First-Year Writing Intensive Seminars (FWIS)

FWIS 100 - INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC WRITING

Short Title: INTRO TO ACADEMIC WRITING

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: FWIS 100 introduces students to academic reading and writing through the study of a specific topic. In this course, students will acquire strategies to improve their critical reading comprehension and will learn how to enhance the clarity, style, and organization of their writing. Students will participate in group discussions and workshops, as well as individual consultations with Writing Coaches. Typical assignments include mapping an academic argument and summarizing a scholarly article. (This course does not fulfill the composition graduation requirement.)

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/programs/first-year-writing-intensive-seminars/fwis-100-overview

FWIS 101 - THE BIBLE IN POPULAR CULTURE

Short Title: THE BIBLE IN POPULAR CULTURE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: We will introduce various ways in which the Bible plays a significant role in contemporary popular culture. By analyzing biblical references found in music, film, art, and the medial, students will discover that even in today's seemingly secular culture, the Bible continues to influence our artistic, social, and political landscapes.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 102 - BLIND SPOTS: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO VISUAL CULTURE

Short Title: BLIND SPOTS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The blind spot of "the act of seeing" is its social construction, its ideological nature. This seminar unveils the various historical, political, economic, and social “filters” that condition our decoding of visual information. This writing seminar aims at developing skills to de-naturalize the "act of seeing."

FWIS 103 - WHODUNIT? INVESTIGATING TRUE CRIME AND CRIME FICTION

Short Title: TRUE CRIME AND CRIME FICTION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: It was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick! Crime fiction and true crime presents forensic evidence as a clue to find out: whodunit? This course examines the construction and adaptation of stories of crime, and investigates how the presentation of evidence influences our understanding of the crime.

FWIS 104 - WHAT WE OWE TO EACH OTHER: THE ETHICS OF WRITING AND RESEARCH

Short Title: WHAT WE OWE TO EACH OTHER

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course, students will watch episodes of The Good Place paired with readings on the theories featured to explore “what we owe to each other” across a range of contexts, from every day communication to equity and access in writing and research in the students’ chosen field of study.

FWIS 105 - MEDIA, POLITICS, AND THE 2024 ELECTION

Short Title: MEDIA POLITICS & THE ELECTION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course offers an in-depth examination of the 2024 American presidential election with a focus on the election’s media and context. Students will critically engage with the developments of the final months of the election while analyzing the social and cultural factors that shape the broader contours of American politics.

FWIS 106 - WRITING THE SENSES

Short Title: WRITING THE SENSES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course investigates the ways different disciplines develop theories of and tools for touching, tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing. We experiment with the distinctions we draw between our senses as well as other ways we process information including our sense of balance, sense of pain, sense of time, and synaesthesia.

FWIS 107 - IN THE MATRIX: ON HUMAN BONDAGE AND LIBERATION

Short Title: IN THE MATRIX

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Using the film "The Matrix" as the point of reference, this course presents celebrated explorations of servitude and emancipation - from religious mysticism to Marxism and artistic modernism. Texts by Lao Tzu, Farid ud-Din Attar, Plato, Freud, Marx, Baudelaire, J.S. Mill, Proust, de Beauvior, Malcolm X, Marcuse, Baudrillard.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 108 - FROM THE CHINA DESK: CHINA ANALYSIS AND REPORTING ON CHINA

Short Title: FROM THE CHINA DESK

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will require students to read critically, discuss, synthesize, summarize and analyze writings about the contemporary affairs of the People’s Republic of China. The students will become familiar with a range of basic documentary sources in English – official press releases, government reports – and also popular and academic secondary sources.

FWIS 109 - CONTEMPORARY ART AND ENVIRONMENT

Short Title: ART AND ENVIRONMENT

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course delves into questions of environment, ecology and sustainability through the lens of contemporary art. From earthworks, to performance, to land art, activist art, and community-based practices, participants engage critically and creatively with contemporary practices. This course is eligible for credit toward the Environmental Studies minor.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 110 - JEWS ON FILM: CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF JEWISH LIFE

Short Title: JEWS ON FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will explore the modern Jewish life around the world through the medium of film. Students will be exposed to diverse Jewish communities and their cinematic representations. The course will consider modern Jewish identity through the lens of various themes including race, gender, religion, nationalism, assimilation and secularization.

FWIS 112 - WRITING ABOUT VIDEOGAMES: APPROACHING VIDEOGAMES AS LITERATURE THROUGH CRITICAL READING AND WRITING

Short Title: WRITING ABOUT VIDEOGAMES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course students will engage with the growing body of academic literature on videogames, learning the theoretical and methodological perspectives scholars have used to engage with the medium for the past few decades.

FWIS 113 - RACE, PUBLIC POLICY, AND RACIAL CHANGE IN AMERICA

Short Title: RACE, POLICY, & RACIAL CHANGE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines conceptual and historical features of race and representation in the U.S., how race has shaped public policy development in the 20th century, and how American political institutions have affected outcomes for different racial groups. It also examines the causes and consequences of political mobilization for racial minorities.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 114 - THE HOLY GRAIL: RELIGION, QUEST, AND TRANSFORMATION

Short Title: THE HOLY GRAIL

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course explores the grail as object, moving from its roots in medieval romance through the literary-historical developments by which it emerges as a reality. Starting with the Arthurian legends, we explore developing associations of the grail within Christianity, and move to grail motifs in modern occultism, fiction and film.

FWIS 115 - EXPLORING BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH CHALLENGES

Short Title: EXPLORING BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive course introduces students to biological research and scientific communication. Student teams work on investigative projects with opportunities to ask questions, perform experiments, collect and analyze data, and share their findings. Recommended for students interested in the Biosciences major who have limited laboratory experience. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 115 if student has credit for BIOS 150.

FWIS 116 - AMERICAN JOURNEYS

Short Title: AMERICAN JOURNEYS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The narratives of travelers in the US are a window into history. Drawing on authors like Crevecoeur, Tocqueville, Trollope, and Kerouac, the class will discuss and write about themes such as Indian life and territorial expansion, democracy, slavery, civil war, western settlement, and 20th-cent. social movements. This course is eligible for credit toward the major in History.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 117 - CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY: "THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE WORLD" IN THE TWENTIETH CENT

Short Title: CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN THE AMER

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This FWIS course seeks to introduce Rice freshmen to the hidden layers of the story of the Americanization of the world in the twentieth century. The topics to be explored include the role played by private philanthropy in shaping and transmitting American cultural forms, the impact of the Cold War on the diffusion of American culture in such diverse arenas as literature, visual and performing arts, movies, TV programming and science and technology.

