PLEASE NOTE: Some course offerings might have changed since you received your Seminar for Freshmen brochure. Please review the list carefully to see the new options.
Additional options are also available for honors students.
-
SF-1130 Lincoln and the Law
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This course will examine Abraham Lincolns relationship to and enduring impact upon the law by exploring 1) his legal career and life as an attorney in Illinois; 2) his views on race and slavery; 3) the effort to pass the Thirteenth Amendment; 4) his views of and other actions related to the Constitution (the suspension of habeas corpus, the right of states to secede from the Union, the Presidents War Powers, etc.); and 5) the code he commissioned to set out the rules of war. We will take an expansive look at Lincolns legal mind and cover diverse topics such as Lincolns legal writing, ethics, the Constitution, and international law. The subjects discussed will then be related to the current practice of law in the United States. The course will be designed to introduce students to the theoretical underpinnings and practice of law, the Constitution, Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, the War Powers of the presidency, and the rules of war through the lens of Lincolns relationship to and impact upon the law.
-
SF-1128 Sustainable Media
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Contrary to a popular perception that information, communication and entertainment technologies are clean, ecologically benign and paperless, the reality of an increasingly digital life is that our fascination with the next best thing in mobile phones, video game consoles, personal computers, digital cameras, tablets, etc., has devastating impacts on our environment. These media devices are manufactured using toxic ingredients in poisonous working condition, require an abundance of energy to operate, and create hazardous waste when disposed. Media technology companies and the advertising industry that markets their wares have successfully persuaded consumers to accept rapid obsolescence and to highly anticipate the latest upgrade. But some consumers, electronics manufacturers, policy makers, and environmental groups are working to change the culture of consumption in favor of sustainable media practices that lessen the environmental footprint of the digital devices we use everyday. The purpose of this course is to understand the problem of unsustainable media, and the possible solutions for a sustainable media system.
-
SF-1129 Beacon Hill: Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy
Credits:
4.00
Description:
The course will explore the physical geography, history, and image in literature, film, and pop culture of Suffolk Universitys Beacon Hill neighborhood. The purpose and objective of the course is to provide students with a deep knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of Beacon Hill through examination of written and visual sources, and feet-on and eyes-on experience of the public parts of the Hill.
-
SF-126 The Boston Theatre Scene: the Inside Experience
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Using the current Boston theatre season as its syllabus, this writing- and analysis-intensive course will explore several plays in production at some of Bostons many professional theatres. We will study the script of four to five plays before attending performances of those works. Students will gain insights on the world of theatre through backstage tours and conversations with theatre professionals such as producers, directors, actors, designers, playwrights, and critics. Students must be available for evening (usually Wednesday) performances. A fee for student-rate tickets will be assessed.
-
SF-161 Passion, Knowledge, and the Morality of Great Minds
Credits:
4.00
Description:
What motivates and inspires great minds? How do they gain and develop knowledge? How do they construct and define moral imperatives? This course will examine selected works of great minds whose lives and works continue to represent an enduring source of critical consciousness, courage, and commitment to humanity. We will review the works of Sophocles, William Shakespeare, Mahatma Gandhi, Simone Weil, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.
-
SF-190 Asia in America Fiction and Fact
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Through selected readings, movies, and a field trip to Chinatown, we will study important socio-cultural events related to Asian immigrants throughout American history. This seminar will help students gain a better understanding of racial and cultural relations and appreciate the dynamics of cultural interactions in the twenty-first century.
Type:
Cultural Diversity Opt A
-
SF-197 Sustainability, Energy, and Technology At Suffolk University
Credits:
4.00
Description:
In this project and team-based course, students study a sustainability problem at Suffolk University and spend the semester developing proposals to address the problem. At the end of the course students will present their proposals to Suffolk Universitys sustainability committee, and will exhibit their websites and visual aids in the Donohue lobby to educate the Suffolk community about sustainability. If their proposals are well-researched and well-communicated, students can see their ideas actualized while they are still undergraduates.
