Program in Writing and Communication
Program in Writing and Communication
https://pwc.rice.edu/
129 Herring Hall
713-348-4932
Jennifer S. Wilson
Program Director
jsw@rice.edu
The mission of the Program in Writing and Communication (PWC) is to integrate the practice of analytical writing and the techniques of both oral and visual communication into the Rice curriculum, with two goals in mind: To enable our students to articulate their ideas as we prepare them for academic and professional life; and to affirm the necessity of communication and its fundamental value to every aspect of their education and across every University department and discipline.
The PWC provides oversight for the First-Year Writing-Intensive Seminars (FWIS). FWIS are content-based, 3-credit hour seminars in which writing and communication pedagogy plays a significant role in assignments and grading. The courses reflect a range of disciplines from across the university. In addition, PWC faculty teach undergraduate communication courses and courses for international graduate students under the COMM designation and subject code.
The PWC also includes the Center for Academic and Professional Communication. Housed in Fondren Library, the Center supports teaching and learning through workshops, consulting, and coaching for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty. Headed by a team of communication professionals, the Center also includes a large staff of writing and communication consultants, both graduate and undergraduate, who are available for individual tutoring appointments. The Center houses facilities for one-on-one consultations and group work on written, oral, and visual projects. Physically accessible whenever Fondren Library is open, the Center is virtually accessible around the clock through the Center's website.
For additional information regarding the Program in Writing and Communication, please see the program's website.
To satisfy the writing and communication graduation requirement, all undergraduate students must complete the following items during their first year at Rice:
- First-Year Writing Assessment. Students will receive a placement for either one or two semesters of FWIS. Students who receive the two-semester placement must complete the FWIS 100 Introduction to Academic Writing course prior to enrolling in FWIS 101-299.
- First-Year Writing-Intensive Seminar. Students must complete a FWIS course numbered 101-299 or be granted transfer credit as outlined in the Graduation Requirements section of the General Announcements. (100-level numbers indicate courses taught in the fall; 200-level numbers indicate courses taught in the spring.)
For courses that satisfy the First-Year Writing-Intensive Seminar University Graduation Requirement, please see Rice's Course Catalog.
The Program in Writing and Communication does not currently offer an academic program at the graduate level.
Program Director
Jennifer S. Wilson
Teaching Faculty
David Messmer
Steven Perry
Senior Lecturers
Lina Dib
Burke Nixon
Lecturers
Ali Garib
Andrew Klein
Hubert Rast
Laura Richardson
Teaching Fellows
Paul Burch
Nina Cook
For Rice University degree-granting programs:
To view the list of official course offerings, please see Rice’s Course Catalog.
To view the most recent semester’s course schedule, please see Rice's Course Schedule.
Communication (COMM)
COMM 105 - LEARNING IDENTITIES, WRITING IDENTITIES
Short Title: LEARNING & WRITING IDENTITIES
Department: Program Writing Communication
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 we learn can change how we see ourselves, and how we see ourselves can influence the way we learn. This course will examine the relationship between identity, writing, and learning, allowing students to reflect on their own identities and the complex forces and factors that can strengthen or challenge our identities as learners and people. Students also will be developing the writing and reading skills needed to engage with college-level readings and to communicate effectively in a number of forms and situations.
COMM 110 - WRITING STUDIO - FOUNDATIONS
Short Title: WRITING STUDIO - FOUNDATIONS
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Studio
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Corequisite: UNIV 110
Description: In this writing studio, to be taken in conjunction with UNIV 110, students will participate in targeted writing instruction and hands-on workshops designed to build fundamental literacy and self-editing skills and will cultivate collaboration in a writing community.
COMM 120 - FWIS WRITING STUDIO
Short Title: FWIS WRITING STUDIO
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Studio
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: In this writing studio, to be taken in conjunction with a FWIS (101+) course, students will participate in targeted writing instruction and hands-on workshops designed to build on students’ existing literacy and self-editing skills and cultivate collaboration in a writing community.
COMM 237 - ORAL COMMUNICATION IN PRACTICE AND THEORY
Short Title: THEORIES OF ORAL COMMUNICATION
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
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 aim to provide students with both a practical and theoretical framework for improving their oral presentation skills while fostering a level of self-awareness regarding the social constructions governing traditional “best practices.”
