COURSE DESCRIPTION

First Year Seminar. Required of all first-year students, the First Year Seminar in Critical Inquiry focuses on the process of critical inquiry in a writing-intensive, small seminar. Each seminar invites students to engage a set of issues, questions, or ideas that can be illuminated by the disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives of the liberal arts. Seminars are designed to enhance the intellectual skills essential for liberal learning and for successful participation in the College’s academic program.

The Memory of War. “All wars are fought twice,” Viet Than Nguyen writes, “the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” In this seminar we will explore the ways in which wars have been remembered – and the ways in which memories of war have been contested. This is not your high school history course, but an interdisciplinary journey through history, literature, popular culture, art history, museum studies and more. We’ll take up memoirs and retellings from conflicts across time and around the world, with an extended consideration of the American War in Vietnam and its aftershocks. What has the trauma of war meant to individuals? What has it meant to societies? How has war been remembered and forgotten? What is at stake in these memories?

Be forewarned: much of the class content is emotionally challenging.

And note: this FYS will participate in an experiential service-learning project that will take students outside of the classroom and into the community.

GOALS OF CLASS

The goals of this course are the objectives of First Year Seminar, which aim to prepare students academically for advanced work.

• Students will be able to analyze complex texts, artifacts, events and/or ideas.
• Students will be able to demonstrate information literacy by finding, evaluating, and using complex texts, artifacts, events and/or ideas.
• Students will be able to communicate effectively in writing.
• Students will be able to reflect on their academic growth.
• Students will be able to apply multiple perspectives to a topic or issue (at the appropriate level for a first-semester, first-year student).

These will sound rather abstract. The topic or issue at hand is the memory of war. The complex texts we have in mind are texts dealing with the memory of war.