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Your First-Year Seminar (FYS) is an interactive, hands-on class in which you will work closely with your professor and classmates to explore how course topics relate to your own experiences and those of your peers.
The FYS will help you develop skills for student success, including:
As you begin your academic journey at Brooklyn College, your FYS professor, peer mentor, and academic adviser will provide ongoing guidance, answer your questions about college, connect you with campus resources, and keep you informed about upcoming deadlines, events, and opportunities. Your adviser will help you select and schedule a First-Year Seminar that aligns with your interests and academic program.
Aleah Ranjitsingh
What is a Black political identity? How would you define Blackness? As an identity marker, was it imposed on people of African descent to other them? Or was it chosen to foster solidarity and consciousness among people of African descent? We will explore such questions as we examine the political, social, intellectual, and cultural constructions and transformations of a global Black identity among people of the African diaspora. Taking a transnational perspective, we will examine the diasporic interconnections of Black people in the United States, the Caribbean and Africa, and become familiar with different movements, viewpoints and discourses which have shaped understandings and experiences of Blackness and a Black political identity and consciousness.
Yung-Yi Diana Pan
Welcome to college and American Studies! In this class, we will explore the fundamental question: What does it mean to be American? To do so, we will ask ourselves and each other about our experiences in this country (and beyond)—are there commonalities and differences? Where, when, and why might our experiences differ? How and why are they similar? And importantly, how might our experiences shape our identities and life chances?
Christopher Richards
This course seeks to challenge the established art historical canon by focusing primarily on global arts from a variety of time periods and cultures. Organized thematically, the course will explore topics such as “Art and Leadership,” “Art and Ritual,” and “Art and Gender.” Students will gain a familiarity with analyzing and discussing art, which will ultimately enhance their visual literacy and speaking skills.
Sreyashi Samaddar
The subject biology is sometimes perceived as too much of information and enormous volume of materials to remember……What is biology? A simple answer is life…. Anything which is living is a part of biology. The current beginning biology course examines the role of biology in people’s lives and helps us understand ourselves better. This seminar will be a special section where we will explore the everyday biological events applicable to all living beings through critical thinking, writing, team effort, group discussion, problem-solving activities and encouraging an active learning environment. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on how biological science is integrated into their daily lives.
Sharona Levy
Communication and Identity is a dynamic and interactive course that explores the interplay between the way we communicate and the formation and expression of our personal and social identities. This course will examine various forms of communication, such as verbal and nonverbal language, and how they shape and are shaped by cultural and social factors as well as by our individual experiences and beliefs. You will learn how our identities are communicated through our words, gestures, and overall behavior, and how they can impact our relationships and interactions with others. Through engaging discussions, practical exercises, and self-reflection, you will gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between communication and identity and develop the skills to effectively communicate your own identity to others.
Malgorzata Ciszkowska
Chemistry and art/archaeology are usually seen as polar opposites. Art is thought of as creative and free of definitions, chemistry is precise and analytical. However, there is a significant crossover between these subjects. Just think about art forgeries and how they are discovered, and how the age of some exciting archaeological artifacts is determined. We will explore all of this and more in Chemistry 2012.
Veronica Manlow
This course will provide philosophical and social psychological knowledge about the self and society. It will enable students to begin to think critically about issues surrounding self and society including agency and alienation. We will look at the role that gender, race, ethnicity, and social class play as well as considering the intersectionality of these facets that contribute to identity and social status. The class is divided into three sections: classical and contemporary perspectives on the self and society, and self and identity in action. Assignments allow students to explore concepts both theoretically and empirically, individually and in groups.
Wayne Powell
This course will introduce the scientific concepts behind Earth’s climate system, the natural and anthropogenic drivers of climate change, and the effects of climate change on Earth’s interconnected systems. In addition, we will explore the potential impacts of climate change, how scientists may help in mitigating or adapting to them, and reflect upon how we may be affected personally by climate change and the behavioral adaptations that will be required.
Section 1: Sophia Bamert
How are our identities rooted in or experienced through the lens of place? And how do ethnicity and immigration inflect our experiences of connection and disconnection to place? In this course, we will approach these questions by engaging critically and creatively with literature. We will read short stories, novels, and essays that depict Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Jewish, Latinx, and Native American ethnic communities from the late 19th century through the present day. Our focus will be on geography and place, and especially on cities as major sites of immigration and ethnic diversity, but also of segregation and inequality. In addition to practicing formal close reading and analysis, we will draw on creative writing, personal writing, and mapmaking as modes of critical thinking.
