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2020 Fall FYS Courses
FYS 001 (CRN 2931) – Lovecraft: Horror & Madness
FYS 002 (CRN 3212) - Memory, History, & Identity
FYS 003 (CRN 6453) – Lovecraft: Horror & Madness
FYS 004 (CRN 6788) – Ghost Stories
FYS 005 (CRN 6959) – Decisions & Revisions
FYS 006 (CRN 6456) – Magic, Monsters, & Medievalism
FYS 009 (CRN 6479) – Jane Austen and Adaptation
FYS 010 (CRN 6481) - The Fairy Tale in Contemporary Literature
FYS 012 (CRN 6967) - So You Think You're a Global Citizen?!
FYS 013 (CRN 6484) – Adventure Journalists
FYS 015 (CRN 6515) – Animal Consciousness and Human Consciences
FYS 016 (CRN 6486) – Conversation
FYS 017 (CRN 6568) – Composing the Female Body
FYS 019 (CRN 6964) – What Is a Book?
FYS 020 (CRN 6507) – Leadership, Personality, and the Hunger Games
FYS 023 (CRN 4098) – The Art of Problem Solving
FYS 024 (CRN 6962) – Toxic Charity: A critical look at Service-Learning & Volunteering
FYS 025 (CRN 7474) – American Dreams (learning community)
FYS 026 (CRN 6593) – Ethnobiology, Nature, and Culture
FYS 027 (CRN 3437) – Ethics and Star Trek
FYS 028 (CRN 3006) – Do You See What I See? FLIGHT
FYS 029 (CRN 7907) – FLIGHT: Exploring Social Justice
FYS 030 (CRN 6963) – Adaptation -- Reading Films Based On Other Sources
FYS 031 (CRN 7002) – Life Beyond Earth
FYS 032 (CRN 6973) – New York, New York
FYS 033 (CRN 6974) – Religions Literature & Interfaith Leadership
FYS 034 (CRN 6975) – Not Just For Kids! Play Across America
FYS 035 (CRN 5176) – HAPPINESS 101
FYS 036 (CRN 3663) – Conspiracy Theories in the U.S.
FYS 038 (CRN 1916) – Exploring the Portrayal of Mental Illness and Intellectual Disabilities in the Media
FYS 039 (CRN 6977) – A Small Dose of Toxicology
FYS 040 (CRN 9949 & 6978) – Vote Smart! & Vote Smart Internship
FYS 042 (CRN 6979) – Road to the Whitehouse 2020
FYS 043 (CRN 7503) – #PaintItBlack
FYS 044 (CRN 7058) – Daring to Dream: The Stories of Business
FYS 045 (CRN 6980) – Famous & Almost Famous Women
FYS 046 (CRN 7041) - Annus Mirabilis: Year of Wonders 2020
FYS 047 (CRN 6982) – Human Rights & Pop Culture
FYS 048 (CRN 6983) – Science Fiction, Science Fact
FYS 049 (CRN 6984) – Adaptation -- Reading Films Based On Other Sources
FYS 050 (CRN 7952) – The Florida Project: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Walt Disney World
FYS 001 (CRN 2931) – Lovecraft: Horror & Madness
Kyle McCord
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
This course introduces students to the horrifying writing of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Students produce their own works of horror, consider Lovecraft in the context of contemporary scholarship, and analyze his themes and their contemporary horror on the page and screen. Discussions center on expanding students’ understanding of the connection between this bright but troubled author and the world of post-WWI America.
FYS 002 (CRN 3212) – Memory, History, and Identity
Dina Smith
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
American writer William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Here he alludes to how, as we move about our present, memory ties us to a personal and collective history. Literature is uniquely suited to archiving memory and exploring how individuals have experienced the past through the present lens of writing and remembering. The seminar will take as its particular focus late-20th-century American literature and the rise of multi-cultural voices (Asian-American, African-American, Indian, Jewish, and poor southern white) that redefined constructions of “American identity.” We will linger on selected works that remember and, in the process, rewrite the past.
FYS 003 (CRN 6453) – Lovecraft: Horror & Madness
Kyle McCord
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
This course introduces students to the horrifying writing of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Students produce their own works of horror, consider Lovecraft in the context of contemporary scholarship, and analyze his themes and their contemporary horror on the page and screen. Discussions center on expanding students’ understanding of the connection between this bright but troubled author and the world of post-WWI America.