COMM 238 - SPECIAL TOPICS
Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Independent Study, Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Seminar, Lecture/Laboratory
Credit Hours: 1-4
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Topics and credit hours vary each semester. Contact department for current semester's topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.
COMM 239 - A QUESTION OF STYLE, RHETORIC AND POPULAR WRITING
Short Title: RHETORIC AND POPULAR WRITING
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
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 of popular writing in outlets such as National Geographic and Sports Illustrated. Through critical reading and writing workshops, students will acquire a nuanced understanding of available stylistic choices as they build the skills they need to develop their own voice with clarity, confidence, and style.
COMM 300 - COMMUNICATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Short Title: COMMUNICATION IN DIGITAL AGE
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Students will develop writing skills by maintaining a blog, generating Webpage content, and using social media. We will also produce video and audio content while remaining aware of how the form of the work impacts its content.
COMM 301 - THEORIES OF WRITING CENTER PRACTICE
Short Title: WRITING CENTER THEORY/PRACTICE
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Students taking this course will read a wide body of scholarly work concerning writing center theory and practice, while also engaging in discussion with peer colleagues. Topics that will be covered in this course include, but are not limited to defining the writing center, second language acquisition theory, tutoring strategies for specific student populations, social justice in the writing center, and consulting on new media. In addition, students will have a chance to observe and learn from experienced writing center tutors. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: COMM 501. Recommended Prerequisite(s): Completion of FWIS requirement
COMM 314 - CIVIC-ENGAGED DATA COMMUNICATION
Short Title: CIVIC-ENGAGED DATA COMM
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture/Laboratory
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Prerequisite(s): DSCI 304
Description: Data locked away on computers, crammed into indecipherable coefficient tables, or thrown into senseless scatterplots cannot make a meaningful difference in the world around us. In this course, students will collaborate with community partners to create a series of advanced visual tools that showcase data to the outside world. Building on principles of communication and aesthetic design, students will explore how to effectively coalesce complicated and nuanced data into approachable and readily understood visuals.
COMM 415 - MEDICAL COMMUNICATION
Short Title: MEDICAL COMMUNICATION
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with a class of Junior or Senior. Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This course introduces students to key issues, theories, and debates related to medical communication, while also helping students develop and reflect on their own communication strategies, and skills as future health care professionals. Sophomores and Freshmen who have fulfilled Rice's First-year Writing-Intensive Seminar requirement for graduation may register by a Special Registration Form. Recommended Prerequisite(s): Sucessfully completed one course, FWIS 101 to 199, to fulfill the Rice's First-year Writing-Intensive Seminar requirement for graduation.
COMM 501 - THEORIES OF WRITING CENTER PRACTICE
Short Title: WRITING CENTER THEORY/PRACTICE
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: Students taking this course will read a wide body of scholarly work concerning writing center theory and practice, while also engaging in discussion with peer colleagues. Topics that will be covered in this course include, but are not limited to defining the writing center, second language acquisition theory, tutoring strategies for specific student populations, social justice in the writing center, and consulting on new media. In addition, students will have a chance to observe and learn from experienced tutors. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: COMM 301.
COMM 600 - INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC READING AND WRITING FOR INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENTS
Short Title: ACADEMIC READING AND WRITING
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This course teaches fundamental academic reading and writing skills to international graduate students in the first two years of their studies. Students will learn how scholars construct arguments and use evidence to support claims, and they will practice writing texts that are relevant to their own courses and careers.
COMM 601 - ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENTS
Short Title: ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This course provides students with strategies to improve oral communication skills necessary for academic and professional success in North American contexts. Students will learn how to overcome common and individual challenges related to pronunciation clarity, small group interactions, and formal presentations. Final projects will be related to students' studies or research. Repeatable for Credit.
COMM 602 - ADVANCED ACADEMIC WRITING FOR INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENTS
Short Title: ADVANCED ACADEMIC WRITING
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This course addresses writing at both the macro- and micro- level, engaging students in such academic writing tasks as critiquing, reporting, and interpreting research findings, illustrating and justifying the significance of research, while also attending to mechanical topics. Writing assignments in the course will be linked to students' studies, courses, or research. One-on-one conferences with instructors will be required.
