Hobart and William Smith Colleges

It All Starts Here

Fall 2025 First-Year Seminar Offerings

information and misinformation: Thinking Critically about Science in a Digital Age
assistant professor of psychological science stephanie anglin 

When should we trust scientific claims? When should we not? From Covid-19 to diet to relationships to our environment, we are bombarded with claims about how to behave and live our lives. But just because "studies have shown" does not mean that something is true, and pseudoscientific, exaggerated, and inaccurate claims can be difficult to spot. How do we learn to have “healthy skepticism” about scientific claims and those who make them? This course addresses questions that are essential to evaluating and using scientific information effectively in our daily lives: What is scientific evidence? What constitutes strong vs. weak evidence? How do people gather evidence to inform their judgments and decisions, and how should they do so? How can we make sense of conflicting evidence, including evidence on polarized topics? How do we recognize and counteract bias in scientific reasoning, including our own? What role do the media and public play in the (mis)communication of science? We will tackle these and other questions by considering a range of popular, controversial, and critical topics relevant to 21st century experience using writing-instructive, critical, and reflective approaches to build skills for college and for life as informed consumers of science.

what's eating you? Cooking, cuisine & Me 
Associate Professor of anthropology christopher annear

“What are you eating? What aren’t you eating? What’s eating you? Food is both social and personal. It sustains and nourishes—drawing us toward some and away from others. Its temporary absence underscores our dependency on it. In this First-Year Seminar (FSEM), we will explore what it means to cook, read, talk, and eat food. The “omnivore’s dilemma” reflects upon the indecisiveness of eating when our choices are many. Gendered prescriptions over the shape and size of our bodies too often lead to eating diseases and disorders. Yet cuisines are also sensual, tasty, and socially affirming. A single bite of one’s own food can transport a person home. When mixed in just the right ways, ingredients can combine to represent a nation. We will reflect on our own relationships to food, research the biography of an ingredient, and compete on Chopped! In doing so, we will learn more about ourselves, while practicing critical thinking and writing.”

Ethical Debates in Medicine
Professor of Religious Studies Etin Anwar

How do we respond ethically to the problems posed by medical practices and policies? What ethical principles would we use? Should medical decisions consider the patient’s cultural and religious backgrounds? How do different cultures treat health and illness? This course is an interdisciplinary approach to the moral, philosophical, social, religious, and legal dimensions of the theories, policies, and practices in issues regarding the beginning, the maintenance, and the end of human life. We will examine a few ethical theories ranging from Virtue, Utilitarian, deontological, religious to feminist Ethics to approach the topics in question. We will particularly discuss the ethical dilemma of the way in which medical technology offers choices to determine a new life, enhances the maintenance of bodily perfection, and informs the decision to end life. Specific issues covered in this course will include concepts relevant to ethical theories, religion and bioethics, reproductive technology, abortion, euthanasia, organ transplant, and plastic surgery.

Mars!
Professor of Geoscience Nan crystal arens 

More than any other planet, Mars seems familiar to us Earthlings. A photo from Gale Crater could have been taken in Death Valley, California. At the same time, Mars is very different from Earth: cold, dry...lifeless? But was it always that way? Could Mars have harbored life? Did it? What was once a red smudge in Earth-based telescopes is today a real place that we can explore through orbital and lander images. In this seminar, we will use Earth as a model to explore these similarities and differences. We will compare and contrast the planets’ internal structures, tectonics, rock cycle, hydrological cycle, sedimentary processes, glacial processes, atmospheric evolution, history, and potential for life—past and present. We will unpack how we know what we know about the Red Planet and highlight some of the most exciting unanswered questions. We will explore these topics through reading and writing, hands-on projects, and a taste of individual research. And we'll chat with some of the modern explorers who have brought us these discoveries. This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

Beyond the Straight and Narrow: Identifying Heteronormativity and Heterosexism
Vice President of Campus Life and Director of the Master of Arts in Higher Education Leadership Becca Barile 