-
SF-1126 Prosperity: the Nature, Sources, and Ethics of Wealth Creation
Credits:
4.00
Description:
The aim of this course is to provide the students with the philosophical tools for understanding the current crisis of capitalism and the debate about what principles we should use as we decide where to go next. The course explores three closely related questions: What is wealth? What are the institutions that are conducive to the creation of wealth? And, by what principles of justice should we regulate the distribution of wealth amongst the members of society?
-
SF-107 Life Lessons From the Writing of Alice Walker
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This seminar will explore the poetry and prose of Alice Walker a contemporary African American author whose writings offer rich lessons on gender, class, race, psychological development, and change. By exploring the authors works in-depth, students will gain an appreciation of the cultural and historical factors affecting individual lives. Videotaped interviews and filmed adaptations of Alice Walkers work will be woven into the curriculum. When opportunities arise, we will schedule relevant field trips and discussions to augment our understanding of the authors writings and experiences.
-
SF-183 Politics, Power and the Media
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Is there a relationship between accumulated political power and mass media representations? Is news content impacted by existing political power relations? It is the object of this course to critically analyze the role of the mass media within the framework of existing political power relations in the United States. In particular, the course will focus on the role the mass media plays in promoting and reinforcing dominant political practices and ideologies. The course will begin by exploring various theories of the press, notably its function in a democratic society, as well as the concepts of power and propaganda. We will continue with a series of case studies, complemented by secondary sources that highlight how media representations affect the contemporary distribution of political power in the US. Topics of discussion will include the current US war on terrorism, the ongoing health care debate, the public disavowal of big government, and the concept of a liberal media.
-
SF-185 Emerson & American Renaissance
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Readings from Emerson and other American Renaissance writers, including Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Whitman, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, William and Henry James, and Emily Dickinson, and examination of their role in shaping twentieth- and twenty-first-century American culture, American pragmatism, and European modern and postmodern philosophy, literature, and cultural criticism. This is a seminar in American cultural, intellectual, political, and socio-economic history which will examine the relationship between Ralph Waldo Emerson and other contemporary American cultural critics, as well as their relationship to the society from which they sprang and to the values of which they were, at the same time, giving enduring cultural formulation. An examination will be also be undertaken of the formative influence of Emerson and his contemporaries on their successors in American cultural production and cultural criticism, and of their enduring influence, for good or ill, on a twentieth- and twenty-first- century America that was in the process of changing profoundly - socially, economically, and ethnically - from that of Emersons day.
-
SF-198 Music and the Brain
Credits:
4.00
Description:
What accounts for the power of music to move us so profoundly? This course explores how our brains and music evolved together: What music can teach us about the brain, what the brain can teach us about music, and what both can teach us about ourselves.
-
SF-198 Music and the Brain
Credits:
4.00
Description:
What accounts for the power of music to move us so profoundly? This course explores how our brains and music evolved together: What music can teach us about the brain, what the brain can teach us about music, and what both can teach us about ourselves.
-
SF-151 Getting Over It: Dealing With the Aftermath of Group Conflict/Mass Atrocity
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Once violent conflict between two groups has ended, what is the best way to transition back to normality coming to terms with the past or simply moving on? To answer these questions we will examine the debates surrounding war crime tribunals, truth commissions, lustration policies, and reparations in the second half of the 20th century. Case studies will include post-apartheid South Africa, post-WWII Germany, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We will discuss the philosophical problems raised by each of these instruments, as well as on the political, legal, and practical difficulties their implementation present. Cultural Diversity B
Type:
Cultural Diversity Opt B
-
SF-102 Economics and the Environment
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This seminar will establish a clear link between the environment and the macroeconomy. We will examine how environmental decisions are also economic decisions that affect output and employment, among other things. We will also establish that environmental issues are global in nature and have political and economic effects beyond our borders. Students will do a significant amount of research and writing and will engage in group discussions.
