participatory, discussion-based learning. All CMC students are required to take a section of FHS in their first year at Claremont McKenna College.

Student learning outcomes:

Students will gain exposure to significant humanistic works and approaches.
Students will gain familiarity with diverse perspectives and modes of inquiry.
Students will develop their intellectual curiosity.
Students will hone their skills in critical reading.
Students will develop their capacity for evidence-based argumentation and analysis through the craft of writing and self-expression.
As members of an intellectual community, students will learn how to engage in complexanalysis, reasoning, and communication through thoughtful preparation, active participation,and collaborative and constructive dialogue.

Course

FHS010 CM - First-Year Humanities Seminar

Topics include:

Autobiography and the Construction of the Self. Martinez, C.
This seminar explores how the self is constructed through the act of writing one’s own life story. Students will read both classic works, for example St. Augustine’s City of God, and contemporary works, for example Nawal El Saadawi’s A Daughter of Isis. Key themes include the impact of modernity on the sense of self, ethnic identity in the post-colonial world, and the gendering of the self. The reading list includes not only autobiographies but also key theoretical essays on the literary genre of autobiography and historical essays to place the works in context.
Blue Humanities, Black Aquatic. Itagaki
Rising sea levels and global ecological crises prompt us to ask, can we imagine a better future with water? Artists, writers, and scholars in the environmental humanities ask how thinking with water (“Blue Humanities”) presents new ethical possibilities for human relationships with the non-human world. This seminar focuses on the Blue Humanities in relation to Black Diaspora Thought through a discussion of art, literature, and culture at their intersection. We will explore critical issues including settler colonialism, property and ownership, interracial relations, feminism, and what scholars call “new materialisms” (gender/sexuality, dis/ability, eco-criticism, queer/trans+ theory).
Caste, Race, and Equality. Panda
This course will explore the bodies of knowledge surrounding the politics and practices of caste in South Asia. We will study the emergence and development of radical social movements in the colonial and postcolonial periods that were opposed to caste oppression, along with scholarship that seeks to understand how such a form of social hierarchy and difference operates within regional and national communities. We will also examine how caste interacts with forms of identity such as class, gender, and religion. Caste has often been compared to race: we will study historical parallels as well as present scholarship and activism that aligns political struggles against caste and racial injustice.
Conceptions of the Good Society: Defining Development. Uvin
For the past sixty years, millions of individuals, in rich and poor countries, have donated their money and time to “do development” in the “third world.” Development work fundamentally consists of a conception of the good life and the good society, but what that concretely looks like has changed much over the last sixty years. This course critically analyzes the conceptual foundations and debates in the field of development, the great goals, shared and enacted (and sometimes contested) by all those who work in it. The course also pays some attention to how these great goals have concretely been implemented.
Democracy, Empire, and War. Evrigenis
Democracy was born in Periclean Athens, a state that valued freedom, openness, and commerce. Its policies, however, turned Athens into an empire, eventually leading it into a long and bloody war with Sparta. The Peloponnesian War weakened Greece’s city-states and ushered a long period of autocratic rule. Since then, people have turned to Thucydides’ history of it-a “possession for all time”-to study human nature, historiography, politics, and war. In this course, we will examine the relationship between democracy, empire, and war through a close study of Thucydides’ account, focusing on the role of institutions, the people, and rhetoric.
Exploring Philosophy Through Literature. Toole
This course will use philosophical texts together with works of fiction to unpack and explore themes relating to the metaphysics of race and gender. This is a modified version of an upper-level course on consciousness, identity, and the self. In particular, we’ll examine how the self is constructed in relation to certain social structures, the sorts of choices that people must make when subjected to these structures (e.g., passing), the role of these structures in shaping (and limiting) what we know, and how to develop social awareness of these structures and their influence. Please note this course is *neither* a course in literary theory *nor* a course on the philosophy of fiction-rather, we read works of fiction together with philosophical texts to deepen our understanding of the themes developed in each.