FYS 004 (CRN 6788) – Ghost Stories
Megan Brown
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
This class will explore classic and contemporary tales of ghosts and hauntings. We will also discuss the ways in which these stories may express the anxieties of the times and places that produced them.
FYS 005 (CRN 6959) – Decisions & Revisions
Craig Owens
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
In this course, we will examine how a variety of “texts”—including novels, short stories, movies, music video, drama, and student writing—engage in adaptation, revision, recycling, and re-envisioning.
FYS 006 (CRN 6456) – Magic, Monsters and Medievalism
Gabriel Ford
MW 8:00am-9:15 am
Medievalism—the use of medieval images, motifs, narrative traditions, and social configurations in post-medieval texts—pervades our current pop cultural moment. Game of Thrones—until very recently—anchored a major network. Peter Jackson’s two Middle-earth trilogies are watched and re-watched by adoring fans. If anything, J.R.R. Tolkien’s celebrated and genre-defining fantasy novels inspire more devotion even than the film adaptations. Even J.K. Rowling’s unprecedentedly popular Harry Potter series regularly world-builds from medieval materials. This course takes its cue from this cultural prominence of medievalism and sets its task as the exploration of the development and deployment of medieval tropes in post-medieval fiction. How did medievalist types—wizard, dragon, swordsman, enchanted ring, wicked king, damsel in distress—make their way into our own imagination? Why do they resonate so powerfully with so many?
The course will work towards answering these and like questions as it proceeds in reverse chronology, backwards from fantasy literature published within the last twelve months and into the deep past. It will proceed through influential twentieth-century fantasy novels, nineteenth-century ideological medievalism, eighteenth-century pseudo-philologial fiction, and the Middle Ages’ own use of fantasy modes.
After doing so, it will return to twenty-first century fantasy literature to apply our retrospective work to the present moment and its medievalisms. We will focus particularly on the uses the monstrous and the magical, not just because they are fun and interesting (they are), but also because these kinds of distortions often open narrative and imaginative possibilities for world-building and social commentary.
Students are encouraged to develop projects that interpret the medievalisms of other pop cultural genres and forms: comics, genre fiction, television, film, tabletop games, and video games.
FYS 009 (CRN 6479) – Jane Austen and Adaptation
Melisa Klimaszewski
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
What makes the films Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Clueless resonate 200 years after Jane Austen published the novels Pride and Prejudice and Emma? How do Austen’s novels relate to race, slavery, and marriage laws? What makes these books funny? Reading novels, viewing films, and studying literary criticism, this FYS builds critical thinking and writing skills while investigating the intriguing questions above.
FYS 010 (CRN 6481) - The Fairy Tale in Contemporary Literature
Elizabeth Brinsfield
TR 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
You need not even have any conscious interest in fairy tales to appreciate their effect on you,” writes Kate Bernheimer.“Fairy tales work on all of us; they’re so ubiquitous.” This course will explore classic fairy tales and fairy-tale form incontemporary literature. We will study the evolution of the fairy tale and its comeback in this cultural moment byexamining a few stories in depth, reading original versions, their revisions, plus modern adaptations and interpretations.We will record responses to reading and discussion in journals and develop ideas in longer analytical essays. Finally, wewill write our own fairy tales and consider how fairy-tale elements make their way into our writing and take hold of ourimagination.
FYS 012 (CRN 6967) – So, You Think You're a Global Citizen?
Stephanie Dana Ely; Kendra Hossain-Morehead
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Come navigate the complex world of global citizenship! What is it? Can it be achieved? Take an in-depth look at your ideas of culture, identity, and values, and survey topics such as citizenship, K-12 education, intercultural communication, travel and study abroad, environmental sustainability, the UN and NGOs, and human rights.
FYS 013 (CRN 6484) – Adventure Journalists
Lee Jollife
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
The journey or adventure tale is among humanity’s greatest archetypal tales, manifest throughout history in fictional and nonfictional works, taking on a variety of narrative forms. Epics such as Homer’s Odyssey established the journey motif as well as the traveler-hero figure, embodied with the bravery, intelligence, and resourcefulness needed to wrestle with the natural world and its inhabitants.
