Standard FYS Courses for Fall 2025
All of the seminars listed below earn 4 units.
FYS 3: Social Difference and the Politics of Technology
Prof. Brian Bartell
MWF 12:50-1:45 + W 3:00-3:55
"Technology" is often thought of as being neutral and at its best providing solutions to problems without human bias. Despite this, contemporary developments in predictive policing and algorithmic racism, to give only two prominent examples, suggest that this is not the case. In Social Difference and the Politics of Technology we will discuss contemporary issues like AI, automation, and environmental technologies, and a longer history of technology dating to plantation slavery and European colonialism. The course will ask students to think about the ways that technological development has never been neutral and has always been connected to histories of race, gender, sexuality, and hierarchical conceptions of what it means to be human, as well as economics and labor, and ecological issues. In doing so we will look at a wide array of texts and media to examine these histories, to imagine worlds otherwise to them, and as a foundation for developing writing skills in order to ethically engage with technological change on an increasingly unequal and unstable planet.
Note: FYS 2 and 3 have the same topic and instructor. While FYS 2 is only available to students participating in the Computing IRL program, FYS 3 is open to all first-year students.
FYS 4: Cultural Anthropology and Other/Realities
Prof. Alex Bolyanatz
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
This course is essentially an introductory course in cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology emerged within the past two centuries as a means of coming to grips with the diversity of ways of being human. While cultural anthropology’s history has been tainted by collusion with racist and imperialist programs, it remains the single loudest academic voice on behalf of indigenous peoples around the world. In this course, we will look at a part of the world—New Ireland, Papua New Guinea—that is different, in many respects, from the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) societies from which most, if not all, of the students in this class come. We will discover that non-WEIRD societies have a logic to their ways of being and relating, and that sometimes, WEIRD ways of doing things are, well, weird. This is a 4-unit course. On average, you should expect to spend at least twelve (12) hours a week (including in-class time) on this course.
FYS 5: German Film: Modernity and its Monsters
Prof. Alex Gardner
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
This course offers a survey of German film from the origins of cinema to the present day. We will focus on questions pertaining to how one can interpret or “read” a film, as well as the relation of German film to contemporaneous developments in art, literature and politics. How is the authoritarianism of the early 20th century depicted and/or confronted in film? What do horror films tell us about the anxieties and prejudices of the societies that produced and consumed them? Throughout the course, we will investigate the ways in which the dilemmas and aspirations of the modern world became legible in film, and ask to what extent film is a medium uniquely suited for depicting and attempting to understand modernity’s paradoxes.
FYS 6: Literature and Philosophy: The Dionysian in Modern Thought
Section 1: Prof. Damian Stocking
Section 2: Prof. Sydney Mitsunaga-Whitten
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
More than simply a "god of wine," Dionysus was for the Ancient Greeks a god of ecstatic self-abandon, of gushing fertility, of violent dismemberment and unexpected rebirth. In myth he was attended by raving Maenads and mischievous Satyrs; amongst humans he was worshiped with festive dances, communal shouts, ritual obscenities, and (perhaps most importantly) with poetry-with the literary genres of ode, comedy and tragedy that were invented specifically to honor him. What could be farther, we might ask, from the cool, reasonable practice of philosophy than this wild, uncanny, irrational god? And yet, as we shall see in this class, this reckless god of madness and poetry stands at the foundation of some of the most important ideas in modern philosophy-Hegel's phenomenology of spirit, Nietzsche's will to power, Heidegger's philosophy of Existenz, Bataille's notion of excess, and Derrida's "non-concept" of différance. Beginning with an exploration of Dionysian poetics in Ancient Greece, this course will attempt to show what thinkers like these found so inspiring in this ancient god, and what the writers and thinkers of our own time might yet find in him still.
FYS 7: Romance and Sexuality in Asia
Prof. Min Joo Lee
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
This course will examine the diverse ways that Asians conceptualize and engage in romantic and sexual relationships in ways that complicate the hegemonic Western stereotype of Asian men as emasculated and Asian women as hypersexualized. For example, we will examine the sex tourism and sex work industry in different parts of Asia. We will comparatively examine the stories of Asian marriage migrants. Furthermore, we will examine how queer Asians conceptualize their queerness in relation to the hegemonic white Western queer identities. In addition to academic journal articles and books, materials we will cover throughout the course will include various forms of popular cultural contents ranging from magazine articles, photographs, and films, to music videos, and social media posts.