Evil. Basu
What is evil, and what distinguishes the merely bad from the evil? In this course we explore the nature of evil and consider how we should respond to evil when we confront not only seemingly obvious cases of evil, but also other more insidious forms of evil that are harder to see. Questions we will address include: Do we, as part of our nature, inherently have a capacity for evil? What implications does a positive answer to this question have for issues concerning moral responsibility and holding people accountable for their actions? Further, in the face of evil, especially great evil such as genocide, how should we respond? Is forgiveness psychologically possible? How can we forgive, how can we have hope?
Gender and Society. Selig
This course explores how influential writers have analyzed the social roles of women and men. We will consider a set of questions: How have thinkers understood the interplay of nature and culture? What arguments did they make regarding education, economics, citizenship, and family life for men and women? What social and political changes did they advocate? We will examine, as well, how their writings were received, what influence they had, and how authors responded to each other’s ideas. After some readings from the ancient and medieval world, our focus will be on Europe and the United States in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.
The Good Life. Uvin
For the past sixty years, millions of individuals worldwide have donated their money and time to promote development in the “Third World.” “Development” is a shorthand for the dominant conception of the good life and the good society, and not surprisingly these have changed much over time. This course more or less chronologically analyzes the evolution of mainstream definitions of development-from economic growth to basic needs, from sustainability to freedom, from modernization to rights. We will then discuss a set of alternative, more current and more critical understandings of development that have been selected by you.
The Graphic Novel and Middle Eastern History. Ferguson
This course explores how visual narratives from medieval manuscript illustrations to the contemporary comic strip and graphic novel provide an alternative lens on Middle Eastern history. Students will first be introduced to the art of visual narratives and their importance to the region more generally, and then use the visual form to assess the reverberations of major turning points from the 19^th to the 21^st centuries on the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of everyday life in the Middle East. The course relies on a combination of scholarly approaches to the art of storytelling and key historical movements in the Middle East, paired with graphic memoirs, novels, and popular comic strips. Students will address questions related to imperialism, national identity, revolutions and revolutionary theory, social and gender norms, as well as patterns of forced and voluntary migration, and explore a geographic terrain that encompasses North Africa, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey and Iraq.
Islam and the West: Cultural Encounters. Hamburg
This course analyzes Islam in certain of its religious, cultural and historical dimensions. After considering the emergence of Islam as a religion from the Age of the Prophet to the twelfth century, we shall focus on Islamic encounters with the European West. At the center of our attention will be Muslims’ religious self-understanding; Christian understanding of, misunderstanding of and hostility toward Islam; and the current rupture between Islamists and the West.
Liberty and Excellence. Blitz
A detailed reading of the Declaration of Independence, along with an inquiry into debates which the Declaration has generated over the past two centuries regarding the meaning of freedom, equality, and political excellence. The primary text for the course will be Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. Allen is a scholar of Classics and Political Science, a prominent public intellectual, and recently campaigned for Governor of Massachusetts, and so one purpose of the course will be to use Allen’s work on the Declaration to help students reflect on how studying the history of political ideas could help us contribute concretely to contemporary politics. Accordingly, secondary readings for the course will include influential statements by American politicians, jurists, and journalists, along with academic scholarship.
Life, Death, and Meaning. Kind
The Sisyphus of myth was condemned to an eternal punishment of rolling a stone up a hill, only to have that stone roll back down so that he was forced to begin his task anew. While Sisyphus’s fate thereby epitomizes meaninglessness, many writers have thought that we are in no better of a position. Do our lives have meaning, or are we no better off than Sisyphus? If we’re doomed to meaninglessness, what kind of attitude should we take our existence? And regardless, how should we view death? Course readings, both classical and contemporary, will be drawn primarily from philosophical, religious, and literary texts.
Love and Evil. Buccola
In this First-Year Humanities Seminar (FHS), we will think about the ideas of love and evil by way of engagement with philosophy, fiction, and film. What is love? What is evil? How are love and evil related to each other? How might deepening our understanding of evil help us better understand love? How might deepening our understanding of love help us better understand evil? We will explore the works of Plato, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Hannah Arendt, Truman Capote, and Shirley Jackson.
Medicine, Health, and Disease in Modern African History. Molosiwa
This course is broadly about sub-Saharan Africa’s medical history, medical cultures and healing traditions and about the interactions between Western medicine and Africa. We will explore the history of disease, health, and healing in the context of changing economic, cultural, and political relations in Africa beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. Topics to be discussed will range from African medical ideas and practices, therapeutic pluralism, colonial medicine, social/public responses to disease, and controversies surrounding the ubiquitous scourges of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.