How did the United States come to terms with the concept of sexualities? How was sex conceptualized as behavior and transformed into how notions of roles and identity? Why does who we have sex with dictate what is normal, accepted, and granted power in the United States, in the workplace, and in other communities? This course highlights how notions of sex, gender, sexuality, and gender expression have been defined, normalized, criticized, and experienced within a variety of communities, and resisted via local, national, and global movements. Intersectionality of power, race, class, faith/no faith, and other difference is explored. This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

Exploring community: Relationships, Happiness and Service
Vice President for Campus Life and Dean of Students Shelle Basilio 

Everyone is talking about “belonging” but what does it really mean to be a part of a community? Students will gain an understanding of the social power structures that support or inhibit community building, and how that impacts individual and collective well-being. In addition to assigned readings and class discussions, students will commit to 20 hours of service-learning (2 hours per week over the course of the semester), through which students will help cultivate community through creating connections with peers on campus and with members of the Geneva community. “Exploring Community” will lead to skill development which will help students navigate their time at HWS and build towards a ‘life of consequence.’ This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

Podcasting America: Storytelling and Social Change
Professor of American Studies Beth Belanger 

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” In this class, students will research, write, produce, and publish podcasts exploring American culture.  While students will be introduced to podcasting skills: research, scriptwriting, interviewing, recording, editing, and producing, this course is primarily designed to help students become better storytellers, think critically about stories they consume, and evaluate how podcasts share, tell, and construct American Culture. Finally, this course examines storytelling in the service of social justice, exploring how storytelling can promote social change.

Shaping Spaces: How We Design and Understand the World Around Us
Associate Professor of Art and Architecture Jeffrey Blankenship 

Why do some places feel meaningful while others seem anonymous? How do landscapes, buildings, and cities reflect power, identity, and memory? This seminar examines the ways in which humans create and interpret place—physical, social, and symbolic—through cultural, historical, and political lenses. Drawing on interdisciplinary readings in human geography, architecture, and design, we will investigate how places emerge through lived experience, planning, and contestation. From the design of neighborhoods to debates over

public monuments, we will analyze how spatial practices shape everyday life. Through readings, field observations, creative projects, and discussions, we will critically explore the spaces we inhabit and the broader forces that shape them.

Sustainability Mythbusters: A Living and Learning Community
Professor of Environmental Studies Kristen Brubaker & associate Professor of Environmental Studies Beth Kinne

Everything you think you know about sustainability is wrong—or is it? Are electric cars going to save us or bury us in a pile of rare earth metal waste? Are reusable water bottles going to reduce landfill wastes or fill our bodies with microplastics? Is eating locally grown food more environmentally responsible than eating things grown thousands of miles away? What difference does it make if we recycle anyway? In this class, we will explore the following question: Do our individual choices matter, and if so which ones? We will also critically examine the playbook that industry and others have used to manipulate our choices. This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

Road Trips
Associate Professor of Media and Society becky burditt & Professor of english and creative writing anna creadick

Rebel writer Jack Kerouac famously went “On the Road” in postwar America, but what’s the story behind Eisenhower’s cross-country interstate system, chrome-trimmed car culture, and drive-thru eateries? American movies cast the open road as a symbol of freedom, but what about when the road is a site for social upheaval, as with the Great Migration, or a site of forced removal, as in the Trail of Tears? Have you ever marched down a road in social protest? What would a road to nowhere feel like? If you took an epic road trip, what songs would be on your playlist?

The road is a powerful conduit to American culture. It symbolizes national ideals of freedom, mobility, and an endless horizon, alongside a fractured history of exclusion, colonial violence, xenophobia, and misogyny. In this FSEM, co-taught by an English professor and a Media and Society professor, we track how writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists, and scholars have generated and interpreted this particularly American fascination. We will watch road movies, read road lit, eat road food, analyze migrations and forced relocations, and sometimes even take it to the streets, as we build a community of road scholars.

