First Year Studies Courses for Fall 2026.
We offer FIYS 110L sections on a wide variety of topics; all sections fulfill the requirements for FIYS 110L. Students will also be assigned to a section of FIYS 110X. Sections of 110X are all identical and are not listed here.
Fall 2026 FIYS 110L Section Descriptions
FIYS-110L-01 Art in Chicago
Lia Alexopoulos
While Chicago’s extensive contributions to modern architecture are known throughout the world, it’s been a critical center of visual art in all media since its earliest years. This course explores the rich and dynamic history of art-making in Chicago from before the Great Fire of 1871 to the present, as well as the city’s role as a center for experimentation and learning in the visual arts. Further, the course explores how AI is impacting art-historical study, enabling students to explore how technology can reveal new connections in how we think about Chicago art and architecture. Throughout its history, Chicago has been home to an art community that has always charted its own path, free from the constraints of more commercial centers like New York, and in so doing has had great influence on visual art and our broader visual culture. The city itself is a critical resource for this class, as course content - in the form of readings, discussion, and various activities - is augmented by visits to diverse art institutions and meetings with influential art-makers. This course requires participation in some evening and/or weekend field trips or events, so consider your other commitments (such as off-campus employment or a fall/winter sports participation) as you identify courses of interest to you.
FIYS-110L-02 Dickens and the Mystery Novel
Carla Arnell
A ghost-haunted estate, where a family’s deepest secrets are buried. A battle over a mysterious law case spanning decades. An orphaned child and her struggle to discover her true identity. And, not least, a brutal murder! These are just some of the many facets of Charles Dickens’s mesmerizing mystery novel Bleak House. This seminar gives students an opportunity to slow-read Bleak House, one of Dickens’s most important novels, over the course of a semester. Through this slow reading, students examine the Victorian origins of the mystery novel, explore how Dickens uses narrative fiction to expose his era’s most pressing social justice concerns, and study Dickens’s robust vocabulary and complex syntax, thereby enriching students’ own vocabulary and understanding of English prose. The seminar concludes, after the fashion of Victorian Christmastide ghost story gatherings, with a communal reading of Dickens’s Christmas Carol.
FIYS-110L-03 Do It: The Art of Instruction
Susy Bielak
We’re constantly inundated with instructions—reminders to brush our teeth or wear sunscreen when we leave the house, visual cues to cross the street, notoriously opaque instructions on how to build a cabinet. Some of these cues are helpful; others are invisible until we begin paying attention. Artists have long used instructions, scores, and prompts not only to direct action, but to question power, comment on social structures, and activate imagination.
This first-year seminar examines instruction as an artistic form, critical tool, and method for social inquiry. The campus will serve as our primary studio. Through hands-on activities including drawing from observation, movement, writing and performing instructions, erasing and reworking existing texts, mapping social systems, and creating temporary, site-responsive actions, students will explore how art can intervene in everyday environments. Experimental and critical writing assignments will respond to art practices, artworks and readings. Class meetings emphasize active making, discussion, group critique, and student presentations. No prior artistic experience is required; curiosity and a willingness to think, draw, write, and create in new ways are.
FIYS-110L-04 Rebels, Visionaries, Saints
Noah Blan
(Rebels, Visionaries, Saints: Ten Lives of Medieval Women) Medieval women influenced their world. They wrote books, ruled kingdoms, saw visions, led armies, and redefined holiness. This course explores ten extraordinary figures whose lives transformed their societies. Some were rebels who challenged authority, some were visionaries who spoke with divine conviction, and some became saints whose memory shaped cultures for centuries. Together, they reveal diverse ways women impacted medieval Europe. We will encounter Perpetua facing the Roman arena, Egeria traversing the Holy Land, Radegund abandoning a throne for the cloister, Dhuoda writing a survival guide for her hostage son, Edith of Wessex exercising authority as queen, widow, and patron, Hildegard of Bingen commanding emperors and popes with her visions, Marie de France reshaping love in poetry, Christine de Pizan defending women with her pen, Margery Kempe crying her visions into the streets, and Joan of Arc leading armies to victory before facing the stake.