COMM 605 - ADVANCED ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENTS
Short Title: ADVANCED ENGLISH COMMUNICATION
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Independent Study
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This independent study course may be taken on its own or in conjunction with one of the other credit-bearing English communication courses. Students will work on a particular communication skill (reading, writing, speaking, listening) or combination of skills under the guidance of an ESL expert. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
COMM 677 - SPECIAL TOPICS
Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS
Department: Program Writing Communication
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Seminar, Independent Study, Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Lecture/Laboratory
Credit Hours: 1-4
Course Level: Graduate
Description: Topics and credit hours vary each semester. Contact department for current semester's topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.
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.
University Courses (UNIV)
UNIV 105 - SCHOLARLY APPROACHES TO SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Short Title: SCHOLARLY APPROACHES TO S&E
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Intensive Learning Experience
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: A six-week, academically intensive, pre-college program for pre-matriculating students who intend to major in science or engineering. The program includes coursework in Calculus, Chemistry, and Physics, with a focus on the most challenging topics from the freshman curricula; daily homework and group-work; and complementary seminars on design, bioscience research, and discrete math. Department Permission Required.
UNIV 106 - RISE
Short Title: RISE
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 0
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Designed for incoming students with expressed interests in the Humanities, Social Sciences, this course uses scholarship on Houston to explore particular issues of race, place, and power in the city, and the relationship between university life and urban life.
UNIV 110 - FOUNDATIONS FOR SELF-DISCOVERY AND LIFELONG LEARNING
Short Title: FIRST YEAR FOUNDATIONS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: This course is designed to provide new students with the knowledge and tools to succeed at Rice. Combining classroom discussion, information from campus departments, self-assessments and reflections, and other interactive activities, this class will focus on key issues new students will encounter when transitioning to college. This course is limited to first-year students only.
UNIV 180 - INTRODUCTION TO RICE FOR NEW INTERNATIONAL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Short Title: INTRO TO RICE - INTERNATIONALS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hour: 1
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Survey course of themes geared for new undergraduate international students to the USA and Rice. Adjustment and acculturation topics include Rice culture, US culture and academic success.
UNIV 181 - ACADEMIC ENGLISH SKILLS FOR VISITING STUDENTS
Short Title: ENGLISH FOR VISITING STUDENTS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
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 reviews the written and oral English skills needed by visiting international students to succeed in upper-division courses at Rice. Students will learn to express ideas effectively in individual and group conversations; to give academic presentations; to critique, report, and interpret research findings in writing; and to become better self-editors of their writing. Instructor Permission Required.
UNIV 194 - CTIS WORKSHOP
Short Title: CTIS WORKSHOP
Department: Dean of Undergraduates
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hours: 0
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: CTIS Workshop will draw from a public health model of violence prevention to teach Freshman and transfer students the dynamics of domestic and sexual violence, consent and bystander intervention. Students will understand the impacts of healthy relationships and consent, as well as successful models shown to increase gender equality, healthy sexual communication and empathy. This course is only available to first time matriculants.
UNIV 195 - CRITICAL DIALOGUES ON DIVERSITY
Short Title: CDOD WORKSHOP
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 0
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: The university’s remarkable diversity enlivens and enriches all of its core missions. Such gains, though, are not all to be gotten passively. This five-week, discussion-based orientation course explores critical approaches to culture, identity, and dialogue fundamental to living and working at the university, and essential for taking full advantage of a Rice education.
UNIV 201 - RESEARCH READINESS: INTRODUCTION TO UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
Short Title: RESEARCH READINESS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: This course is designed for students who have not been exposed to research and would like to learn about how to explore research at the university and beyond. Learn about academic research in all disciplines, prepare for research opportunities, and improve your eligibility for undergraduate research awards. This course is a prerequisite for two Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry programs for students from under-resourced backgrounds without prior research experience: Sustaining Excellence in Research (SER) Scholars and Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF).