FWIS 119 - THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST: TELLING AND RE-TELLING THE TALE AS OLD AS TIME

Short Title: THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines filmic and literary adaptations of “Beauty and the Beast” from the “original” 1740 French version to the present day. It asks how the tale reflects cultural anxieties and fears and reinforces problematic representations of gender roles, toxic masculinity, and the tenuous fairy-tale conflation of goodness and beauty.

FWIS 120 - FICTION AND EMPATHY

Short Title: FICTION AND EMPATHY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive course explores the possible link between reading literary fiction and empathizing with others. We'll read short stories, novel excerpts, and literary criticism in an effort to scrutinize and more deeply understand the specific elements of fiction that might provoke empathy.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 121 - TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES: FICTION, FILM, SCIENCE

Short Title: TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: From an aesthetic perspective, time travel has existed as long as there have been stories. Narrative introduces alien temporalities, transporting listeners and readers into different temporal landscapes. This writing-intensive course investigates the historical, aesthetic, and scientific connections between the authorial and scientific co-creation of time travel.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 122 - CONVERSATIONS WITH SOCRATES

Short Title: CONVERSATIONS WITH SOCRATES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: We will read four Platonic dialogues about the last days of Socrates. We will explore the human concerns that Socrates and his friends discuss, and analyze their arguments. We will also consider literary features, and how the dialogues can inform our understanding of reading, writing, and speaking and their value.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 123 - STAR WARS AND THE WRITING OF POPULAR CULTURE

Short Title: STAR WARS & WRITING CULTURE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will unpack the cultural legacy of the Star Wars films through traditional literary analysis and close reading, by situating the films historically, and by considering the ways that the films reflect attitudes towards a variety of social issues, such as spirituality/religion, philosophy, race, gender, class, nationality, and imperialism.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 124 - WITNESSING THE HOLOCAUST

Short Title: WITNESSING THE HOLOCAUST

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will examine selected testimony given by Holocaust survivors. Their testimony varies according to time and the circumstance in which it was given and also according to the genre (film, memoir, drama) in which it is presented.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 125 - WRITING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Short Title: WRITING WITH AI

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The course will examine the role of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in students’ own composition education and prepare them to make informed decisions as consumers of this rapidly evolving technology. Topics include AI-assisted writing, AI ethics, and AI’s role in education generally and writing specifically. By the end of this course, in addition to improved writing skills, students will employ AI tools in their writing, evaluate some tools, and gain insights into how they are transforming education.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 127 - KING ARTHUR IN POPULAR CULTURE: TIME TRAVEL, SPACE ALIENS, AND HOLY HAND GRENADES

Short Title: KING ARTHUR IN POPULAR CULTURE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive seminar examines how medieval Arthurian literature has been re-imagined within 19th, 20th, and 21st century contexts. Beginning with foundational readings from Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, we will examine and discuss how the Arthurian tradition has been translated into various mediums, including the novel, comic books, art, and film.

FWIS 128 - SPACE, SPEED, CINEMA: THE AUTOMOBILE IN AMERICAN FILM

Short Title: THE AUTOMOBILE IN U.S. FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Covering movies ranging from the early 20th Century to the present day, this class asks students to think critically about what it means to depict the automobile through film and to consider how these depictions, and their meanings, might change in accordance with different historical, artistic, and political contexts.

FWIS 129 - CHINGIS KHAN AND THE EMPIRE OF THE MONGOLS

Short Title: THE EMPIRE OF THE MONGOLS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In the thirteenth century, the Mongols conquered China, Eastern Europe and Middle East. This class explores empire building, warfare, government and steppe culture, through reading the letters and memoirs of Mongols, merchants, travelers and adventurers. The students will work closely with primary sources to develop analytical writing skills.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 130 - WRITING EVERYDAY LIFE

Short Title: WRITING EVERYDAY LIFE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course is dedicated to the poetics of everyday life. It draws from the forms and colors of what surrounds us day-to-day, from landscapes, to bodies and objects. Students develop research and writing skills through creative fieldwork assignments and workshops. This course is eligible for credit toward the major in Anthropology.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 131 - THE WAR ON DRUGS

Short Title: THE WAR ON DRUGS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines the rhetoric and implications of the “War on Drugs” in the U.S. and Latin America. Students analyze from different perspectives key texts that are related to policies enacted in the last fifty years to suppress illicit drug use and that have affected civil liberties and national security.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 132 - SLAVERY ON FILM

Short Title: SLAVERY ON FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will look at the ways major Hollywood (or equivalent) films have dealt with chattel slavery in the United States. We will explore the general question of how feature films deal with controversial historical issues by analyzing more specifically how Hollywood has dealt with American slavery.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 133 - WOMEN AND THE HOLOCAUST: VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS

Short Title: WOMEN AND THE HOLOCAUST

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will examine the Third Reich and the Holocaust from the perspective of women as perpetrators and as victims.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 134 - RELIGION, TECHNOLOGY, AND MAGIC

Short Title: RELIGION, TECHNOLOGY, MAGIC

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The course explores how new technologies transform religion and lead to emergence of new forms of spirituality, as well as how religion inspires imagination in ways that lead to technological innovation. Students will discuss the history of contested categories, such as magic, and their relation to the history of technology.

FWIS 135 - WHAT IS A BOOK? THE MATERIAL FOUNDATIONS OF READING AND WRITING

Short Title: WHAT IS A BOOK?

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will explore the history of books and the material (both intellectual and physical) from which they are created. We will consider how the physical form of books has shaped their content and meaning and think critically about how contemporary media shape our reading, writing, and thought.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 136 - COWBOYS AND CORNFIELDS: (UN)MAKING THE AMERICAN WEST IN FILM, T.V., AND LITERATURE

Short Title: (UN)MAKING THE AMERICAN WEST

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: FWIS 109 examines film, television, novels and short stories in order to consider the American West from a variety of different perspectives and identities. In each case, we examine how alternate Western narratives intersect with, or refute, the dominant tropes and mythologies of this most contested of cultural spaces.