Game-changers: Disease, Cures, and Social Change
Professor of Biology Sigrid Carle 

How did early thinking on the causes of disease impact society?  What scientific breakthroughs lead to the development of vaccines and antibiotics?  What was the role of government in the development of cures?  What parallels exist between societal reactions to COVID and to prior diseases and medicines? To answer questions like these about important advances in public health and the science that helped humanity fight deadly diseases, we will examine the history and science of vaccine development, as well as the social implications and controversies that surrounded such developments.  Public health measures and vaccinations have changed the landscape of childhood diseases, as well as helped control our most recent epidemic- COVID-19, but developing medication that is stable and can be transported is not an easy feat: money and support, particularly from the United States government, was essential for the work on penicillin, for example.  We will focus on the “game-changers,” key cases with significant impact: the few insightful individuals who figured out simple public health measures could prevent deadly infections in maternity wards and in cities such as London, the discovery of a mold that inhibited bacterial growth and led to the development of the first antibiotic, and other discoveries that continue to impact the way we live our lives today.

20 questions
associate professor of english and creative writing rob carson

Are we alone in the universe? Is democracy the best form of government? Where does gender come from? Does social media make us anti-social? Are human rights universal? Can Artificial Intelligence make real artworks? In this seminar we will contemplate twenty fascinating questions drawn from disciplines across the liberal arts, considering the various alternatives on offer and debating their respective merits. Our main purpose in this class is to offer you an introduction to the broad range of subjects that we study in the HWS curriculum. This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

X marks the spot
Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology brian clark

How will you make your place here at HWS? What places will be your comfort zone? How have others made their place at HWS? As humans, we conceive and divide space into places: places for work, places for leisure, places of memory and community. Making places happens in both the present and in response to the past. Traversing the spaces between places is itself an experience of place.

In this course, you will learn to navigate your way through the HWS and Geneva communities while we will explore the theme of “place-making” from different academic perspectives. As you search for “your place” we will question what it means to make and belong to places, how we experience places, and how places shape communities. This course will emphasize experiential learning by engaging you with places such as scavenger hunts, nature walks, and map-making exercises. At the end of the semester, you will make your own places for future students in the form of geocaches. This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

What is Freedom?
associate professor of english and creative writing Stephen cope

What is “freedom”? How have ideas and beliefs about freedom changed over the course of history? How has freedom been defined, defended, critiqued, or dismissed by philosophers, politicians, artists, and others? Have these definitions, defenses, dismissals changed, and, if so, how? What relation, if any, exists between different kinds of freedom (freedom of speech, artistic freedom, freedom of conscience, of movement, of self- definition and/or self-determination...)? More generally, we will simply pose the question of what freedom IS, what the term MEANS, and where our ideas about freedom come from.

Parched: The Past, Present and Future of Water
Associate Professor of geoscience Tara curtin 

In the midst of global climate change, environmental crises for water resources and the political debates over water, we have come to realize our complete dependence on water. We will explore the nature of humankind's encounters with water by examining maps; studying local bodies of water including Seneca Lake, nearby rivers and groundwater; listening to podcasts and music; reading and analyzing autobiographies, novels, poems, non-fiction works and scholarly articles; and watching movies and documentaries. Through class discussions, in-class debates, short essays, blogging, and research papers, this seminar will provide students with the tools to explore the past, present and future of water in order to think through possible solutions to sustain our water resources in perpetuity.

Living with AI: Data, Society, and Machines that Learn
Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science jon forde 

Everywhere you turn these days, there it is: AI. It talks to us online, creates art, writes code, evaluates job applications, and much more. But how did we get here? Where did these AIs come from? Do they really work? How? Are chatbots really “intelligent” in the ways humans are intelligent? Where is the line between fact and science fiction? What does it all mean for our lives, the environment, and society?

In this course, we explore the history of our current technological moment. We look at how data helps us understand the world around us, how it has been leveraged into powerful new technologies, and how computation and humanity collide. We critically examine what can (and cannot) be accomplished with statistics, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Trust and Betrayal
Professor of Philosophy Karen Frost-Arnold

Trust between people makes life worth living, and yet trusting others makes us vulnerable to betrayal.  This seminar explores the nature of trust and betrayal, as well as related questions of power, morality, and knowledge: How do I know whom to trust?  What makes someone trustworthy?  How does prejudice influence whom we trust and distrust? By examining situations in which trust was betrayed by doctors who experimented on humans, corporations who manipulated science to make a profit, and business professionals whose conflicts-of-interest undermined the national economy, students will study the role of social institutions and personal morality.  We will also study a variety of vexing questions that we find in our daily lives and in television and film... What is a trusting romantic relationship?  Does it make sense to trust a vampire or a gangster? Am I trustworthy?

