Fall 2023 First Year Seminar

This community-based course introduces human rights, social justice, and environmental justice theoretical frameworks and issues from global perspectives designed and taught by award-winning Professor of Social Justice Education, Rajni Shankar-Brown. Through interdisciplinary service learning, students will have hands-on opportunities to explore art as activism and participate in civic engagement. Specific topics including the intersectionality of identities including race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, nationality, language, and education will be examined, and provide roots to further personal and intellectual development and global citizenship. Diverse texts (readings, films, music, etc.) will include equity-centered explorations of history and the complex interplay of theories in a pluralistic society, with opportunities to apply them to current equity and inclusion issues. The course encourages reflective practice, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity through community engagement art projects focusing on historically situated and currently unfolding social justice issues. Writing as an inquiry-oriented and developmental process will be emphasized, along with multimodal literacies and communication with attention to applied critical thinking. Civic and community engagement and service-learning experiences in collaboration with diverse community partners, including public schools and nonprofit organizations, are required for the successful completion of this course.

Your Professor

Rajni Shankar-Brown, MA, MBA, PhD, is an internationally award-winning Professor and the Jessie Ball duPont Endowed Chair of Social Justice Education at Stetson University, as well as the recipient of Stetson’s most prestigious awards -- the McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Hand Award for Distinguished Faculty Achievement. She is also the President of the National Coalition for the Homeless Board, author, community organizer, cultural strategist, poet, artist, and a human rights and environmental justice activist. She is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Institute for Catalyzing Equity, Justice, and Social Change and she serves as the Co-Chair of Equity and Justice for the International Society for Teacher Education and Information Technology. Dr. Shankar-Brown actively works at international, national, state and local levels to confront systemic oppression and advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, including with the United Nations and U.S. Federal Agencies. She has presented around the globe and published articles, book chapters, and creative works in leading academic sources, as well as a globally celebrated collection of poetry (Tuluminous), and an education book series including Bending the Arc Toward Justice: Equity-Focused Practices for Educational Leaders and Re-Envisioning Education: Affirming Diversity and Advancing Justice. In addition to being a passionate leader and scholar, she is a dedicated Amma (means “Mom” in her first language, Tamil) who loves sunflowers and masala chai.

How influential is Hollywood? Who decides what appears on our screens? Hollywood has a long history of avoiding official censorship by organizing its own office to control and edit out provocative content before controversy could attract official attention. While we often talk of repressive regimes elsewhere, during WWII Hollywood created its own propaganda films and the government did, in fact, make many decisions about what should or should not be screened to benefit the nation. This course explores the history and morality of movies, the Motion Picture Production Code, the politics of WWII, the Blacklist, the code’s breakdown, and the rise of the rating system. How DID films express ideas in the face of these codes? Last, we will discuss current issues in censorship including marketplace demands and cancel culture.

Your Professor

Nicole Denner, PhD, attended Indiana University for her undergraduate and master's degree and received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University. She studied horror films at IU and eighteenth-century Enlightenment literature for her doctorate (they aren't so different after all). She has taught at Stetson since 2001 in both the French and English departments. She is most interested in how and why texts so frequently turn inward and comment upon themselves.

Throughout history, lawyers have had a great impact on the direction of American business, government, and society. This course examines how lawyers from the past and in the present have built businesses, shaped government, and righted wrongs. In this course, we will focus on well-known and not-so-well-known lawyers, as well as the business, governmental, and societal environments that provided the impetus for them to make a difference.

Your Professor

Elizabeth (Libba) Galloway is Assistant Professor of Practice in Business Law and Director of Stetson's Business Law Program. She earned a B.A. from the College of William and Mary and a JD from Duke University School of Law. Prior to coming to Stetson, she was a Partner in the Cincinnati office of the national law firm Taft, Stettinius & Hollister; served as Deputy Commissioner and Chief Legal Officer of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA); and was Executive Director of the Professional Association of Athlete Development Specialists (PAADS). Her years of experience working in law and in business opened her eyes to the myriad of ways in which lawyers can not only have fulfilling careers for themselves but can also have a positive impact on the world in which they live.

This First Year Seminar will explore charismatic leadership in the 20th and early 21st centuries and the impact these leaders have on their organizations and the causes they espouse. The course will explore the attributes of charismatic leaders who have emerged over the last 100 years, along with the role that their followers play in supporting the leader’s power and mission. The course will also examine the nature of Personalized and Socialized charismatic leaders and explore examples, and implications, of modern cults and causes.

Your Professor

Chris Colwell is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at Stetson University. Prior to his work at Stetson, Professor Colwell served as a teacher, counselor, elementary, middle and high school principal, and as Deputy Superintendent for the Volusia County School Board.

Chris Colwell served as President of the Florida Organization for Instructional Leaders. He was named Florida’s Principal of the Year in 1997. Professor Colwell is a frequent presenter at the state and national level on issues relating to education leadership, innovation, and reform.

Chris Colwell’s scholarly work centers on best practices in educational leadership. He has published three books on the subject; Impact: How Assistant Principals Can Be High Performing Leaders (2015), Mission Driven Leadership: Understanding the Challenges Facing Schools Today (2018), and the Fourth Tier: Leadership and the Power of Charisma (2020)

Sound provides a unique method for learning about any location, especially coastal regions. These regions are home to diverse ecosystems both above and below the water, and attract a range of recreation and commercial activities by humans. All of these contribute to the sound of the place, or its soundscape. This course applies concepts and methods from acoustic ecology to investigate issues relevant to Volusia County and selected coastal regions around the world. These investigations require an interdisciplinary perspective that draws from environmental studies, musical acoustics, geography, bioacoustics, and digital arts.

Your Professor

Nathan Wolek is a sound artist and audio researcher whose work encompasses electronic music, audio field recording, multimedia performance, and sound design. He is also a two-time Fulbright Scholar, recognized twice by this prestigious academic exchange program (Norway 2012 and Scotland 2021). His music and sound installations feature rapid edits, gradually changing textures, and environmental recordings of personal significance. Wolek has presented his creative work across the United States, in addition to engagements in Korea, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Canada and Brazil. In 2020, Wolek collaborated with Atlantic Center for the Arts on the launch of Young Sound Seekers. The program creates opportunities for blind and partially-sighted youth to learn about natural soundscapes and audio field recording at Canaveral National Seashore.