FWIS 137 - POP MUSIC AND AMERICAN CULTURE

Short Title: POP MUSIC & AMERICAN CULTURE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Recent cultural movements encourage a more serious exploration of popular music. This course will participate by taking a critical look at what songs mean, what songs/albums/genres express, what our interest in music expresses, and how writing about music can lead us to great insights.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 138 - PLOTTING MARRIAGE: ROMANCE, INHERITANCE, JURISPRUDENCE

Short Title: PLOTTING MARRIAGE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What does marriage do – socially, economically, legally? In "Plotting Marriage" we will examine representations of marriage in literature and film to answer these questions, revealing how the institution of marriage has largely constructed our understanding of gender roles and how representations of marriage have plotted to represent marriage as desirable.

FWIS 139 - SHAKESPEARE IN ADAPTATION

Short Title: SHAKESPEARE IN ADAPTATION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course, as its central focus, addresses the tension that exists between the longevity of Shakespeare’s stories and the fluidity of adaptation that has been applied to these works, begging the question of where lines can be drawn between novel creation and adaptation.

FWIS 140 - IMAGINING THE PAST: FILM, FICTION, AND HISTORY

Short Title: FILM, FICTION, AND HISTORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In the twentieth century and beyond, movies and television serve as an important source of mythologized national narratives (or somewhat “faked news”) from war movies, to westerns, to “biopics” of figures such as Kenneth Turing. Are their patterns of distortion at work, we can identify? How do we correct them?

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 141 - TECHNOLOGIES OF TASTE

Short Title: TECHNOLOGIES OF TASTE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Does pineapple belong on pizza? Does red Gatorade taste better than blue? Many of our favorite flavors are produced and marketed by food science and the food industry. This writing-intensive seminar investigates how technologies of taste shape our palates and the ways we think and write about what we eat.

FWIS 142 - WATER AND CITIES

Short Title: WATER AND CITIES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Investigates ancient, historical, and modern cities and how their residents received water. Questions include: how cities developed water resources, how water shaped city life, and how the environment was engineered to produce water. Students will be able to choose a city and a water topic for their final seminar project.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 143 - LEARNING TO OBSERVE THROUGH A TOUR OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TEXAS

Short Title: NATURAL HISTORY OF TEXAS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course, students will hone their skills of observation through careful study of nature, from the geology to the birds and plants of Texas. Students will learn how to interpret and communicate these observations through writing and illustration. This course will involve several local field trips to explore the natural history of the upper Texas coast.

FWIS 144 - THE 2024 FEDERAL AND STATE ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

Short Title: 2024 ELECTIONS IN THE US

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will utilize the 2024 U.S. elections as the vehicle through which to achieve the six FWIS Learning Goals. It will involve a set of written work and oral presentations on specific election and political related topics, with concomitant group discussion and debate of those topics, culminating with a research paper.

FWIS 145 - MUSEUMS IN WORLD HISTORY

Short Title: MUSEUMS IN WORLD HISTORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What is a museum? What role do they play in the modern world? This course fosters critical thinking about how and why museums were important institutions. They emerged as sites of identity within and between local, regional, national, imperial and global networks. Globally, a diverse number of museums are at once beloved and controversial, commanding and irrelevant. These contradictions aren’t new. To address the future of museums we must understand the evolution of these institutions in their global pasts.

FWIS 146 - APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Short Title: APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What is Apartheid? During the course, we will learn what Apartheid was and how white South Africans constructed and justified a system of racial separation, oppression, and violence in South Africa during the 20th century. We will also learn about the ways non-white South Africans fought against it.

FWIS 147 - AMERICA THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

Short Title: AMERICA THROUGH FOREIGN EYES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The United States has always been a source of fascination – both attraction and repulsion – for many people around the world. The course covers the perceptions and interactions of five regions – Africa, China, France, Mexico, and Russia – with America. It offers ways to approach cross-cultural study and concludes with a segment that “reverses the gaze” by analyzing American opinions of other cultures. "America through Foreign Eyes" addresses four overarching themes: 1) democracy and modernity; 2) globalization and capitalism; 3) racism and immigration; and 4) intellectual and cultural life.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 148 - THE ART OF SPORTSWRITING

Short Title: THE ART OF SPORTSWRITING

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This class is designed to introduce students to sports writing as a vehicle for conveying complex ideas and stories, and investigating difficult issues. It is not a sports journalism course, but rather one focused on story-telling through and about sports. We will read a variety of fictional and non-fictional writing about sports as a means to learning about how to look deeply into the world and the people around us.

FWIS 149 - GRAPHIC MEDICINE

Short Title: GRAPHIC MEDICINE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Do graphic novels reflect perceptions of medicine? Can comics orient our notion of care? Formally dependent on interruption, graphic novels demonstrate the complexity of reading—reading texts, reading bodies, reading trauma. Thus, our class will grapple with disruption and healing in comics and will consider these implications for medical practice. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 149 if student has credit for CLAS 303.

FWIS 150 - THE WORLD OF MEDIEVAL MEDICINE

Short Title: THE WORLD OF MEDIEVAL MEDICINE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: How did medieval Christians understand and treat mental and bodily illness? How did their experiences of pain, sex, childbirth, and death interact with larger concepts of God, nature, and the heavens? What role did angels and demons play? This seminar will explore these issues through close reading of medieval texts. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 150 if student has credit for FSEM 171/MDEM 171/RELI 171.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 151 - THINK OF THE CHILDREN – HISTORIES OF 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN CHILDHOOD

Short Title: THINK OF THE CHILDREN

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing intensive seminar casts attention to some histories of twentieth century American childhood. Some of the topics explored include the advent of juvenile courts, psychologization of children, coming-of-age film, youth political disenfranchisement, and age as means of organizing collective life. Any and all majors are welcome.

FWIS 152 - NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS: REAL REMEDIES OR SHADY SCIENCE?

Short Title: THE SCIENCE OF SUPPLEMENTS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive seminar examines evidence for the use of nutritional supplements in promoting health. Topics include the role of vitamins, herbs and food-based supplements in medicine; the biology of illnesses such as cancer and depression; and the molecular mechanisms of supplements in disease prevention and management.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 153 - BODY POLITICS IN FRANCOPHONE FICTIONS

Short Title: BODY POLITICS FRENCH FICTIONS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: How do political, social, and cultural forces shape women’s experience and beliefs about their body? We will analyze the social construction of women’s body through contemporary Francophone fictions and discuss the roles personal, institutional, and disciplinary powers play in the degree of control women retain over their body.

