Summer Courses for the Class of 2030
Wesleyan is offering students in the Class of 2030 the opportunity to take a course remotely from home over the summer before matriculating in the University this fall. The summer course curriculum includes small writing-intensive First-Year Seminars (FYS). All incoming students are encouraged to complete one FYS within their first year at Wesleyan.
The course registration process will be open to incoming first-years over the summer via their Academic Road Map. Every student who submits course preferences during this time period will have an equal chance of getting scheduled into a class. Students will be notified of their final course schedule by late June.
No additional charge will be incurred for incoming students who enroll in one of the courses listed below; tuition for these special courses is included in the regular academic year tuition fee. [Note that this program for the incoming class is entirely separate from Wesleyan's Summer Session, which offers courses every summer with a tuition cost.]
Summer courses for the incoming class will take place online from Monday, July 6 through Tuesday, August 11. The class meeting times listed are the hours when the entire class will meet together; while some classes have greater or fewer synchronous meeting times, all courses will require the same total amount of academic work over the five weeks.
We hope you will join us!
Course Offerings
AMST 130F: Wilderness or Paradise? The Colonial World in the Western Imagination (FYS)
What do William Shakespeare's Tempest, Karl Marx's Capital, Georgia O'Keefe's Ram's Head, Bob Marley's Redemption Song, and Sterlin Harjo's Reservation Dogs have in common? What about Jean Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Frida Kahlo's Two Fridas, Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddam, and George Lucas's Star Wars? All these works offer critical reflections on the process of European colonialization of the Americas that started in the late fifteenth century and extends to our days. They all grapple with the question of whether the New World was (and still is) an Edenic utopia or a hellish dystopia. And they all offer provocative answers and difficult new questions.
This first year seminar will explore how different thinkers and artists have imagined and reimagined colonialism in the Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. We will also investigate how the representations they created have contributed to reinforcing or upending colonial relations. We will study cultural creators belonging to different groups, including indigenous peoples, enslaved and free Africans and African Americans, metropolitan and colonial elites, and Asian and European immigrants.
This course will introduce students to different forms of intellectual expression in the Western world--from philosophical treatises to movie series, passing through novels, paintings, and songs. To better understand these works, we will read academic texts and address the practical and theoretical foundations of academic thinking. As we engage with primary and secondary sources on colonialism, the students will also learn practical skills ranging from formatting texts and citations to finding books in the library and articles on the internet to making a compelling argument in an essay or a research paper.
Instructor: Professor Roberto Saba
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Tuesday/Thursday, 2:00pm - 5:00pm
DANC 102F: Perspectives: Dance as Cultural Knowledge (FYS)
This FYS course -- a writing intensive and introduction to Wesleyan’s culture -- investigates the various social, political, and historical contexts that have contributed to the explosive evolution of dance since the nineteenth century, and conversely, explores the ways that performers and choreographers have utilized the medium of dance to reflect their personal concerns back to society in powerful ways. Dynamic artistic movements, choreographers, and dancers examined will include Imperial Russian Ballet, gesamtkunstwerk of Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes, gender manipulation in the roles of Nijinsky; WW I and II and its aftermath in the German ausdruckstanz of Mary Wigman; Modernism’s effect on seminal choreographers in America such as Martha Graham; politics, race, class, and the Harlem Renaissance; the anthropological research in dance of Black choreographers Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus; experimentations of Merce Cunningham; exploration of Postmodern rebellion of the Judson Dance Theater; and the response of choreographers and performance artists to Civil Rights and the AIDS crisis. Students will view performance videos and documentaries, pursue extended research, and be expected to speak and write about dance in a way that will prepare them for academic writing at Wesleyan.
Instructor: Professor Patricia Beaman
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Tuesday/Thursday 10:00am - 12:30pm
ENGL 111F: 21st Century American Literature (FYS)
This course will explore American literature of the 21st century and in so doing, we will consider the portrayals of race, class, ethnicity, religion, trauma, citizenship, migration and sexuality. We will approach these portrayals in engaged class discussion as well as in writing, both analytical and creative. We will also discuss the ways in which these authors conceptualize and problematize American identity.