Stories told in words and pictures go by many different names all around the world, such as comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, manga, bandes dessinées, fumetti, tebeos, comix, image-texts, sequential art and graphic narratives. Whatever they are called, comics and their influence are everywhere-on magazine racks, online, in literary journals, in museum galleries and on movie screens. They have been used to tell the simplest of jokes, create the wildest fantasy worlds and explore the depths of the most profound human experiences. This course will examine the art form that the French call "The 9th Art" in order to: Examine how words and pictures combine to make meanings; Survey a variety of texts from different times and places; Investigate where comics have come from, where they are now, and where they might go in the future. We will work together on reading visual/verbal texts closely, on writing analytically, and on finding ideas and presenting them in class. Students will have the opportunity to design a creative project in which they make their own comic or create a work of art about comics.

Your Professor

Joseph "Rusty" Witek, professor of humanities, has been teaching English and Humanities courses at Stetson University since 1989. He is known as one of the first academics in the United States to focus on comics as an art form, making Stetson one of the first universities to offer regularly scheduled courses on comics and graphic novels. He has published books and articles on such topics as comics criticism and theory, autobiography and history in comics, war comics, 9/11 in comics and the fact that Donald Duck can't fly. He is presently working on a book project that examines some of the worst comics ever published.

Countercultural movements throughout the twentieth century, holding values contrary to those of mainstream society, have sought to challenge the status quo with radical works of music, art, and literature. Were they effective? Does art have the power to change the way people think? Have these works of music, art and literature contributed to the creation of the culture in which we live, and, if so, how? In this course, students will be introduced to some of the more radical and controversial works of music, poetry, theatre, and visual art from the 1880s to today as well as the cultures that produced them: from the composers, writers and painters of the fin de siècle to those of the New York art scene in the 1960s; from the writers of the Beat Generation to the musicians and artists of the San Francisco psychedelic movement, to the formation of hip-hop in the late 1970s. Through class discussions and writing assignments, students will be asked to reflect upon what art is and what its role is in society. They will be asked to reflect upon the music and art of their own generation, its culture and its countercultures and identify the values that are propagated by it.

Your Professor

Lonnie Hevia holds a D.MA in composition from The Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Christopher Theofanidis, Nicholas Maw and Michael Hersch. His bachelor's and master's degrees in composition were earned from The Florida State University School of Music, where he studied with John Boda and Ladislav Kubik. Dr. Hevia has presented music in master classes conducted by John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse and Justin Dello Joio, and he has taken individual lessons from Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Libby Larsen and Chen Yi. His music has been performed throughout the United States by world-class musicians. It has been presented at conferences of the College Music Society, Society of Composers, Inc. and The Midwest Graduate Music Consortium. The confluence of a variety of influences, Dr. Hevia's music often combines the energy of rock, the melodic lyricism of pop, the harmonic and rhythmic complexities of jazz, the timbres of spectral music and the counterpoint and dramatic form of concert music, all into a unified style that is uniquely his own. While at Peabody, Dr. Hevia earned a second master's degree in music theory pedagogy, and, before his appointment at Stetson, he held teaching positions at Peabody, Towson University and Johns Hopkins University. He has taught music theory, aural skills, keyboard skills, counterpoint, form and analysis, twentieth-century theory, composition, arranging and the history of popular music.

In American society, we spend more hours working than any other activity. We live in a culture that links productivity to self-worth, work to meaning, and pressures us to embrace "the grind" over healthy limits. Creative thinking is highly prized, yet there is no clear method for developing creativity itself. Cultivating creativity and understanding the personal significance of work are some of the most relevant issues in modern life. In this course, we will engage with numerous texts on creativity, work, productivity, procrastination and daily ritual. Students will explore these issues through class discussions, writing, creative work and critical evaluation, developing their intellectual and emotional responses using critical thinking skills.

Your Professor

Chaz Underriner is a composer, inter-media artist and performer based in DeLand, Florida where he is an Assistant Professor of Digital Arts at Stetson University. Chaz's work explores the representation of reality in art, especially landscape, through the juxtaposition of video projections, audio recordings and live performers. Chaz's work has been programmed both nationally and internationally at festivals and venues such as Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Utrecht), the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s National Composer’s Intensive, the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Scotland), the International Computer Music Conference, and the Impuls Festival (Austria). As an engineer, composer and performer, Chaz's work has been released on Edition Wandelweiser Records, Slubmusic, New World Records, Fleur du Son, Task Records, Sedimental Records and Delos.

Data has become an integral part of everyone's daily life. Every time you post on social media, select a movie to watch online or make an online purchase, you leave a digital footprint. These are only a few of the ways that data is generated. That ever growing ocean of data can be used to help doctors make better medical diagnoses, help you find a movie that you might like, help a marketer target the sales of a product or possibly even affect how a person will vote. In this class, we will explore different aspects of how data and technology affect your day-to-day life. We will critically think about the ethical implications of the use of data, the consequences of how you share information and how others may misuse data. We will reflect on the implications of these uses (and abuses) of data through discussions, presentations and written activities.

Your Professor

Jay Stryker is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Stetson's Business Systems and Analytics department. He has been a consultant to Volusia County Schools and has many years' experience teaching and tutoring various aspects of technology and data analysis. He is a Stetson graduate who received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics. He went on to receive a Masters's degree in Applied Mathematics from Georgia Tech and a PhD in Mathematics from Florida State University. His research interests include machine learning, big data and multi-criterion decision making.

In this course, we will examine the meaning of diversity and its relation to global education. Through literature and film, we will discuss the broad definition of diversity, focusing on the study of race, ethnicity, language, gender, social class, sexual orientation, religion, and emotional and physical disabilities. All students will use field placements in local schools or non-profit organizations to provide practical experiences that will illuminate our class's major concepts.

Your Professor

Bette Heins holds the Nina B. Hollis Chair of Educational Reform in the Department of Teacher Education. She directs the Hollis Institute for Educational Reform and teaches educational psychology, exceptional student education and classroom management. Her research interests include single-gender education, reading issues and classroom management. She loves teaching about diversity in the classroom and, in her words, "celebrates deviancy on a daily basis." 

This freshman seminar investigates food in East Asian societies, as well as overseas Asian communities, from a sociological perspective. In the first part of the course, students will examine the social construction of food and relationship between food and identity, particularly among Asian (American) groups. The course then turns to how economic development changes food systems, consumption, and population health in East Asian societies. Finally, the course traces the environmental impacts of food from farm to table to landfill. The course will feature numerous opportunities to sample Asian cuisine and snacks without leaving DeLand.

Your Professor

Rachel Core is a medical and comparative historical sociologist whose research examines how social conditions and factors, including access to healthcare and preventive programming, affect health outcomes. Dr. Core has spent ten years overseas, including eight years in East Asia. She is obsessed with food and looks forward to sharing this obsession with her FSEM students. She is currently Associate Professor, Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department, and Chair of the International Learning Committee at Stetson University.