FIYS-110L-05 The Politics of Population
Danielle Cohen
When you were born, you joined about 6.6 billion other humans on this planet, but by 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion. What are we going to do with everyone? In this course, we examine the intersections between population growth and security, economics, and the environment. We explore a range of national efforts to manage population growth, from China’s infamous "One Child Policy" to measures implemented in countries like Singapore to encourage childbearing. We investigate how the international community shifted from a population control approach to one that prioritizes reproductive health, with accompanying debates surrounding reproductive choice; whether imbalanced sex ratios in a society lead to increased violence; and the economic implications of aging or youthful societies. We consider the many reasons people migrate, from climate change to economic opportunity to violence, and the implications for both sending and receiving countries. Throughout this course, we pay particular attention to the impact on both women worldwide and on citizens of the Global South.
FIYS-110L-06 The Science of Cooking
Elizabeth Fischer
Since 1992, the term molecular gastronomy has become part of understanding the world’s cuisine. This course examines the chemistry and physics of cooking, and the physiology of taste and flavor. We explore such questions as what is the science behind making a foam or gel; how do you prevent food bacteria from forming; and what does it mean to temper chocolate? The science of cooking includes the important works of Hervé This, Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adria, José Andrés, and Grant Achatz, among others. We read their work and not only become familiar with the latest materials and methods of the world’s most innovative cuisine, but also learn how these methods may be part of the solution to ending world hunger. We work with a chef to perform experiments to elucidate the theory we will be studying.
FIYS-110L-07 American Playwrights in Chicago
Ben Goluboff
Chicago is home to a vivid and diverse theater scene that includes everything from tiny stages in the back rooms of bars to glitzy Broadway-style productions. This course examines a selection of American-authored plays from the Chicago season as the materials for an introduction to literary studies. As such, the course considers the plays we see and read as an occasion to develop skills in critical thinking, research, and writing. A secondary objective is to connect the various plays to particular moments or themes in American history and culture. We proceed from the acquisition of a simple critical vocabulary for describing a play’s form and content, through character study, to more complex questions of the director’s decisions in taking a play from the page to the stage. This class includes three Thursday evening field trips to Chicago theaters.
FIYS-110L-08 Becoming Human in the Age of AI
Aaron Greenberg
As artificial intelligence advances, the boundaries between human and machine blur, challenging our understanding of what it means to be human. This course explores cultural, ethical, and philosophical questions around AI, drawing on Western, Indigenous, African, Asian, and other perspectives to examine human identity, creativity, work, and the environment in an AI-driven world. Through global case studies and ethical frameworks, students investigate how diverse cultural traditions shape approaches to AI’s impact on privacy, intellectual property, and sustainability. Engaging with AI’s real-world applications in various cultural settings—such as Confucianism, Ubuntu, Indigenous movements for data sovereignty, and Japan’s AI-driven elder care—students gain a deeper, global perspective on humanity’s evolving relationship with intelligent technology.
FIYS-110L-09 Governments and Markets [formerly FIYS 147]
Kent Grote
Why is the government involved in some aspects of our lives more than others? This question can be answered in many different ways, depending on one's theoretical background. Different economists would provide different analyses of the government's role, especially as it relates to business and markets. They would also base their arguments on fundamental economic theories. The primary goal of this course is to develop an understanding of economic markets and issues where governments have become important participants. Both in the United States and abroad, governments take an active role in the economics of education, the environment, health care, big business, poverty, and unemployment, among other issues. Although the course will be approached from an economic perspective, the topics relate to other fields of study as well, and particularly to the fields of politics and sociology.
