FYS/L Courses Draft – Spring 2025
AAAD 51-001: Masquerades of Blackness |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Charlene Regester |
This seminar is designed to investigate how the concept of race has been represented in cinema historically, with a particular focus on representations of race when blackness is masqueraded. Its intent is to launch an investigative inquiry into how African Americans are represented on screen in various time periods, how we as spectators are manipulated by these cinematic constructions of race, and how race is marked or coded other than through visual representation. Students will view films that deal with “passing” from the various historical periods and will utilize theoretical concepts introduced in class to read these visual representations. Films selected for viewing include the pre-World War II Era, the Civil Rights Era, and the “Post-Racial” era. Students will be required to write three papers that reflect their ability to apply theoretical concepts to reading racialized representations on screen in these three historical periods to demonstrate their understanding of how racial masquerades have evolved over time and continue to persist in contemporary culture. Charlene RegesterCharlene Regester is an Associate Professor in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies and Affiliate Faculty for the Global Cinema Minor. She received her BA, MA, Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900-1960 (which was nominated by the press to the NAACP Image Awards). She is the 2011 recipient of the Trailblazer Award Hayti Heritage Film Festival and 2007 Oscar Micheaux Book and Film Award from the Oscar Micheaux Film Festival, South Dakota. She has appeared on North Carolina Bookwatch with UNC-TV 2011; WUNC-FM Radio The State of Things; and Turner Movie Classics. Documentaries in which she has appeared include: Movies of Color: Black Southern Cinema (2003, Tom Thurman director), Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel (2001), Madison Davis Lacy director), and Birth of a Movement (2017, Bestor Cram and Susan Gray directors). |
AAAD 53-001: Experimentalism in Global Black Music and Performance Arts |
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FY Seminar | MW, 12:20 PM – 1:35 PM | Instructor(s): David Pier |
This course centers on artists who are known for their radically experimental approach to music-making and performance, pushing at established boundaries of genre, form, and affect, while taking inspiration from black identity, history, and culture. Geographically, this course is not limited to the United States, but also examines avant-garde artistry in Africa, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. The focus is mainly on music, with excursions into avant-garde jazz, Brazilian tropicália, Jamaican dub, and electronic music. But we do additionally discuss experimental dance and theatre. The special challenges faced by black artists in establishing themselves in artistic fields marked as modernist, given the historical domination of discourses and institutions of modernism/modernity by whites, are explored. Students have the option to either write a traditional research paper on a topic of their choice, or create their own experimental artistic project. David PierProfessor David Pier is an ethnomusicologist who researches music in Africa and the United States. His book, Ugandan Music in the Marketing Era: The Branded Arena is a ethnographic study of the commercialization of folk music and dance heritage in Uganda. He is currently working on a book on a Ugandan guitar genre known as kadongo kamu. Having started out as a jazz pianist, he is keenly interested in both the processes and underlying ideas of musical experimentalism, especially in global Black historical contexts. |
AMST 65-001: North Carolina Black Feminisms |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Antonia Randolph |
The goal of this First-Year Seminar is to help students develop their own sense of Black feminist thought and practice through exploring the lives and works of several key Black feminist figures with ties to North Carolina. The figures are Harriet Jacobs, Anna Julia Cooper, Pauli Murray, Ella Baker, Nina Simone, Jaki Shelton Green, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Students will engage materials that put these figures in context of Black feminist thought and will do hands on activities that reflect Black feminist practices. Antonia RandolphAntonia Randolph is an assistant professor of American Studies at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is a graduate of Spelman College (BA in Sociology) and Northwestern University (PhD in Sociology). Her interests include diversity discourse in education, multicultural capital, non-normative Black masculinity, and the production of misogyny in hip-hop culture. Her book The Wrong Kind of Different: Challenging the Meaning of Diversity in American Classrooms (Teachers College 2012) examined the hierarchies elementary school teachers constructed among students of color. She has also published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and The Feminist Wire. Her current book project, Thats My Heart: Queering Intimacy in Hip-Hop Culture, examines portrayals of Black mens intimate relationships in hip-hop culture. |
ANTH 68-001: Forced Out and Fenced In: Ethnography of Latinx Immigration |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Angela Stuesse |
Undocumented immigration receives considerable attention in the U.S., but what does it mean to be undocumented? How does illegality shape the lived realities of migrants themselves? Using the lens of legal anthropology, which seeks to understand the relationship between law/policy, social relations, and inequality, and through in-depth engagement with ethnographic research on the topic, this course examines the social, political, and legal challenges faced by undocumented Latinx migrants and their families. All authors are invited to join the class for a virtual Q&A with students. Angela StuesseAngela Stuesse is a cultural anthropologist broadly interested in social inequality in the Americas and specializing in methodologies of activist research. Her scholarship focuses on globalization, migration and citizenship, race and racism, labor, and policing in the US and Latin America. Much of her work, including her award-winning book, Scratching Out a Living, has explored how new Latinx migration to the US South has shaped and been shaped by the regions racial hierarchies. She also investigates the intensification of immigrant policing and the experiences of undocumented young people in higher education. |
ANTH 89-001: A History of the World in 12 Objects |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Douglas Smit |
How did we get here? What were the major transformations in human history that created our world? What impacts have these changes made on the natural world and on us? What can we learn from this long history? This class is about objects and social change: meaning that we will use human-made objects – artifacts – as a way to understand the long and complex history of our species. We use the concept of ‘object biography’ to do this – you will each get a chance to produce an object biography of your own and to think critically about how we understand and represent material culture in museum displays. Douglas SmitDouglas Smit is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology. He is an archaeologist who currently directs projects in Peru and Philadelphia. His research focuses on the archaeology of the recent past, how local people have interacted with big processes like globalization over the past five hundred years. He is also a newcomer to UNC, having just moved with his partner, an infant, two dogs, and one cat to North Carolina from Philadelphia in the summer of 2022. Beyond archaeology, he loves hiking, basketball/soccer, and reading, non-fiction, although these days, it is mostly child-care. |
ANTH 89-002: Taking up Space: Colonization, Resources, and Life Beyond Earth |
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FY Seminar | MW, 4:40 PM – 5:55 PM | Instructor(s): Caela O’Connell |
Our early human ancestors were great travelers moving across great distances over many generations and thousands of years. Our more recent human history is dominated by human colonization as new waves of people traversing the globe using technological innovations and paving a path of incomparable destruction and exploitation that continue to overshadow the lives of millions of people and our very planetary health to this day. In early 2020 Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX released their campaign to “Occupy Mars” by 2050, joining a long linage of human ventures that have considered places and peoples unknown to them up for grabs and consequently, ownership and exploitation. Fantastic research, technology, international cooperation, and human advancements have come out of space research. However, the idea that life and resources outside our planet or beyond our galaxy is tenacious and remains an influential factor. In this course, we will explore our human future beyond Earth through the lens of our past asking the question is colonization inevitable? Is it possible as described in Star Trek to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no [hu]man has gone before?” without contaminating, dominating, and destroying that which exists out there? Can we as a species learn from our human past and avoid colonial mistakes? Can we handle discovering new resources without depleting them? How might discoveries made beyond Earth influence the meaning, use, and ideas about our resources here at home? Applying an anthropological lens to understand the human experience of curiosity, travel, expansion, and colonization, this class, dares to dream big and ask hard questions. This discussion-based seminar will read research and popular publications of nonfiction and fiction including a SciFi novel and ethnographic book, view films and documentaries, and look for signs of space in everyday life on Earth. Through assessment activities such as “Taking up Space” students will learn to critically break down and research the role of cultural ideas and how they influence scientific research and discovery. Caela O’ConnellCaela O'Connell is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and the Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program. Dr. O'Connell runs the Socio-Ecological Change Research Lab (SECR Lab) at UNC investigating different aspects of sustainability, agriculture, inequality, water, disasters, adaptation, crisis and environmental conservation and partnering with community organizations for engaged scholarship. Her work is primarily in the Caribbean and the Americas, and she’s currently working on a new project that considers human resource use and conceptions in research and development for outer space exploration. When not thinking about the future for farming and our global environment, she enjoys baking for friends, hiking (nothing too steep), taekwondo, tracking hurricanes, reading Sci-Fi and mysteries, and traveling with her family. |
ANTH 89-003: Anthropology of Disability |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM | Instructor(s): Dariia (Dafna) Rachok |
Disability is a part of life: we all get sick, age, and require care. This course examines debates on disability from a perspective of cultural and medical anthropology. We focus on the diversity and richness of disability worlds, learning how different societies make sense of disability and how living with disability leads to a proliferation of identities and cultures. This course covers a wide range of topics, from the history of disability to cross-cultural approaches to mental health to the intersections of disability with gender and sexuality to caregiving. Course material illustrates that disability is a collective project that encourages individuals and communities to engage in creative modes of thinking and being in a world that moves beyond the binary of “normal” and “abnormal.” This course shows that studying disability unveils new ways to see the world and helps us to better understand what it means to be human. Dariia (Dafna) RachokDafna Rachok is a medical and political anthropologist, researching global health, medical humanitarianism, and patient communities. Her current research, Affective Belonging: Vulnerable Groups Political Subjectivity and HIV in Ukraine explores what underpins the strength of a public health system in a supposedly weak post-socialist state. It centers on political mobilization of Ukrainian vulnerable communities (people living with HIV, sex workers, people who use drugs) as citizens through interactions with the state public health bureaucracy. Dafna's research was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation, among others. When Dafnas not working, shes spending time with her Malinois-mix named Doxa. |
APPL 110-01F: Design and Making for Engineers: Developing Your Personal Design Potential |
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FY Launch | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Glenn Walters |
Students work in flexible, interdisciplinary teams to assess opportunities, brainstorm, and prototype solutions. Design thinking and physical prototyping skills are developed through fast-paced, iterative exercises in a variety of contexts and environments. Glenn WaltersI am a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill. In this role, I am developing and teaching courses covering fundamentals of engineering in such areas as design, fluids, hydraulics, additive manufacturing, etc. My specialty is creating curriculum that focuses on experiential activities that develop student intuition as a pathway to learning theory and practice. |
ARTH 64-001: Picturing Nature |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Maggie Cao |
Whether it’s cute animal cams or frightening visualizations of climate change, pictures of nature are both ubiquitous and powerful. This seminar explores the ways in which nature has been collected, displayed, and represented in art, science, and popular culture from the Renaissance to the present. We will explore nature’s many meanings: as curiosity and resource, as playground and lab, and as preserve and wasteland. How have portrayals of nature shaped ideas in the arts and sciences? What is the place of nature imagery now in a time of environmental crisis? Students can expect to experience nature in addition to reading and writing about it. For final projects, students will research and write an op-ed article about picturing nature during uncertain times. Maggie CaoMaggie Cao is an art historian who studies the eighteenth and nineteenth century United States. She is an associate professor educated at Harvard. She published one book about American landscape painting and its nineteenth-century demise and has just finished another about painting and imperialism. She has long been interested in historical connections between art and science, the subject of this course. She also happens to be an avid hiker and backpacker in North Carolina and beyond. |
ARTS 59-001: Time, A Doorway to Visual Expression |
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FY Seminar | MW, 11:15 AM – 12:45 PM | Instructor(s): Jim Hirschfield |
This class will closely examine and explore visual expression as they investigate the often-forgotten design element of time. Students examine the philosophical and scientific descriptions of time, as well as the physical, psychological and emotional properties of time. Students immerse themselves in the subject and create original works of art motivated and inspired by their personal but enhanced understanding of time. Jim HirschfieldJim Hirschfield is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History who began contemplating the experience of time during his travels through the deserts of the southwest in his VW Microbus. He still treasures the experience of travel and travels for inspiration and for adventure. Jim has received a number of art commissions from cities across the country: From Anchorage, Alaska to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and from San Diego, California to Orono, Maine. He has also received numerous awards for his art installations, which he describes as explorations in meditative and ethereal environments that expand our perceptions of time. |
ASIA 57-001: Dis-Orienting the Orient |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM | Instructor(s): Dwayne Dixon |
Examines how the East is constructed as the Orient in different historical periods: 19th-century European colonialism, 1950s to 1960s Hollywood films, contemporary Japanese animation, and the current global war on terrorism. Dwayne DixonDwayne Dixons ethnographic research is focused on several intersecting issues within a broadly imagined Asia: youth culture, city spaces and urban life, media, and body experiences. These various interests coalesce in his work on Japanese young people situated in Tokyo, especially the lives and practices of skateboarders. As an anthropologist, he emphasizes fieldwork methods of extended engagement with his subjects, including the use of ethnographic video to produce visual documents that coincide with the use of video cameras by the young people themselves. His ongoing research into Asian skateboard culture involves studying the global incorporation of young skateboarders into the Olympic structure in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games where skateboarding will be included for the first time. Additionally, he is doing research on guns as a prosthetic; investigating the ways training and imagination construct an embodied relationship between the physical perception of perpetual threat as it relates to the immediate environment and the unknown. This research is informed by changes in small arms use and the narratives around them since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reshaped the global arms trade and the specific American experience of conflict in Western Asia. |
ASIA 59-001: Media Masala: Popular Music, TV, and the Internet in Modern India and Pakistan |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Afroz Taj |
This seminar explores different types of broadcast and digital media, examining various cultural examples (e.g., music videos, television soap operas and reality shows, radio, and the Internet) and covering a variety of topics, including gender, sexuality, globalization, religion (personal and public), and activism. We will also discuss the ways traditional art forms (e.g., qawwali, ghazal, epic, classical dance) are transformed and given relevance in the modern South Asian media. An important theme of this course is how India and Pakistan, despite historical tensions, are linked by a common media culture that interprets and sometimes transcends geopolitical differences. This seminar will be particularly useful and fun for students who like to consider a variety of multimedia and textual sources in thinking about a provocative issue or question. Each student will design a short research project and make a presentation, and with a small group, produce a music video, giving the class an experiential perspective on the media in modern India and Pakistan. Afroz TajAfroz Taj has been teaching South Asian literature, culture, and language in the United States since 1983. In 1995 Afroz came to the University of North Carolina to establish a pioneering program of teaching Hindi-Urdu through live, interactive videoconferencing. He is the creator of the popular language learning websites A Door Into Hindi and Darvazah: A Door Into Urdu. Afrozs research interests include Urdu poetry and poetics, South Asian theater, cinema and media. Afroz is the author of The Court of Indar and the Rebirth of North Indian Drama, Urdu Through Hindi, and The Tanhaiyan, Ankahi, and Ahsas Companion. |