One of the most important challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century is to identify and develop sustainable sources of energy in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living while also minimizing our impact on the environment. This seminar will discuss the science of energy production and usage for a variety of energy sources and energy conservation strategies, and also examine the environmental advantages and drawbacks of each source or strategy. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the nuclear disaster in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 illustrate just some of the dangers underlying our current energy production portfolio. The science regarding the challenge of global climate change will also be discussed. While the seminar is discussion-based and writing-intensive, students will be introduced to the basic physical principles and skills necessary to understand the issues involved in energy systems and sustainability, including physical units conversion and problem-solving techniques. The course will also include course blog postings and discussion of topics of current interest regarding energy and environmental issues found in the popular press.

Your Professor

Kevin Riggs holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Minnesota and specializes in research on magnetic materials useful for magnetic recording and information storage. He also holds an MS in Physics/Musical-acoustics from Case Western Reserve University and has an active research program using laser-based holographic techniques to image the vibration patterns of musical instruments. He teaches many advanced courses for physics majors, but especially enjoys interacting with students from a wide range of backgrounds in his general education course on musical acoustics titled "The Science of Music" and his new first-year seminar titled "Energy and the Environment." In his spare time, Riggs enjoys playing guitar in a Stetson University faculty jazz quartet, the "Thin Film Magnetism."

How do we create enough trust between people such that freedom rings? That was a question answered for the first time around 500 BC—the so-called Axis Age which pivoted away from magic and religion towards morality and reason as the answers to societal ills. The only option at that point was to build better humans and the likes of Socrates, the Buddha, and Confucius took up the task with relish. How did these philosophers try to end wars and democratize life across the world after millennia of dictatorships? And what roles do the later monotheisms of Christianity and Islam play in this equation on the road to right now? This trip will answer these questions but only after we lay out some of the issues of today. Recent events at home and abroad will be digested before we can make any sense of what a “pause for liberty” some 2500 years ago can teach us about our current situation.

Your Professor

Martin Blackwell is a specialist on Eurasian history, having lived in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Kyiv, L’viv (Ukraine) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) and speaking fluent Russian. Before earning his Ph.D. in History from Indiana University Bloomington, he worked in various capacities across the post-Soviet space including two memorable years as a Russian-speaking laborer at the Embassy of the United States in Moscow. His recent book Kyiv as Regime City: The Return of Soviet Power after the Nazi Occupation uncovers the reasons for Joseph Stalin’s popularity following the Second World War. While currently researching Soviet Communism’s unprecedented collapse in the 1980s, he is also interested in the cyclical nature of history and has taught survey courses on the ancient and medieval worlds. In his free time, Dr. Blackwell especially enjoys hanging out with his wife and nine-year-old daughter and exploring the world as a family.

A few buildings at Stetson University are said to be haunted, most notably Elizabeth Hall and the remnants of Hulley Tower. Central Florida abounds in ghost stories overall and such tales can be found all over the world. Students may be familiar with the misty apparitions that glide through walls or walk noisily upstairs in the middle of the night, but what about the life-sucking powers of Chinese fox spirits, the gory appetites of Tibetan flesh-eating demons, or the unrelenting stalking of Japanese vengeance ghosts? This course will introduce students to both classic examples of Western ghost stories and gothic tales as well as folklore and fictional accounts from India, Tibet, China and Japan. Western examples will include the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, and H.P. Lovecraft, while eastern stories will include Indian tales by Rudyard Kipling, Pu Songling's "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio," and the Japanese "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" by Akinari Ueda. Students will read these stories and compare and contrast how ghosts and otherworldly spirits are portrayed between cultures. Assignments will also focus on how these stories reflect the societies in which they were written and include viewings of popular Chinese and Japanese horror films.

Your Professor

Christopher Bell received his B.A and M.A from Florida State University and his PhD from the University of Virginia. His specialization is in Tibetan Buddhism, with a secondary concentration in Asian religions overall. He is particularly interested in Indian, Tibetan and Chinese demonologies. He has presented papers and published articles on Tibetan deity cults, oracles, and divination. Prior to joining Stetson in the fall of 2013, he taught at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, conducted fieldwork in Tibet and India, and lived in the south of Turkey. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. 

Today, more than ever before, globalization is part of our everyday local lives. We are linked to others on every continent:

• socially through the media and telecommunications
• culturally through movements of people
• economically through trade
• environmentally through sharing one planet
• Politically through international relations and systems of regulation.

In a fast-changing and interdependent world, education can, and should, help people to meet the challenges they will confront now and in the future. Global Citizenship is essential in helping people rise to those challenges. In this course, we will define global citizenship. We will discuss what steps need to be taken in order to prepare to become a global citizen. We will reflect on what it means to be an individual, what it means to be a citizen in your local community, and what it means to be a citizen of the world.

Your Professor

Savannah-Jane Griffin is a nationally recognized leader with specialty in non-profit leadership, strengths-based leadership, strategic planning, DEIA, and community building. She currently serves as CEO of the Neighborhood Center of West Volusia, which is the leading non-profit organization benefiting the homeless in Central Florida. Prior to serving as CEO, she worked at Stetson University for 15 years where she led and managed the campuses efforts in community engagement, diversity and inclusion, and religious and spiritual life. Through her consulting work she has helped numerous businesses, non-profit organizations, and higher education institutions build strategic plans that help them achieve their long-term goals. She is a Certified Strengths-Based Facilitator. She has been nationally recognized for her work in community engagement and was named a Bonner Foundation National Fellow and achieved the Florida Campus Compact Community Educator of the Year Award. Griffin holds a BA in Business Administration and a MBA from Stetson University.

Hidden disabilities are not easily obvious to others and include mental health conditions, autism spectrum disorders, and other learning disabilities. Approximately 26% of adults living in the United States have some type of disability but, of that number, nearly 20% are considered hidden disabilities. The course will cover what a disability is under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA, 2008) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973) and discuss the steps to be considered a person with a disability to receive accommodations for accessibility purposes. Students will ask themselves what it means to be a person with a hidden disability by reflecting on knowing a person with a disability in their circle of friends and family and how their knowledge has affected them throughout their lived experiences. In addition to texts on the ADAAA and Section 504, students will read real life stories – the first of a young adult diagnosed with Autism and the second of a man who was not diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome until his early forties – in order to explore the experiences of people with hidden disabilities at two different stages of their lives.

Your Professor

Martha von Mering earned both her bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her bachelor’s degree in Music Voice Performance led her to seek her master’s degree in Organizational Management from Antioch University New England followed by her Ph.D. at UMASS in Educational Administration and Leadership with a concentration in special education. With two deaf siblings, Professor von Mering is passionate about serving all students with disabilities so that they may be lifelong learners and successful in both their personal and professional lives. Having spent over twenty years in the PK12 special education arena, Professor von Mering is excited to be able to bring her skills to the post-secondary level.