Mystics, Prophets, and Social Change. Espinosa
This seminar introduces students to religious and secular mystics, prophets, and social radicals whose revolutionary ideas continue to shape civilizations around the world: Moses, The Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Augustine, Mohammad, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, William James, Mircea Eliade, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Mary Daly, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and/or Osama bin Laden. It explores how their notions and critiques of God, sin, justice, and/or salvation shaped their attitude towards religion, politics, and strategies for revolutionary social change.
Nature and Society. Venit-Shelton
This class explores how societies have interacted with the natural world from roughly the fifteenth century to the present day. We consider nature not only as physical forces and spaces but also as the meanings and values ascribed to them. We will ask how nature has affected practices and policies and vice versa as a departure point for thinking about the historical roots of contemporary environmental thinking and problems.
Natures of the Self. Gilbert
The course examines the Self as represented and understood during various periods and in different intellectual frameworks within western civilization. Through important works of literature, philosophy, and science, we will examine how the Self is constructed and contested, the relation between independent Self and social Self, between the Self and the story of the Self, and whether or not these exists and identifiable, irreducible Self.
Otherness and Encounters. Aitel
In this course we will take an interdisciplinary, multimedia, and focused approach to a fundamental aspect of human experience, that is, the encounter with the “other”, and, implicitly, its corollary, the recognition of the same. From the earliest texts and visual representations men and women have grappled with the other-difference-whether as a matter of distinguishing who is a member of the social/racial/gender group, or as a division of labor, etc. As a collective experience, this course addresses an essential aspect of all communities and societies, namely the way we organize ourselves with or against, the “other”. From the map of Odysseus’ world in The Odyssey to the latest sci-fi films, humankind has struggled to understand and represent the “other” in a multitude of ways. This struggle to represent the “other” is a productive or constitutive process, however, as it will also allow for the emergence and full identity of the “same” and the demarcation of the boundaries of the collectivity or community.
Philosophy and Literature. Toole
This course will use philosophical texts together with works of fiction to unpack and explore themes relating to the metaphysics of race and gender. This is a modified version of an upper-level course on consciousness, identity, and the self. In particular, we’ll examine how the self is constructed in relation to certain social structures, the sorts of choices that people must make when subjected to these structures (e.g., passing), the role of these structures in shaping (and limiting) what we know, and how to develop social awareness of these structures and their influence. Please note this course is *neither* a course in literary theory *nor* a course on the philosophy of fiction - rather, we read works of fiction together with philosophical texts to deepen our understanding of the themes developed in each.
The Case of George Orwell. Farrell
George Orwell has been the most loved and hated political writer of the last hundred years. He wrote about colonialism, war, race, poverty, cruelty, and oppression from a personal point of view. He was a convinced Socialist but a bitter critic of the Left, an internationalist but a patriot, a freedom fighter but a loner. We will follow his thought and experience, as expressed in his novels and essays, from his school days in England to his time in Burma, his fight against fascism in Spain, and his novelistic debate with Aldous Huxley over the looming threats to freedom.
Poverty, Wealth, and Social Change. Chung-Kim
This seminar examines some of the most important religious, secular, and political thinkers in human history and their reflections on poverty, wealth, and social change. It also explores their strategies and methods for social change and why their views on wealth and poverty remain influential around the world to this day. Key thinkers analyzed include Moses, Confucius, the Buddha, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammad, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Adam Smith, John Locke, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Mao Zedung, John Stuart Mill, Walter Rauschenbusch, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Leonardo Boff, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Rigoberta Menchú, and Muhammad Yunus.
Race, Diversity, and Higher Education. Basu
In this class, we will take up questions surrounding the goals and goods higher-education education, and the place of race, diversity, and merit in college admissions. Some of the questions we’ll explore include the following: What is diversity and why does it matter? What is merit and what does it mean to evaluate candidates according to merit? Are college admissions fair? If they’re not fair, is there any way they could be made fairer? In addition, we will also explore the idea of the university itself, what it is for, and whether education serves to free the mind or to indoctrinate it.