Adventure journalists in the Gilded Age were sent out by newspaper publishers to provide day-by-day accounts of their journeys. Unlike the "objective" reporting we value most in our news, these writers placed themselves onstage as actors in the drama, writing in the first person. They sought out new, exotic, often dangerous locales specifically in order to send home tales of their own derring-do to an audience hungry for their stories. They brought skills of observation, an investigative mind, a commitment to truth-telling, description and details, and a sense of news – what in this day’s adventure was important, unique, etc.
FYS 015 (CRN 6515) – Animal Consciousness and Human Consciences
Christopher L Kliethermes
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
How do the specific cognitive abilities an animal species might possess – its sensory awareness, pain perception, and learning and memory abilities – affect how we interact with and use that species? This course explores selected historical and contemporary issues in our relationship with non-human animals, including their use in agriculture, research, and as pets. Students will engage with perspectives on these issues from evolutionary neurobiologists, biomedical researchers, moral philosophers, animal behaviorists, and animal rights activists.
FYS 016 (CRN 6486) – Conversation
Amy Letter
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
This is a new course which will focus on conversation, meaning both in-person, face-to-face, attentive but fundamentally unstructured communication about various topics, as well as the idea of a Great Conversation, a culture-wide process of writers, thinkers, and creators responding to one another and building on each other's insights.
FYS 017 (CRN 6568) – Composing the Female Body
Yasmina Madden
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
In this seminar, we will analyze the ways that contemporary literature and popular culture compose or construct the female body and what these various narratives and depictions reveal to us. As a participant in this course, you will be expected to fulfill frequent writing assignments, critically read and respond to numerous texts, and participate meaningfully in class discussions.
FYS 019 (CRN 6964) – What Is a Book?
Leah Huizar
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
What makes a book a book? Is a book essentially a material production of paper and ink or might a book exist as only a visual or audio artifact? In this class, we make books, read books about books, and explore its forms, including chapbooks, spoken word albums, and interactive stories.
FYS 020 (CRN 6507) – Leadership, Personality, and the Hunger Games
Cristina Wildermuth
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
This multidisciplinary course helps students understand the impact of personality on leadership styles. We will use characters from young adult literature – especially, the Hunger Games series – to explore different personality traits and leadership approaches. Students will assess their own personality traits as per the Five Factor Model, identify their leadership strengths, trace a development plan, and use Hunger Games characters as metaphors for lessons learned. Students will also work, together, on a class blog, exploring multiple leadership styles and personality traits as illustrated by characters in popular books and movies.
FYS 023 (CRN 4098) – The Art of Problem Solving
Adam Case
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
A “problem” can be many things: a tip that needs to be calculated at a restaurant, a puzzle that we want to solve, a painting that an artist is trying to create, or a scientific question that needs an answer. In this first-year seminar, students will learn how to become better problem solvers by studying how humans reason about problems across various disciplines within the arts and sciences. Some of the topics that will be discussed include procedural thinking, intuition, heuristics, creativity, and artistic thinking. We will learn techniques that professionals use to identify, reason about, and solve problems within their fields of study. We will also learn how to apply these techniques in order to solve interactive puzzles from a computer game!
FYS 024 (CRN 6962) – Toxic Charity: A critical look at Service-Learning & Volunteering
Kodee Wood
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Drake's mission is to provide an exceptional learning environment that prepares students for meaningful personal lives, professional accomplishments, and responsible global citizenship. As entering first year students selected for the Engaged Citizen Corps, students will address concepts, issues, and practices of charity, service-learning, and volunteerism. Utilizing their weekly service placement as an extension of the classroom learning, various articles, and the textbook, students will spend time in reflective observation and active participatory research to understand their individual contributions towards society as a whole. We will wrestle with the notion that not all good intentions lead to what is best for organizations or people – and that, in fact, some charity can be toxic.
FYS 025 (CRN 7474) – American Dreams (learning community)
Joan McAlister
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm AND TR 12:30pm-1:45pm (POLS 001 CRN 4192)
Honors students enrolled in this learning community will receive 3 elective credits towards the Honors Track of the Drake Curriculum.
This Honors learning community critically examines the American Dream, considering its shifting representations, historical exclusions, and role in public life and national identity. Together, we explore key values such as liberty, equality, and freedom, as well as concerns about the role of individualism, materialism, and social justice in defining success in America.
Students in this FYS will be simultaneously enrolled in a special section of POLS001, American Political Systems, which will examine the same questions as they play out in American politics and government.
