First-Year Seminars
These writing-intensive courses prepare first-year students to excel at collegiate writing across disciplines.
What to Expect From Your First-Year Seminar
Through first-year seminars — small, discussion-oriented courses required for all first-year students — you will level up to college academics, broadening your perspective, deepening your understanding, and learning how to make your case in writing. Because the writing process takes precedence over the subject material of these courses, faculty are able to get creative with what they choose to teach.
And, peers support your learning: Each first-year seminar includes a student writing assistant. Writing assistants work closely with first-year seminar professors to help students make the transition from high school to college writing. Writing assistants attend class, know the class material, lead workshop sessions on writing, and meet one-on-one with each student at least three times throughout the semester.
First-Year Seminar Examples
The Glorification of Youth Sports
We love a good high school sports redemption story. But at what cost? What happens when we turn high school athletes into sports heroes? Students read the true stories that inspired “Hoosiers” and “Friday Night Lights” and consider what is gained and lost when true stories get the Hollywood treatment. Students critically examine the impact youth sports can have on both the athletes and their communities and explore who wins and who loses when we put pressure on kids to be superstars.
Springsteen’s America
Few artists are more closely associated with America than Bruce Springsteen. In this course, students use Springsteen’s work as a departure point for an examination of contemporary American life. Topics include war, economic displacement, racial tensions, urban decline, and immigration.
East Asia in 10 Words
Can just 10 keywords capture the complexity of modern East Asia’s history, cultures, and global impacts? The class takes on one keyword for each learning unit — think Confucianism, Technology, Gender, Disparity, Miracle, or Cities — to discover how these concepts have resonated with people in Asia and have shaped societies in China, Japan, Korea, and beyond. Whether students are fascinated by samurai, K-pop and the Hallyu wave, cultural history, or global politics, this course invites them to see modern East Asia in a new light as a dynamic culture and a constantly evolving world-region.
Cuisine as Culture: Exploring Allentown’s Hispanic Immigrant Communities
This course explores the concept of food as a marker of culture and change. In the Lehigh Valley’s Hispanic immigrant communities, food is at once a marker of assimilation and a nostalgic link to a distant homeland or disappearing culture. By looking at food through the eyes of filmmakers, poets, historians, visionaries, and activists — and by visiting local restaurants and food stores — students learn to consider food as a lens through which they can analyze broader issues.