ASIA 72-001: Transnational Korea: Literature, Film, and Popular Culture |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Jonathan Kief |
Taking the recent Korean Wave phenomenon as its point of departure, this course introduces students to the history of transnational imaginations in modern and contemporary Korean culture. Drawing upon literature, film, television, and secondary scholarship, we will explore how a diverse array of Korean cultural producers have used narratives of cross-border travel, migration, and exchange to rethink Korea’s place in the world and refashion Korean identity. In each section of the course, we will consider a different domain or dimension of border-crossing activity: education; labor; migration and diaspora; North-South interactions; war and military; cosmopolitan imaginings and the making of “global Korea.” In so doing, we will learn to think critically about the relationship between works from colonial Korea, postcolonial North Korea, postcolonial South Korea, and the Korean diaspora, and we will also gain a more nuanced understanding of popular culture’s place within its broader social and historical contexts. Jonathan KiefJonathan Kief is a scholar of modern Korean literature and culture whose research focuses on interactions between words and images in postcolonial North and South Korea. He is also interested in the Korean diaspora, the history of Korean translation practices, and the history of radio and television in Cold War-era East Asia. His teaching combines literature, film, and popular culture to help students explore both the contemporary globalization of Korean culture and the robust history of transnational exchanges that it builds upon. Before moving to North Carolina, he lived in Korea, Japan, and many different parts of the U.S. |
ASIA 76-001: Traveling to China and Traveling from China in the Premodern World |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM | Instructor(s): Kyoungjin Bae |
From the medieval Silk Road to the contemporary Belt and Road initiative, the country we now call China has been a dynamic place with changing borders and the traveling of many people, things, and ideas across them. This course examines cross-cultural and transregional interactions premodern Chinese had with the broader world through the lens of traveling. Examining records written by various travelers – merchants, missionaries, pilgrims, nomads, and diplomats –, the course invites students to the following questions: what kinds of questions did travelers have about the others? What were the major routes of overland and oceanic travels in the premodern world? How did cross-border travels foster religious, ethnic, and cultural diversities as well as early modern globalization? How was an idea of “China” formed in and outside China through the interaction facilitated by travels? Students will read and discuss translated primary sources arranged in a thematic and chronological order. During the second half of the course, students will form groups to create digital itinerary maps using the information extracted from the readings. Kyoungjin BaeKyoungjin Bae is a historian of China. Her research places Chinese history in the global contexts and includes the Sino-Western interactions, Chinese maritime trade, crafts, and material culture during the early modern period. |
ASIA 89-002: Women and Performance in Transnational Asia |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Yurika Tamura |
This course will examine various performances (live performance, media performance, dance, singing and other forms of art making) produced by women (broadly defined) in transnational Asia. The Asia imagined in this class is global and diasporic, thus, trans-national. These women’s performances speak of their feminist, post-colonial, and anti-hegemonic agenda; reveal various nations’ struggle to globalize; and reflect how the category of “Asian,” intersected with gender, continues to evolve. This course will engage with these performance deeply and creatively and respond to these strong voices of the artists with our critical analysis. Yurika TamuraI received my Ph.D. in Womens and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. My scholarship focuses on Indigeneity, media and performance arts, minority formations under Japans imperialism, and corpo-materialist ethics of sound and sensation. My forthcoming book, Vibration of Others: Resonation and Corporeal Ethics of Transnational Indigenous Soundscapes (Wesleyan University Press, 2024) studies how Ainu artists curate transnational Indigenous soundscapes to address racism and environmental crises in post-Fukushima Japan and beyond. |
BIOL 53-001: Biotechnology: Genetically Modified Foods to the Sequence of the Human Genome |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Jill Dowen |
A good life depends on access to adequate food and medical care. Advances in biotechnology have made possible both agriculture and medicine, and further advances may allow us to feed and keep healthy a burgeoning population in both developed and undeveloped countries. This seminar will examine the science behind a number of striking recent advances in biology, including animal cloning, genetic engineering of crop plants, development of new therapeutic drugs, development of embryonic stem cells, and deciphering of the complete human genome sequence. Students will debate how specific technological advances force us to confront new social and ethical choices, such as whether you want your own genome to be sequenced. We will also consider how new technologies are actually implemented, especially in regard to recent public health challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The seminar should bring together the humanistic and technical impulses in students, and is open to students planning careers in scientific or humanities fields. Jill DowenJill Dowen, PhD, is a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Integrative Program in Biological and Genome Sciences, and is an Associate Professor in the Biochemistry and Biophysics Department and the Biology Department at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Dowen's lab investigates the function of DNA loops that connect genes and their regulatory elements. Projects in her lab address how chromosome structure impacts the expression of genes in different cell types during development and how disruptions in these mechanisms lead to human diseases such as cancers and developmental syndromes. |
BIOL 75H-001: Biodiversity and Citizen Science |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Allen Hurlbert |
In this course you will learn about the biodiversity around us, and the discipline of citizen science as a means to understanding more about that biodiversity. Citizen science is the public generation of scientific knowledge, and in this era of mobile technology and artificial intelligence, non-expert members of the public are providing millions of biodiversity observations each year. We will learn about the promise of citizen science for answering important questions in biodiversity science, we will contribute our own observations to citizen science databases, and we will learn how to make and interpret graphs and figures using citizen science data. Allen HurlbertMy research seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying broad-scale patterns of distribution, abundance and diversity across the globe, and how that biodiversity is expected to respond to ongoing environmental change. I enjoy observing the natural world (especially birds and bugs), but also figuring out how to best analyze data to yield the most important insights. I hope my students grow in both of those areas! |
CHEM 101-01F: General Descriptive Chemistry I |
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FY Launch | MWF, 10:10 AM – 11:10 AM | Instructor(s): Jade Fostvedt | Lab/Recitation: CHEM 101, sections 601-643 Requisite(s): Prerequisite, MATH 110. |
The first course in a two-semester sequence. See also CHEM 102. Atomic and molecular structure, intermolecular forces, stoichiometry and conservation of mass, and properties of gases. Jade FostvedtJade Fostvedt is a teaching assistant professor of chemistry at UNC-CH. Jade is originally from South Dakota and received her B.S. degree in chemistry in 2017 from the University of South Dakota. Jade then moved to California for doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley; she received her Ph.D. in synthetic chemistry in May 2022 and moved to UNC-CH in Fall 2022. At UNC-CH, Jade teaches CHEM 251 (intro to inorganic chemistry), general chemistry I and II, and CHEM 550L (synthetic chemistry lab). Jade believes that everyone in the classroom - including the teacher - is a co-constructor of knowledge. She aims to guide students towards mastery of chemistry by departing from traditional lecture-based methods of teaching, validating student science identities, creating a joyful and supportive classroom community, and offering flexible opportunities for demonstrating content mastery. |
CHEM 102-01F: General Descriptive Chemistry II |
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FY Launch | MWF, 3:35 PM – 4:25 PM | Instructor(s): Joshua Beaver Requisite(s): Prerequisites, CHEM 101 and 101L; C- or better required in CHEM 101. |
The course is the second in a two-semester sequence. See also CHEM 101. Solutions, thermochemical changes including conservation of energy, thermodynamics, reaction rates, chemical equilibria including acid-base chemistry, and electrochemistry. Joshua BeaverJoshua Beaver, Ph.D., is a Teaching Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in organic and general chemistries. He completed is graduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill in organic chemistry and molecular recognition in water. His postdoctoral training at Duke University involved developing targeted anticancer drug delivery agents. As a professor he adapts interdisciplinary problem-solving approaches to active, evidence-based teaching to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills in a supportive and inclusive learning environment. His current research focuses on improving student outcomes in chemistry through the development of new teaching strategies, building data-driven analytical tools, and developing novel scaffolded learning resources. |
CLAS 61H-001: Writing the Past |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM | Instructor(s): Emily Baragwanath |
The intersection of history-writing, cinema and fiction will be our focus as we engage with the greatest Greek historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius—against the backdrop of modern renditions of the past and of war in cinema (including Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and Zack Snyder’s 300), documentaries (including Tolga Ornek’s Gallipoli), news footage and short stories. We will examine the strategies of each ancient writer in confronting challenges that remain pressing for directors, journalists, and historians today. These include difficulties of conflicting perspectives, biased evidence, and the limitations of memory, as well as broader questions about the nature of historical representation. The aim is for students to engage in critical and informed analysis of the strategies of our three ancient historians in ‘writing the past’, and to draw appropriate comparisons with the challenges that confront modern counterparts. The course will center on in-class group discussion and debate focused on questions arising from the week’s reading or viewing assignments. Students will write two short essays and a longer paper arising from their course project. Emily BaragwanathEmily Baragwanath studied at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, before taking up a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, U.K. where she gained her doctorate in Classics. She has since held research fellowships at Christ Church, Oxford, at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C., and in Heidelberg. Her main area of scholarly interest is the literary techniques employed by Greek historians in their construction of historical narratives. Her first book, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, winner of Oxfords Conington Prize and the CAMWS Award for Outstanding Publication 2010, explores the representation of human motivation in Herodotus Histories. She is now examining the representation of women in the historian and philosopher Xenophon. |
CLAS 65-001: The City of Rome |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 3:35 PM – 4:25 PM | Instructor(s): Sheira Cohen |
All roads lead to Rome! But what was Rome really like? This class is an introduction to the history, art, and archaeology of Rome from antiquity to today. You will learn to recognize and interpret different aspects of the ancient city – temples, theaters, sculptures, mosaics, and more – to see how the Romans sent messages through them, and how those messages were received, manipulated, and reinterpreted by different audiences. We will consider not only the perspectives and (many) monuments of wealthy men but also the contributions of women, workers, freedpersons, and slaves. Just as modern American cities grapple with how to deal with old monuments, we will explore how different generations of Romans re-imagined their past and used archaeology to tell a story about themselves and their world, from the aristocracy of the Renaissance (15-16th centuries) to Mussolini and the Fascists (1922-45) to the debates still happening today. Sheira CohenSheira Cohen is Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Classics. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (PhD Classical Art and Archaeology); she was born in Aotearoa New Zealand and studied at both the University of Auckland (BA Anthropology and Ancient History) and University of Sydney (MA Classics). Her work explores questions of how people formed communities and expressed their intersecting identities through their material culture. Her research interests include burial practices, mobility and networks, shepherds and pastoralism, and urbanism. She is an active field archaeologist and currently supervises excavations at the ancient city of Gabii, a city outside Rome. Her fieldwork makes use of cutting-edge digital recording techniques as well as new biochemical and bioarchaeological analyses to learn more about the lives of ordinary people in the past. |
CLAS 89H-001: Pagans and Christians |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Janet Downie |
What does large-scale culture change look like? What does it feel like? What do individuals and communities experience as world-views change from generation to generation? In this course we’ll examine these questions by looking at one example of a period of substantial culture-change in the past: the first three centuries of the Common Era in the Mediterranean world, when Christianity was emerging with new ideas about social organization, community and personal identity, and the structure of the cosmos. In this seminar course, we will explore a range of texts from this period – ancient novels, early Christian gospels and acts, religious satires, pagan hymns, oracular texts, religious inscriptions, philosophical and theological texts – that offer a glimpse of some of the conversations and debates between new and old ideas about human beings, the natural world, and the gods. Janet DownieDr. Janet Downie teaches courses in ancient Greek language, literature, culture, and thought in the Department of Classics. Her research focuses on Greek literary culture in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious context of the Roman Empire. She is most interested in the "end" of antiquity: what happened as the classical world became Christian? And how does that distant time continue to shape our thinking today? |
COMM 140-01F: Introduction to Media History, Theory, and Criticism |
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FY Launch | MW, 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM | Instructor(s): David Monje |
An introduction to the critical analysis of film, television, advertising, video, and new media texts, contexts, and audiences. David MonjeDr. David Monjes research and teaching interests are in the environment, art, aesthetics and politics. He has travelled widely pursuing these interests and brings a broad perspective to the class. His interdisciplinary approach to teaching is informed by his education: he has BFA in painting, a BA in Linguistics, an MA in Communication and Society, and Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and Communication. |
COMM 63-001: The Creative Process in Performance |
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FY Seminar | MW, 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM | Instructor(s): Joseph Megel |
Students in this seminar will attend and study the production process of multimedia, music, dance and theater performances on campus and on-line. The Process Series of the Performance Studies program in the Department of Communication Studies, Playmakers, Carolina Performing Arts, and others across campus and additional on-line performance. We will discuss how performance as it was experienced (pre-Covid) and as it currently experienced. We will examine performance through multiple lenses, from Aristotle’s Poetics, Peter Brooks’s Empty Space, up to current writing from Performance Studies scholars. We will explore the ways that performances engage us, communicating powerful ideas and emotions through their various media of expression. Students will research performance pieces, interview the performers, attend rehearsals and performances, and write essays that combine their own experiences of the performances with class readings. Students will also create their own performance pieces as they observe the relationship of preparation and practice to the spontaneity and surprise of performance. Joseph MegelJoseph Megel has spent the last 20 years focusing on the direction and development of new works, for theatre, film and video. Mr. Megel is a member of SSDC (Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers), Co-Artistic Director of StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and an Associate Artist for The Working Theatre in New York. He holds the M.F.A. degree from the Peter Stark Motion Picture Producing Program at the University of Southern California, a Master of Arts from the University of Cincinnatis College Conservatory of Music and a B.S. in Speech from Northwestern University. He served for six years as Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, a new play development theatre, and continues to serve as Co-Executive Producer of Harlands Creek Productions, producer of New York premieres of new plays, developmental producer of screenplays, readings and films. |