Unsinkable
Associate Professor of Russian Area Studies david galloway

In 1912, the liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, killing over 1500 people. In 2023, the Titan submarine imploded on its journey to view the wreck of the Titanic, killing four. How do these two incidents magnify how we consider class? Why was traveling to the Titanic wreck compelling enough to risk lives to view it, and why does a disaster from over a century ago hold so much fascination for people worldwide? We will read accounts of the 1912 and 2023 events as we consider how these intertwined stories impacted world culture and became cautionary tales of how humans overestimate their technological capabilities. We will examine literal class—as in the way Titanic housed its passengers—as well as how socioeconomic class affected how the two events unfolded, how the world reacted to them, and what expectations there were about how different people should react in an emergency when lives are at stake.

Railroad to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Upstate New York
Associate Professor of History Janette Gayle 

Focusing on the Finger Lakes region, Railroad to Freedom examines the semi-secret networks of abolitionists in Upstate New York who helped enslaved men and women fleeing slavery. These people faced an array of obstacles including the law, navigating an unknown landscape, and the constant threat of betrayal. Helping to facilitate their journey to freedom, abolitionists played a vital role by providing shelter, food, and protection to the fugitives fleeing slavery. In this course we will utilize a variety of learning modalities: readings, interactive lectures, discussions, documentaries, film clips, music, and an off-site trips to places connected to the UGRR in the Finger Lakes.

The Reality Effect (It Was Not a Dark and Stormy Night)
Assistant Director of First Year Seminars Susan Hess 

Why and how do stories achieve power and influence? Where is the line between a real story, misinformation, and ‘fake news’? Whose stories get told? How do we use stories, and how do stories use us? In this course, we will critically examine real stories—some more true than others—that have changed U.S. culture and birthed social movements. While some stories will be controversial or unsettling, examining such stories will help students become more adept at analyzing craft, method, and impact. Students will also do much drafting and revising to improve as writers, and practice the art of storytelling, too. As a first-year seminar, our course will also explore the “story” that is first-year student experience by helping students acclimatize to HWS academics. Readings include both historic and modern stories.  Please note: while this is not a fiction-writing course, fiction writers may enjoy and benefit from it.

Japan:  Ghosts, Demons & Monsters
Associate Professor of Asian Studies James-Henry Holland 

Godzilla.  Pokemon.  Films like “Spirited Away” or “The Ring.”  The ninja magic of Naruto.  The shape-shifting demons of Inu Yasha.  These are all examples of the Japanese supernatural, re-packaged for world consumption. But what does the American consumer miss out on when enjoying these Japanese tales?  Why is occult lore such an important part of the expressive culture of Japan?  What is the historical or religious basis of the “soft power” of “Cool Japan”?  What do we learn about Japan—and about ourselves—when we shiver to a well-told Japanese ghost story? Readings will include Japanese comic books (in translation) and short creative fiction, backed up with academic analyses of the history of spooks in Japan.  Students will research particular beings and give presentations on their findings. This is a writing-intensive course, and the final project will involve a creative re-imagination of the Japanese lore learned through the semester, expressed in live or filmed performances, written stories, or visual art projects.

Moving Mountains
Director of Teacher Education Program and Secondary Education andie huskie 

Why are mountains such powerful metaphors for the challenges and triumphs of life? Why do summits provide such fertile ground for both internal reflection and external perspective? How has the sport (and big business) of mountaineering changed our perspective on the relationship between humans and the Earth? How have traditionally marginalized populations moved to reclaim alpine environs to make these sacred spaces once again ‘free’? Mountainous terrain looms large in our cultural imagination. Civilizations around the globe have long created narratives about the peaks and valleys of their immediate and distant landscapes. This course will use classic and contemporary texts to explore how mountains have been used to make sense of our world for centuries.