FIYS-110L-10 Photographic Modernism
Maggie Hazard
(Photographic Modernism and the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Understandings of History) This course focuses on the histories and theories of photography from roughly 1890 to 1945 (the modernist period). Using primary and secondary sources class discussions, exercises, and writing assignments the course considers the innovations of the photographic medium as well as the ways in which photography intersects with cultural and social ideas and technologies of the period. Through the work of modernist photographers from Alfred Stieglitz to Henri Cartier-Bresson, we explore the social and cultural impact of photography and the many ways in which photographic material frames and helps us to understand the world historically and today. This course interrogates issues surrounding the development of AI technology relative to historic photographs, including the ethics of photographic production, manipulation, and dissemination using AI. AI specific discussions might include the use of AI technology on photographs, the practice of manipulating historic photographs with AI technology, and creating AI images that purport to be from time periods well before this technology existed.
FIYS-110L-11 Narrative and Knowledge Production
Daniel Henke
(Narrative and Knowledge Production) Telling stories is a fundamental part of being human. We share stories of our families, friends, and experiences. We examine religious texts, myths, folklore, and the media for insight into ourselves and others. We create, share, and explore internal narratives to better make sense of the world. However, the significance of storytelling is often undervalued in the world of academic knowledge production. In this class, we examine narrative and how it is used to offer legitimacy for our actions and beliefs. Moreover, we look closely at narrative’s relationship to knowledge production and how narrative is interwoven with facets of identity, such as race, gender, sexuality, social class, and ability. We read critical, feminist, working class, and queer theory and examine how writers from nondominant identities use narrative to articulate their own complex position in relation to education and culture. This course demonstrates that stories are both ubiquitous and integral in knowledge production and that they can both subvert and reinforce the status quo.
FIYS-110L-12 Voices of Leadership
Gary Johnson
“Voices of Leadership” invites students on a journey through perspectives of leadership ranging from mythic tales of an ancient Botswanan village to reports from leaders and thinkers from the contemporary United States. Students examine topics such as diverse leadership styles, the intersection of ethics and power, and the ethical and human challenges facing today’s emerging leaders in the age of artificial intelligence (including questions of data bias social impact). The seminar fosters critical thinking and nuanced understanding of leadership in different contexts, encouraging students to engage with the material both in individual assignments and group activities. Students develop their own leadership voices, equipped to apply their insights in their own lives.
FIYS-110L-13 Digital Dawn: Hum Cyberspace, and AI
Justin Kee
(Digital Dawn: Humanity, Cyberspace, and the Rise of Artificial Intelligence) This course explores the development of cyberspace, the migration of human activity to its digital platforms, and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the “first intelligent creations” that reside entirely in a digital space. We will explore new and pressing questions about human identity and the necessary responses caused by AI's rapid advancement. The course will tackle the complexities arising from AI’s growing influence in the real world, including a range of emerging issues, regulatory concerns, and policy-making challenges. We will trace the historical trajectory of generative AI, from its science fiction roots to its connections to remix culture and social media. We will explore everything from advanced deep learning technologies to the creation of AI-generated content and the development of AI as a potential companion for humans. We will highlight the ethical challenges posed by these technologies, with emphasis on equal access to computational resources and inherent biases in AI datasets.
FIYS-110L-14 Art Goes Pop: Fine Art in Mass Media
Kimiko Matsumura
From Princess Anna in a painting gallery to Taylor Swift in a bathtub, contemporary media often references the history of art. But what did the original artworks mean, and why are they useful in pop culture today? This course considers examples of famous art in movies, music videos, video games, and cartoons to learn about masterpieces and their afterlives in popular media. We discuss how and why studios reference famous art, the historical validity of these choices, and the role of appropriation and remix. By examining these transformations, students will decode the facts and tropes of art culture and better understand how images from the past shape the images of the present.
Note: some course material addresses racist and sexist stereotypes in images and culture
FIYS-110L-15 Philosophy of Humans and Animals
Janet McCracken
Western philosophers since Aristotle - at least - have claimed that human beings, as a species and alone among species, are capable of complex reasoning. The seventeenth-century French philosopher Descartes, famously, denied that non-human animals have minds or could think, claiming that they are essentially robots. From these kinds of premises, philosophers have inferred a wide range of ethical and religious claims, e.g., it is ethically permissible to eat non-human animals. Alternative claims, however, have just as long a history. In this course, we will read and discuss an array of philosophical opinions on the similarities and differences between humans and other animals, and the practices of industrial farming, training animals to work or entertain, building and patronizing zoos, animal experimentation, and other controversial topics. This course requires participation in some evening and/or weekend field trips or events, so consider your other commitments (such as off-campus employment or a fall/winter sports participation) as you identify courses of interest to you.