COMM 89-001: Remixing Star Wars |
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FY Seminar | MW, 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM | Instructor(s): Tony Perucci |
This course is a critical and creative inquiry in contemporary culture, art and politics through Star Wars films and television series. Students will learn methods of creating of original video-based and/or performance-based to use the imagery, sounds and film/video sequences of Star Wars to engage the many cultural, political and individualized contexts in which Star Wars is already situated, as well as by wrenching them from their contexts through radically recontextualization. Our work will be informed by course readings that locate Star Wars in film and television history, as well as the many ways they speak to, from and with the political and cultural issues they (intentionally and unintentionally) engage. The course is organized around the creation and exhibition of original student works based in the art of remix and mash-up, utilizing found video and audio to engage themes developed by students. Tony PerucciDr. Perucci is Professor of Performance and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication. He is a scholar and performance practitioner whose research focuses (1) on how artistic practices across mediums (performing arts, film/TV/media, music, literature) utilize performance as a means aesthetic experimentation and political engagement, and (2) the role of performance outside of artistic contexts that shape culture, politics and everyday life (e.g., surveillance, political demonstrations and rallies, media and marketing spectacles, performances of self). His books include Paul Robeson and the Cold War Performance Complex: Race, Madness, Activism and On the Horizontal with Mary Overlie and The Viewpoints. His current research focuses on contemporary artistic practices in film, television and performance that intentionally sabotage the viewer's ability to discern fact and fiction/real and fake, and the significance of such work in the context of "post-truth politics," AI and deepfake technologies and conspiracy theory. His work as a performance practitioner has been presented in Los Angeles, New York City, Brazil, Germany and North Carolina. |
DRAM 120-01F: Play Analysis |
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FY Launch | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Mark Perry |
Development of the skill to analyze plays for academic and production purposes through the intensive study of representative plays. DRAM 120 is the first course in the major and the minor in dramatic art. Mark PerryMark Perry teaches playwriting, play analysis and dramaturgy and serves as a resident dramaturg with PlayMakers Repertory Company. His plays A New Dress for Mona and The Will of Bernard Boynton have been produced by UNCs Department of Dramatic Art, and both scripts are available from Drama Circle. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowas Playwrights Workshop and a former recipient of the North Carolina Arts Councils Literature Fellowship for playwriting. |
DRAM 80-001: Psychology of Clothes: Motivations for Dressing Up and Dressing Down |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Pamela Bond |
The course seeks to help students find ways to articulate their own motivations for dress and then apply the ideas they have discovered to the ways in which individuality as well as group attitudes are expressed through clothing. Pamela BondPamela Bond is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art. Pamela has taught at Hampton University and North Carolina Central University. Her recent work includes costume design for The Bus Stop featured at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. She has performed professionally at the National Black Theatre Festival and featured apparel designs in Charlotte Fashion Week and Winston Salem Fashion Week. Pamela believes that in order for students to experience the full scope as theatre practitioners they must be willing to explore diverse ethnic and cultural backdrops, as well as their own. So what does your clothing say about you? What messages are you trying to send with what you put on today? Lets explore your closet and see who you are. |
DRAM 83-001: Spectacle in the Theatre |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): David Navalinsky |
This seminar will explore the artists, art and technology involved in creating the world of the play. It is intended as an overview for students who want to learn about theatrical design. Students will create their own designs in the areas of scenery, costumes, and lighting for three plays throughout the semester. The plays will be placed outside of their traditional setting while still maintaining the story and themes. Students have placed Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a trailer park and a daycare center for example. Careful historical research, close reading and analysis, text and source material, and collaboration will be the focus of the student projects. David NavalinskyDavid Navalinsky is the Director of Undergraduate Production in the Department of Dramatic Art. David has taught at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Mississippi. Davids recent design work includes scenery for The Uncanny Valley by Francesca Talenti. The Uncanny Valley featured a Robothespian, which is exactly what it sounds like. He has also written a documentary theatre piece Priceless Gem: An Athlete Story, which tells the stories of UNC athletes. David has worked professionally at South Coast Repertory in Orange County California, The Utah Shakespeare Festival, The Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and the Karamu Performing Arts Theatre in Cleveland, OH. Some of Davids favorite projects were at the Dallas Childrens Theater where he made a dinosaur collapse and pirates walk the plank. |
ECON 101H-01F: Introduction to Economics |
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FY Launch | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Sergio Parreiras | Lab/Recitation: ECON 101H-601 |
Introduction to Economics (Economics 101H) is the Honors section of the introductory course in Economics for undergraduates. The Honors section covers the same material as the large enrollment version but does so in more depth. This is an introductory course in both microeconomics and macroeconomics. In this one-semester course students are introduced to fundamental issues in economics including competition, scarcity, opportunity cost, resource allocation, unemployment, ination, and the determination of prices. This course is the gateway course for the major of Economics; if you wish to major in Economics, you must have at least a C in this course. Sergio ParreirasProfessor Parreiras has broad research interests in economics of information and game theory. His most recent research has concentrated on auctions and mechanism design. His recent publications include papers in the Journal of Economic Theory and Games and Economic Behavior. |
ECON 89-001: Asian Socialist Systems |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Steven Rosefielde |
Asian Socialist Systems elaborates the workings of the North Korean, Chinese and Japanese socialist economies in neoclassical perspective. The course goal is acquainting students with the special characteristics and comparative merit of Asian socialist systems. Steven RosefieldeProfessor of Economic, UNC |
EMES 51-001: Global Warming: Science, Social Impacts, Solutions |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM | Instructor(s): Marc Alperin |
Students will examine evidence that human activity has caused global warming, investigate scientists’ ability to predict climate change, and discuss the political and social dimensions of global climate change. Marc AlperinMarc Alperins work involves the use of stable isotopes as natural tracers of sedimentary processes. He is particularly interested in carbon cycling in coastal sediments and its role in the global carbon budget. Recent projects have included studies of the biogeochemistry of organic compounds dissolved in sediment pore waters, the fate of organic matter deposited on the seafloor, anaerobic oxidation of methane in marine sediments, and the effects of dissolved organic nitrogen and carbon in atmospheric precipitation on coastal ecosystems. Dr. Alperin also co-leads the CHAOS Biogeochemistry Laboratories. |
ENGL 121-01F: British Literature, 19th and Early 20th Century |
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FY Launch | MWF, 1:25 PM – 2:15 PM | Instructor(s): Jeanne Moskal |
Fulfills a major core requirement. Launch focusing on later British literature covering the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods–great foundation for studying later periods. Jeanne MoskalJeanne Moskal is an award-winning teacher and mentor. She has authored a study of the poet William Blake and has edited the travel writings of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Moskals book-in-progress analyzes twentieth-century adaptations of Jane Eyre. |
ENGL 71H-001: Healers and Patients |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Kym Weed |
When medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman writes that “illness has meaning,” he reminds us that the human experience of being sick involves more than bodily symptoms. Moreover, the effects of illness and disability are rarely confined to one person. In this course, we will analyze a diverse collection of writers who work to make sense of illness and disability through a range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic memoir, podcasts, and oral histories. Divided into five units, the course will allow us to explore not just the medical, but also the personal, ethical, cultural, and political facets of illness from the perspectives of patients, healthcare providers, and families. Central texts will include /Ask Me About My Uterus/ by Abby Norman, /Black Man in a White Coat/ by Damon Tweedy, /Mom’s Cancer/ by Brian Fies and /The Farewell/ directed by Lulu Wang. Additionally, students will explore a set of oral histories to learn more about the experiences of patients, healthcare providers, and families from across North Carolina. Kym WeedKym Weed is a Teaching Assistant Professor in English & Comparative Literature and the Co-Director of the HHIVE Lab and Associate Director of graduate programs in Literature, Medicine, and Culture. She earned her PhD from UNC and returned to Chapel Hill after a year in Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. Her research focuses on the intersection of science and literature in late-nineteenth-century American literature and culture as well as contemporary understandings of illness, health, disability, and embodiment. Her most recent project examines narratives around anti-microbial resistance. She teaches courses in health humanities, disability studies, American literature, and writing. |
ENGL 87-001: Jane Austen, Then & Now |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 12:20 PM – 1:10 PM | Instructor(s): Jeanne Moskal |
Pride and Prejudice, often cited as the best-loved novel in English, is the focus of this semester’s course in Austen and present-day responses to her oeuvre. We will begin with in-depth reading of Austen’s 1813 novel, with attention to its form (genre and narrative style) and to its historical and biographical contexts; we will examine recent re-workings, in fiction and in film, in light of present-day concerns and the students’ interests. Several film adaptations will be considered as part of our research into Austen’s current influence. First-time readers of Austen are welcome in the course, as are those deeply familiar with Austen’s oeuvre. Interested students are welcome to contact the instructor in advance of registration with any questions or concerns. Jeanne MoskalJeanne Moskal is an award-winning teacher and mentor. She has authored a study of the poet William Blake and has edited the travel writings of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Moskals book-in-progress analyzes twentieth-century adaptations of Jane Eyre. |
ENGL 89-001: The Rhetoric of Wellness |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Daniel Anderson |
Scan any bookstore shelf and you’d think the human psyche is hanging on by a thread. From fighting anxiety to seeking happiness to putting an end to procrastination, the titles compete for the opportunity to fix our problems with the promise of self-improvement. But are we really in worse psychological shape than those who have come before us? And how would we begin to study the status of our wellness? This first-year seminar will offer one approach to exploring these and related questions: studying the rhetoric of self-help. Rhetoric provides a lens for thinking about the ways people talk about self-help. This lens will drive the organization of the course. Studying the language in online self-help discourse, for instance, will enable extensive research activities. Students will learn to collect a corpus of Tweet data, and then use grounded theory and qualitative approaches to study the conversation. Using mixed methods, they will then quantify interpretations and develop visuals to recognize patterns. In addition to working with contemporary online discourse, students will explore texts with historical instantiations of self-help rhetoric—from classical instruction linked with civics and oration to medieval meditations to 1960s and 70s self-actualization to modern mindfulness. Rhetorical study will also facilitate the production of knowledge as students translate their understanding into communication to be shared publicly. The class activities will feature the creation of texts in a range of media. Students will produce print reports, visual memes, and PSA video projects. Students will also explore oral communication through the creation of podcasts. The combination of mixed methods research and public communication will drive the class. Teaching methods will tap into this dynamic by augmenting lecture and discussion with hands-on activities, collaboration, and the drafting and revision of projects. Daniel AndersonDaniel Anderson is a Professor in the Department of English & Comparative Literature. He is the Director of the University Writing Program. He is also Director the Digital Innovation Lab, where he leads campus digital humanities initiatives. He studies digital rhetoric, digital humanities, humanities data studies, teaching with technology, and alternative approaches to scholarship. His books include Video Scholarship and Screen Composing, Write Now, Connections: A Guide to Online Writing, Writing About Literature in the Media Age, and Beyond Words: Reading and Writing in a Digital Age. He also creates new media performance art and scholarship using the computer screen as a composing space. More information can be found at https://iamdan.org. |
ENGL 89-002: Apocalypse Now, Then, and Later |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Taylor Cowdery |
Plenty of us feel like we’re living in the end times – but why do some of us feel like they happened long ago, or that they’re just around the corner? This course considers the representation of the apocalypse in Western literature and culture from two angles: first, as the product of a religious fascination with the end of time, and second, as a phenomenon whose significance depends upon whether it has occurred, will occur, or is occurring at this very moment. Students will read a selection of texts drawn both from the Bible and from parallel religious traditions (for instance, medieval visions of the apocalypse, or the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh) alongside novels and essays by writers attempting to think through the significance of the apocalypse as both a temporal and an historical event. Taylor CowderyI study the literature of late-medieval Britain, with a secondary specialization in the history of gender and sexuality. My first book, Matter and Making in Early English Poetry (Cambridge, 2023), considered how premodern poets thought about materiality, and especially, the "matter" of their own writings. I'm currently at work on two new projects. One of these is a historical study of the literature and culture of middle-class people in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while the other is a more theoretically driven book that considers medieval concepts of embodiment, transition, and gender fluidity in relation to contemporary queer theory. |
ENGL 89-003: American Poetry in Motion |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM | Instructor(s): Eliza Richards |
This course focuses on the creative processes involved in writing poetry. We will look at poets’ revisions of their work, their statements about poetry, their letters to and from other writers, and the publication and reception of their poems in their own time. We will concentrate on specific case studies: the manuscripts and letter-poems of the reclusive writer Emily Dickinson; the notebooks, letters, and poems of Walt Whitman that he wrote while tending the wounded in the Civil War hospitals; the poems, manuscripts, and letters of George Moses Horton, who taught himself to read and write and published two books of poetry while enslaved in North Carolina; and the drafts, revisions, and animal drawings of twentieth-century modernist Marianne Moore. The course seeks to develop close reading skills that are crucial for interpreting poetry; to explore how social and cultural conditions both limit and enable poetic expression, and how poets analyze and criticize those conditions; to strengthen writing and oral communication skills; and to develop research skills. Eliza RichardsEliza Richards is a Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She teaches American literature before 1900 and American poetry. She has written about Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, the poetry of the US Civil War, and popular womens poetry. Professor Richards has won awards for teaching on both the graduate and undergraduate level. |
ENVR 89-002: Environment-ECUIPP Lab: Connecting with Communities through Environmental Research for Public Health |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Amanda Northcross |