For every student fascinated by ancient Egypt, the Greeks and Romans, the ancient Near East and the Fall of the Roman Empire, there is a nagging question of how we know so much about such long departed societies, especially when so few ancient documents were preserved. This course will introduce the student to the various ways in which ancient historians study these societies. You will learn how to use archaeology, how to read coins and inscriptions, and how to study the ancient natural environment. You will also have the chance to learn about current trends and controversies in ancient history, and how historians use the written and non-written evidence to study the distant past. The class will be challenging and interactive, as we look at what we can learn from actual coin "hoards", excavations, inscriptions, and the voices of the ancients themselves. No knowledge of ancient language is needed.

Your Professor

Dr. Kimberly D. S. Reiter is Associate Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at Stetson University. Her scholarship focuses on the Western Roman Empire, specifically the Aquitaine Basin, and in the impact of Romanization in perceptions of the wilderness. Within her own field, she is interested in the differing perceptions of "Romanization" as a measurement of Roman involvement and agency, and has recently co-authored a textbook in Western Civilization. Dr. Reiter has had extensive experience designing and teaching courses in environmental history and environmental issues and has presented and published papers on the teaching of environmental issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. She is currently President of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association (IEA). She is very active in student field projects as well, and directs the Stetson British Field Course on the Early English landscape. She is also advisor for the Stetson chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the History honors society, and chairs the Stetson Undergraduate Research committee.

From the geometric line-work found on the 5,000-year-old mummy of Ötzi the Iceman to the full-color, photo-realistic portrait of their dog that someone, somewhere is getting tattooed right now, tattoos have been a part of societies across the globe for millennia. In this seminar, we will explore the art of tattooing, examining different styles and methods, as well as delve into tattoos as self-expression and their place in various cultures and subcultures. Through frequent writing assignments, lively classroom discussions, oral presentations, and debates we will examine the questions of why do people get tattoos, what do they mean, how are they received by others, and much more.

Your Professor

Colin MacFarlane comes from a social science background with a focus on quantitative analysis and postmodern historiography. He is heavily tattooed, receiving his first piece at the age of 18 and continuing to build his collection every year since. His ink is diverse in content but has predominant stylistic influences from Japanese Traditional and Art Nouveau. He is a strong proponent of identity exploration and expression and has facilitated dialogues and presented workshops around identity development and intercultural competence with college students, business leaders, and higher education professionals. Joining Hatter Nation in the fall of 2012, he serves as the Director of Assessment and Operational Effectiveness where he leads the division of Campus Life and Student Success in answering the questions of what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how could we be doing it better. He received his Master of Education in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics and Assessment from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been working in higher education since 2009.

Communism swept the globe after 1917. What is it that has made socialism or communism widely appealing to so many people over the past century? Why, on the other hand, has it been so challenging to translate a doctrine that was so compelling on paper to reality? And if communism is, intrinsically, an anti-authoritarian ideology, why did it produce so many autocratic regimes? In this course, we are going to examine different facets of Socialist ideology and Communist state and society, using three case studies: USSR, PRC (China) and Cuba focusing on the rule of Stalin, Mao and Castro.

Your Professor

Monika A. Kurlander received her BA from University of Wroclaw, Poland and University of Massachusetts, and her MA from Stetson University. Prior to joining Stetson, she was a resident scholar at Harvard University, a faculty at PH College in Freiburg, Germany, and has been teaching International Baccalaureate for years.

"Persuasion is often more effectual than force"...Aesop. From social media, to marketing, or the courtroom, we are persuaded (and we persuade) on a daily basis. But, how do we know which tactic to use in a given situation? When should technology be included? In this course, students will examine, analyze, and practice a variety of strategies designed to improve their argument designs and communication skills. Be prepared to have thoughtful conversations and substantive analysis, critical thought, & reflection. This is a writing intensive course.

Your Professor

Michele Randall holds degrees in Technical Writing (BA), Creative Writing (MA), and Poetry (MFA), and has taught College Writing, Composition, Creative Writing, Interdisciplinary Studies and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction. Her book, Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books) was published in 2015, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Painted Bride Quarterly, The Potomac Review, Newport Review (First Prize Flash Fiction) and elsewhere. Her current work focuses on the new realities of mental health patients and was a finalist for the Peter Meinke Poetry Prize. She appreciates a good sense of humor and has been known to geek out over Dr. Who, Torchwood, Star Trek, and Star Wars.

Why has Putin invaded Ukraine? What should we do about it? In the end, why is there so much mystery and intrigue surrounding present-day Russia? This adventure will focus on critical moments creating ordinary Russians’ perceptions of the world. Surprisingly, many of these moments are not all that different from those shaping our own reality. Polarization, inequality, racism, popular culture, climate change, technological innovation, even the private sphere—everything will be on the table. But the particular intellectual trajectories working to form Russians’ understandings will be the points for analysis. Can we capture some of these dynamic historical processes which have long been being formulated behind what amounts now to a new “iron curtain”? The forces then creating the everyday lives and dreams of Russians will be what we talk and write about with the goal of understanding where our own futures are headed.

Your Professor

Martin Blackwell is a specialist on Eurasian history, having lived in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Kyiv, L’viv (Ukraine) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) and speaking fluent Russian. Before earning his Ph.D. in History from Indiana University Bloomington, he worked in various capacities across the post-Soviet space including two memorable years as a Russian-speaking laborer at the Embassy of the United States in Moscow. His recent book Kyiv as Regime City: The Return of Soviet Power after the Nazi Occupation uncovers the reasons for Joseph Stalin’s popularity following the Second World War. While currently researching Soviet Communism’s unprecedented collapse in the 1980s, he is also interested in the cyclical nature of history and has taught survey courses on the ancient and medieval worlds. In his free time, Dr. Blackwell especially enjoys hanging out with his wife and nine-year-old daughter and exploring the world as a family.

Have you ever been to a Latino party? Have you ever listened to salsa? Have you ever danced salsa? What do you know about salsa? This course explores the origin and history of one of the most versatile and popular musical genres of the 20th and 21st centuries. Salsa has transcended the borders of the Caribbean and the entire American continent to European and Asian latitudes because of its complex and irresistible rhythms, its attractive melodies, and its sensual and romantic lyrics. What is the musical power of salsa? What is inside of this contagious rhythm that communes magically with the content of a text? How can performers improvise words and new phrases without departing from the main message? We will examine the different styles of salsa in its various forms and its vocabulary and slangs to identify musical momentums, as well as to recognize their rhythmic structures and sounds. Will you dare to play it, dance it and sing it?