FWIS 154 - MONSTERS, HYBRIDS, AND MYTHICAL REALMS: CROSSING BOUNDARIES INTO THE LAND OF MARVELOUS NARRATIVES

Short Title: MONSTERS, HYBRIDS, AND MYTHICA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive seminar will transport you on a mesmerizing journey through time and literature as we explore narratives of monstrous creatures and mythical realms. From ancient histories, through gothic literary works, to cinematic classics, we will study the evolving depictions of monstrosity, and gain insights into perceptions of otherness.

FWIS 155 - WRITING ASIAN FOOD IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

Short Title: WRITING ASIAN FOOD

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course exposes students to the exercise of writing about Asian food. Students engage in the activity of "converting" multi-sensory experience, i.e. eating food, into writing on the one hand and think about transnational Asian food in the context of globalizing world. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 155 if student has credit for ASIA 205.

FWIS 156 - THE STATISTICAL MEASURES OF CAUSE AND CORRELATION

Short Title: CAUSE AND CORRELATION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Statistics is traditionally concerned with correlation rather than saying anything about cause-and-effect. This class will examine recent work toward extending statistical methods to include formal inference about causal relationships. We will consider the historical development of the field as well as current applications of the methods.

FWIS 157 - TRAVEL AND MODERN ASIA: LIVED EXPERIENCES ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Short Title: TRAVEL AND MODERN ASIA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this class, we will read and write about people who traveled across and beyond Asia from the fourteenth century to the twentieth century, focusing on core topics such as intercultural interactions, globalization, and modernity. In doing so, we will also challenge the common misconception that Asian societies were isolated from one another and from the rest of the world before the arrival of the Westerners in Asia in the nineteenth century.

FWIS 158 - THE HOLOCAUST IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Short Title: THE HOLOCAUST IN HISTORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will examine the history of the Holocaust from early accounts to recent reconstructions of the origins, implementation, and aftermath of the “Final Solution.” We will also analyze documents, testimonies, memoirs, trial records, and various forms of representations and commemoration of the Shoah.

FWIS 159 - ROBOPSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE INTERNET

Short Title: SPIRITUALITY OF THE INTERNET

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: From TikTok to Instagram, Google and ChatGPT, artificial intelligence is an inescapable aspect of everyone’s daily life. This course explores how the internet platforms they engage with in their daily lives, and the dreams of the technologists who create them, are also embedded in the history of philosophy and religion.

FWIS 160 - GENDER, RACE, AND THE CARCERAL STATE: INCARCERATION THROUGH AN INTERSECTIONAL LENS

Short Title: GENDER, RACE, & INCARCERATION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will examine the gender and racial dynamics of incarceration, particularly as they intersect with other systems of oppression. This interdisciplinary course will provide students with the tools to consider the place of the prison in the context of the United States punitive landscape, and in considerations of “justice.”

FWIS 161 - AUSTRALIAN CULTURE AND HISTORY

Short Title: AUSTRALIAN CULTURE AND HISTORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course covers over 200 years of Australian culture. We interrogate the many crises following the British invasion. Students will investigate settler colonialism, issues surrounding Indigeneity, democracy, and cultural change. We will read novels, newspapers, and archival objects to think critically about life in the colonies.

FWIS 162 - HOW TO WRITE ESSAYS ABOUT LOVE

Short Title: HOW TO WRITE ESSAYS ABOUT LOVE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Love is an ancient philosophical problem. Writing about love means discussing politics, race, and sexuality, alongside psychology and biology. Our inherited ideas about love - how, who, and in what way, is it best to love? - are undergoing a revolution. Students will learn how to write to participate in these conversations.

FWIS 163 - SEX, DEATH, AND SPIRITUAL WRITING

Short Title: SEX DEATH & SPIRITUAL WRITING

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course we will look at the ways in which a variety of historical and contemporary “spiritual but not religious” texts grapple with sexuality, mortality, race, gender, class, and politics. This course will foreground discussion and reflection, and students will write weekly discussion posts on canvas, in addition to the three major papers and a group presentation.

FWIS 164 - WAYS OF WALKING IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Short Title: WAYS OF WALKING

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course explores the act of walking, in theory and in practice. Through readings, discussions, writing assignments, and group and individual walks, it examines questions about the body and its movements; the construction and navigation of space; the tradition of travel writing; and the relationship between walking and thinking.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 165 - MEDIATION, "FAKE NEWS," AND DEMOCRACY

Short Title: FAKE NEWS AND DEMOCRACY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive seminar examines how and why the spread of disinformation has become increasingly more prevalent in our 21st century society and what impact it has on our democratic processes. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to discussing fake news, drawing from history, philosophy, journalism, media studies, and political science.

FWIS 166 - EXPLORING THE WORLD THROUGH INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Short Title: EXPLORING INTL EDUCATION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Every year millions of college students leave their home countries to spend months, or even years, integrating into a new culture and interacting meaningfully with people in another country. This course explores significant features of international education, through reading, writing, and learning from experts.

FWIS 167 - BOOKS YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN: AN EXPLORATION OF THE READING EXPERIENCE

Short Title: BOOKS YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What is it about certain books that draws us in and keeps us turning the page? To answer this question, this class examines selected works of fiction and creative nonfiction with a focus on literary form, the psycho-social functions of narrative, and the physical and emotional experience of reading.

FWIS 168 - CASE STUDIES OF BUILDING DESIGN PROBLEMS

Short Title: BUILDING DESIGN PROBLEMS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: We will analyze buildings that ended up in legal battles. Problems include structural failures, design blunders and near disasters. You will write about what went wrong and why, who saved that day and who should have acted differently. You will learn to write critically and present a convincing argument.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 169 - WHAT ARE HUMAN RIGHTS?

Short Title: WHAT ARE HUMAN RIGHTS?

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: We hear and talk about "human rights" frequently, but few of us have an easy time defining ideas so inherently contested and pitted against one another. This class will read, discuss, and write about the history and future of human rights in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 170 - "WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP?"

Short Title: "WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP?"

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Paying special attention to the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and (formerly) enslaved peoples of the United States, this seminar takes a broad approach to the examination of “citizenship,” its global contexts, and its material domains, including education, identity, labor, language, sovereignty, and suffrage.