Religion and Modernity. Michon
As Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar argued in 2001, “modernity is inescapable…[and we must]…desist from speculations about the end of modernity. Born in the West some centuries ago under relatively specific socio-historical conditions, modernity is now everywhere.” This course, then, does the important work of tracing the story of the birth and development of modernity in the West, and it pays particular attention to the role of religion in this process. The course moves from the religious foundations of modernity to religion’s impact on modern philosophy, science, politics, and economics.
Religion and Poetry. Martinez, C.
Why have mystics and religious thinkers so often expressed themselves poetically? How and why have modern poets drawn upon the language and techniques of sacred texts? How have poetry and religion been used to critique society and frame ethical problems? This course will explore the relationship between the religious and the poetic, introducing key sacred texts from a variety of religious traditions alongside poetry from the 18^th century to the present.
Revolutions and Their Legacies. Livesay
This course examines periods of revolutionary change, how they transform societies and social relations, and how they become remembered. Three types of revolutions-political, technological, and cultural-will be explored over the course of the semester. Students will study the background of those events to understand how societies change through revolution, as well as how individuals conceive of themselves and their communities in the midst of such unsettling. They will then critique contemporary discussions of those revolutions’ meaning in the present day. Readings and assignments will help first-year students to analyze a range of material in order to build a strong foundation in the humanities.
Sacred Grounds: Coffee, Power, Religion. Velji
Drinking coffee is one of the most common of human experiences. Yet most of us don’t really spend much time thinking about what goes into our cup or how it gets there. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to one of our most quotidian of drinks, this course illustrates how coffee is anything but ordinary. Our exploration begins with a discussion of coffee’s early history and how that history is tied to religion. We then examine global trading patterns and the flourishing of the coffeehouse. After examining the material cultures of coffee, we trace the development of coffee from industrial product to global commodity, highlighting along the way questions concerning labor, race, and representation.
Socratic Questions. Evrigenis
Socrates is considered the father of Western philosophy. This course will offer students the opportunity to engage in depth with Socrates as a philosopher, and as a historical and literary figure. We will read Plato’s dialogues, which recount Socrates’ philosophical conversations with his fellow-Athenians. Some of the core questions we will address include: What is the meaning of life? Should I primarily seek pleasure? To what degree am I obliged to obey the law? Why do we sometimes do what we know is wrong? How do we learn to be good? How do we learn to apply concepts?
Tales of the Heroic. Bjornlie
This course offers a thematic approach to understanding societies by examining various strategies for portraying the ideal individual. Students will examine a wide range of literary and artistic sources, including epic, biographical and semi-biographical material, histories, sculpture and painting, in order to consider the political, economic, social and religious elements ascribed to the ideal individual and the roles that they have been assigned in various ancient and medieval societies. Along the way, the course will consider a number of core cultural themes-status and power, sexuality and gender, religion, family and education-connected to the portrayal of the ideal individual in an ancient and medieval context. More generally, the course will also introduce students to various strategies for conducting research in a humanities or social science course.
Vampires, Zombies and the African Diaspora. Sarzynski
In popular culture and myths, vampires and zombies have often been depicted as monsters that return from the dead to exploit the living or to be exploited as forced labor. This course examines early representations of vampires and zombies in popular culture to recognize the racialized origins of the genre. We then analyze how locals in Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S. South interpreted vampire and zombie stories as related to the transatlantic slave trade and their experiences with colonialism. We continue our examination of vampires and zombies in the modern era, recognizing historical legacies and changes in representations in U.S. and global popular culture.
Virtue and Character. Hurley
The virtues are traits of character. Developing these traits of character, e.g. courage, prudence, honesty, benevolence, and justice, is widely thought to promote the flourishing of human beings in every aspect of their lives. This course will trace the development of accounts of virtues in the Western tradition from the Greeks to the present day, including recent challenges by many philosophers and psychologists to the relevance of both character and the virtues. Authors we might consider in a given semester include Homer, Aristotle, St. Paul, Adam Smith, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Christopher Lebron, Miranda Fricker, Gilbert Harman, and Rachana Kamtekar.