Your Professor

Jesus Alfonzo is associate professor of music in viola, chamber music and music history at Stetson University, where he also conducts the Viola Consort and leads the Viola Clinic. He is also a member of the Bach Festival Orchestra in Winter Park, Fla. and has been a member of the Rios Reyna String Quartet since 1987. He received a diploma and post-graduate Diploma from the Juilliard School of Music and master of music and doctorate in musical arts degrees from the Michigan State University.

Alfonzo was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He is a founding member of the EL SISTEMA, The Venezuelan National System of Youth Orchestras, in which he had the opportunity to develop both his teaching and playing skills. In 1980 and 1981, he was principal violist of the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra. Later, he became principal violist of Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for sixteen years. In his vast orchestral experience he has worked with distinguished conductors and soloists including Claudio Abbado, Gustavo Dudamel, Leonard Bernstein, Jose Antonio Abreu, Maxim Schostakovitch, Kristoff Penderecki, Zubin Mehta, Serge Baudo, Carlos Chavez, Jerzy Semkov, Eduardo Mata, Claudio Arrau, Joseph Silverstein, Mstislav Rostropovich, PinchasZukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Monserrat Caballe, Jean PierreRampal, Yehudi Menuhin and Henry Szeryng. He has taught in Venezuela at the Conservatorio de Musica Simon Bolivar, the Institute of Musical Studies and the ColegioEmil Friedman.

Since 1998, he has given an annual series of viola and string pedagogy master classes at EL SISTEMA in almost every state of Venezuela. In 2008, he wrote the First Catalogue for Latin American Viola Music.

Everyone begins the day by putting on clothes, but not everyone thinks about their choices. We thus begin the course with three central questions: Looking at history and culture, how have value and meaning - personal, cultural, economic -- been inscribed in clothes and adornment? How does what we wear reflect our choices and our places in the world? What are the true costs of style?

In the class we’ll read a text on fashion history at the beginning of class (and develop our eyes in terms of proportions, cuts, and fabric); we'll do an assignment where we analyze current writing about fashion against our own observations of Stetson style; we’ll read history and literary works about fashion movements and rebellion (the LA Zoot Suit Riot in the 1940s; youth culture in the 1960s); last, we’ll read the new book Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas, who addresses the environmental and personal cost of current fashion but also entrepreneurial and scientific breakthroughs in better practices. Each student will write a style credo for their final project.

Your Professor

Lori Snook, PhD, is a specialist in dramatic literature; her academic training is in Restoration comedy, a historical genre famously concerned with style, and she is currently working on a scholarly project on Noel Coward. She is also the chair of the English Department. 

What does the term "individual" mean apart from "the community"? What does "community" mean apart from the concept of "the individual"? This seminar will explore the relationship between these two concepts with a view to understanding how the community shapes the individual and how the individual can, and should, shape the community. We will think about issues pertaining to social justice and ask what responsibility the individual has for her or his own formation and what responsibility the individual has for the formation and well-being of the community. Service-learning in the community is central to this exploration.

Your Professor

Jeremy Posadas holds Stetson University's Hal S. Marchman Chair of Civic and Social Responsibility along with a joint appointment as associate professor of religious studies and gender studies. He joined Stetson after 11 years teaching in rural North Texas. As a professor, his chief goal is to foster learning experiences for diverse students to build an equitable and caring community as they co-create new understandings that are useful for disrupting and dismantling systemic injustice.

As a social ethicist, he critiques unjust aspects of society and proposes alternatives to promote social justice, on the basis of inter-sectionally feminist, queer, anti-racist, anti-capitalist and eco-centric moral principles. He majored in the Great Books in college yet later wrote his dissertation shaped by the post-structuralist thought of Michel Foucault. His recently published essays have addressed topics including reproductive justice; feminist anti-work theory; pedagogies to dismantle rape culture and its root cause, toxic masculinity; and solidarity with the working class. At his previous institution, he led the effort that secured a $1.3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation for social justice curriculum development. In addition, Posadas has held faculty fellowships at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Auburn Seminary (in NYC) and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. He serves on the elected committee that oversees the world's largest gathering of religion scholars and also co-chairs its unit on the study of class and labor.

In 2018, Posadas created the United Regions of America map, clustering all 3,142 counties (and equivalents) into 14 regions that calibrate local perceptions with major landforms and industries. This map offers a more useful alternative to the cultural stereotypes and colonialist assumptions projected in Colin Woodard's map of eleven American nations.

Before becoming a professor, Posadas worked as an organizer in the labor and LGBTQ movements; ministry leader in a multi-racial urban congregation; social work assistant in a pediatric hospital; and award-winning fast food order-taker/cashier. His hobbies include ice and inline skating, listening to Beethoven, watching sci-fi and rom-coms/-drams (bonus if they're gay!) and delving into Census data and regional geography.

The idea of giving back is not a new one; however, it may be suggested that the younger generation demands a stronger connection to the community. Individuals and organizations often connect to society through cause-related marketing, fundraising and community events. This course examines the fundaments of fundraising, including not-for-profit organization capital creation and recruiting, and for-profit organization cause-related marketing. We will focus on the idea generation, strategic goal creation and tactical implementation of fundraising activities. Students will learn how to develop effective fundraising activities that meet specific strategic goals, while making a difference and connecting with the community around them.

Your Professor

Dena H. Hale earned a triple major (BS degree in business administration, BS degree in marketing, and BA degree in foreign language and international trade) from the Southern Illinois University Carbondale, an M.BA degree from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and her Doctor of Philosophy Business Administration (PhD) in marketing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Dr. Hale has over 20 years of professional experience in marketing and sales within the services sector. Over the course of her professional career, Dr. Hale has held numerous roles. She has 11 years as a soldier, eight years as sales representative for transportation/logistics firms and radio advertising, 8 years as an Entrepreneur, and over 20 years of fundraising success.

Can u raed this? Do you bilveeptassinaloey in the pweor of iedas to cnagheateitudts, lveisandumtillaety, the wrlod? If so, you may wish to ponder over why so many life-changing ideas are ignored or downright rejected in the world. We agree that humans are rational, intelligent beings, but why do we often act against our intelligence? To what degree do we live our lives in an economically, socially, emotionally and spiritually thoughtless manner? Is it possible that despite our intellectual dominance, we live like goslings imprinting upon the first role model (economically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually) that we come across, blindly following it to the death of our human intelligence? Students registering for this course will read and analyze books in economics, psychology, sociology and religious studies to contemplate these questions and more. However, as you prepare to think outside the box, be wary of jumping into the frying pan.