FWIS 171 - THE DEVIL AND THE WORLD: THE IMAGE OF THE DEVIL IN WESTERN CULTURE

Short Title: THE DEVIL AND THE WORLD

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What are the reasons for the Devil's sustained popularity in Western culture? And what are the consequences of this "popularity"? How and why did the Devil, the embodiment of pure evil, become a romantic and tragic hero? This class will tackle these and other questions regarding the image of the Devil.

FWIS 172 - SITES, SOUNDS, & STORIES: THE RHETORIC OF PUBLIC MEMORY

Short Title: RHETORIC OF PUBLIC MEMORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course invites students to consider whose stories we remember, and how/when/where. How does the framing of historical events bolster or disrupt dominant narratives of public memory? Students will examine scholarship on public memory and conduct analyses of the sites, sounds, and stories of national and local histories.

FWIS 173 - GENDER AND RACE IN U.S. POPULAR MUSIC

Short Title: GENDER & RACE IN US POP MUSIC

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course aims to introduce students to popular music as a site for critical analysis. Listening to U.S. female artists across time and genre, students will consider how gender, race, and class become signified in sound and how the intersection of these categories shape iconic figures. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 173 if student has credit for FSEM 159/HIST 159.

FWIS 174 - SOUNDING THE CITY

Short Title: SOUNDING THE CITY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Sound surrounds us. And yet we often put little thought into what role it plays in our lives and the lives of our public spaces. This course aims to correct this oversight by offering an introduction to the field of sound studies focused on Houston’s audio environment, past and present.

FWIS 175 - POLITICS AND RELIGION: THE JEWISH QUESTION

Short Title: POLITICS AND RELIGION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Though the separation of church and state is a tenet of modern democracies, the relationship between religion and politics is more complicated than it appears. In this course, we will focus our attention on the Jewish Question as a case study for thinking about the relationship between religion and politics.

FWIS 176 - DRAMATIC PAUSES: INTRODUCTION TO EAST ASIAN PERFORMANCE STUDIES

Short Title: EAST ASIAN PERFORMANCE STUDIES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Introduces performing arts of China, Japan, and Korea, like Noh, P'ansori, and Beijing opera, focusing on psychological and multimedia aspects. Introduces performance studies--how to think, write, and present ideas about singing, dancing, storytelling, and drama from perspectives like ritual, gender, music, choreography, costume, stage design, and literary criticism.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 177 - STORYTELLING IN BUDDHISM

Short Title: STORYTELLING IN BUDDHISM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course explores the forms and contexts of storytelling in Buddhism, with a broad eye toward literature, visual arts, and performance. Students engage in both creative and academic writing to understand the importance of narrative in Buddhist cultures and different approaches to writing in the modern day. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 177 if student has credit for FSEM 109.

FWIS 178 - JESUS CHRIST MOVIE STAR

Short Title: JESUS CHRIST MOVIE STAR

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This class presents a film-by-film look at several "Jesus" films as recreations and revisions of sacred texts, as reflections of religious and social history, and as responses to biblical scholarship on the subject of the historical Jesus. Writing workshops are interspersed with essential readings and film discussions. Films viewed outside class period. Student film festival outside class period. Evaluation: film journal, 4 papers, creative film short.

FWIS 179 - MEDICINE AND DISEASE IN TRANSNATIONAL ASIA: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Short Title: MEDICINE IN TRANSNATIONAL ASIA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What does the history of medicine look like when Asian experiences are emphasized? This writing-intensive seminar examines the history of health and disease in Asia and beyond. Topics covered include public health as both a political and practical concept; pluralistic medical systems; colonial and semi-colonial medicine; disease stigmatization; and pandemics.

FWIS 180 - RACE IN THE 20TH CENTURY UNITED STATES

Short Title: RACE IN THE 20TH CENTURY USA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course combines ideas from history, public policy, sociology, and political science to examine how ideas of race have changed over from 1877 to the present. While we might think of ideas like “white,” “Black,” “Asian American,” or “Hispanic” as concrete categories, all of these categories and their social impact changed significantly over the course of a century.

FWIS 181 - GRAPHIC BLACKNESS: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMIC BOOK TRADITION

Short Title: AFRICAN AMERICAN GRAPHIC NOVEL

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines the struggle for black representation in comics and graphic novels. We will discuss the unique opportunities that sequential narratives present to creators as they represent race on the page and we will examine the history of black artists working in the comic book industry.

FWIS 182 - BORDER POLITICS: MIGRATIONS AND THE MEANING OF THE NATION

Short Title: BORDER POLITICS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In the midst of a global climate and migration crisis, the safeguarding of borders has become an increasingly contentious issue worldwide. In this course we will explore the perilousness of the human condition, as experienced in the crossing of real and imaginary borders, and in the traumatic loss of homeland and self.

FWIS 183 - UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA? THE POLITICS OF SPACE

Short Title: UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA: POL. OF SPACE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course discusses utopias and dystopias across history and cultures through a political lens: national borders, imperial conquests, and modern urbanism all result from map-making and the power of human engineering to overcome or live in harmony with nature. Content includes films, essays, comics, novels, and more. All majors welcome.

FWIS 184 - THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION OF TEXAS

Short Title: CULTURAL IMAGINATION OF TEXAS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What do we mean by Texas? How has Texas been figured in the American imagination? How are ideas of place both meaningful and limiting? In this course will look at how Texas has been portrayed in the American imagination while uncovering lesser told histories of the state.

FWIS 185 - CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY

Short Title: CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This class will delve into contemporary American poetry by exploring outstanding poetry books of the previous year. Students will study American poetry in literary and historical contexts, develop ability to analyze how poems "work," develop ability to create clear, effective prose, and build framework for exploring other types of poetry.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 187 - INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN LITERATURE AND MEDIA IN ENGLISH

Short Title: INTRO TO AFRICAN LIT & MEDIA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Intro to African Literature and Media in English explores a variety of cultural and artistic work emerging out of Africa after 1945. In this course, students will learn verbal and written communication skills, especially how to revise and edit their own academic writing. No prior knowledge of African literature is required.