FYS 026 (CRN 6593) – Ethnobiology, Nature, and Culture
Nanci Ross
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
Our everyday experiences and observations are the beginnings of the study of natural science. The way we perceive nature is, in many ways, inherited from our culture. In this class, we explore the connection between science, nature, and culture through an exploration of nature around readings, discussion, scientific experimentation, and us.
FYS 027 (CRN 3437) – Ethics and Star Trek
Jerome Hilscher
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
Using Star Trek Episodes we will examine a variety of out of this world conundrums, and apply differing ethical theories to the decision making process. You will be required to watch a few episodes on your own, but you do not need to be a Trekkie. Live long, and prosper.
FYS 028 (CRN 3006) – Do You See What I See? FLIGHT
Ted Hatten
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Through this course, students will explore culture and society and how issues social justice work to provide a framework for an equitable community. Students will explore how culture forms and shifts over time, and look at inequalities that can be addressed through principles of social justice. Students will engage in a hands-on community based research project that brings to light the principles of culture, society and social justice, as well as providing a bridge to the student to become a part of the Drake and Des Moines Community. Our inquiry will be both academic and experiential, as we explore questions about how to sustain a commitment to personal well-being and academic success while simultaneously engaging larger questions about social justice.
FYS 029 (CRN 7907) – Social Justice: FLIGHT
Erin Lain
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Through this course, students will explore culture and society and how issues of social justice work to provide a framework for an equitable community. Students will explore how culture forms and shifts over time, and look at inequalities that can be addressed through principles of social justice. Students will engage in a hands-on community-based research project that brings to light the principles of culture, society and social justice, as well as providing a bridge to the students to become a part of the Drake and Des Moines Communities.
FYS 030 (CRN 6963) – Adaptation -- Reading Films Based On Other Sources
Nick Renkoski
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
More than half of current Hollywood movies are based on other sources but what is the process of bringing a story from page or stage to the screen? What things are gained, and what things are lost? This FYS examines the range and forms these transformations can take.
FYS 031 (CRN 7002) – Life Beyond Earth
Charles Nelson
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
Perhaps the most remarkable result from NASA's Kepler Mission, is that there are at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. In this class we will discuss the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the Universe, and what it might be like.
FYS 032 (CRN 6973) – New York, New York
Mary Beth Holtey
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
New York City has served as the backdrop for books, movies and television shows. It’s an icon. But how did New York City move from Dutch colony to one of the world’s most influential cities? This course will examine the city’s history in the context of location and reform.
FYS 033 (CRN 6974) – Religions Literature & Interfaith Leadership
Tim Knepper
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
This first-year seminar aspires to increase religious literacy and cultivate interfaith leadership. The former will be accomplished primarily through the exploration of “lived religion” in Des Moines; the latter, by studying the principles and practices of interfaith leadership, and implementing them in public programming of interfaith events.
FYS 034 (CRN 6975) – Not Just For Kids: Play Across America
H. Ellie Wood
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
To be fully-realized, humans need to play. Scholars may disagree on details in the definition of play, but they agree that play is important for people of all ages. In this FYS, students will examine their personal play experiences, play as depicted in media, and varied approaches scholars take to conceptualize play.
FYS 035 (CRN 5176) – HAPPINESS 101
Molly Shepard
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
We will explore the science behind happiness and the link between happiness and success. Based on the book, “U-Thrive,” we will research and discover tools for creating positive lifelong habits and develop a model for thriving in college and beyond. Receive practical lessons from the field of positive psychology and the study of mental health to cultivate happiness, learn important life skills, and decrease stress.
FYS 036 (CRN 3663) – Conspiracy Theories in the U.S.
Bartholomew Schmidt
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
From the Salem Witch Trials to present-day headlines about the Deep State, Americans have embraced conspiracy theories to explain the sometimes un-explainable. This course will explore a sample of conspiracy theories in United States history, focusing primarily on the past century.
FYS 038 (CRN 1916) – Exploring the Portrayal of Mental Illness and Intellectual Disabilities in the Media
Anisa Hansen
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Stigmatization of mental illness and intellectual disabilities is readily apparent in the media. Class will focus on recognizing stigma, factual knowledge of different disorders, and locating resources. Students complete a service-learning project outside regular class time at a special education high school, participating in classroom activities with students with disabilities.