This course is an entry into an undergraduate learning community organized by the Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering. The ECUIPP Lab (Environmentally-Engaged Communities and Undergraduate students Investigating for Public health Protection) is a creative community of students, faculty members and practice partners. Students in ENVR 89-001 will become members of the Environment-ECUIPP Lab. Over the course of the semester they will design and conduct research that addresses a pressing environmental health issue in a local community. Students will work with the local community partner to develop a research question and use the resources of the ECUIPP Lab and the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering to answer the question through the research process. The course is a hands-on undergraduate research experience Amanda NorthcrossProfessor Amanda Northcross likes to build things and enjoys working together with students and communities to explore environmental health concerns, design field campaigns, and build and deploy networks of sensors to answer environmental health questions. With BS, MS and PhD degrees in chemical and environmental engineering she is passionate about health equity. Dr. Northcross has conducted environmental health and engineering research in Guatemala, Brazil, Nigeria and the United States. She will work together with faculty from UNCs Water Institute to conduct community-engaged environmental research with first year students. |
EXSS 155H-01F: Human Anatomy and Physiology I |
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FY Launch | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Kristin Ondrak |
This course is targeted to students enrolled in Department of Exercise and Sport Science majors as well as other students with interest in medical professions. This course involves a systematic approach to human anatomy and physiology with an emphasis on the musculoskeletal, articular and nervous systems as well as anatomical terminology and homeostasis. No prerequisites are required. Kristin Ondrak |
FOLK 77-001: The Poetic Roots of Hip-Hop: Hidden Histories of African American Rhyme |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Glenn Hinson |
“There ain’t nothing new about rapping.” That’s what elders from a host of African American communities declared when hip-hop first exploded onto the scene. This “new” form, they claimed, was just a skilled re-working of poetic forms that had been around for generations. Each elder seemed to point to a different form–some to the wordplay of rhyming radio deejays, others to the bawdy flow of street corner poets, still others to the rhymed storytelling of sanctified singers. And each was right; elegant rhyming has indeed marked African American talk for generations. Yet because most such rhyming was spoken, its history remains hidden. In this seminar, we’ll explore this lost history, talking to poets and hip-hop emcees while probing the archives to uncover the hidden heritage of African American eloquence. Our goal is nothing short of writing the prehistory of hip-hop, and in so doing demonstrating rhyme’s longstanding role as a key marker of African American identity. Glenn HinsonBy training and spirit, Glenn Hinson is a folklorist, one who works with communities to explore grassroots creativity and the many ways that it holds meaning. Though he is white, much of his work over the years has been with Black communities, whose members have repeatedly schooled him on the simple fact that any exploration of artistry must address the critical and all-encompassing context of racism. Their challenge directly contributed to the creation of this seminar, which explores the erasure and misrepresentation of more than 150 years of affirming and anti-racist Black artistry. |
FREN 80-001: Déjà vu. Medicine and Narration across Time and Space |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM | Instructor(s): Dorothea Heitsch |
Hallucinations, depression, hysteria, paranoia, anxiety, neurosis, body dysmorphic disorder, obsession, and pain are only some of the symptoms that will be reflected in the narratives of this course. The authors featured in this seminar are familiar with the medical knowledge of their time and are often patients themselves suffering from the medical conditions they describe. Throughout the semester, we will examine the practices of authors – such as Maupassant, Montaigne, Selzer, Sembène, or Meruane – who not only borrow heavily from medicine in composing their works but also conceive of writing itself as something medical, that is, as having a therapeutic function for both writer and reader. Accordingly, we will study a group of writers and artists across time and space who explore, adapt, and converse with contemporaneous medical learning in their creative works. Dorothea HeitschDorothea Heitsch is Teaching Professor in French & Francophone Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. In addition to the language sequence, she teaches French grammar & composition, culture courses about France and French-speaking regions, and topics courses across the centuries, inviting students to explore Honors Theses, the Ackland Museums visuals, and UNCs numerous special collections. Her research and teaching include medical, political, and religious issues, and she particularly enjoys pointing students to questions of rhetoric, translation, and linguistic practice. She is the author of two monographs and numerous articles on early modern topics and the co-editor of two collections. |
GEOG 130-01F: Development and Inequality: Global Perspectives |
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FY Launch | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Elizabeth Olson |
This course is an introduction to historical and contemporary ideas about practices and meanings of development through the perspective of geography. Students will explore the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of struggles over inequality. They will also consider how development and inequality become constructed and institutionalized throughout history, the radical and not-so-radical ways that individuals, governments, and organizations have sought to change inequality, and the ways that geographical concepts can improve our thinking about these puzzles. SPECIAL FOR SPRING 2025: We will be collaborating with a local arts organization, Culture Mill, and a local community group on a new performance titled ‘Bloc’, in order to understand local landscapes of inequality and also of community in Chapel Hill. Elizabeth OlsonElizabeth Olson is Professor of Geography and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds an M.A. in Political Science/Public Policy and a Ph.D. in Geography, both from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She was previously on faculty at Lancaster University, England, and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She researches care, ethics, and geographies of inequality. She has published widely on topics related to normative ethics, the geographies of religion and spirituality, and youth and young people, and is co-editor of Religion and Place: Landscapes, Politics and Piety (2012) and The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies (2020). She loves teaching and offers classes related to global inequality and global theory, cultural landscapes, and geographies of religion. |
GEOG 56-001: Local Places in a Globalizing World |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Ruth Matamoros Mercado |
This course is designed to reflect on the complexities of an interconnected world and the dynamic relationship between globalization and localization by investigating how these forces shape our world and influence individuals and communities. A central component of this exploration involves examining the perspectives of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. Students will critically examine how these diverse groups respond to, influence, and resist globalization, thus gaining nuanced insights into alternative development and environmental stewardship paradigms. Ruth Matamoros MercadoI am an Indigenous Geographer specializing in indigenous research methods, decolonial indigenous and feminist geographies and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). My research interests center on Indigenous Peoples' land relations with a focus on Central America. My current research examines the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of land dispossession for the lives of Indigenous peoples in Nicaragua and Honduras. I completed a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and I also have a degree in Law from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, UNAN-León. |
GEOG 68-001: Freshwaters in the Anthropocene |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Amanda DelVecchia |
Freshwaters sustain myriad ecosystem services by providing drinking water, irrigation, inland fisheries, transportation, recreational opportunities, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. At the same time, both water quality and quantity are impacted by land use, water abstraction, damming, contamination, and climate change. This seminar will focus (1) on understanding how these anthropogenic pressures affect freshwater ecosystems differently across ecoregions, and (2) how management, legislative, and social initiatives have adapted or developed solutions. We will focus mainly on the United States but consider case studies from around the world. Students should be prepared to read and discuss three materials per week. These reading materials will include a range of popular media including podcasts, newspaper articles, and book chapters, as well as scientific articles and overviews. We will also spend some time exploring and talking about streams accessible to the UNC campus. Class will culminate with research projects in which students get to explore a topic of their choice and presenting findings to their peers. Amanda DelVecchiaI am a physical geographer focusing on freshwater ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry. This involves connecting various spatial and temporal scales, and biotic and abiotic factors, within groundwater, lakes, wetlands, rivers, and their watersheds. In particular, I ask how connectivity between different parts of the landscape (including those we cannot see!), and over time, affect functions like carbon and nutrient cycling, food webs, and greenhouse gas dynamics. By understanding these connections, we can better predict how freshwaters react to climate change and anthropogenic alteration, so that we may better protect freshwater biodiversity and function. I use a mix of empirical and data science, and work across the U.S. and internationally. You can learn more about my research by visiting my website at amandadelvecchia.weebly.com, by emailing me, or by visiting during my office hours, in which case I can promise you a warm reception and an offer for tea. |
GEOG 69-001: People and Forests |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM | Instructor(s): Shorna Allred |
This course delves into the interplay between human communities and the vital forest ecosystems upon which they rely. Through our collective exploration, we will deepen our understanding of the far-reaching impacts of forests on virtually every facet of our daily lives. In addition to forests of the world, we will also explore art about trees and learn about the forests that make our campus unique. The course includes field visits to the Coker Arboretum and other natural areas on campus. Shorna AllredShorna Allred is a Professor of Geography and Environment at UNC Chapel Hill. She has worked in forests all over the world to partner with local communities on conservation challenges and spans from upstate New York to the island of Borneo. Her work in the U.S. centers on environmental justice and bringing equity into forestland stewardship. Dr. Allred is a third-generation Texan and first-generation college student, and her passion for sustainable development and environmental justice was sparked at Penn State, where she was one of the first African-American women to earn a graduate degree from the School of Forest Resources. |
GSLL 76-001: Uncharted Territory: Underworlds in Literature and the Visual Arts |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Aleksandra Prica |
This course examines concepts and representations of underworlds in literature and the visual arts from the ancient world to modernity. Our journey will take us to the realms of the afterlife as well as into the abyss of the human psyche and the shady areas of criminal activities. We will explore how the desire to know the beyond has triggered people’s imagination, inspired literary and artistic traditions and influenced new forms of knowledge, moral values and social realities. Readings include short stories by E.A. Poe and Franz Kafka, and excerpts from works such as Plato’s Republic, the Bible, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoirs, Don de Lillo’s Underworld, and Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. We will watch movies and TV shows such as Apocalypse Now and Breaking Bad. We will visit the museum and a theater performance. Through reading responses, papers, and an oral presentation students develop and practice skills of critical thinking, persuasive written and oral communication and they use creativity effectively. Aleksandra PricaAleksandra Prica is a professor of German literature. She was born and raised in Switzerland and studied at the University of Zürich. So far, her life has involved a lot of traveling, and she has lived in different countries and cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam, Chicago and a small village in Columbia, South America. She joined the faculty at the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures in 2016. In her research she focuses on literature of the Middle Ages and contemporary adaptations of the medieval world in literature, art and film. |
HIST 51-001: Latin American Revolutions |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Andrew Walker |
This course explores the problem of revolutionary upheaval in Latin American history, from the revolutionary wars of the independence era (1810-1825) to revolutionary episodes of the 20th century. Andrew WalkerAndrew Walker is a historian of slavery, emancipation, nation-building, and racial formations in the Atlantic World, with a focus on Haiti and the Greater Caribbean in the nineteenth-century. His current book project, Haitian Santo Domingo: From Emancipation to Separation, uses local notarial and administrative records from the city of Santo Domingo to tell the story of how Hispaniola, an island governed by independent Haiti for 22 years, became divided into two nations. The book argues that the transition from unification to division cemented revolutionary antislavery as a foundational legacy of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but also generated paradoxical silences surrounding racial inequalities in the modern Dominican Republic. Dr. Walker's published work has appeared in the William & Mary Quarterly, the Law and History Review, and Slavery & Abolition. He has also contributed book chapters to the Routledge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Latin America and the edited volume Santo Domingo, 1821-2021: Bicentenario de la Independencia Efi?mera, published by the Archivo General de la Nación of the Dominican Republic. Previously, Dr. Walker held postdoctoral fellowships at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and at Wesleyan University. Dr. Walker received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in History and French Studies from Duke University. Dr. Walker teaches courses on Caribbean history, modern Latin American history, and Latin American studies. |
HIST 63H-001: Water, Conflict, and Connection: the Middle East and Ottoman Lands |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Sarah Shields |
Despite its centrality for the lives and the livelihoods of people in the Middle East, water has seldom been examined in its own right as a contributing factor to its history. This new First Year Seminar will explore the many ways in which water has shaped the history of the region, and the effects it currently has on life in the Middle East. Along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts as well as the Red Sea and Arab/Persian Gulf, seafaring and fishing played important roles in the economy; in the Gulf, pearl-diving became an important local industry as well. Agricultural innovations allowed permanent settlement in areas with little rainfall. Rivers and seas were essential for transportation, connecting populations of far-flung parts of the Middle East with each other, facilitating commerce and pilgrimage. The availability of clean water has become an increasing problem as industrialization and consumerism soil beaches and sully the region’s drinking supplies. Water and conflict have been indivisible in the region, since water is one of the crucial and rare resources in the Middle East. Some have argued, for example, that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can only be resolved by taking water resources into account; others have pointed to recent drought in Syria as a major factor contributing to the uprising that began in 2011. This course will focus in turn on the historical, cultural, and contemporary issues surrounding the presence and absence of water in the Middle East. Sarah ShieldsSarah Shields has been at UNC for decades, and both of her children have graduated wearing Tar Heel blue. She teaches courses on the modern Middle East, the conflict over Israel/Palestine, the history of Iraq, and a variety of courses on water in the Middle East. Her current research is on the Middle East and the establishment of borders after World War I. She has enjoyed teaching at UNC so much that she has even accompanied UNC students to programs in Turkey, England, and South Africa. |
HIST 72-001: Women's Voices: 20th-Century European History in Female Memory |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Jennifer A. Boittin |
The course examines 20th-century European history through the lenses of women’s autobiographical writings. It explores women’s voices from different generational, social, and national backgrounds and asks what formed their memories. Jennifer A. BoittinJennifer A. Boittin is the Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Global History. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University and was previously a professor at Penn State University. Her research and teaching look at how colonial spaces in West Africa, Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the French Caribbean were shaped by intersections between class, politics, and urban culture around the world wars and decolonization. Completed in part thanks to a Paris Institute for Advanced Studies fellowship, her second book is entitled Undesirable: Passionate Mobility and Womens Defiance of French Colonial Policing, 1919-1952 (2022, University of Chicago Press). Undesirable tells the virtually unknown history of hundreds of women in Southeast Asia (French Indochina) and West Africa (AOF) tracked by authorities because they were traveling alone and claiming Frenchness. Drawn from Cambodian, French, and Senegalese archives, Undesirables focus on how ordinary people react to being policed gives historical depth to pressing contemporary issues of migration and violence in France today and of similar reckonings on a global scale. Boittins first book, Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris (2010, University of Nebraska Press) is an innovative, intersectional history of radical interwar politics. She has also published extensively on the Nardal sisters, Lamine Senghor, Tiémoko Garan Kouyaté, Black anti-imperialism, masculinity, Black and African diaspora, Josephine Baker, and women travelers. She is a Past President of the Western Society of French History, editor of French Colonial History, and founding member on the editorial committee for Marronnages, les questions raciales au crible des sciences sociales. |