FWIS 188 - INTRODUCTION TO ENGINEERING DESIGN AND COMMUNICATION

Short Title: ENG DESIGN & COMMUNICATION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students. Enrollment limited to students in the School of Architecture or School of Engineering colleges.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Students learn the engineering design process to solve real-world problems by evaluating design requirements and constructing innovative solutions in the OEDK. Several communication assignments will be completed by individuals rather than teams. Fall limited to ENGI and NSCI students; spring open for engineering and architecture students. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 188 if student has credit for ENGI 120.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 189 - POST-APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE AND FILM

Short Title: POST-APOCALYPTIC LIT AND FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Our culture is fascinated with its own destruction. From zombies to nuclear war, ecological disasters, aliens, disease and killer machines, Armageddon takes many forms. Structured around ways in which we have imagined the world ending, this course charts the cultural consciousness of apocalypse.

FWIS 191 - THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY

Short Title: THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: How exactly does the length of a piece of writing connect to its expression as a work of art and our interpretation of it? In this course, we’ll consider “shortness” as a challenge authors undertake, investigating the ways they weave complex tales into brief, often pithy, masterpieces.

FWIS 192 - THE ROARING TWENTIES

Short Title: THE ROARING TWENTIES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The 1920s were about new possibilities, aesthetic experimentation, and frenzied expression. We'll examine iconic '20s literature by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, and others, as well as the linchpins of '20s culture: jazz, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance, and modern art. Highlights include lessons on the Charleston and a Roaring Twenties soiree.

FWIS 193 - THE RULE OF LAW AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

Short Title: LAW AND JUSTICE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Democratic societies claim to be based on the rule of law. This course examines what is required of a society that treats every individual equally regardless of a person´s status or influence. We will analyze the relationship of politics and the law in the distinct historical and national contexts of the contemporary US and post-war Germany, as well as exploring the topics of crimes, guilt, punishment and vigilante justice in selected literary texts and films.

FWIS 194 - LATIN AMERICAN DICTATORSHIPS THROUGH FILM

Short Title: LATIN AMERICAN DICTATORSHIPS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines ways films have grappled with histories of dictatorship in Latin America, in the 20th century. We will use films alongside other historical and literary sources, to learn about various dictatorial regimes and explore broader questions about state violence, democracy, revolution, imperialism, justice, and memory.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 196 - BUSINESS IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION

Short Title: BUSINESS IN LITERATURE & FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The world of business has long been a culturally rich site for national and self-reflection. As we read representations of business in literature and film, we will consider an array of allegories, motifs, and plots about the profits and pitfalls of American commerce culture.

FWIS 197 - SCIENCE, PSEUDOSCIENCE AND SKEPTICISM: HOW TO TELL GOOD SCIENCE FROM JUNK SCIENCE

Short Title: SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE?

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This class focuses on scientific skepticism and critical thinking, and how they can be utilized to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Core topics include the fallibility of perception; mechanisms of self-deception; as well as metacognition, cognitive biases and logical fallacies. These topics will be illustrated through examples of good and bad science.

FWIS 198 - THE ESSAY AS LITERATURE: MONTAIGNE AND HIS LEGACY

Short Title: THE ESSAY AS LITERATURE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This FWIS will treat the essay as a genre that is just as artful and worthy of attention as poetry, fiction, or drama. We’ll begin with Montaigne, the inventor of the form, and consider how his legacy has been embraced and complicated by essayists and educators in our own time. Along the way, we’ll read and write a variety of critical, personal, and scholarly essays, strengthening our abilities as writers, readers, and thinkers.

FWIS 199 - THE SOCIAL LIFE OF DATA

Short Title: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF DATA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The Social Life of Data is an introduction to the discipline of social-cultural anthropology and its engagements with data as both a topic of study and key figure animating contemporary human life. More specifically, the course interrogates how recent investments in data inform long-standing structures of social inequality.

FWIS 200 - TRANSFER CREDIT – FIRST-YEAR WRITING (FWIS)

Short Title: TRANSFER CREDIT-FWIS WRITING

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Transfer Courses

Course Type: Transfer

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: For transfer of an approved first-year writing intensive seminar. This course may not have been taken pass-fail at the transferring institution and must meet Rice University’s transfer credit requirements. Credit for this placeholder course will count towards the total credit hours required for graduation, and will be eligible to satisfy the university’s Writing and Communication Requirement. Transfer students must contact the FWIS transfer credit advisor to determine if their course will transfer. Instructor Permission Required.

FWIS 203 - WHODUNIT? INVESTIGATING TRUE CRIME AND CRIME FICTION

Short Title: TRUE CRIME AND CRIME FICTION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: It was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick! Crime fiction and true crime presents forensic evidence as a clue to find out: whodunit? This course examines the construction and adaptation of stories of crime, and investigates how the presentation of evidence influences our understanding of the crime.

FWIS 209 - CONTEMPORARY ART AND ENVIRONMENT

Short Title: ART AND ENVIRONMENT

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course delves into questions of environment, ecology and sustainability through the lens of contemporary art. From earthworks, to performance, to land art, activist art, and community-based practices, participants engage critically and creatively with contemporary practices. This course is eligible for credit toward the Environmental Studies minor.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 210 - JEWS ON FILM: CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF JEWISH LIFE

Short Title: JEWS ON FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course will explore the modern Jewish life around the world through the medium of film. Students will be exposed to diverse Jewish communities and their cinematic representations. The course will consider modern Jewish identity through the lens of various themes including race, gender, religion, nationalism, assimilation and secularization.

FWIS 211 - THE MEANING AND IMPACT OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

Short Title: MEANING AND IMPACT OF QUANTUM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: We will discuss many ongoing debates over the content and meaning of quantum theory. This will reveal how theories are formed, how science is done, how these impact our day-to-day culture, and the surprisingly significant role that humans play in objective science.

FWIS 213 - THE SUPERNATURAL SOUTH: HAUNTED PLANTATIONS, CONFEDERATE VAMPIRES, AND CREATURES IN THE BAYOU

Short Title: THE SUPERNATURAL SOUTH

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course, we will examine and analyze the meanings of supernatural stories—both historical and contemporary—set in the American South, as well as southern ghost tourism. In doing so, we will discuss what these stories tell us about southern history, culture, and ongoing debates over southern memory.

FWIS 214 - A HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA IN THE AMERICAS IN 12 OBJECTS

Short Title: AFRICAN DIASPORA IN 12 OBJECTS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course revolves around twelve objects that reflect the profound impact of the African diaspora in the Americas. From towering monuments to humble leather pouches, each artifact serves as a portal into the multifaceted tapestry of Black lives from the 16th to the 21st century, from the US to Brazil.