FIYS-110L-16 and FIYS-110-17 Graphic Medicine
Dustin Mengelkoch
This course examines the visual aspects of the practice of medicine by focusing on medical comics and graphic novels collectively known as graphic medicine. During our semester, we study how visuals support medical diagnoses, assist in communication between doctor and patient, and record experiences of illness via medical staff, patients, and caregivers. To have the clearest understanding of what is at stake in our study, we also make our own visuals and comics that respond to and use both primary and secondary sources. All told, we gain insight into some of the most important themes in contemporary graphic medicine. (Great artistic ability is not required in this course, but a commitment to sketching, drawing, and doodling is.)
FIYS-110L-18 Effects of Social Media & AI
David Noskin
(Understanding the Effects of Social Media and AI) Facebook and Tumblr were all the rage in the mid 2010s. Today, it’s TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Tomorrow, who knows? Just as fast as internet and social media platforms change, so too does our relationship with this technology. Are you as dependent on it as you were in high school? Can your mood change for the better after two minutes on your smartphone? In this course, we will examine our social media use from a psychological, social, and ethical perspective. After a brief study of the rise of social media in the 2000s, we study its effects on teenagers and young adults of intersecting identities, and how we carry those impacts into adulthood. We consider how the introduction of AI – chatbots and algorithms – has made social media more powerful in the past decade. We explore how AI has transformed social media platforms, as algorithms use our data to personalize content but contribute to misinformation and increasing polarization. And we analyze how AI impacts issues of race and social class. Ultimately, we work to figure out what it means to ensure that our use of social media and the internet is healthy and productive.
FIYS-110L-19 Telepathy and Magical Thinking
Evan Oxman
In 2024, The Telepathy Tapes—a podcast chronicling the rise of a movement claiming that nonspeaking autistic individuals could communicate telepathically—became one of the year’s most-viewed and most-debated series. Its popularity raised a striking question: what made this extraordinary, unverified claim so compelling to so many? The podcast’s blend of testimony, hope, misinterpretation, and scientific ambiguity offers a powerful case study in how narratives about cognition and communication gain cultural traction.
Using this phenomenon as our starting point, this course examines how humans interpret minds across communicative difference and why certain explanations—supernatural, technological, or otherwise—flourish where evidence is thin. We connect the podcast’s themes to contemporary AI systems that appear to infer intentions or “read” users’ thoughts, probing the parallels between human interpretive bias and machine-driven prediction. Students will develop interdisciplinary tools for analyzing extraordinary claims, understanding communicative diversity, and evaluating how both people and AI construct meaning at the limits of what can be observed.
FIYS-110L-20 Independent, Alternative, and Community Media
Dave Park
Media of communication play pivotal roles in our lives. Media are of basic importance to our culture, our democracy, and our ways of knowing the world. This course addresses independent, alternative, and community media. In a time of global media consolidation, one can find smaller media outlets that respond more directly to the interests of people than the dominant media bloc. The relative autonomy of independent, alternative, and community media outlets makes them uniquely disposed to operate as points of resistance globally for discussions pertaining to race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, social class, and more. This course will consider independent, community, and alternative media around the world, with a particular focus on the potential for these media outlets to support democracy, and to act as avenues for empowerment for historically marginalized and disenfranchised groups. We will consider in detail how independent, alternative, and community media play a role in such domains as: the sustenance of small communities, political protests around the world (from Hong Kong to Turkey), hip hop and other music scenes around the world, independent cinema, and much more. This course requires participation in two weekday field trips to Chicago during the semester.
FIYS-110L-21 Who Decides Who Is Disabled?