Your Professor

Ranjini Thaver was born and raised like a gosling in South Africa. She completed her BA degree in Economics and Psychology at the University of Durban-Westville, a BA (Hons.) degree in Economics at the University of Cape Town, and then completed her MA and PhD in Economics at the University of Notre Dame. She has taught at Stetson since 1992 and co-created the AFS program and developed the first university-based microcredit program in the world. This program is located in poverty-stricken Spring Hill in DeLand, and in a small village in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. She has also teamed up with organizations such as the United Way, the FDIC and the IRS to offer business development workshops and personal finance classes to low-income families. She has taught courses in Economics, Africana Studies, Women and Gender Studies and the Honors Program.

In the United States alone, almost one-third of all food produced for human consumption is wasted. Meanwhile, approximately 10% of Americans experience food insecurity because they cannot afford food. Creative and resourceful cooks use their training and experience to reduce food waste in the kitchen while up-cycling trims and ingredients that would be normally wasted to create delicious dishes. The largest sector that contributes to food waste is everyday home cooking. This course will address all aspects of the food waste crisis in the world while featuring a hands-on format in which students will learn professional cooking techniques that create delicious food while eliminating food waste.

Your Professor

This course will be taught by award-winning Chef and Mathematician Hari Pulapaka who has been cooking professionally and full-time since 2005 in professional kitchens including in his own top-rated restaurant for 11 years. A four-time semifinalist for the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef, since the inception, Chef Pulapaka has been at the forefront of advocating for reducing food waste through creative up-cycling and professional cooking techniques. Chef/Professor Pulapaka was named as a Grist 50 Fixer in 2017 for his work in the food waste problem space. His recipes and writing appear in a number of high-profile publications by the James Beard Foundation, Grist, Edible Communities, Food Tank, Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times, to name a few. Chef Pulapaka graduated at the top of his class with a Diplôme Le Cordon Blue in the Culinary Arts, is a Certified Executive Chef (CEC) of the American Culinary Federation, a World Certified Master Chef (WCMC) from World Chefs and has been inducted into the American Academy of Chefs (AAC), the honor society of the ACF. Chef Pulapaka has published two books and his third book will be released in 2023.

This first-year seminar prepares students to critically examine our culture's extreme obsession with technology and media in an era of perpetual crisis. Using literature, film, graphic novels, and video games, students will analyze the cultural crisis of technology and explore societal issues surrounding privacy and information security, the coming AI revolution, and how science and technology are redefining what it even means to be “human.” How should we live in a world so conditioned—and threatened—by technological progress? To what extent does technology aid humans' search for meaning—and to what extent does it limit us? How are we to protect ourselves in a post-truth world? In this discussion-based and writing-enhanced course, we will address each of these topics as well as the question of how technology and digital culture are shaping our personal identities and lives. Texts may include (but are not limited to) Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Spike Jonze's Her, Lauren Beukes' Moxyland, Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, Issac Asimov's "The Last Question," Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, the B-Game "Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy," Toby Fox's Undertale, and selections from the television series, Black Mirror and Westworld.

Your Professor

Christopher D. Jimenez is an Assistant Professor of English at Stetson. His research examines the discourse of catastrophe in 20th- and 21st-century global Anglophone literature, with interdisciplinary interests in ecocriticism, nuclear criticism, biopolitics and the sociology of literature. His secondary work in the digital humanities focuses on the theoretical and computational features of alphabets and their relationship to artificial intelligence and the philosophy of language.

The young United States Navy was a failure for the first decades of existence, and only gained strength after the War of 1812. This course will introduce you to the study of naval history through the lens of the fighting ships of sail, their officers and the politics, economics and society that defined the evolution of the navy. Race, class, and gender will also be studied as we look at the crews that manned these ships, and the unique naval culture that formed shipboard.

Your Professor

Kimberly D. Reiter is Associate Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at Stetson University. Besides her favorite courses in Roman and English history, Dr. Reiter also teaches maritime and environmental history.As a teenager she sailed around the world in a homemade boat, comes from a naval family, and has expertise in naval and pirate history in the age of sail (She teaches a killer course on the History of Piracy). On dry land she is an expert on Stonehenge – ask her anything. She is past President of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association (IEA) and a National Councilor in the Council for Undergraduate Research.She has also been a Coleman Scholar for Entrepreneurship and recipient of the NEH Enduring Questions Grant. She directs the Stetson Field Course on the Early English landscape and the Stetson Rome Experience.

Why do war memorials and historical films spark controversy years after the events they depict? It's because they are part of historical memory—how people shape a collective identity based on ideas about the past. This kind of memory exists in many places—monuments in public parks, films, museums, public art, tourism, and public celebrations like parades and festivals. People learn about history from these kinds of places as much (or more) as they learn from history classes and books. To understand the power of historical memory, we have to think about what these collective memories tell us about the American past. Whose stories are told and whose are not? Whose faces and what events do we learn about in public space? What kinds of films tell America's stories? This course examines how Americans have shaped historical memory at various points in time from the early nineteenth century to the present. We will get out into our local community and use DeLand itself to examine the workings of historical memory in our own times. Ultimately, we will consider how Americans, collectively and in conflict, produce ideas about the past.

Your Professor

Dr. Emily Mieras teaches a range of courses in the History Department as well as in the American Studies Program and the Gender Studies Program. She is currently working on a research project about historical memory and community identity in the American South, work that helped inspire this course. Originally from Lexington, Massachusetts, Dr. Mieras grew up attending battle re-enactments on the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord—an experience that also shaped her interest in the ways history influences tourism, landscape, and sense of place. Dr. Mieras attended Harvard University (A. B in History and Government) and the College of William and Mary (M. A. and PhD, American Studies). Outside the classroom and the archive, Dr. Mieras enjoys exploring new places and seeing firsthand how “the past is present.”

This course is designed to explore the interconnectedness of diversity, identity, and social justice in modern, urban, industrial and global societies. In this course, we will use a multidisciplinary approach to gain insight into the socio-cultural context of identity, including the philosophical and historical bases of social justice and diversity at large. Through various media like music videos, documentaries and text, this course seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will prepare them to be sensitive to individual and cultural differences as well as interrogate structural barriers and bridges that impact equity.

You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. (Jim Croce)

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion. (Proverbs)

Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river. (Cordell Hull)

Ancient seekers of wisdom believed that there was meaning in human existence. If you found the rhythms of life, success followed. Other thinkers were less positive. No matter how hard you try, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  As did the sages of old, students will enter the ageless quest for wisdom. We'll explore the traditions of the ancient Near East including that of the biblical texts. We'll look to wisdom traditions within world religions and consider contemporary expression of wisdom themes. The worldview of wisdom, as a social movement and as language and literature, will provide students a blueprint for developing their own guide for finding meaning in life. This course counts toward the Writing Requirement.