FYS 8: Enchantment and Disenchantment: Senses in Premodern Chinese Literature and Art
Prof. Meimei Zhang
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Why are the senses important? They are our means of experiencing the physical world. We are born to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, through which we perceive, experience, and make sense of our surroundings. This course explores the vital role of the senses in human experience and their representation in Chinese literature. Through various genres and historical periods, we will examine how sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are depicted in literary works. By analyzing these sensory descriptions, we will uncover how authors’ philosophical views, aesthetic preferences, and personal interests influence their ways of writing about sensory experiences. The course emphasizes that our sensory experiences are both collective and individual, highlighting the diverse ways in which we perceive and interpret the world around us.
FYS 9: How to Read Poems
Prof. Jake Mackey
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
In this class, we will learn to read poems. We will practice the slow reading that poems require. Most specimens of writing we encounter in daily life admit of fast reading. This is because these specimens of writing are not meant to draw attention to their language but to the stuff in the world that their language is about. News stories, Tweets, texts, social media posts, advertisements, and so on are typically instances of language use that are meant to inform you of things out there in the world beyond the language itself. Poems, in contrast, amount to uses of language that draw our attention to themselves. Metaphor, simile, alliteration, rhyme, word patterns, rhythm, meter, and so on are the very stuff of poetry. This is not to say that poems cannot also be about stuff. They can. But what is typically most important in poems is the way—the linguistic, verbal, wordy way—that they are about the stuff that they are about, rather than the stuff itself. In this class we will attend not only to the stuff poems are about but also to how they use their language to be about that stuff. In other words, we will learn to read poems.
FYS 10: Debates in Sexuality
Prof. Caroline Heldman
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
This course introduces three theoretical perspectives on sexuality: biological, psychological, and social construction. With these perspectives in mind, we address pressing topics involving sex-prostitution/sex work, abortion, pornography, and sexual violence.
FYS 11: Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Making
Prof. Sharla Fett
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Building on traditions of resistance established under chattel slavery, freedpeople struggled to make freedom a reality along many dimensions, including bodily sovereignty, land, labor, intimate relations, family integrity, education, legal rights, and citizenship. In this class, we will immerse ourselves in primary historical documents—including letters, military reports, petitions, and newspapers—seeking to understand how African Americans pursued their visions of freedom from wartime through Reconstruction.
FYS 12: Comic Book Nation: A Survey of American Graphic Literature
Prof. Raul Villa
Section 1: MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Section 2: MWF 12:50-1:45 + W 3:00-3:55
Comic books were once considered an intellectual and moral threat to young people. Today, “graphic narrative" is a celebrated and lucrative medium supported by a mainstream apparatus of publication and criticism. We will study the history of this hybrid, word-and-picture medium, in the United States from its origins as disposable children's fare to its current array of serious adult genres: novels and short stories, memoir, documentary journalism, and biography. For comparison, some attention may be given to foreign texts in translation. This course should be particularly attractive to students interested in the creative arts and humanities, but the variety of texts and topics should appeal to students with broad topical interests in 20th-century U.S. history and culture.
FYS 13: Imagining Freedom
Prof. Season Blake
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Mariame Kaba, an anti-violence activist and advocate of abolishing prisons and policing, has said, "As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm." This course revolves around Kaba's insight. To imagine a freer and more just world, we begin by discussing concepts of freedom. Then we use these concepts to discuss the many ways that those in the prison system are denied freedom, as well as the ways that people are manipulated toward complicity in an unjust status quo, even sometimes in our own oppression. Then we will examine how certain social movements have developed practices to resist social and political coercion, with special focus on how their work enables us to discuss and imagine more freely.
FYS 14: Chaos: Just How Predictable is Our Universe?
Prof. Janet Scheel
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
In this seminar, we will learn how the mathematics of chaos helps us to better understand science, economics, psychology, and our environment.