-
SF-105 Voices in Conflict
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Why are conflicts so hard to resolve? How do myths about conflict affect communication? What is the role of power in conflicts? How can we use language and listening skills to engage in healthy conflict resolution? Course examines conflict within and across issues of gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, and ethnicity. Explores attempts to negotiate meaning and power within and across socio-cultural conflicts and how this is revealed through language.
Type:
Expanded Classroom Requirement
-
SF-116 Enlightened Insanity
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Rain or shine, the great 18th century Enlightenment philosophers would meet at the famous cafes of Paris to discuss their ideas, and to observe and criticize society. From these informal debates emerged ideas that are at the core of our modern understanding of the nature of society, marginality, human nature, civil rights, the essence of creativity and genius. Come join us in the quest to understand, define, observe, and analyze the key ideas and concepts of these great thinkers, such as Rousseau, Diderot, and Voltaire, still so relevant in our time. We will read key works of these creative thinkers and philosophers. We will enrich our experience and understanding through the use of film, theatre performances, museum visits, as well as the occasional cafe debate.
-
SF-121 The Challenge of the Cradle to Prison Pipeline
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This course explores the process through which youth in urban areas are funneled into criminal careers and lives in prison. The focus is on the experience of young men who face the prospect of spending significant portions of their lives incarcerated. Three segments of the life-course for this population are explored - before, during, and after prison. The course is developed as a Service Learning Course, offering students opportunities to learn about and work in communities with programs that target criminogenic factors and are designed to prevent youth from ending up in prison. The community component of the course requires 15 contact hours in community service settings such as group meetings, agency hearings, courts, intervention programs, etc. The course utilizes a life story approach to learn more about individuals, families, and communities at risk. Other activities include a prison visit, reviews of programs in prison and class visits with former offenders.
-
SF-132 The Beatles: Here, There & Everywhere
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This seminar will investigate the impact and legacy of the Beatles. The Fab Four deserve our scholarly attention as musical innovators and as cultural avatars of the 1960s, an era that still exerts influence today. We will examine the many ways in which the Beatles rocked the establishment and became defining figures in post-war youth culture. We will also discuss other media (the visual arts, film, fashion, style) and fields of study (mass media, marketing, recording technology, copyright law, English history) using the Beatles as our guides.
-
SF-156 The Mask Behind the Face: Personas, Personalities, and Perception. Acting in /Out Life
Credits:
4.00
Description:
The theatre has always been a metaphor for life. In modern times life has become theatre. This seminar will confront the idea of real life and the eroding boundary between performers and audience. Students will study the roots of the contemporary obsession with stars and stardom, a mania that began in the 18th century and flourished in the 19th century. We will look at performance studies, performers memoirs, plays, and films that dramatize this dilemma.
-
SF-168 Women in Art: Eastern and Western Perspectives and Issues of Identity
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This course will survey issues of female identities and how they were shaped or informed as functions of social, political and religious dynamics in the Eastern and Western hemispheres and within various historical periods. The students will objectify their study with the rich and highly representative collection at the Museum of Fine Arts as they critically interpret female portrayals under the brush of the male artists and the purse of the male patron. The evolution of female identities and shifting perceptions of women will also serve as a key objective in weaving a more comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon
Type:
Expanded Classroom Requirement
-
SF-172 Seeking Paradise: From Modern Fantasy to the Classics
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Philip Pullman to Milton and back to C.S Lewis The course will begin with reading and discussing His Dark Materials (the trilogy that includes The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman. Through reading this exciting but complex fantasy students will begin an examination of the ideas and narrative structures that Pullman uses to expand on and develop his sources, which among others include Paradise Lost, the poetry and paintings of William Blake and The Bible. Students will then read and examine excerpts from these sources and read about their use in His Dark Materials. The final section of the course will compare Pullmans work with that of fellow Oxford resident C.S. Lewiss Chronicles of Narnia and look at the different ways the two authors use the same source material. With both authors works having recently been filmed and turned into video games, the opportunity is here to look at the influences of elements of the literary canon on 21st century culture. Readings will include Pullmans His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass). C.S. Lewis The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and extracts from Prince Caspian and The Last Battle. Essays by Pullman and Lewis about their work and their ideas, particularly Pullmans humanistic atheism and Lewis journey towards a personal Christianity. Extracts from Paradise Lost, William Blake and The Bible. Journal Articles and essays about Pullman and Lewis from literary critics, theologians, anthropologists and cultural critics.