belief, skepticism, and paranormality
professor of economics joyce jacobsen 

How do we construct belief and how do we test the beliefs of ourselves and others? There is a body of knowledge about what it means to be skeptical and what kinds of tools we can use to evaluate beliefs. We as humans are also prone to particular errors in constructing belief that we can analyze objectively. We consider the principles and techniques of skepticism and apply them to a range of phenomena and beliefs to evaluate their likelihood. Subjects studied include a range of proposed paranormal and supernatural phenomena, as well as conspiracy theories, cults, witch hunts, beliefs about afterlife and the spirit world, and how to draw the line between science and pseudoscience. These topics seem particularly relevant given our location in the “burned-over district” and the founding of William Smith College by a freethinker and spiritualist.

Encountering Difference
Associate Professor of Religious Studies Sal Kafrawi

Encounters happen every day. We encounter people of different civilizations, nations, races, faith, class, sexes, and genders at schools, workplaces, supermarkets, public squares, and other venues. What do we expect when we meet other people? How do we respond when we encounter difference? What constitutes difference? Why do we fear difference? Why do people stereotype? Could the fear of the other necessitate one to control the narrative, the people, or their resources? Or, could encounter with the other become a life-changing experience that affirms oneself and the other simultaneously? What needs to be done for us to have a meaningful encounter with the other? This seminar will particularly explore on two kinds of encountering difference: Christian Spaniards’ encounters with Native Americans in early Americas, contemporary encounters between White Americans and American people of color including African-Americans and Arab-Americans, and interfaith encounters between Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Berlin - Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Professor of German Area Studies eric klaus 

Berlin stands for many things to many people: political might, cultural energy, technological advancements, intellectual vitality, and vibrant, palpable history. Indeed, the city has witnessed a great number of events that defined not only European but world history. This history is carved into Berlin’s landscape, it influences the city’s, and country’s, politics and culture, and it impacts the everyday lives of the city’s inhabitants. This class will explore these phenomena to ask: How is the past remembered? How does it influence the present? How does it shape the future? We will do so by working with primary and secondary materials from the past 200 years; from first-hand accounts of victory parades through the Brandenburg Gate by Napoleon, Bismarck, and the Nazis, to social media commentaries on current events, to interviews with HWS students and Berliners themselves about their lived experiences in the city and what challenges lie ahead.

Religion and Film
Associate Professor of Religious Studies John Krummel 

The course examines religious themes and motifs as depicted in film.  These include themes such as transcendence, the sacred, exile and home, ritual, faith and doubt, knowing God, mortality, reincarnation, the fall, suffering, enlightenment, absurdity, abuse, authority, and so on, all having to do with the existential question of meaning in life.  We will begin the term with a series of introductory essays that explore what is religion, the relationship between film and religion, and how to “read” or analyze film.  We will then watch a series of feature-length films; read selected primary and secondary literature dealing with the religious theme or issue depicted in the film as well as literature on the film itself and/or the director; and discuss and interpret the film.  Through the process first-year students will be introduced to the culture of the Humanities in general and methods of how to read and analyze written material and visual material while relating them together and to one’s own life and the world one is familiar with.

Face to Face: Interrogating Race in the United States and South Africa
Visiting Associate Professor of Africana Studies James McCorkle

How do we talk about race after the murder of George Floyd? In this seminar, we'll explore the parallels between South Africa and the United States, their policies of segregation and their ongoing resistant imaginations.

"Bodies" Politic
Associate Dean Joe Mink 

How do you present yourself in everyday life? Your clothes, manners, haircut, and how you decorate your room are all `texts' through which you reveal (and sometimes hide) yourself from others. Are you a preppy, a punk, a goth, an urban hipster, or a chic hillbilly?  In this seminar we will explore`the body'; as a site at which cultural, social, and political commitments are both constructed and challenged.  In its traditional use, The Body Politic is a metaphor in which the members of a political community are thought to compose a single corporeal body.  In this course, however, we will be less concerned about how individuals may be incorporated into a legitimate and politically authoritative collective; instead we will employ`Bodies' Politic to interrogate how society produces material bodies that are meaningful (and how those meanings often inspire resistance). Specifically, we will draw upon texts from history, anthropology, literature, film, and political theory in order to explore the body as a means of learning and self-expression, as a mechanism for social control, and as an object of political regulation. More specifically, we will examine what vampires, soccer hooligans, Civil War reenactors, and cyborgs reveal about the changing and contested categories of class, race, gender, and sex through which our bodies are made comprehensible to others.