Your Professor

Carmen Palmer, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, and specializes in the study of the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to teaching at Stetson, she taught in the areas of biblical studies and global citizenship at a number of colleges in Canada. She is interested in understanding the communities behind ancient texts and their sociohistorical settings, as well as how individuals come to join communities. She serves as the Chair of the International Cooperation Initiative Committee for the Society of Biblical Literature, where she learns much from the wisdom of other global contexts and communities.

In this course, we'll look at the relationship between travel and spirit, in other words, the relationship between outer journeys and the inner ones. Pilgrimages have long been a part of religious and cultural traditions. Consider, for example, the centuries of trips to the Holy Land, Mecca, Bodh Gaya, Lourdes and Santiago de Compostela. Think about secular pilgrimages to places like the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Vietnam War Memorial or Graceland. Besides pilgrimages to one specific place, many travelers have more free-ranging objectives: for example, the Australian walkabout or even the post-college rite of backpacking around Europe.

Why is travel such a catalyst for spiritual growth? In this course, we'll focus on the ways in which travel--especially unpredictable travel outside one's comfort zone--has an effect on the spirit. We'll read books and essays—fiction and non-fiction—and watch movies and videos, alas jumping-off points for thoughtful insights, discussions, and writings about the spiritual transformations of travel.

Your Professor

Nancy Barber has been a lecturer at Stetson University since 1998. She majored in political science at Davidson College, then worked as a journalist before getting an MA in English at Stetson, and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Florida. Barber specializes in creative nonfiction. Among her other writings, she published an essay on human cannonballs in Raritan Quarterly in 2006 and co-wrote Meals Worth Stopping for in Florida: Local Restaurants within 10 Miles of the Interstate, published by Globe Pequot Press in 2008. She is also a veteran of both sacred and secular pilgrimages.

This course provides an introduction to immersive technologies (virtual, augmented and mixed reality) and their application in business and society. Students will learn how these technologies have enhanced today's world by studying their use in everyday life and across a variety of industries including retail, education, healthcare, entertainment, sports, real estate, hospitality, manufacturing, military, and law enforcement. In addition, students will research and conceptualize a real-world virtual reality application that can be used to overcome challenges currently faced by business or society.

Your Professor

William Sause is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Business Systems and Analytics at Stetson’s School of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Nova Southeastern University and has over fifteen years of professional experience as a software developer for corporations such as Lockheed Martin and McKesson. At Stetson’s School of Business, Dr. Sause teaches courses in programming, databases and big data, management information systems, and spreadsheet modeling. His research interests include virtual environments for e-learning and data visualization, software development, and artificial intelligence. Dr. Sause also serves as the Brown Center Fellow for Digital and Remote Learning where he consults with faculty colleagues on the transition to online delivery of classes and promotes faculty development in digital and remote learning.

Water is life. We are water. We are drawn to water. We surround ourselves with water in every way possible, except when we try to expel it or hold it at bay. This multi-disciplinary course will explore human interfaces with water: water in music, literature, art, architecture, engineering, religion, culture, politics, business, geography, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and the fluid earth. Students will read three books and several articles about water; experience water-themed art and music; swim in springs; and smell sewage. They will create works of writing and other artistic expression to reflect on and express how they understand water, and will use all of these perspectives to address this ultimate question: Is clean, fresh water a fundamental human right?

Your Professor

Wendy Anderson, Professor and the Chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Studies has taught at Stetson since 2014 after 16 years as a professor at another university. She earned her B.S. and M.S. from Baylor University and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, all with majors in Biology and a specialty in plant and ecosystem ecology. Her research is focused on the movements of nutrients across ecosystem boundaries and the impacts those moving nutrients have on the plants and animals in the ecosystems where the nutrients arrive. As the county-wide elected Chair of the Volusia Soil and Water Conservation District, she brings science to the public to inform local and state policies for the protection of Florida's natural resources.

This class will study how societies allocate a critical natural resource, water. Analysis will range from the Incas in Peru to the Fertile Crescent in the Near East for historical context, then study modern water use in the Western US and Israel. You will learn the economics of water allocation and the environmental, political and social impacts of water policies.

Your Professor

Dr. de Bodisco is an environmental economist whose focus is water allocation issues in Florida and globally. His secondary interest is economic development, also with both local and global applications. He holds a PhD in Economics from Vanderbilt University and a BA from New College of the University of South Florida. After earning his doctorate, Dr. de Bodisco conducted applied research on agricultural and public water demand at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science (IFAS) at the University of Florida. More recently, he conducted a range of environmental policy analyses (e.g. protection of Florida's source waters, and optimal policies to mitigate damage from sea level rise for Florida's coastal communities) as an economic consultant in Orlando.

Course Description

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction that takes a global perspective on gender equality, feminism and workplace issues that affect women. Theories about gender differences, workforce discrimination and the legal framework for equity at work will be explored while looking at the position of women in the workplace from a global perspective. The course encourages reflective practice, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity. Writing as an inquiry-oriented and developmental process will be emphasized, along with oral communication with attention applied to critical thinking.

Course Concepts

• Workforce women
• Segregation
• Gender differences
• Employment discrimination
• Networks
• Mentors
• Communications
• Hostile environments
• Sexual harassment
• Life balance
• Women entrepreneurs
• Policies and practices

Your Professor

Meg Young, DBA, is a proud first-generation college graduate and faculty member. Her teaching philosophy is simple: to change the world for the better, one student at a time. Relationships matter!

First-Year Seminars (FSEMs) are part of the university's mission to acclimate you to the academic standards and practices of this institution, particularly in reference to writing and critical thinking. This is a one-unit/four-credit course. Learn more about the workload expectations for this course.

Regardless of political orientation, class, nationality (or any perspective that informs a worldview), everyone is in agreement that something is wrong with the “system." As we examine a wide range of historical reform figures and their strategies to effect social and institutional change (i.e., Lycurgus, Cicero, Not Sure, Oge´, and anonymous), you will work to emulate and/or adapt these models to achieve some degree of measurable civic improvement, either in a local or national context. Although this course is geared toward social action, it is also a writing course, which means that a premium is placed on refining your communicative fluency. To achieve this goal, a portfolio of your revised work is required (e.g. a comprehensive collection of all your course papers/drafts). The purpose of this course is

• to improve your ability to argue in writing,
• to analyze persuasive methods, and
• to provide historical/social contexts for your assignments that enable you to offer informed, convincing and critical arguments.

The course will incorporate some aspects of a traditional lecture, but dialogue/interaction is expected, since we will engage in many oral debates that will affect the content and revisions of your portfolio. 