Section 2: Dorell Thomas
Whether it is GIs landing at Normandy, NAFTA, or Ahmaud Arbery’s fateful jog, movements across geographical borders are often reified, tracked, mapped, marked, contested, or, on occasion, completely erased. This course explores travel and migration discourse across regional, intercontinental, and global boundaries. Using mostly short fiction, the course poses a range of questions. How does the manner or circumstances under which people are moving across borders inform outcomes? How are privileged and restricted movements raced, classed, and gendered? Students can expect to curate from a range of questions.
David Brodsky
This course surveys the Jewish approaches to leading moral issues including: truth and lying; self-sacrifice, martyrdom, and suicide; the just war; abortion; euthanasia; capital punishment; sexual ethics and morality; and business ethics. In each class we will examine the classical Jewish sources (Bible, Talmud, medieval codes) pertaining to an ethical issue and discuss the range of ethical positions that may be based on the sources.
Jonathan Nissenbaum
The nature and structure of human language in relation to other communication systems is the focus of this introductory linguistics course. Topics of study include the evolution and acquisition of language, dialects and styles, language and culture, and speech and writing. We will compare traditional and recent theories of language.
Jeffrey Suzuki
This course focuses on problem solving and applications of mathematical thinking in the real world and in the ideal world of mathematics. We will introduce some of the basic strategies used by mathematicians to create mathematics and to use mathematics to analyze the world around us. As part of the First-Year Experience, we’ll focus our attention on the mathematics used to analyze problems of justice, equity, and fairness in the world around us.
Bernardita Llanos Mardones
This course is an introduction to Latin American women writers in translation. We will read short stories by well-known writers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Venezuela. We will study the characteristics of short story writing and how each writer creates her own individual perspective and themes that represent in multiple ways contemporary issues centered around history, intimacy, gender, race, family and interpersonal relationships. The stories will serve as inspirations for students to reflect on their lives and how the topics studied shed light on their own experiences.
Serene Khader
Philosophy challenges us to think for ourselves and to think more clearly. If have ever found yourself wondering what you really believe, asked yourself whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or felt frustrated when you and a friend were talking past one another, philosophy can help. In this course, we will take time to ask questions that matter deeply to our lives, but whose answers we often take for granted, such as “what is education?” and “what are social structures?” We will develop skills for understanding the reasons behind people’s beliefs, so that we can better understand our own and those of others.
Carla Santamaria
This course will take the genres of Puerto Rican reggaetón, Puerto Rican hip hop, dembow dominicano, and trap as a mirror of the different cultural dynamics that shape Puerto Rican society and other Caribbean nations. It will focus on how popular culture works as an archive of the socio-political contexts, cultural formations, hegemonic narratives, and political resistance that distinguish Puerto Rican and Caribbean histories.
Elisabeth Brauner
How do we want to work tomorrow? Why do we have to work? Why do we work? What if we didn’t have to work? What will work look like when we’re old? Although it may not sound obvious, psychology has some answers to these questions. We will explore how human work started and how employment developed, among many other topics. We will explore your interests and your career goals, and if you don’t have any yet, we will find out what you enjoy doing and which careers may align with your interests.
Sonia Murrow
All levels of public education in the United States today have become the focus for often competing political, economic, social and cultural visions of how and why we should educate the nation’s youth. This course offers students the opportunity to become knowledgeable about critical issues in American education and the controversies surrounding them, while considering the historical, political, sociological and economic dimensions of each. The fall 2023 section will focus on school segregation, desegregation, equity, and access—past and present—with special attention given to the New York City public school context. SEED 1001 satisfies the Pathways Flexible Core “US Experience in Its Diversity” requirement.
Donna Lee Granville
What exactly is sociology? To some, it’s the study of the obvious, to others it is common sense. In its simplest definition, sociology is the discipline that helps us understand the societies we live in and to consider what we are participating in and how we participate in it. Since we simultaneously observe and participate in this social world, thinking sociologically requires a special set of tools. In this course, you will acquire the tools to do just that. Through readings, activities, films, and more, you will develop your “sociological imagination,” or the ability to see the ways individuals and societies directly influence each other. By deeply engaging with all aspects of this course you will learn the importance of sociological thinking and be empowered to take an active role in social change that transforms your world.