FWIS 215 - EXPLORING BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH CHALLENGES

Short Title: EXPLORING BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive course introduces students to biological research and scientific communication. Student teams work on investigative projects with opportunities to ask questions, perform experiments, collect and analyze data, and share their findings. Recommended for students interested in the Biosciences major who have limited laboratory experience.

FWIS 217 - CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY: "THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE WORLD" IN THE TWENTIETH CENT

Short Title: AMERICANIZATION OF THE WORLD

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This FWIS course seeks to introduce Rice freshmen to the hidden layers of the story of the Americanization of the world in the twentieth century. The topics to be explored include the role played by private philanthropy in shaping and transmitting American cultural forms, the impact of the Cold War on the diffusion of American culture in such diverse arenas as literature, visual and performing arts, movies, TV programming and science and technology.

FWIS 218 - BAD MOMS: THE RHETORIC AND REALITY OF AMERICAN MOTHERHOOD

Short Title: BAD MOMS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines the experiences of mothering parents who do not fit cultural and social ideals of “good motherhood” – working mothers, immigrant mothers, mothers who are single, young, absent, sick. Students will analyze cultural texts and read essays from different scholarly fields, including sociology, history, philosophy, and others.

FWIS 219 - THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST: TELLING AND RE-TELLING THE TALE AS OLD AS TIME

Short Title: THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines filmic and literary adaptations of “Beauty and the Beast” from the “original” 1740 French version to the present day. It asks how the tale reflects cultural anxieties and fears and reinforces problematic representations of gender roles, toxic masculinity, and the tenuous fairy-tale conflation of goodness and beauty.

FWIS 220 - FICTION AND EMPATHY

Short Title: FICTION AND EMPATHY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive course explores the possible link between reading literary fiction and empathizing with others. We'll read short stories, novel excerpts, and literary criticism in an effort to scrutinize and more deeply understand the specific elements of fiction that might provoke empathy.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 221 - TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES: FICTION, FILM, SCIENCE

Short Title: TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: From an aesthetic perspective, time travel has existed as long as there have been stories. Narrative introduces alien temporalities, transporting listeners and readers into different temporal landscapes. This writing-intensive course investigates the historical, aesthetic, and scientific connections between the authorial and scientific co-creation of time travel.

FWIS 226 - THE GERMAN FAIRY TALE: OLD AND NEW

Short Title: THE GERMAN FAIRY TALE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this writing-intensive seminar, students will examine the fairy tale and its role in German culture and beyond. Topics include the Brothers Grimm and their times, qualities of the fairy tale genre, gender dynamics in fairy tales, and political and historical content in fairy tales. Appropriate for all majors.

FWIS 230 - WRITING EVERYDAY LIFE

Short Title: WRITING EVERYDAY LIFE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course is dedicated to the poetics of everyday life. It draws from the forms and colors of what surrounds us day-to-day, from landscapes, to bodies and objects. Students develop research and writing skills through creative fieldwork assignments and workshops. This course is eligible for credit toward the major in Anthropology.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 231 - THE WAR ON DRUGS

Short Title: THE WAR ON DRUGS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines the rhetoric and implications of the “War on Drugs” in the U.S. and Latin America. Students analyze from different perspectives key texts that are related to policies enacted in the last fifty years to suppress illicit drug use and that have affected civil liberties and national security.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 237 - POP MUSIC AND AMERICAN CULTURE

Short Title: POP MUSIC & AMERICAN CULTURE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Recent cultural movements encourage a more serious exploration of popular music. This course will participate by taking a critical look at what songs mean, what songs/albums/genres express, what our interest in music expresses, and how writing about music can lead us to great insights.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 240 - IMAGINING THE PAST: FILM, FICTION, AND HISTORY

Short Title: FILM, FICTION, AND HISTORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In the twentieth century and beyond, movies and television serve as an important source of mythologized national narratives (or somewhat “faked news”) from war movies, to westerns, to “biopics” of figures such as Kenneth Turing. Are their patterns of distortion at work, we can identify? How do we correct them?

FWIS 241 - TECHNOLOGIES OF TASTE

Short Title: TECHNOLOGIES OF TASTE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Does pineapple belong on pizza? Does red Gatorade taste better than blue? Many of our favorite flavors are produced and marketed by food science and the food industry. This writing-intensive seminar investigates how technologies of taste shape our palates and the ways we think and write about what we eat.

FWIS 242 - WATER AND CITIES

Short Title: WATER AND CITIES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Investigates ancient, historical, and modern cities and how their residents received water. Questions include: how cities developed water resources, how water shaped city life, and how the environment was engineered to produce water. Students will be able to choose a city and a water topic for their final seminar project.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 243 - LEARNING TO OBSERVE THROUGH A TOUR OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TEXAS

Short Title: NATURAL HISTORY OF TEXAS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course, students will hone their skills of observation through careful study of nature, from the geology to the birds and plants of Texas. Students will learn how to interpret and communicate these observations through writing and illustration. This course will involve several local field trips to explore the natural history of the upper Texas coast.

FWIS 245 - MUSEUMS IN WORLD HISTORY

Short Title: MUSEUMS IN WORLD HISTORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What is a museum? What role do they play in the modern world? This course fosters critical thinking about how and why museums were important institutions. They emerged as sites of identity within and between local, regional, national, imperial and global networks. Globally, a diverse number of museums are at once beloved and controversial, commanding and irrelevant. These contradictions aren’t new. To address the future of museums we must understand the evolution of these institutions in their global pasts.

FWIS 248 - THE ART OF SPORTSWRITING

Short Title: THE ART OF SPORTSWRITING

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This class is designed to introduce students to sports writing as a vehicle for conveying complex ideas and stories, and investigating difficult issues. It is not a sports journalism course, but rather one focused on story-telling through and about sports. We will read a variety of fictional and non-fictional writing about sports as a means to learning about how to look deeply into the world and the people around us.

FWIS 252 - NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS: REAL REMEDIES OR SHADY SCIENCE?