HIST 89-001: Native North Carolina: Past, Present, and Future |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Kathleen DuVal |
This course introduces students to the long history of North Carolina’s many and diverse Indigenous peoples. We will learn about their millennia-long history in this place, from the Outer Banks to the Appalachian Mountains. We will study their sixteenth-century encounters with newcomers from Europe and Africa and how they brought those newcomers into their economic and social worlds. We will see how, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, non-Indigenous settlers moved west, taking the land of Native peoples starting on the coast and then moving to the piedmont and finally the mountains. We will see how Native peoples kept their communities alive while fleeing, hiding from, and fighting colonialism in various ways. And we will learn about the economic and cultural renaissance going on today among Native North Carolinians. The class will include on-campus field trips (usually during the class period) and up to two off-campus field trips. Kathleen DuValKathleen DuVal's research focuses on early America, particularly how various Native American, European, and African women and men interacted from the sixteenth through early nineteenth centuries. |
HIST 89-002: Doing Digital History |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Lauren Jarvis |
How has the information age changed the ways that historians do and share research? This class is designed to help students chart shifts in the historical discipline alongside broader transformations in technology, media, and information-sharing since the post-World War II era. It will also allow students to practice using digital history tools and methods, culminating with a collaborative final project. Over the semester, our class will work with the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources as well as students in another first-year seminar (Native North Carolina) to create an interactive map of resources for K-12 educators relating to state-recognized tribes. Lauren JarvisLauren Jarvis is an Associate Professor of History. She grew up in Chapel Hill and earned her BA in History at that school down the road (rhymes with "fluke"). She then received her PhD in History at Stanford. Jarvis's research focuses on 19th and 20th century South Africa. At UNC, she teaches classes in South African, African, Global, and (most recently) Digital History. She is currently the Faculty Director of The LAUNCH, or The Lab at UNC History, a digital history and storytelling hub. |
HIST 89-003: The Environment in American History |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Joanna Smith |
In this course, students will analyze the ways in which Americans have both shaped and been shaped by their natural environment. Together, we will trace a selected history of interactions between humans and nature in America, focusing on the often-fraught intersection between political, economic, social, and religious understandings of nature. As we do so, we will examine the various answers that Americans have given to a set of slippery core questions: What responsibilities do humans have to the broader natural world? Are humans a part of nature, or outside of it? What, ultimately, is the nature of nature? This will be a dynamic course that requires students to connect the lessons of history to the world they inhabit today. In addition to learning from texts and primary historical sources, students will engage with podcasts, popular journalism, literature, and more. As a class, they will visit sites like the Coker Arboretum, the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, and the Carolina Community Garden to explore how the environmental history they are studying has shaped even their most immediate on-campus surroundings. Students will also each have the opportunity to dive into a research projects on a contemporary environmental issue of their choosing. Joanna SmithDr. Joanna Sierks Smith has a PhD in American Religion. Her research focuses on nature, foodways, and environmental philosophy, and her most recent project on the history of the meat industry took her to slaughterhouses and farms around North Carolina. In addition to teaching, Dr. Smith serves as the Associate Director for State Outreach at Carolina Public Humanities, where she works with partners at community colleges, libraries, and historic sites around the state to organize public conversations about some of today’s most pressing issues – including environmental issues. |
HNRS 89-001: Narrative and Medicine: Writing COVID/Writing Us |
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FY Seminar | W, 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM | Instructor(s): Terrence Holt |
This first-year seminar is a workshop in autobiographical and creative short story, focusing on the complex connections between story-telling, interpretive skill, the experience of illness, and the practice of medicine. The only prerequisite is some experience (and enjoyment in) reading stories. Students will write and distribute autobiographical and and creative short stories about illness and caregiving; the seminar will meet weekly to discuss these stories, as well as published works by doctors and other writers, seeking out the key issues each story expresses about what it means to be sick, and what it might mean to take care of others. This is a highly collaborative course. Each week, the entire class works as a group to build an understanding of: how meaning arises in the stories composed and presented by members of the class; In addition to writing for the workshop, participants will keep a journal over the course of the semester, charting not day-to-day events but vignettes of remembered experience, daydreams, sketches, which taken together address, one way or another, what it has been like for you to experience the Great Pandemic of 2020-2X. It is difficult to imagine writing, either autobiographical or imaginative, that does not, under our current conditions, somehow address the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not to say that everything we write should consciously, overtly, or explicitly be about COVID 19, but simply that the reality of the pandemic shapes much of what we think these days, especially concerning illness. Whether we choose to live in the world as if the pandemic were over, or if we are still aware of its ongoing ravages both at home and abroad, we still inhabit a world utterly changed by the fear of contagion, and all the different ways we choose to respond to both that contagion and that fear. As an omnipresent and yet unvoiced anxiety, as a deeply facilitated pathway in our limbic cortices, as an occult force in our individual and social lives, COVID continues to provide an ideal topic as we attempt to understand how our stories draw on memories and emotions of which we may not (wish to) be aware. This journal is to be the foundation for the capstone project. This project need not be “written.” It can take the form of a video or audio recording, an animation, or of images strung together as a slide show while you read a narrative composition. Or it can simply be a story, autobiographical or imaginative, about you and COVID 19. The writing and (especially) interpretive skills acquired in this workshop are directly valuable to anyone contemplating a career in medicine, but are equally valuable in a wide range of humanities disciplines, as well as to anyone who might at some point encounter (in themselves or in someone they care for) the trauma of illness. In addition to the weekly workshop, participants will have one-on-one conferences with the instructor (himself an MD with an international reputation as a writer). Both in the writing of your stories, and in the discussion of your classmates’ stories, you will find in this course both the tools for a greater understanding of yourself and a greater appreciation of how much you share with those around you. This course offers a personal, meaningful approach to questions many of us share, but rarely have a chance to put into words. Terrence HoltTerrence Holt (M.F.A., Ph.D. Cornell University; M.D. UNC), has held a faculty position at the School of Medicine since completing his residency (internal medicine) in 2003. He teaches topics ranging from health care finance to medical ethics to narrative medicine. For ten years a contributing editor to Men's Health, he publishes and speaks widely on a range of topics related to ethical and experiential questions of medical practice. His short story collections (In the Valley of the Kings, Internal Medicine) have appeared on numerous "best of" lists, including the New York Times bestsellers, and have been reprinted, translated, and anthologized in the US, Europe, and Asia. He thinks of this course as his central contribution to his teaching at Carolina, one that combines the multiple disciplinary strands of his career into a unified experience for learners at a range of levels. |
IDST 89-001: The Way of Medicine |
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FY Seminar | T, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM | Instructor(s): John Thorp |
Seminar will discuss and explore how health should be defined and various classical and contemporary views of medical practice. Ethical controversies in modern medicine will be discused and anlayzed. John ThorpI am the McAllister Distinguished Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the UNC School of Medicine and have practiced clinical medicine since 1983 in Chapel Hill. My research interests include clinical epidemiology, biomedical ethics, perinatal substance abuse, and preterm birth. |
MATH 69-001: Unfolding Infinity: Mathematical Origami and Fractal Symmetry |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Mark McCombs |
Have you ever wanted to be able to hold infinity in the palm of your hand? This course engages students in an exploration of the interplay between mathematics, origami, and fractal symmetry. Learning objectives will include mastering basic origami folding techniques, identifying and applying fundamental symmetry operations, recognizing and analyzing fractal symmetry, and creating geometric tessellations. Students will use image editing software (Illustrator and Photoshop), mathematical imaging software (Geometer’s Sketchpad and Ultra Fractal), and the laser cutter in UNC’s BeAM space, to design and create modular origami and fractal tessellation artwork. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions and small group work, as well as submit short written assignments on course topics. Mark McCombsMark McCombs is a Teaching Professor of Mathematics. He teaches Selected Topics in Mathematics, Calculus 13, Discrete Math and First Year Seminars focusing on mathematical art. He strives to help students explore how mathematical ideas resonate with fields typically perceived as non-mathematical. He uses UNCs BeAM network to develop maker-based activities that cultivate students analytical creativity. He enjoys making 3D origami sculpture and digital fractal art (https://www.deviantart.com/boygnius/gallery/), some of which was exhibited at the 2018 Bridges Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. One of his sculptures is now on display in Stockholms National Museum of Science and Technology! |
MUSC 63-001: Music on Stage and Screen |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Naomi André |
Offers tools and techniques for understanding multimedia, staged musical works like opera, musical theater, and film. The goal of the seminar is to develop students’ analytical skills in verbal and nonverbal media and to encourage their visualization of the potential and implications of artistic forms and structures. Naomi AndréDr. Naomi André (David G. Frey Distinguished Professor) received her B.A. in music from Barnard College and M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard University. She was previously a professor at the University of Michigan in the Departments of Afroamerican and African Studies, Womens and Gender Studies, and the Residential College. Dr. Andrés research focuses on opera and issues surrounding gender, voice, and race. Her publications include topics on Italian opera, Schoenberg, women composers, and teaching opera in prisons. Her books, including, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (2006) and Blackness in Opera (2012, co-edited collection) focus on opera from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries and explore constructions of gender, race and identity. African Performance Arts and Political Acts (2021, co-edited collection) focuses on how performance and the arts shape the narratives of cultural history and politics on the African continent. Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (2018) is a monograph on staging race and history in opera today in the United States and South Africa. She has served on the Graduate Alumni Council for Harvard Universitys Graduate School of Art and Sciences, the Executive Committee for the Criminal Justice Program at the American Friends Service Committee (Ann Arbor, MI), and has served as an evaluator for the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program. In 2019, Dr. André was named the inaugural Scholar in Residence at the Seattle Opera which has continued to the present. In her role, she advises Seattle Opera staff and leadership on matters of race and gender in opera; consults in artistic planning as it relates to representation of race and gender; and participates in company panel discussions, podcast recordings, and contributes essays to opera programs. She has continued to work with major and regional opera companies through panels, short residencies, and program essays. In addition, Dr. André has worked with every major opera company in the United States and many regional opera companies and festivals. This summer she is a scholar-in-residence for the Des Moines Metro Opera. She has written program essays for recordings of Blue (CD, Tesori and Thompson, 2022) and Fire Shut Up in My Bones (DVD Blanchard and Lemmons 2022). On February 4, 2022 she testified before the Committee on the Judiciary as a Witness for House Resolution 301 hearing Examining the History and Importance of Lift Every Voice and Sing to become a National Hymn (sponsored by Congressman James E. Clyburn, South Carolina). |
MUSC 64-001: What is a Work of Art? Listening to Music |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Evan Harger |
Music is one of the most ubiquitous arts in our world. It surrounds us in the grocery store, it accompanies our favorite films and television shows, and it serves as a basis for our ringtones and social media content. And yet, it is also one of the hardest arts to define. What exactly IS music? Does music express emotion, or is it just sounds interacting in space and time? Is there a ‘right’ way to hear music, or does the same musical excerpt mean different things to different people? And how does THAT work? If I ‘cover’ a song, am I playing the song, or a new piece? Is birdsong music? Why or why not? These are just some of the many questions that this course seeks to explore. A special emphasis is given to developing active listening skills so that we can hear more parameters of music. No prior knowledge of music notation is required to take this course, just an openness to learning about musical traditions from various times and places and a desire to discuss as a class the big questions that underlie the musical arts. Evan HargerDr. Harger (Assistant Professor) is the Music Director for the UNC Symphony Orchestra. He also serves as a Staff Conductor in various capacities for Global Arts United festivals in Sofia, Bulgaria; Vienna, Austria; and São Paulo, Brazil. Additionally, He holds the position of Associate Conductor of the Newfound Chamber Winds, where he assists with guest conducting, producing, and outreach. As an educator, Dr. Harger enjoys asking the big philosophical questions that underly the musical arts, and he enjoys leading student-generated discussions about big questions within the musical arts. Past guest conducting engagements have included the Newfound Chamber Winds, Oregon Mozart Players, Arkansas Music Works Brass Band, Sofia Philharmonic, PHACE Ensemble, PMEA District IX and VIII Orchestras, Marywood String Celebration Chamber Orchestra, and Idaho All-Collegiate Band. He also served as a past Music Director of the Young People's Philharmonic of the Lehigh Valley. He is thrilled to be a part of the UNC community! |
MUSC 89-001: Sound Art |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Lee Weisert |
This course explores the primary concepts, techniques, and artists/works falling under the category of “sound art,” an interdisciplinary field that centers sound and listening in contexts outside of traditional musical performance. Examples of sound art include sound installations, soundwalks, performance art, conceptual music, music technology, and more. Artistic work at the intersections of visual art, sculpture, science, architecture, theater, poetry, and music will be discussed in a seminar-style class format. In addition to learning about the history and aesthetics of sound art, students will participate in the creation and performance of original sound art works. Lee WeisertLee Weisert is a composer of instrumental and electronic music and a multimedia sound artist. He teaches courses in music technology, composition, musicianship, and digital media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Weiserts recent music has incorporated increasingly disparate elements such as orchestral instruments, found sounds, field recordings, digital synthesis, and analog circuitry, in an attempt to find, through experimentation, tinkering, and unconventional approaches, a ritualistic and deeply expressive world of sound. His music is published by New Focus Recordings. |
MUSC 89-002: Music and Women's Rights |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Anne MacNeil |
This First-Year Seminar is about the history and protest songs of the First and Second Waves of American feminism, from the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 – where women declared their equality with men and called for women’s right to vote – to the passage of Roe v. Wade and the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Issues for discussion include the role of music-making in women’s activism, the practice of writing contrafacts (new words for old tunes), and the intersectionality of women’s rights and civil rights movements. COURSE OBJECTIVES This First-Year Seminar carries three learning objectives: 1) to introduce students to the roles that music and the writing of new words for old tunes play in women’s activism during the First and Second Waves of American feminism; 2) to foster students’ engagement in self-directed, multi-media research; and 3) to teach students how to present their research online using ArcGIS StoryMaps. Anne MacNeilAnne MacNeil holds a PhD in the History & Theory of Music from the University of Chicago and a Masters Degree from the Eastman School of Music. She is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the Authority of Record at the Library of Congress on the Renaissance commedia dellarte actress Isabella Andreini. Prof. MacNeil is also a founding directory of IDEA: Isabella dEste Archive, an international research consortium that studies the music and culture of Renaissance Italy through the lens of the marchesa of Mantua, Isabella dEste (1474-1539). |