Instructor: Professor Jennifer Wood
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: TBD
PHIL 229F/MATH 114F: History and Philosophy of Mathematics (for Everyone)(FYS)
Mathematical knowledge is a pinnacle of human knowledge and achievement, so we will never have an adequate account of human knowledge until mathematical knowledge is properly understood. For this reason, the course addresses the question: How do we come to know mathematical truths? What is distinctive about the course is that we will try to answer this philosophical question via scientifically, culturally, and historically informed reflection. This "humanizes" mathematical thought by finding its origins in humans (and in animals), and by finding it in specific cultural contexts and practices and in the historical expression and transmission of ideas. We will reflect on examples of proto-mathematical practices (measurement, record-keeping, writing), on the cognitive or psychological limitations that we overcome mathematics, as well as on some of the history of properly mathematical practices (arithmetic, geometry, algebra). We will identify the distinctive features of various mathematical practices and ask why they take the forms they do and what general morals can be drawn from them. You will also be invited to draw a philosophical moral about the nature of mathematical truth. Meetings will be a mixture of lectures, discussion, and review. Assignments will include writing assignments, problem sets, and "explainer" presentations in which you explain what's going on in a given passage. Hints and pointers about the readings will be provided. Never fear; no calculus will be presupposed or taught!
Instructor: Professor Oliver Marshall
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 1:20pm - 2:10pm
QAC 190F: Big Data, Big Promises, Big Problems? (FYS)
This seminar explores the transformation of the modern data landscape from its pre-datafication beginnings in the early 90s to the contemporary age of "big data." Throughout this transformation, various sectors of society, including healthcare, education, business, urban planning, governance, sustainability, media, science, and art, have experienced unprecedented opportunities for growth and advancement. However, alongside these opportunities, significant challenges have arisen, including privacy concerns, fairness and bias issues, data governance, and model interpretability, all of which have far-reaching implications. The seminar provides a systematic exploration of the characteristics of the "big data" landscape, its impact on the production and distribution of goods and services, and its "data ethics" implications. We will explore the promises, and problems, of our data-driven era, paving the way for informed discussions and critical thinking in our fields of study.
Instructor: Professor Maryam Gooyabadi
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Tuesday/Thursday/Friday, 10:00am - 12:00pm
REES 208F: Otherness & Belonging (FYS)
One of the many haunting utterances of Fyodor Dostoevsky's most famous antihero, the Underground Man, is "I am alone, I thought, and they are everyone." Like him, the other protagonists of this course are outcasts, dissidents, and strangers - jaded office clerks and repressed misanthropes, queer activists and "enemies of the state" - who refuse to conform to societal norms, disrupt conventions by saying the unsayable, and write and make art from the margins, the realm of undesirables. Focusing mainly on Russia and Eastern Europe, we will analyze representations of otherness and belonging in fiction, non-fiction, and film. We will explore narratives of undesirability through the thematic prisms of exile and immigration; gender and sexuality; mental illness; prison writing; ethnic difference; religion; and unrequited love. The concept of undesirability will also be our point of entry for constructing arguments about community, privilege, and a society without outsiders.
Instructor: Professor Roman Utkin
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 1:00pm - 2:30pm
RELI 115F: Theorizing Religion with Zombies
This course introduces students to theories in religious studies in order to investigate the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas: the zombie and the apocalypse. We will critically trace their representations in popular culture in order to explore writings in biblical narrative, history, modernity, monster theory, alterity, gender, capitalism, race, epidemiology, film theory, and media studies. We will begin with ancient texts, move to the history of the concept of the zonbi in Haiti, and then trace the trope of this modern monster and its various meanings into the contemporary moment.
Instructor: Professor Elizabeth McAlister
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Tuesday/Thursday, 9:00am - 11:00am
THEA 145F: Clash of the Titans: Adaptation Across Theater, Film & Television (FYS)
This course will explore how classic texts have informed and inspired contemporary writers of theater, film, and television and how seemingly disparate parts of the canon enrich and illuminate one another. We will dive into close readings of plays, exploration of scenes from an actor's point of view, supplemental viewings and reflections/critical writing analyses of films and plays, and an original adaptation. We will be taking a non-traditional dive into these texts, using free-writes and exercises including breathwork, stretching, movement, and music. The class will have asynchronous work as well and requires rehearsal hours. Content might include Hamlet/Haider, Medea/Mojada, Vanya/Uncle Vanya/Vanya on 42ndStreet, Hadestown, Euridyce, Original Myths, and The Taming of the Shrew/Ten Things I Hate About You/Kiss Me Kate.
Instructor: Professor Maria-Christina Oliveras
Grading Mode: Student Option (choose A-F or Cr/U)
Meeting Times: Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday, 1:00pm - 4:00pm