FYS 039 (CRN 6977) – A Small Dose of Toxicology
James Sacco
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Rapid advances in science and technology have produced enormous benefits but have also created undesirable dangers that impact human health and the environment. How do we deal with products that make our lives better but that also harbor a potential for harm? Why are we still confronted, on a daily basis, by toxins in our food, air and water? Through selected readings and movies, class discussions, presentations, and simulation games, students will study and research the controversial impact of poisons on our society.
FYS 040 (CRN 9949) – Vote Smart!
FYS 041 (CRN 6978) – Vote Smart! Internship
Rachel Paine Caufield
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
What does it mean to be an “informed” voter? In an age of instant communication, echo chambers, ideological bubbles, and fake news, where can voters go to get reliable information that will allow them to make meaningful decisions? Vote Smart, a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization headquartered at Drake University, provides the tools for voters to learn about elected officials and candidates. All students will do an internship with Vote Smart, supplemented by course readings and guest speakers to gain insight into the ways that citizens can make sense of politics – from interest group assessments, campaign finance disclosures, candidate speeches, and voting records.
Students will complete an internship with Vote Smart (additional 3 credits), supplemented by readings and guest speakers to understand the ways that citizens can make sense of politics.
FYS 042 (CRN 6979) – Road to the Whitehouse 2020
Greg Wolf
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Presidential elections are a combination of democratic decision-making, theatre, and folly – they also produce a president who is subsequently expected to govern a large, diverse, and complex country. We’ll pay close attention to the various interpretive lenses that we use to understand what we are seeing throughout the campaign.
FYS 043 (CRN 7503) – #Paint_It_Black
Tony Tyler
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
In recent years social movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo have significantly impacted our culture and society. In the Fall of 2018 the #PaintItBlack movement began at Drake University. This course will examine the specifics of what occurred in the Fall of 2018 on Drake's campus, the larger social climate of movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter and how they informed #paintitblack, as well as how the movement is continuing to evolve and manifest in our community.
FYS 044 (CRN 7058) – Daring to Dream: The Stories of Business
Debra Bishop
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
Many aspects of business success were, in fact, the path-breaking innovations of pioneering entrepreneurial leaders. Passion, timing, connections – what makes for either business or personal success? We will ponder business success using both well-known and fascinating little-known stories. Along the way, you will have an opportunity to dream; developing your personal mission and strategy for success, while discovering the impact culture and experiences play in defining success.
FYS 045 (CRN 6980) – Famous & Almost Famous Women
Carrie Dunham-LaGree
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
This course explores fictional depictions of real women in fiction and film. Together we’ll read short stories, a novel, watch films, think, write, research, and discuss both the fictional depictions of women and what we learn about their real lives.
FYS 046 (CRN 7041) - Annus Mirabilis: Year of Wonders 2020
Sue Mattison
TR 3:30pm – 4:45 pm
This "year of wonders" wasn't the first worldwide catastrophic health event (influenza, Ebola, Plague, cholera), and unfortunately, unlikely to be the last. The current COVID-19 pandemic brings to light a multitude of issues across many disciplines. How can we contextualize current events? What can we learn and how do we move forward?
FYS 047 (CRN 6982) – Human Rights & Pop Culture
Julia Steggerda-Corey
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
This course will examine some of the human rights issues through the lens of pop culture. While some analyses will occur through fictional depictions of human rights issues, others will focus on biographical and non-fictional depictions.
FYS 048 (CRN 6983) – Science Fiction, Science Fact
Dan Chibnall
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
Science fiction storytelling often predicts scientific achievements, warns of darker scientific efforts, illuminates facts in the face of pseudoscience, and helps us navigate social problems. We will use science fiction stories and films to understand scientific principles and achievements, separate facts and falsehoods, and explore our future for scientific discoveries.
FYS 049 (CRN 6984) – Adaptation -- Reading Films Based On Other Sources
Nick Renkoski
TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
More than half of current Hollywood movies are based on other sources but what is the process of bringing a story from page or stage to the screen? What things are gained, and what things are lost? This FYS examines the range and forms these transformations can take.
FYS 050 (CRN 7952) – The Florida Project: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Walt Disney World
James McNab
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
The Florida Project will explore the development, construction, and operation of Walt Disney World as both an ideal and a reality and begin to answer the question of what Disney World means to us as a society.
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