NSCI 175-01F: Introduction to Neuroscience |
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FY Launch | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Alexandra Nowlan |
Provides an introduction to the structure and function of the nervous system. Fundamental principles will be introduced including nervous system anatomy; molecular and cellular properties of the nervous system; sensory and motor systems; current methods used in neuroscience; and how the nervous system produces behavior and cognition. This course provides greater breadth and depth of neuroscience topics, as compared to Biopsychology (PSYC 220). Alexandra NowlanAlexandra (Ally) Nowlan earned her PhD from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Science, where she investigated neural circuits that support multisensory integration and neural plasticity important for social communication. Dr. Nowlan performed her postdoctoral research at UNC-CH in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, where she studied changes in noradrenergic activity in opioid use disorder and withdrawal syndrome. She joined the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience as an adjunct lecturer in 2024 and will be joining as an assistant teaching professor in 2025. |
NSCI 175-02F: Introduction to Neuroscience |
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FY Launch | MWF, 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM | Instructor(s): Alexandra Nowlan |
Provides an introduction to the structure and function of the nervous system. Fundamental principles will be introduced including nervous system anatomy; molecular and cellular properties of the nervous system; sensory and motor systems; current methods used in neuroscience; and how the nervous system produces behavior and cognition. This course provides greater breadth and depth of neuroscience topics, as compared to Biopsychology (PSYC 220). Alexandra NowlanAlexandra (Ally) Nowlan earned her PhD from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Science, where she investigated neural circuits that support multisensory integration and neural plasticity important for social communication. Dr. Nowlan performed her postdoctoral research at UNC-CH in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, where she studied changes in noradrenergic activity in opioid use disorder and withdrawal syndrome. She joined the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience as an adjunct lecturer in 2024 and will be joining as an assistant teaching professor in 2025. |
NSCI 61-001: Drug Addiction: Fact and Fiction |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM | Instructor(s): Kathryn Reissner |
Illicit and legal drugs make the user feel good but also promote the development of dependence and long-lasting changes in brain physiology. In this biological psychology seminar, we will take a multi-disciplinary approach to learn about the neurobiology of drug addiction with a focus on the following questions: How do we define addiction? What are the beneficial and harmful psychological effects of abused drugs? What has scientific research revealed about the neurobiology of the “brain on drugs”? Do most users become addicts? How is drug addiction treated? We will tackle these and other questions through classroom discussions/debates, lectures, movies, reading and writing assignments, and an optional tour of a residential substance abuse recovery program. In this communication intensive seminar, critical analysis of information about the neurobiology of addiction will be used to separate fact from fiction. Kathryn ReissnerKathryn (Kate) Reissner received her PhD from the University of California, where she performed research on the neurobiology of learning and memory. Dr. Reissner went on to perform postdoctoral research at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she studied the role of glutamate transport in the development of cocaine addiction. She joined the Department of Psychology at UNC-CH as an Assistant Professor in 2013. Research in the Reissner lab is focused on the long lasting changes in the brains reward circuitry induced by cocaine abuse which mediate enduring vulnerability to relapse, with emphasis on neuron-astrocyte interactions. |
PHIL 85-001: Reason, Religion, and Reality in the Copernican Revolution |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Marc Lange |
The reasoning by which Galileo and his contemporaries defended the Copernican model of the solar system (the “heliocentric” model – that is, with the Earth orbiting the Sun rather than the Sun orbiting the Earth) can puzzle us even today. Here are a few of the questions that we could ask about the reasoning given by Copernicus, Galileo, and their contemporaries. Did Copernicus’s arguments support the heliocentric model strongly enough to justify believing it true? Or was it unjustified until Galileo amassed telescopic evidence for it? Or was it unjustified until even later – when Newtonian physics was developed? Or did it remain unjustified until even later – when various mechanical and optical discoveries were made in the nineteenth century? Was the Catholic Church justified at the time of Galileo in regarding Copernicus’s theory as just one among many fairly successful techniques for predicting the night sky’s appearance? Did Galileo bring his sentence (at his famous – and notorious – trial) on himself? Could Galileo argue persuasively for his telescope’s reliability? Could Galileo use mere “thought-experiments” (as opposed to actual experiments) to defend Copernicanism? In this course, we will grapple with these and related questions in order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the logic by which scientific theories in general are tested and, ultimately, justified. We will also try to use this historical episode to understand better how political, social, and cultural factors can influence the reception of a scientific theory – even today! We will learn some of the means by which the biases and presuppositions introduced by these factors were overcome (eventually) in the Copernican Revolution, and we will apply some of these lessons to current science. At various points during our discussions, each student will submit in written form his or her own best reconstructions of some of the arguments that were given for or against the Copernican model. In other words, each student will offer his or her best advice regarding how a given scientist might have argued for or against Copernicanism, anticipating possible objections and responses. Students will occasionally form groups to examine and to critique one another’s proposals, with each group finally presenting its best thoughts orally to the rest of the class for further discussion. Students will, in effect, be putting Galileo on trial once again – not for heresy or for disobeying authority, but for having convincing or for having insufficient evidence for his Copernicanism. In all of these ways, students will learn how to appreciate sympathetically the competing astronomical theories from the perspective of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the truth was in some doubt. Along the way, students will wrestle with some of the puzzles and apparent paradoxes arising even from today’s best philosophical accounts of the logic of theory testing in science. No previous background in science will be assumed. Students will not need to purchase any books. Marc LangeMarc Lange is Theda Perdue Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. He specializes in the philosophy of science and related areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics, along with the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology. He won UNC's 2016 Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction and a Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professorship for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. (For a brief sample of his teaching, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SKmqh5Eu4Y) |
PHIL 89-001: Identity in African American Philosophy |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Tom Dougherty |
In this discussion-focused First Year Seminar, we will closely read influential texts by African American philosophers that engage with issues concerning identity. We will ask questions like: What types of identity, if any, do all Black people have in common? What is the relationship between Black identity and Black culture? What types of Black identity are necessary for Black political solidarity? We will consider Black feminist insights about how some identities lie at the intersection of multiple social groups. Tom DoughertyTom Dougherty is a philosophy professor who researches and teaches ethics and political philosophy. They have written books on the ethics of consent. They are from the UK and previously worked at Stanford, Cambridge, and Sydney University. |
PHYS 118-01F: Introductory Calculus-based Mechanics and Relativity |
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FY Launch | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Muxin Zhang | Lab/Recitation: PHYS 118-401. Note: The PHYS 118-01F lecture will be combined with other PHYS 118 lecture sections, and it will be taught as a large survey class. PHYS 118-401, the studio section associated with this class, is the FY Launch section. Please be sure to enroll in the lecture, PHYS 118-01F, and the corresponding studio, PHYS 118-401, to fulfill the FY-LAUNCH requirement. Requisite(s): Prerequisite, MATH 231; Pre- or corequisite, MATH 232; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisites. |
Mechanics of particles and rigid bodies. Newton’s laws; mechanical and potential energy; mechanical conservation laws; frame-dependence of physical laws; Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Students may not receive credit for PHYS 118 in addition to PHYS 104, 114, or 116. Muxin ZhangMuxin Zhang received her PhD in Physics Education Research (PER) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023 with Dr. Eric Kuo. Her thesis focused on analyzing cognitive and socio-emotional aspects of small group interactions in physics discussion sections and labs. She is particularly passionate about understanding the role of emotions in science education and scientific practices. She is currently teaching Physics 114 and Physics 118 courses at UNC-CH. |
PHYS 89-001: Mysteries of the Universe |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Laura Mersini-Houghton |
This course will provide a qualitative treatment of some of the great mysteries related to our understanding of the universe and the fabric of space and time, as well as key modern physics theories and laws of nature that we use in exploring these mysteries. Topic include: the second law of thermodynamics and entropy; the pricniples of quantum mechanics; their application to a unified undertsanding of how our universe emerged to existence and how it will end; what lies beyond the horizon at the largest scales of space and time and in the heart of black holes. Course objectives: Give you a deeper insight into the working of the universe and its mysteries, expose you to cutting edge research in modern physics, and demonstrate how different fields of knowledge merge and blend together into a unified description of Nature. Encourage critical and conceptual thinking. Laura Mersini-HoughtonLaura Mersini- Houghton is an internationally renowned cosmologist and theoretical physicist and one the worlds leading experts and author of the origin of the universe from the quantum multiverse. She proposed to use quantum entanglement to test the multiverse and made a series of predictions for anomalous signatures, notable the Cold Spot, imprinted in our sky. All of the predicted anomalies were confirmed by the Planck satellite experiment. She is a full professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a visiting professor at numerous distinguished universities around the world, including University of Cambridge in the UK and CITA, University of Toronto in Canada. She has been the subject of hundreds of interviews & articles in leading popular science magazines, newspapers, and documentaries, in the Science Channel, Discovery Channel, PBS, National Geographic, and BBC-Horizon, BBC Radio 4 and NPR. |
PLAN 89-001: The Hood is Not For Sale |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Ashley Hernandez |
This course delves into the multifaceted dynamics of gentrification, exploring its historical roots, and its far-reaching implications for cities and communities from the 1960s to today. This class conceives of gentrification as a complex process that is distinctly different from redevelopment. It changes the makeup of neighborhoods and fuels political and policy conflicts while exacerbating inequality and destabilizing the tenure of longstanding communities. Throughout the course, we will examine the interplay between urban development, social change, and political power, while exploring the challenges and strategies for combating the negative impacts of gentrification. Ashley HernandezMy name is Ashley Hernandez, and I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. I am a qualitative researcher, and my research areas include urban change and inequality as it relates to gentrification, urban social movements, affordable housing, and community engagement. I am deeply committed to community-based research and equitable policy, particularly that which centers the experiences and voices of underrepresented communities and their struggles against displacement. |
PLCY 51-001: The Global Environment in the 21st Century |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Elizabeth Sasser |
Explores linkages among nations, global environmental institutions, and the environmental problems they cause and seek to rectify. Introduces pressing challenges of the global environment, particularly around energy use and climate change, and potential solutions. Discusses perspectives of nations, NGOs, and the international community involved in crafting policy solutions. This class does not have any prerequisites. Elizabeth SasserElizabeth Sasser is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Public Policy with extensive experience in federal and state government. Prior to joining UNC, she served as policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she worked with U.S. and Chinese government leadership on strategies to advance U.S. interests on environmental and energy issues. She was also a policy advisor to two North Carolina governors on energy and education issues. She has a B.A. and an M.P.P. from Duke University and has studied at Peking University in Beijing, China, where she developed a fluency in Mandarin. |
PLCY 81-001: America's Labor Market |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Jeremy Moulton |
The course will familiarize students with the major public policies and movements affecting the American labor market. Students will learn how each of the following impacts the labor market: education, the minimum wage, Social Security, pensions, unions, unemployment insurance, welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF), income taxes (including the Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC), self-employment, immigration, automation, and the gig economy. The course uses news articles, policy summaries, podcasts, and academic journal articles to help students learn the many theoretical and political viewpoints associated with each topic. Jeremy MoultonJeremy Moulton received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Davis and works in the fields of public and labor economics. His research primarily utilizes public policy shocks as natural experiments to investigate labor market outcomes, retirement decision-making, the intergenerational transmission of wealth and education, and the real estate market. Jeremy has published papers that investigate the extent to which people leave the labor force when they lose eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), whether people can marry a more educated spouse if they increase their own education using variation in education caused by the World War II G.I. Bill, whether lower healthcare costs caused by Medicare Part-D pushed people to enter self-employment, the long-run impact of entering the labor market during the Great Depression, and the impact of property tax exemptions on real estate prices using a ballot initiative in Virginia. |
PLCY 89-001: Issues in Science and Technology Policy |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 1:25 PM – 2:15 PM | Instructor(s): Maria Carnovale |
Intended for first-year students of any major, this course explores the role of public policy in shaping the innovation ecosystem where new science and technology emerge and how governments, organizations, and communities influence their development. By looking at contemporary, domestic, and international case studies, we will examine key issues in the governance of emerging technologies, their ethical dimensions, and the intersection of science with issues like climate change, public health, and national security. Students will develop an understanding of policy-making processes, stakeholder engagement, and the role of public and private institutions in shaping science and technology landscapes. The course will also provide practical insights into regulatory frameworks, international collaboration, and the trade-offs involved in balancing innovation with safety, ethics, and the public interest. Maria CarnovaleMaria Carnovale studies under what conditions technology maximizes well-being without negatively impacting individuals and communities and how policies can foster this process. She has written about the social and ethical implications of digital platforms, digital contact tracing, and more recently smart sanitation, among other topics. In her classes, Maria draws from her academic work as a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and as a Visiting Associate at the University of Notre Dame, with practical insights from her non-profit experience. An avid writer, her work has been published on Slate, Issues, and Zocalo, among other publications. |
POLI 100-01F: American Democracy in Changing Times |
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FY Launch | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Suzanne Globetti |