In this class, critical thinking is embedded within the rhetorical process (e.g. by examining how authors/historians use tropes, for example, you learn how arguments become convincing. By applying these strategies yourselves, you then internalize these creative and critical processes. These rhetorical strategies are evaluated in all of your papers as you model sources and use similar approaches.

Your Professor

While intermittently working on his graduate degrees (Clemson, MA, English; University of South Carolina, PhD, Composition and Rhetoric), Michael Barnes taught, wrote and traveled in the Far East, calling Tokyo home for four years. Tenured at Stetson University in 2006, his current research interests focus on computer-facilitated empirical studies on academia via overlooked institutional artifacts (textbooks, internal communiques and so forth). Pedagogically a sophist, most of his courses push students to "argue both sides equally well."

>This Honors First Year Seminar explores the following question: “Why prison?” We return to this question throughout the semester, and will explore additional sub-questions together, including What do prisons teach us about society? What do prisons and policing teach about the historical legacies of racial violence in the United States? What do prisons teach us about (in)justice? What does studying prisons teach us about ourselves?

Your Professor

Yohann C. Ripert is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of World Languages and Cultures as well as a Faculty in the Honors Program at Stetson University. Yohann Ripert is currently completing two projects: the first is a book translation of the posthumous volume of Leopold Se'dar Senghor's essays on education and culture, entitled Education & Culture (Paris: Presence Africaine, 2013); the second is a monograph entitled Global Negritude: Confidential Conversations Across the Ocean. Global Negritude explores a set of recently declassified cables that reveal how Le'opold Se'dar Senghor engaged with Cold War cultural politics to strategically transform vestiges of colonial exploitation into postcolonial weapons.

This Honors First Year Seminar explores the following question: “Why prison?” We return to this question throughout the semester, and will explore additional sub-questions together, including: What do prisons teach us about society? What do prisons and policing teach about the historical legacies of racial violence in the United States? What do prisons teach us about (in)justice? What does studying prisons teach us about ourselves?

Your Professor

Sam Houston specializes in modern Islamic thought, comparative religious ethics, and Christian-Muslim relations. He spent two years teaching English in Abu Dhabi, UAE, during which time he traveled extensively throughout the Middle East. In 2013, he was awarded a U.S. State Department-sponsored Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Morocco. He earned his PhD from Florida State University, an MA in philosophy from Boston College, a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a BA from Baylor University. He enjoys traveling with his wife Shannon, long-distance running, and watching Arrested Development ad infinitum.

This Honors First Year Seminar explores the following question: “Why prison?” We return to this question throughout the semester, and will explore additional sub-questions together, including: What do prisons teach us about society? What do prisons and policing teach about the historical legacies of racial violence in the United States? What do prisons teach us about (in)justice? What does studying prisons teach us about ourselves?

Your Professor

Hannah Markley is an Assistant Professor at Stetson University. Her teaching and scholarly interests include the intersections of literature and science, the medical humanities, gender and sexuality studies, and the history of addiction. She has published several articles on the intersection of addiction narratives and psychopharmacology, femininity and the nineteenth-century practice of opium-eating, representations of appetite in fiction and medical history, and the hypodermic needle role in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Her current book project is entitled Morbid Cravings: Medicalizing Appetite in Nineteenth-Century Literature.

Introduction to Music Education: Principles and Methods of Diverse Learners is an introductory course that provides a foundation for upper-division coursework in education. Emphasis will include research-based literature on teacher effectiveness and student learning with classroom observations/participation. This course is designed to help music majors explore the historical, philosophical and social foundations of music education while examining issues that focus on music curricula, goals and objectives of music programs and the many aspects involved in teaching music. Teacher effectiveness and student learning are demonstrated through classroom observations and instruction.

Your Professor

John A. Lychner is Director of Music Education in the School of Music at Stetson University. He teaches classes in music education, supervises intern teachers, serves as an academic advisor as well as the advisor for the collegiate NAfME chapter, and is active as a clinician and conductor. Prior to coming to Stetson, Dr. Lychner was Professor of Music in the School of Music at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

Lychner earned a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) and was then awarded a Rotary International Foundation Scholarship to continue studies in music and education at the University of Nottingham in Nottingham, England. He taught band, choir and general music in the Lindbergh School District in St. Louis, Missouri. He received a Master of Arts from Northeast Missouri State University where he was the principal conductor for the University Concert Band and then went on to complete a PhD at Florida State University in Music Education. While in Tallahassee, Lychner was also assistant director of Bands at Rickards High School and woodwind coach and rehearsal assistant with the Tallahassee Symphony Youth Orchestra. During his career, he has also worked as a summer music camp instructor, church organist and church choir director.

Lychner has served in a variety of leadership roles with the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), including national Chair for two Special Research Interest Groups and President for the Michigan Music Educators Association, the Michigan affiliate of NAfME. He was also a member of the Production Staff for the International Association for Jazz Education annual convention.

His research in the areas of aesthetic response to music and teacher education has been published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, the International Journal of Music Education: Research, and the Journal of Band Research, among others. He has also been published in several volumes of the series Teaching Music Through Performance in Band and has written articles for the Music Educators Journal, The Michigan Music Educator and The Instrumentalist.

Introduction to Music Education: Principles and Methods of Diverse Learners is an introductory course that provides a foundation for upper-division coursework in education. Emphasis will include research-based literature on teacher effectiveness and student learning with classroom observations/participation. This course is designed to help music majors explore the historical, philosophical and social foundations of music education while examining issues that focus on music curricula, goals and objectives of music programs and the many aspects involved in teaching music. Teacher effectiveness and student learning are demonstrated through classroom observations and instruction.

Your Professor

Gregory W. LeFils Jr., PhD, is a visiting assistant professor of choral music education at Stetson University. His duties include teaching music education classes and supervising student teachers. LeFils holds a PhD in music education from Florida State University where his teaching included assisting with music education, conducting and graduate choral literature classes. As a conductor, he was the assistant conductor of various choral ensembles including the Women's Glee Club, Choral Union, Chamber Choir and the Tallahassee Community Chorus.

LeFils' professional experience includes directing two secondary choral music programs in Florida, conducting The Orlando Chorale and The Orlando Chamber Choir, and singing/soloing with the Festival Singers of Florida. His research interests include teacher effectiveness, music teacher curriculum and training, incorporating elements of teamwork into rehearsals, choral improvisation and choral history. LeFils has presented research and educational clinics throughout the region including the annual conferences of Music Education Associations in Alabama and Florida and other workshops for music educators in central Florida. His dissertation is entitled The History of the Stetson University Concert Choir. In addition to his roles as researcher and educator, LeFils maintains an active agenda as a speaker, clinician and adjudicator across the region.