Fish On!
Associate Professor of writing and rhetoric ben ristow

What happens when you survey the history and future of fishing in literature, science, art, and media? Well, you get a first-year seminar that expands your thinking while you learn the material skills of freshwater fishing through hands-on activities like fly tying and water restoration and conservation. This experiential course draws energy from learning about fishing through classical sources and contemporary social media. We will fish and learn how fishing roots itself in the social, cultural, and historical fabric of cultures beyond our classroom and around the world. This course does not require prior experience. You need only be willing to learn and bring in an open mind to the fishing traditions we'll explore in the course. Tight lines!

The Secret Science of Learning
Professor of chemistry Kristin Slade 

What is learning? How do factors like sleep, intrinsic motivation, and socioeconomic background play into one’s ability to learn? Can skills like creativity and work ethic be learned? Recent scientific evidence reveals that many intuitive study strategies are inefficient or just don’t work. This course aims to expose students with an interest in science to our current understanding of how the brain processes information and the most effective learning strategies based on scientific evidence. We will experiment with these methodologies by applying them to the coupled introductory chemistry course. Students will reflect on their own learning process, by systematically trying study techniques, looking at the outcomes, and then adjusting their strategies. By equipping students with the current understanding of brain science and best learning practices, they will be able to create their own toolbox of techniques in order to better grasp scientific concepts and reach their full learning potential. This course is part of a Living/Learning Community. Learn more here.

Needs, Care, and Human Flourishing
Professor of economics bill waller

What do we need to survive? What do we need to feel personally fulfilled? What do we need to do as members of a community to ensure these needs are met for each of us in our many differences. This seminar will explore the fundamental concepts of human needs, human flourishing, and the ethics of care. Students will engage in critical discussions regarding the basic physical and social needs that contribute to individual well-being and the overall health of society. Once we have some idea of human needs and human capabilities, we will consider what is necessary for human flourishing. Since all people require care as different times in their lives we will explore various perspectives on care to develop an understanding of the importance of caring labor and the ethical responsibilities associated with it. The course will include a Service-Learning requirement.

Through the Lens-French Cinema
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FRENCH, FRANCOPHONE, AND ITALIAN STUDIES Court wells 

This course will be an in-depth study of French and Francophone film, from its invention by the Frères Lumières in the late 19th century to the present day. Through readings, research, in-class discussions, and group viewings, students will study the history of cinema in French (and beyond), the fundamentals of the analysis of film, and the vocabulary necessary for discussing film. Films will be shown in French with English subtitles and classroom discussions will be held in English, along with any assignments, exams, presentations, etc. Because a film cannot be divorced from the particular linguistic, cultural, and historical setting in which it is made, this course will also focus on those parts of culture and history that are relevant to the films assigned.

CORALations: connecting through corals
Professor of History and Asian Studies Lisa Yoshikawa

Imagine gliding underwater through the beauty of lush tropical corals and their reefs teeming with colorful life. Now imagine them all gone as anthropogenic causes decimate these reefs that produce oxygen that we breathe, house fish that we consume, protect our shores, and nourish life beyond humanity.

Corals and humans are both holobionts: ecological communities made of multiple symbiotic genes, each contributing to the effective performance of the whole. Earth has been called a holobiont: organisms therein interact in multidisciplinary webs that sustain life. Today, concerns that humans are upending these matrices motivate various specialists to change our thoughts/behaviors: historians, scientists, media experts, legal scholars, ethnobiologists. Increasingly, we are compelled to borrow from the coral/human ecological model and connect multiple inquiry methods to think across different, overlapping, fields that together help us understand our responsibilities as part of holobionts.

Let’s consider the human-coral relationship from various perspectives, thinking holistically by connecting across disciplines, time, space, lives, and their entanglements, and continue swimming on this wondrous planet, reflectively and deliberately.