FYS 15: Islamophobia, Anti-Arab Racism, and Muslim Exceptionalism
Prof. Sohaib Khan
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Arabs and Muslims are exceptional figures in the American imagination. A "bad" Muslim is exceptionally religious, violent, conservative, and anti-democratic. Conversely, a "good" Muslim can only be an exceptional one. This course will introduce students to approaches in religious studies, ethnic studies, and critical race theory toward a critical examination of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in the US. We will ask: How do race, religion, and ethnicity interact to produce exceptional stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims? How are non-Arab Muslims racialized as Arabs and non-Muslim Arabs as Muslims? How does such racialization foster a culture of suspicion and normalize practices of surveillance against Arabs and Muslims? How do efforts to combat Islamophobia as a form of religious prejudice end up obscuring anti-Muslim racism? Finally, how do we make sense of exceptions to free speech, international law, human rights, academic freedom, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that undermine the rights and human dignity of Arabs and Muslims?
FYS 16: Religion and Violence
Prof. Michael Amoruso
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
This course interrogates the relationship between religion and violence. Through a survey of the scholarship on religion and violence and a series of focused studies on 9/11 and the "revolutionary suicide" at Jonestown, this course will offer an overview of religion and violence in the Americas. Using these case studies, we will ask a series of analytical questions: What is violence? Can religions motivate violence, or do they merely sanctify it? And what are the sources of religious authority (such as leaders, scripture, tradition, and ritual practice) that can militate for or against violence? And what kinds of speech and action are properly understood as "violent"?
FYS 17: Understanding Society through Soccer
Prof. John Lang
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Beginning in England over 150 years ago, association football, commonly known as soccer in the United States, has evolved from a working-class tradition to a multi-billion dollar global industry. Argentina's World Cup final victory over France in 2022 had a global audience of roughly 1.5 billion people, making it a far larger event than the 2022 NFL Super Bowl's audience of roughly 115 million. Passion for the game connects fans in the legendary arenas of Wembley Stadium (England), Estadio Azteca (Mexico), and Maracana Stadium (Brazil) among others, to the suburban fields of the United States, and makeshift pitches across the globe. Given its ubiquity, with possibilities to watch the game on television 24/7, not to mention on the small screen of everyone's smartphone, one wonders, how can soccer be used as a prism for learning about society?
FYS 18: All That Glitters: Life, Literature and Film in Los Angeles
Prof. Jackie Elam
Section 1: MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Section 2: MWF 12:50-1:45 + W 3:00-3:55
Norman Mailer described Los Angeles as a “constellation of plastic.” John Fante called it a “sad flower in the sand.” Is Los Angeles really just “72 suburbs in search of a city,” as Dorothy Parker claimed, or is there something else brewing beneath the beautiful, sunny skies? We’ll explore (primarily through films and literary texts) 20 th and 21 st century Los Angeles as both a real and imagined location. Through the completion of three papers, a self-directed field trip and other activities, you’ll craft your own conceptual “map” of the place. Please note that some of the literary and film texts for this course may be disturbing. Contact the instructor if you have any questions.
FYS 19: Why This and What Else?: Social Criticism and the Literary Imagination
Prof. Devin Fromm
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
A foundational principle of the modern world is that, in large part, we make it for ourselves. This happens in a variety of ways that we usually consider within the confines of philosophy, politics, and law. But storytelling appears as an equally powerful force, with its unique ability to give complex insight on a given social moment, along with its persuasive ability to unsettle accepted norms and imagine radical alternatives. In this case, our seminar will look at a variety of ways in which narrative has emerged as a specific vehicle for social criticism, as it develops specialized techniques to challenge social arrangements and effectively imagine alternatives. This seminar will look closely at a variety of such efforts at criticism and reimagining, considering literary approaches to rationality, conflict, empathy, and perspective, and working through such diverse movements as romanticism, realism, modernism, and postmodernism.
FYS 20: Isn't It Romantic? Romance Novels as the People's Genre
Prof. Q. Ostendorf
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
While the term "romance novel" today often calls to mind tawdry love stories featuring heaving bosoms and uncontrollable passions, the genre of romance is much more complex than these stereotypes would make it seem. Early examples of romance are sprawling adventure narratives of chivalry, crusades, the supernatural, and yes, occasionally even love. Today, these tales have evolved into the modern day romance novel - a genre known for celebrating love, but which also often questions gender, sexuality, family and friend relationships, and professional success. In this course we will explore the genealogy of romance, asking not only what constitutes a romance, but also what the continuously popular genre can teach us about readers' desires and discontents across history.