Short Title: THE SCIENCE OF SUPPLEMENTS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This writing-intensive seminar examines evidence for the use of nutritional supplements in promoting health. Topics include the role of vitamins, herbs and food-based supplements in medicine; the biology of illnesses such as cancer and depression; and the molecular mechanisms of supplements in disease prevention and management.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 255 - WRITING ASIAN FOOD IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

Short Title: WRITING ASIAN FOOD

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course exposes students to the exercise of writing about Asian food. Students engage in the activity of "converting" multi-sensory experience, i.e. eating food, into writing on the one hand and think about transnational Asian food in the context of globalizing world. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for FWIS 255 if student has credit for ASIA 205.

FWIS 257 - TRAVEL AND MODERN ASIA: LIVED EXPERIENCES ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Short Title: TRAVEL AND MODERN ASIA

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this class, we will read and write about people who traveled across and beyond Asia from the fourteenth century to the twentieth century, focusing on core topics such as intercultural interactions, globalization, and modernity. In doing so, we will also challenge the common misconception that Asian societies were isolated from one another and from the rest of the world before the arrival of the Westerners in Asia in the nineteenth century.

FWIS 263 - SEX, DEATH, AND SPIRITUAL WRITING

Short Title: SEX, DEATH, & SPIRITUAL WRITIN

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In this course we will look at the ways in which a variety of historical and contemporary “spiritual but not religious” texts grapple with sexuality, mortality, race, gender, class, and politics. This course will foreground discussion and reflection, and students will write weekly discussion posts on canvas, in addition to the three major papers and a group presentation.

FWIS 267 - BOOKS YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN: AN EXPLORATION OF THE READING EXPERIENCE

Short Title: BOOKS YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What is it about certain books that draws us in and keeps us turning the page? To answer this question, this class examines selected works of fiction and creative nonfiction with a focus on literary form, the psycho-social functions of narrative, and the physical and emotional experience of reading.

FWIS 268 - CASE STUDIES OF BUILDING DESIGN PROBLEMS

Short Title: BUILDING DESIGN PROBLEMS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: We will analyze buildings that ended up in legal battles. Problems include structural failures, design blunders and near disasters. You will write about what went wrong and why, who saved that day and who should have acted differently. You will learn to write critically and present a convincing argument.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 274 - SOUNDING THE CITY

Short Title: SOUNDING THE CITY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Sound surrounds us. And yet we often put little thought into what role it plays in our lives and the lives of our public spaces. This course aims to correct this oversight by offering an introduction to the field of sound studies focused on Houston’s audio environment, past and present.

FWIS 277 - STORYTELLING IN BUDDHISM

Short Title: STORYTELLING IN BUDDHISM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course explores the forms and contexts of storytelling in Buddhism, with a broad eye toward literature, visual arts, and performance. Students engage in both creative and academic writing to understand the importance of narrative in Buddhist cultures and different approaches to writing in the modern day.

FWIS 281 - GRAPHIC BLACKNESS: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMIC BOOK TRADITION

Short Title: AFRICAN AMERICAN GRAPHIC NOVEL

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course examines the struggle for black representation in comics and graphic novels. We will discuss the unique opportunities that sequential narratives present to creators as they represent race on the page and we will examine the history of black artists working in the comic book industry.

FWIS 282 - BORDER POLITICS: MIGRATIONS AND THE MEANING OF THE NATION

Short Title: BORDER POLITICS

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In the midst of a global climate and migration crisis, the safeguarding of borders has become an increasingly contentious issue worldwide. In this course we will explore the perilousness of the human condition, as experienced in the crossing of real and imaginary borders, and in the traumatic loss of homeland and self.

FWIS 286 - MINORITIES AND SUBCULTURES IN EAST ASIA

Short Title: MINORITIES AND SUBCULTURES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course challenges the myth of homogeneity in the understanding of East Asian societies by examining the experience of a variety of minority groups in terms of ethnicity, gender, religion, class, occupation, as well as physical and mental conditions.

FWIS 288 - INTRODUCTION TO ENGINEERING DESIGN AND COMMUNICATION

Short Title: ENG DESIGN & COMMUNICATION

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students. Enrollment limited to students in the School of Architecture or School of Engineering colleges.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Students learn the engineering design process to solve real-world problems by evaluating design requirements and constructing innovative solutions in the OEDK. Several communication assignments will be completed by individuals rather than teams. Fall limited to ENGI and NSCI students; spring open for engineering and architecture students.

Course URL: pwc.rice.edu/

FWIS 290 - BLACK CONTEMPORARY ART

Short Title: BLACK CONTEMPORARY ART

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This course introduces students to the field black contemporary art. How is a new generation of black art making shaping the way we think about race, gender, sexuality, and disability? How have expressions of self-representation changed over the decades and how do we begin to understand the political stakes of who is seen, who is overseen, and who is made invisible?

FWIS 291 - THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY

Short Title: THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: How exactly does the length of a piece of writing connect to its expression as a work of art and our interpretation of it? In this course, we’ll consider “shortness” as a challenge authors undertake, investigating the ways they weave complex tales into brief, often pithy, masterpieces.

FWIS 292 - THE ROARING TWENTIES

Short Title: THE ROARING TWENTIES

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The 1920s were about new possibilities, aesthetic experimentation, and frenzied expression. We'll examine iconic '20s literature by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, and others, as well as the linchpins of '20s culture: jazz, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance, and modern art. Highlights include lessons on the Charleston and a Roaring Twenties soiree.

FWIS 293 - THE RULE OF LAW AND THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

Short Title: LAW AND JUSTICE

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Democratic societies claim to be based on the rule of law. This course examines what is required of a society that treats every individual equally regardless of a person´s status or influence. We will analyze the relationship of politics and the law in the distinct historical and national contexts of the contemporary US and post-war Germany, as well as exploring the topics of crimes, guilt, punishment and vigilante justice in selected literary texts and films.

FWIS 296 - BUSINESS IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION

Short Title: BUSINESS IN LITERATURE & FILM

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The world of business has long been a culturally rich site for national and self-reflection. As we read representations of business in literature and film, we will consider an array of allegories, motifs, and plots about the profits and pitfalls of American commerce culture.

FWIS 297 - SCIENCE, PSEUDOSCIENCE AND SKEPTICISM: HOW TO TELL GOOD SCIENCE FROM JUNK SCIENCE

Short Title: SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE?

Department: First-Year Writing Intensive

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: This class focuses on scientific skepticism and critical thinking, and how they can be utilized to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Core topics include the fallibility of perception; mechanisms of self-deception; as well as metacognition, cognitive biases and logical fallacies. These topics will be illustrated through examples of good and bad science.