Why do Americans love democracy, but hate politics? Why are there only two political parties? Why do voters hate, yet respond to negative campaigning? This course will introduce students to politics in the United States, addressing these and many more questions about how American democracy works. Suzanne GlobettiSuzanne Globetti joined the political science department after having taught 14 years at Vanderbilt University and 4 years at Bowdoin College.??She received her BA at the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Suzanne teaches a range of classes about American politics and research methods.??At Carolina, shell offer the introductory American government class, along with courses on the mass media, public opinion, campaigns and elections, and beginning statistics.??At Vanderbilt she won multiple teaching awards and was widely considered the political science departments most successful classroom presence. |
POLI 130-01F: Introduction to Comparative Politics |
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FY Launch | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Caitlin Andrews-Lee |
This course examines the diversity of political arrangements in societies across the globe. Honors version available. Caitlin Andrews-LeeCaitlin Andrews-Lee is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She earned her Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining UNC, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane Universitys Center for Inter-American Policy and Research and an Assistant Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Caitlins research and teaching interests are in comparative politics and political behavior, with an emphasis on charismatic leadership and followership in Latin America. She is the author of The Emergence and Revival of Charismatic Movements: Argentine Peronism and Venezuelan Chavismo (Cambridge University Press, 2021), which won the Leon Epstein Award (APSA) and the Social Sciences Award (LASA). Her research has also been published in journals including Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Democratization, Political Research Quarterly, and Journal of Politics in Latin America, among others. Caitlins current project investigates the gendered nature of charismatic authority and explores under what conditions women can defy expectations and establish legitimacy as charismatic leaders. |
POLI 59-001: Revolution, America in 1776 and France in 1789 |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Matthew Weidenfeld |
This course is designed to throw students into New York City in 1775 and Paris in 1791 by recreating and engaging with the ideas and arguments of these times. The course will rely on the Reacting to the Past pedagogy. “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills. The course will be extremely hard work, but should also be intellectually engaging and, to put it simply, a good deal of fun. Click the following link to see a video of students discussing their experiences in the class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUq6IU6NGOs&t=1s Matthew WeidenfeldDr. Matthew Weidenfeld has a wide range of teaching interests and experience in the history of political theory and in American Politics. Recently, his courses have featured role-immersive, Reacting to the Past Simulations. These consist of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; though he advises and guides students throughout. The simulations seek to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills. |
POLI 70-001: Political Conflict in the European Union and the United States |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Gary Marks |
This course is concerned with politics and political conflict in the Europe and the United States. In Part one you will learn about political parties and electoral systems, and why they are so important. Part two moves to the European Union: why was it created; how has it developed, and how does it work? Part three investigates the revolt against globalization in Europe and the US. Who is involved and why? Gary MarksGary Marks is Burton Craige Professor of Political Science and Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. He served as the director and co-founder the UNC Center for European Studies and EU Center of Excellence. In 2017 he received the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association and has received the Humboldt Prize for his contributions to political science. Professor Marks has written more than a dozen books and is one of the most cited scholars worldwide in political science. |
POLI 74-001: Introduction to Constitutional Conflicts |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Michael Gerhardt |
This seminar will introduce students to the issues, arguments, history, impact, and reasoning arising from or in conflicts between presidents and Congress. The constitutional conflicts that are the focus of the course involve presidents and Congress fighting for primacy in areas in which they have shared constitutional powers. Michael GerhardtMichael Gerhardt is the Burton Craig Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina Law School. He is the author of seven books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, which the Financial Times named as one of the best non-fiction books of 2013, and over 100 articles on constitutional law. He has testified more than 20 times before the House or Senate, has been special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the confirmation proceedings for seven of the nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court, and served as special counsel to the Presiding Officer in Donald Trump's second impeachment trial in the Senate. |
POLI 75-001: Thinking about Law |
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FY Seminar | MW, 3:35 PM – 4:50 PM | Instructor(s): Charles Szypszak |
Are you interested in being a lawyer or public official? Do you know what it means to “think like a lawyer?” Have you considered why people mostly honor the law? Where do you find “the law?” How do judges decide difficult cases? This seminar will explore the notion of a rule of law, formal and customary law, legal analysis, judicial interpretation and the realities of the adversarial system and law practice. We will consider what makes law seem legitimate and how to assess whether it promotes liberty and justice. This seminar will challenge students to be reflective and critical about their own perspectives and to explore personal responsibility for promoting a rule of law. Students will be engaged in analytical thinking and expression through required participation in teacher-led dialogues based on assigned readings and with research and writing assignments. Reading materials include selections from court cases and other sources that provide an introduction to the notion of a rule of law, the sources of law that govern us and protect our individual rights, the nature of legal analysis, the different methods of judicial interpretation, and the realities of law practice and the adversarial system. Charles SzypszakCharles Szypszak is Albert Coates Distinguished Professor of Public Law and Government. He has been with the School of Government since 2005. Prior to that, he was an attorney and director of a general practice firm in New Hampshire. He provides legal counsel to state, national and international institutions, organizations and public officials and teaches Law for Public Administration in the graduate program in public administration. He has taught and worked on law reforms in Poland and Russia. He is the recipient of the Universitys J. Carlyle Sitterson Freshman Teaching Award and the School of Governments Coates Distinguished Professorship for Teaching Excellence. |
POLI 77-001: Immigrants and Refugees in World Politics |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Niklaus Steiner |
The movement of people across international borders is one of the most politically controversial issues in the world today. This class focuses on two different types of global migrants, immigrants and refugees, and explores why these two groups move out of their countries and how they are treated by receiving countries. Immigrants and refugees have traditionally been thought of as politically, legally and ethically different from each other and this class explores these differences, but it also explores the many ways that they are similar. Finally, the class explores a third type of global migrant that politicians and policy makers frequently promote, guest workers, and considers to what extent guest worker policies can effectively address the challenges and opportunities posed by the two other migrant groups. This class encourages students from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives to enroll because it benefits significantly from including such diversity. Niklaus SteinerNiklaus Steiner is a native of Thun, Switzerland, who moved to Chapel Hill with his family when his father became a professor at Carolina. He earned a bachelors degree with highest honors in international studies at UNC and a Ph.D. in political science at Northwestern University. He has had the good fortune of moving between cultures his whole life and because of this experience, his teaching and research interests are around immigration, refugees, human rights, nationalism, and citizenship. His textbook, International Migration and Citizenship Today seeks to facilitate classroom discussions on admission and membership in liberal democracies, and he is currently working on a 2nd edition. Before joining the political science department in 2020, he enjoyed working at UNCs Center for Global Initiatives, the last 15 as the director, and he is especially proud of the work he and many colleagues from across campus did to bring diversity, equity and inclusion into global education at Carolina. When not at work, Niklaus is often cutting or replanting flowers in the garden, walking in the woods with his family or making something up in the kitchen. |
POLI 87-001: What Does it Mean to be a Good Citizen? |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Nora Hanagan |
What, if any, responsibilities accompany democratic citizenship? Voting? Active participation in political meetings? Obeying laws? Volunteering in one’s community? Preserving natural resources for future generations? Adhering to certain values? Protesting unjust laws? This course offers an overview of the different ways in which Americans have answered these questions. We will also be developing our oral communication skills this semester through a variety of activities, including active-listening sessions, a structured debate, and a consensus-building workshop. We will also be learning how to run effective group meetings. I realize that public speaking is stressful for many people, and I promise to make this as painless as possible. Nora HanaganProfessor Nora Hanagan studies political ideas. She is particularly interested in the ideas that have animated American politics and history. Her book, Democratic Responsibility: The Politics of Many Hands in America, examines whether individuals bear responsibility for harms that are caused by social institutions and processes. She is also affiliated with the Program for Public Discourse and the Philosophy, Politics, and Economic Program. When she isnt chasing her young children around, she likes gardening and hiking. |
POLI 89-001: Introduction to Constitutional Conflicts (John L. Townsend III First-Year Seminar) |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Michael Gerhardt |
This seminar will introduce students to the issues, arguments, history, impact, and reasoning arising from or in conflicts between presidents and Congress. The constitutional conflicts that are the focus of the course involve presidents and Congress fighting for primacy in areas in which they have shared constitutional powers. Michael GerhardtMichael Gerhardt is the Burton Craig Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina Law School. He is the author of seven books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, which the Financial Times named as one of the best non-fiction books of 2013, and over 100 articles on constitutional law. He has testified more than 20 times before the House or Senate, has been special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the confirmation proceedings for seven of the nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court, and served as special counsel to the Presiding Officer in Donald Trump's second impeachment trial in the Senate. |
PSYC 54-001: Families and Children |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Shauna Cooper |
The goal of this first-year seminar course is to familiarize students with a range of topics associated with contemporary families, with a specific focus on familial influences on child and adolescent development. Also, given the increasing diversity among families in contemporary society, this course will increase knowledge of the various domains of diversity (i.e., developmental stage, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity) as well as help students be attuned to pertinent issues faced by these families. Select course topics include 1) demographic trends of families; 2) parenting and development; 3) sibling relationships; 4) cultural contexts of parenting and families; 5) media and technology; 6) neighborhood and community influences; and 7) youth civic engagement. Shauna CooperDr. Shauna M. Cooper is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on how social contexts and experiences shape development. Much of her research examines the family, school, and community contexts of development and youth well-being as well as how culture may shape parenting and family processes. Her research lab is the Strengths, Assets, and Resilience (StAR) Lab at UNC: thestarlab.org. |
RELI 65-001: Myth, Philosophy, and Science in the Ancient World |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Zlatko Pleše, Zlatko Ples?e |
This interdisciplinary course explores various, often conflicting ways of conceiving and shaping reality in the ancient world – religious, scientific, and philosophical. The course is organized around a series of case studies: (1) the formation and makeup of the cosmos; (2) the origin of mankind and its sexual differentiation; (3) the invention of the ‘self’; (4) the origin and nature of dreams; (5) foundations of law, justice, and morality. Short writing assignments, in-class discussions, oral presentations, and a term-paper will be used to introduce students into a complex intellectual network of natural scientists, philosophers, and oral story-tellers throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Readings include Near Eastern mythical narratives and Homeric poems and hymns; selections from the earliest Greek philosophers through Plato’s dialogues to Hellenistic and Roman philosophical schools; works from the famous Hippocratic corpus and Galen’s medical treatises; and various religious texts from ancient Greece and Rome, early Christianity, and late antiquity. Zlatko PlešeZlatko Pleše received his PhD in Classics at Yale University, where he specialized in ancient philosophy and medicine, early Christianity, Hellenistic rhetoric and Coptic language. He taught at various universities in Europe and the US, including Yale and Wesleyan University, and is currently Professor of Ancient Mediterranean religions (Greco-Roman world, early Christianity and late antiquity) at Carolina. He has published monographs and articles on Platonist philosophers of the Roman imperial period, ancient Gnostic and Hermetic writings, apocryphal gospels, and early modern theories of nationhood in South-Eastern Europe. Zlatko Ples?eZlatko Ples?e received his PhD in Classics at Yale University, where he specialized in ancient philosophy and medicine, early Christianity, Hellenistic rhetoric and Coptic language. He taught at various universities in Europe and the US, including Yale and Wesleyan University, and is currently Professor of Ancient Mediterranean religions (Greco-Roman world, early Christianity and late antiquity) at Carolina. He has published monographs and articles on Platonist philosophers of the Roman imperial period, ancient Gnostic and Hermetic writings, apocryphal gospels, and early modern theories of nationhood in South-Eastern Europe. |
RELI 70-001: Jesus in Scholarship and Film |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Bart Ehrman |
This seminar will examine how historians have reconstructed the life, teachings and death of the historical Jesus. We will look at the Gospels of the New Testament, as well as references to Jesus in other writings (Roman and Jewish sources, as well as Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament). In addition, we will explore how Jesus has been portrayed in modern film, including such Biblical “epics” as The Greatest Story Ever Told, such “period pieces” as Jesus Christ Superstar, such brilliant retellings as Jesus of Montreal and such controversial films as The Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ. The ultimate goals of the seminar are to see what we can say about the historical man Jesus himself and how Jesus came to be portrayed in both ancient sources and modern imagination. Bart EhrmanBart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. He has taught at Carolina since 1988. He is author or editor of thirty books and is widely regarded as a leading expert on the New Testament and the history of the early Christian church. He is also a well-known teacher on campus, having won the Undergraduate Students Teaching Award, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the John William Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Teaching Award. |
RELI 72-001: Apocalypse Now? Messianic Movements in America |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Instructor(s): Yaakov Ariel |
This course explores the messianic idea in America as well as the messianic movements that have been active in the nation’s history and their interaction with American society and culture. Yaakov ArielMuch of Yaakov Ariels research has focused on Protestantism, especially Evangelical Christianity, and its attitudes towards the Jewish people and the Holy Land; on Christian-Jewish relations in the late modern era; and on the Jewish reaction to modernity and postmodernity. He has published numerous articles and three books on these subjects. One of these books, Evangelizing the Chosen People, was awarded the Albert C. Outler prize by the American Society of Church History. His latest book, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews, was published in 2013 by New York University Press. His current project looks at the religious aspects in the life and career of poet Allen Ginsberg who was, in significant ways, a pioneer and prophet to many of his generation. |
RELI 80-001: Religion and Writing in the Ancient World |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 8:00 AM – 9:15 AM | Instructor(s): Joseph Lam |