FYS 21: Songs To Save Your Life: Writing About Music
Prof. Ara Corbett
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Music lovers of all genres, styles, and eras, unite and take over! In this course we will explore different ways to write critically and powerfully about music. Students will learn how to engage and guide readers’ ears, hearts, and minds by entering current cultural conversations, responding to provocative critical assessments, and championing work that has been overlooked by the public and/or the critics. By reading and discussing some of the greatest music writers from the past few decades, students will learn how to incorporate technical terms and socio-historical context into their arguments while sharpening the sensitivity of their own observations and honing the quality of their own personal voices. We will also consider other music-related topics such as the effects of technology (streaming, generative AI), the value of print media (album artwork, zines), the impact of local college radio stations (KOXY, KXLU), and more.
FYS 22: What's the (Subject) Matter with Musicals?
Prof. Laural Meade
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Broadway musicals are paradoxical. For all their quality, popularity, and variety, musicals have been historically disparaged as escapist entertainment: romantic and/or comedic romps that are, for the most part, thematically light and spectacle-oriented. And then Hamilton, right? Not so fast. Singing and dancing theater artists have dramatized hard-hitting social dynamics throughout the history of the form. This course will explore the development of the distinctly "political" stage musical. Offerings will track its rise throughout the 20th century (in shows such as Showboat, Cradle Will Rock and Hair), to contemporary productions that tackle a variety of issues through a decidedly intersectional lens (like Caroline, Or Change and Passing Strange). Our inquiries will also address representation and access. For all of the evolution of the genre, musicals are out of reach for many, on stage and off. How can an essentially elite art form have meaningful resonance and impact?
FYS 23: Technologies of Resistance
Prof. Malek Moazzam-Doulat
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
This course will examine modes of and moral groundings for social and political resistance — ranging from highly organized revolutionary movements to distributed, asymmetrical and covert actions. We will also attend to the role of new digital technologies — from social media to AI, drones and other robotic weapons. The examples and sites we will study will be global but with special attention to the Middle East and North Africa.
FYS 24: The (SLAC) Campus Novel
Prof. Yumi Pak
MWF 12:50-1:45 + W 3:00-3:55
In this course, students will be asked to think critically about the form and content of what is known as "the campus novel," or a work of fiction that takes place on, or is centered around, student life on a university or college campus. Specifically, students will join the ongoing conversations that focus on campus novels that are set in fictional — or perhaps fictionalized — small liberal arts college (SLAC) campuses. Authors may include, but are not limited to, Donna Tartt, Don Lee, Elisabeth Thomas and Mona Awad. By analyzing creative narratives of student lives at SLACs, alongside academic scholarship on higher education in the United States, this first year seminar will invite participants to think deeply about their own desires and demands from Occidental College, and from a liberal arts education writ large.
FYS 25: Microbe curious? The invisible world that shapes who we are and how we thrive
Prof. Shana Goffredi
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
In this course, we will explore the microbial world. Bacteria, archaea, and fungi are the most dominant forms of life on Earth, and they play an enormous role in shaping and sustaining our planet. In fact, only a very tiny fraction of them do us harm. Scientific breakthroughs have uncovered a breathtaking diversity of microbes in environments ranging from compost to arctic ice, underwater volcanoes to leaf surfaces, and within the bodies of animals, from aphids to humans. Together, we will put Los Angeles under the microscope and develop an appreciation for the necessity of microbes by looking at how they evolved, how they function, and their impacts on human society.
FYS 27: Reimagining Intelligence: What Does it Mean to be Human in the Age of AI?
Prof. Stephanie Nelli
MWF 11:45-12:40 + W 3:00-3:55
Even though we do it every day, recognizing a face isn’t as easy as it seems. Different hairstyles or a sideways angle fooled our best algorithms for decades. Using principles from the human brain, artificial neural networks can now recognize faces, write stories, and even create art. Some believe these algorithms have even passed our benchmark for evaluating whether a machine possesses human-like intelligence, the classic “Turing test”. Students in this course will understand how the human brain inspired these algorithms by reading neuroscience literature, philosophy of mind literature, and implementing code. With these tools, students will explore how these algorithms shed light on, and challenge, what it means to be human. No experience is required to succeed in this course but a strong interest in cognitive science, computer science, philosophy, mathematics and/or statistics will be beneficial.