-
SF-173 Crime in American Society
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Popular beliefs about crime are often inspired by the media and by specific criminological theories. These theories about and media images of crime will be examined in detail, including the hits and misses.
-
SF-174 Tragedy and Literature
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This course will focus on classic works of ancient and modern literature that examine the human condition from a tragic perspective. We will concentrate on close readings from the following texts: Homers Iliad, Sophocles Antigone, The Bhagavad-Gita, Shakespeares Othello, Chekhovs short stories, and Joyces Dubliners.
-
SF-178 Sacred Hoops & Sneaker Pimps: Understanding the American Hoop Dream
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This course is about the basketball hoop dream played out at the high school and college levels. We will study a wide variety of materials - novels, films, websites, reference works - to understand both the construction, and destruction, of the hoop dream in such diverse places as New York City, Seattle, rural Indiana, suburban Georgia, and the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Issues of race and culture will serve as guiding themes as we develop critical theory explaining why the hoop dream has persisted, and adapted, over time, to fit the needs of its believers and supporters.
Type:
Cultural Diversity Opt A
-
SF-182 Heroes, Antiheroes and Outsiders: Reading the Graphic Novel
Credits:
4.00
Description:
How is it that comics, a genre often viewed as entertainment for children and adolescents, has become one of the most exciting forms of narrative and visual art? To answer this question, this seminar will examine a range of graphic novels, from those that celebrate their origins in superhero comics, such as Alan Moores Watchmen, to those that treat subjects not usually considered proper to the comics genre, such as Art Spiegelmans Maus, about the Holocaust, and Alison Bechdels Fun Home, about the complexities of sexual identity. As we read these works, we will look at how the combination of words and still images makes the graphic novel a unique storytelling form, as well as how artists and writers push the envelope to create new styles and challenge our expectations. In addition to class discussions and writing assignments, we will take a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts and create a collaborative group graphic novel step-by-step over the course of the semester (all abilities welcome).
-
SF-191 Film Adaptation Film Adaptation
Credits:
4.00
Description:
Why did they change the ending of the book? The novel is so much better! We will explore the concept and industry of film adaptation. Students will read novels and watch respective film adaptations to explore how the written word is adapted to the screen; both fiction and non-fiction works will be considered. Also, field trips to past film locations in Boston will be taken to explore why specific settings were chosen for respective situations. Additionally, students will create their own written adaptations of source materials, putting into practice the concepts studied in class.
-
SF-1118 Pageantry: Competitive Beauty
Credits:
4.00
Description:
In this seminar, we will explore the history and mystique of pageantry in our country. We will study the roots of these programs (such as Miss America) and look for lessons learned about women as we follow the progression of competitive beauty through to the crowning of a young woman students may come to see as someone not too different from themselves. This exercise in exploration and examination of the American beauty queen should intrigue all her peers, and challenge supporters and critics of pageants alike to redefine their opinions of the modern pageant woman.
-
SF-1122 The Ethics of Peace and War: From The Ancient World to the Present
Credits:
4.00
Description:
This course will explore historical, ethical and political issues concerned with matters of peace and war. We will examine a variety of different texts: religious, historical, philosophical and literary, but the main emphasis will be philosophical justifications for war and philosophical visions of just peace, with an eye to contemporary questions in the War on Terror. To the extent that we use non-philosophical texts, this will be in the service of focusing the imagination on the philosophical issues and applying theoretical frameworks to historical events.
