First-Year Seminars

The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will:
- Critically analyze information and ideas
- Examine issues from multiple perspectives
- Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason
- Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and
- Create clear academic writing

The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and between students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.

All Dickinson first-year students arrive on campus for orientation knowing which seminar they will join.

The following First-Year Seminars are offered in the Fall of 2012:


Analyzing the causes of pediatric obesity
Ancient Democracy: A Modern View
Between two worlds: Mexican Americans in United States
Biomedical Ethics: Cases and Quandaries
Bob Dylan’s Music and Jungian Psychology
Chasing the Flying Car: A History of the Future
Chinese Attitudes towards the Environment
Democracy in the 21st Century World
El Çid: Discovering the Medieval Epic Hero
Family Drama
Founders of Modern Discourse: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
Getting the Boot: The Italian Experience in America
Green Music
Ideas that Have Shaped the World
Law & the War on Terrorism
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
Lord of the Castle, Lady of the House
Mental Illness: From Movies to Memoir
On the Delivery of Healthcare
Picturing Health, Disease and Medicine
Process and Invention in the Arts: The Pluralistic Nature of Creative Methods in the Digital Age
Stand Up and Be a Man: Exploring Representations of Men, Manhood and Masculinity in Film, Literature and Art
Sustainability and Renewable Energies
Sustainability, Greening and Entrepreneurship: An Introduction to Ecopreneurship
The 1970s: The Promise and Pitfalls of Liberation
The Culture of Science
The Economics of Human Mating Behavior
The Evolution of a Cheeseburger
The Poetry of Place and Identity
The Politicization of Science
Transforming Lives: Social Justice Leaders of the 19th and early 20th Centuries
Utopias, Dystopias, and Engineering "Progress"
War, Violence and Memory
Watched: Surveillance and Society
What is science?
Sites of Memory: Reclaiming Indigenous Histories
School Desegregation in the U.S.: Its History and Implications
Mediated Realities