Roshni Patel
The very concept of disability assumes contrast from what we might call “typical,” “normal,” or “able-bodied,” but the boundaries between these sets of terms quickly blur. Am I disabled if I have a vision impairment? Am I still disabled if glasses adequately correct my vision? This simple example shows that technologies and access to equipment can shift what we consider to be disability.
Our overarching objective in this course will be to think through what we are saying and implying when we invoke the language of disability. We will study different models of disability, such as “the medical model” and “the social model,” from a philosophical perspective; identify the assumptions and values that motivate their outlook; and evaluate their merits and shortcomings. We will also consider how the term “disability” circulates more generally by asking questions that include: when or why is it advantageous for someone to identify or be identified as disabled? When is it less so? How can we meaningfully distinguish between adjacent concepts like “disability,” “need,” or “difference”? Is it possible that everyone is disabled to some degree since everyone has needs? Finally, we will determine what sorts of ethical commitments these reflections motivate by charting what justice or fairness looks like for the disabled community in terms of attitudes, institutional structures, and principles.
FIYS-110L-22 BFFs: Besties and Gender
Catherine Reedy
(BFFs: Besties and Gender in Literature and Film) From Betty and Veronica to the Golden Girls, “besties” raise a number of seemingly unanswerable questions. Are our best friends our missing piece—the “other half” of an equivalent soul—or do opposites attract? Does the intimacy of friendship ever compete with the love shared between romantic partners: that is, are friends ever really “just friends”? What does it mean to be a best friend in our own culture, and how does this compare with the place of this special bond in other cultures and other distant eras? In this course, we examine contemporary representations of friendship from television programs to classic novels. After learning to analyze literary and cinematic representations of friendship, students end the course with their own creative representation and philosophies of friendship and gender.
FIYS-110L-23 Becoming Adult in Times of Change
Holly Swyers
(Becoming Adult in Times of Change: Liminal States.) You probably don't have a word for it, but the world right now is in a liminal state. In anthropology, a liminal state is a time of being betwixt and between, when things are not the same as they were before, but they haven't yet found a new normal. Starting college is also a liminal state, because you're not really a high school student anymore but not quite a college student. This course focuses on figuring out your liminal state in three ways: 1) exploring the idea of liminality, including the idea that all of college is a liminal space before adulthood; 2) challenging you (literally) to try something new on a regular basis, while maintaining a "beginner’s mind"; and 3) exposing you to tools you will need in your college and adult life, ranging from negotiating politics at dinner parties to exploring career options. If you've read this far and didn't get put off by the scary title or your assumptions about what this course would be, you have what it takes. This course requires participation in up to two evening and/or weekend field trips to explore new experiences in Chicago, so consider your other commitments (such as off-campus employment or a fall/winter sports participation) as you identify courses of interest to you.
FIYS-110L-24 Adventures in Astronomy
Veronika Walkosz
This course introduces astronomy at a level appropriate for first-year students, with an emphasis on information gathering, research skills, data analysis, and academic writing. The course explores our solar system, orbits and gravity, the nature of light and the tools used to observe and study the universe, as well as the development of astronomy over time. Course content is flexible and incorporates current celestial events and astronomy-related news as they occur, as well as policy and ethical questions related to space exploration. Weather permitting, several night-sky observing sessions will be scheduled outside of regular class hours, and students are required to attend a specified number of these sessions. Students who enroll in this section may not take PHYS 103.
FIYS-110L-25 Bob Dylan: Music and Text
Nick Wallin
Musician, Poet, Social Activist, Reluctant Celebrity, Nobel Prize Winner – these are just some of the roles that Bob Dylan has played over the past 60 years. During that time, he has exerted an outsized influence on popular culture. This course explores Bob Dylan’s songs with a detailed look at their musical and lyrical content. We examine his musical influences, especially his relationship to Woody Guthrie, and his poetic inspiration, including Rimbaud, Petrarch, and Whitman. We also examine the numerous cover versions of his songs by musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Adele, The Byrds, Garth Brooks, and others. No previous musical experience is required, only a desire to both listen and read critically.