Few technological innovations have more profoundly shaped the course of human civilization than the invention of writing. This course explores the role of writing in the development of ancient religious traditions, covering the wide chronological period from the beginnings of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt (approximately 3200 BCE) to the advent of Islam. We will begin by considering the nature of writing both as a technology and as a symbolic system, giving attention to insights coming out of modern linguistic research. Then we will examine a series of case studies of the relationship between religion and writing drawn from the ancient world (especially the ancient Near East), in order to illustrate the diversity and complexity of these interactions between technology and society. Specific topics to be addressed include: religion and the early alphabet, magical and mystical uses of writing, religion and literacy, scribal culture, and the development of “scriptural” texts such as the Bible and the Qur’an. Joseph LamJoseph Lam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. He received his Ph.D. (with Honors) from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on ancient Near Eastern religious texts and practices, with an emphasis on the diverse written traditions of the Levant (Syria-Palestine) in 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, including the Hebrew Bible. At Carolina, he has taught courses on Classical Hebrew language, Hebrew Bible, ancient Near Eastern culture, and the place of metaphor in religious language. |
RELI 89-001: Indigenous Ways of Knowing |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Abelardo de la Cruz |
The course explores the various Indigenous knowledge production, the struggles, and the beliefs throughout Indigenous populations in Mexico. The course will begin with historical studies of Indigenous people populations, examining the history of the conquest to better understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans and colonization in Mexico. The course will then explore the diversity of Indigenous cultures in colonial Mexico and their production of Indigenous knowledge until today. Topics include the Mesoamerican writing system, language, religions, ritual practices, gender, human rights, and place and space of Indigenous people. Students will also learn about the cultural wealth preserved by the Indigenous culture and its contributions to the global world. Abelardo de la CruzI am a macehualli (Nahuatl native speaker) and ixtlamatquetl (Nahua scholar) from Chicontepec, Veracruz, Mexico. My research focuses on Indigenous religious practices, particularly the intersection of Nahua traditions and Catholicism. I hold a Ph.D., with my dissertation examining the role of motiochihuanih (catechists turned prayer specialists) in Nahua communities. My work emphasizes the coexistence and accommodation between Indigenous and Catholic practices. |
ROML 89-001: Pastoral Plate: Exploring Food, Farming, and Fiction |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Danila Cannamela |
This course explores how nature, farming, and food are portrayed in literature, especially within the pastoral tradition, which depicts an idealized version of rural life, often emphasizing harmony with nature and the simplicity of country living. We will read a mix of classical and modern texts, and watch a selection of films, to analyze how this tradition shapes our understanding of culture and the environment. Focusing on the significance of four key ingredients—milk, root vegetables, meat, and honey—we will examine the connection between people and nature, the role of food in shaping identity, and how different landscapes are represented. Students will visit a local farm and historical sites to see how these idealized portrayals compare to the realities of rural life. Through class discussions, presentations, and writing assignments, students will understand how food, farming, and nature influence society, and how literature and films reflect and challenge these ideas within the context of pastoral settings. Danila CannamelaDanila Cannamela's work explores literary genres and movements that have remained at the periphery of dominant culture. This includes avant-garde poetics, niche genres, counterculture, and gender liberation movements. She is working on a book project titled Radical Trans/Locations: U.S. Trans Activism in Italy. This monograph traces overlooked connections between Italian and American trans activists. She believes that scholarly work can be creative and can open up connections between theory, pop culture, and everyday life. Her future book-length project is a theory-infused cookbook. This project rethinks the pastoral genre as a "comfort food recipe" that has inspired sophisticated "cooking techniques" and reinventions. |
SCLL 89-001: What is a University For? |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Danielle Charette James |
This seminar considers the purpose and history of the university and different conceptions of liberal learning. Is the university primarily a place? An idea? A community of students and teachers? Focusing mainly on the development of higher education in the United States, we will debate the relationship between the university and democracy, the difference between academic study and professional training, and competing understandings of intellectual liberty and free expression. Danielle Charette JamesDanielle Charette James is a political theorist with broad research interests in the Scottish Enlightenment and American intellectual history. She is excited to launch this new FYS seminar to debate the purpose and politics of the modern research university and what we hope to achieve in going to college. |
SCLL 89-002: C.S. Lewis in a Disenchanted World |
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FY Seminar | MW, 9:05 AM – 10:20 AM | Instructor(s): Flynn Cratty |
C.S. Lewis is mostly remembered today as the creator of the fantastical land of Narnia, but he grew up in a modern world stripped of enchantment. It was only gradually that he learned to see magic everywhere. This course will follow Lewis through a string of awful boarding schools, the muddy trenches of France, and the Gothic streets of Oxford. Above all, it will seek Lewis in the books he wrote and the books that shaped him. In doing so, it will ask whether the world really is as disenchanted as it seems. This is an interdisciplinary course that draws from fields like history, religious studies, and literature. Students in this first-year seminar will be expected to read a substantial portion of Lewis’ work, as well as some of the texts that made the greatest impact on him. We will explore topics that include the purpose of an education, mythology, science and religious belief, friendship, and Christianity. Flynn CrattyFlynn Cratty is a professor of the practice in the School of Civic Life and Leadership and a historian of early modern French and British history. His scholarly interests include the development of secularism; academic freedom of expression; religion; intellectual history; the Reformation; and the Enlightenment. Prior to coming to UNC, he was a lecturer on history at Harvard. He's also read all of the Narnia books aloud to his children. |
SCLL 89-003: The Politics of the Bible |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Michael Hawley |
The Bible is the most widely read book in history. It forms a central pillar of western – if not world – civilization. It is invoked constantly by political partisans of all stripes, and nearly everyone recognizes at least a few of its most famous quotations. But what does it really have to say to us today? This class does not expect that students read the Bible as believers in its divine authority, but rather in what Leon Kass calls a “wisdom-seeking” spirit, an attitude that treats the text as making serious claims to truth in the same way that philosophic dialogues and great works of literature do. We will be concerned less with the Bible’s otherworldly message than what it might teach us about the things of this world. We will explore the Bible’s account of human nature, the good life, family, friendship, justice, love, war, economics, and freedom. Michael HawleyI am a political theorist with special interest in ancient and modern political philosophy. In class, we will explore age-old questions of what it means to be a good human being and what it means to be a good citizen. Reading great books, we will consider the problems of finding meaning and transcendence and figuring out our place in the world. |
SCLL 89-004: Lab Coats and Legislators: Science and Public Policy |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Jeffrey Warren |
This course aims to help students navigate the messy intersection of science, policy, and politics by teaching how the substance, history, presentation, and interpretation of science influences our understanding of the world. Further, students will gain an understanding of how science can influence policy within government at both a state and national level. Students will: 1) analyze public discourse and debate about science, 2) consider how philosophies, data, and interpretations are created, delivered, and received (e.g., traditional and digital media; social media; technical and academic journals; personal interactions; etc.), and 3) discuss how these factors – alongside partisan politics and bias from both sides of the aisle – influence science policy outcomes. This course is designed to expose students to the necessary critical thinking skills required to gain a basic understanding of the scientific research (who does it, how it is funded, how it is communicated, and how it can be incorporated into policy decisions). A wide variety of case studies will be presented and discussed, and students will actively work together to develop a science-related policy as a capstone project. Jeffrey WarrenProfessor Warren is the executive director of the NC Collaboratory and a professor of the practice in the Department of Public Policy. Formally trained as a marine geologist, Warren has spent the past 15 years in State-level science policy positions, including the coastal hazards policy specialist for the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management (2004 to 2010) and the science advisor for the North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore (2011 to 2017). Warren earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2006). His academic research included field sites in the southeastern US, northern Mexico, the East and South China Seas, and Antarctica. |
SCLL 89-005: Human Being and Citizen |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM | Instructor(s): Michael Hawley |
How shall we live together? Humans are unique among living creatures in that we cannot live solitary lives by ourselves, yet we also have no fixed method of organization. It thus remains an open question how we will organize our common life. To answer it, we need to ask whether there is any conflict between the life of a good person and a good citizen. We must weigh tradeoffs between liberty, justice, and stability. In this course, we enter into “the great conversation,” in which political thinkers for more than two millennia have debated these questions with each other. Michael HawleyI am a political theorist with special interest in ancient and modern political philosophy. In class, we will explore age-old questions of what it means to be a good human being and what it means to be a good citizen. Reading great books, we will consider the problems of finding meaning and transcendence and figuring out our place in the world. |
SCLL 89-006: American Politics and Literature |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Melody Grubaugh |
This course explores the links between politics and literature in America, focusing on the way in which fiction is able to provide a unique view of politics. The course will look at American short stories, poems, films, and novels in roughly chronological order, examining how the political and social concerns of each era are expressed its literature. Throughout, we will address questions including: Is there a uniquely American mode of literary expression, and what does that say about the American character? How can literature serve as a commentary on or intervention into politics? Does doing so compromise its status as art? Can literature give us insight into politics that theoretical treatises, journalism, and other historical documents cannot? What are the limits of understanding politics through literature? Melody GrubaughMelody Grubaugh is an adjunct assistant professor and a political scientist whose work focuses on constitutional studies, political theory, and politics and literature. |
SOCI 53-001: The Consequences of Welfare Reform and Prospects for the Future |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM | Instructor(s): Jessica Su |
President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” in 1996 when he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act into law. This significant and historical welfare reform fundamentally changed the federal safety net in the United States and abolished guaranteed aid for those in poverty. In this first-year seminar, we will use a sociological lens to investigate the causes and consequences of welfare reform, as well as the subsequent expansion of other antipoverty programs designed to help the working poor. We will consider a range of viewpoints that inform current policy debates. Topics will include the conceptualization and measurement of poverty, causes of poverty, public and political attitudes toward welfare and the role of the government, and the implementation and efficacy of antipoverty policies. Jessica SuDr. Jessica Houston Su is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow in the Carolina Population Center. Her research focuses on social inequality in American family life. At first glance, family formation may seem very individualized; decisions about whom we marry, when we have children, and how we raise them are personal. Her work investigates how social inequality contributes to patterns of family formation at the population level, and subsequently affects the development and well-being of parents and children. Her research appears in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Demography, the Journal of Marriage and Family, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University and her B.A. in Sociology from Dartmouth College. |
SOCI 89-001: Black Feminism |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM | Instructor(s): Shannon Malone Gonzalez |
Black Feminism is a first-year seminar that introduces students to black feminist theory and praxis. In this course, we will explore central themes and conversations around intersecting systems of domination. We will critically interrogate power and how inequality shapes policies, institutions, and our day-to-day lives. Topics will include (1) black feminist theory: past and present; (2) carcerality and violence; (3) resistance and solidarity; and (4) abolition and belonging. Students will develop critical analytic, research, and writing skills while thoughtfully engaging with interdisciplinary theories of black feminism. Shannon Malone GonzalezDr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow in the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research examines the relationship between marginality and policing. Dr. Malone Gonzalez is especially interested in how black women and girls experience, understand, and resist police surveillance and violence. Drawing from black feminism and critical criminology, Dr. Malone Gonzalez uses mixed methods to investigate the social conditions that shape and obscure black women and girls experiences of policing across social institutions and contexts. |
SOCI 89H-001: Poverty, Inequality, and the American Dream |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Regina Baker |
What does it mean to live in poverty in the “land of plenty” and experience inequality in the “land of opportunity?” Why is the “American Dream” more attainable for some people than it is others? This FY-S will use a sociological perspective to explore these questions and more. We will cover a wide range of topics as they relate to poverty and inequality, including perceptions, measurement, causes, and consequences as well as different domains (e.g., housing, education, the labor market, the criminal legal system, etc.) and how they serve as inequality mechanisms. We will also discuss the significance of history and place as well as highlight different axes of inequality (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, disability). Ultimately, this course aims to advance understanding of poverty and inequality in America, and in doing so, highlight why the American Dream is difficult (and becoming increasingly so) for some individuals and families to attain. Regina BakerRegina S. Baker is an Associate Professor of Sociology. Prior to joining UNC-CH in 2023, she was previously an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research seeks to understand the factors that shape socioeconomic conditions and disparities across people, places, and time. Her current research areas include poverty and poverty risks across children and families, historical and institutional mechanisms of inequality, and racial and place-based disparities in socioeconomic and health outcomes. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University, Masters in Social Work from the University of Georgia, and Bachelors in Sociology from Mercer University. |
SOCM 89-001: Food Allergies in Everyday Life |
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FY Seminar | TTH, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Instructor(s): Jill Fisher |
Sharing food is central to social life as well as to the formation of cultural identities. We can see this in how people come together over food, structure their days around it, and perform national or ethnic identities through it. At the same time, food allergies are on the rise and introduce many challenges to individuals, families, and organizations. The situation is complicated by the fact that public awareness, responses from schools and other organizations, and regulatory safety measures tend to lag behind. This course explores the topic of food allergies through several important lenses: biomedical, political, cultural, and social. The course’s goals are to understand how living with and managing food allergies can be challenging to individuals and families, as well as to query how potential therapies for food allergies should be regulated and how schools and business should accommodate for food allergies. The course critically engages concepts such as risk/benefit, medicalization, disability, and quality of life to better understand the social and cultural values that shape perceptions of and responses to food allergies. Jill FisherJill A. Fisher, Ph.D. is Professor of Social Medicine in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials (Rutgers University Press, 2009) and Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals (New York University Press, 2020). She is currently conducting qualitative research on food allergy clinical trials to study the social and ethical issues that emerge from testing new medical therapies on children. |
WGST 66-001: Growing Up Girl, Globally |
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FY Seminar | MWF, 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM | Instructor(s): Amalia Ashley |
Course introduces students to literature by women from around the world, particularly stories of a girl’s transition to womanhood. Close reading strategies are used to examine films, novels, and poetry. Amalia Ashley |