UNIV 212 - PROFESSIONOWL PROGRAM - CAREER AND LIFE OPTIONS
Short Title: PROFESSIONOWL PROGRAM
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: The ProfessionOwlProgram (POP) is designed to help you learn more about yourself, careers, professional communication skills and more. This class is intended for students who are exploring careers and academic majors. Students will learn about career options that match their interests, personality, and values; become more familiar with the world of work and various career options; understand the connections between careers and major choice; learn about services that will enhance their marketability and academic experiences (internships, study abroad programs, scholarships/grants); and develop an action plan to reach their goals. This course welcomes students who aren’t sure what they want to do after graduation, as well as students who have already identified potential career interests. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for UNIV 212 if student has credit for HUMA 212. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for UNIV 212 if student has credit for HUMA 212.
UNIV 220 - PEER ACADEMIC ADVISING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Short Title: PAA PROF DEVELOPMENT
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Designed for members of the Peer Academic Advising (PAA) program. Students in this course will learn about best practices in advising and see that being a peer advisor is more than just recommending classes to fellow students. The course is meant to help PAAs think differently and more critically about their roles as peer advisors, as well as to discuss the power PAAs have in helping create positive change on campus and in the experiences of individual students. Instructor Permission Required.
UNIV 235 - APPLIED LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Short Title: APPLIED LEADERSHIP
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Designed with an emphasis on critical thinking, this class will assist O-Week Coordinators in the critique, design, development and execution of a comprehensive orientation and new student transition program for freshmen and transfer students. Due to Rice’s unique orientation structure, special attention will be placed on the importance of providing leadership to teams, as well as working successfully in a team environment to allow students to best function in their role as O-Week Coordinator this semester. Instructor Permission Required. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for UNIV 235 if student has credit for COLL 199.
UNIV 238 - SPECIAL TOPICS
Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Seminar, Independent Study
Credit Hours: 1-4
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Topics and credit hours may vary each semester. Contact department for current semester’s topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 250 - RICE HEALTH ADVISORS
Short Title: RICE HEALTH ADVISORS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture/Laboratory
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 designed to introduce students to the principles of peer health education. Students will assess their own personal health status as well as major health risks among their peers. They will learn effective strategies for reducing these risks and promoting healthy lifestyles to college students. Enrollment is restricted, students must be in good academic and judicial standing and complete an application. This course is a pre-requisite to becoming a Rice Health Advisor. Instructor Permission Required.
UNIV 295 - EXPLORING CAREERS THROUGH AN INTERNSHIP
Short Title: CAREERS THRU INTERNSHIP
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Designed for currently enrolled undergraduate students from all areas of study to gain experience in a work place setting, earn course credit, and further develop professional skills. Students meet individually with a CCD team member to process their experience and complete an action plan to market their qualifications to potential employers and graduate schools. Students arrange internship and receive approval from the course instructor(s). Instructor Permission Required. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for UNIV 295 if student has credit for HUMA 295. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 299 - SCIENTIA: LECTURES IN SCIENCE AND CULTURE
Short Title: SCIENTIA SCIENCE & CULTURE
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level
Description: Annual lecture series, panel discussions and discussion talks on topics bridging science, culture and art. 4 lectures plus 2 discussion talks. Lectures are on specified dates, usually Tuesdays. Discussion talks scheduled at semester beginning. Topics vary year to year. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 301 - UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
Short Title: UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Research
Credit Hours: 0
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This zero credit course enables students to have supervised research experience on and off campus recorded on their transcript. Students must register the name and contact of their PI in the UNIV 301 OWL-Space site by the end of the second week of classes or drop the class. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 304 - RESEARCH ETHICS IN THE COMMUNITY
Short Title: RESEARCH ETHICS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This class introduces students to a range of ethical issues that arise in community-based participatory research. Drawing on literature review and case studies, the class brings together students who will carry out CBR projects abroad on a Loewenstern Fellowship. We will also focus on cultural communication and how the international landscape influences the role of the researcher.
UNIV 310 - RICE LEGAL LAB
Short Title: RICE LEGAL LAB
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This course provides hands-on exposure to the practical legal environment, including legal research, legal writing, and Texas court processes, with optional work placing the Texas legal environment into an international comparative context. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 311 - JUDICIAL INTERNSHIP - RICE LEGAL LAB
Short Title: RICE LEGAL LAB
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Students will serve judicial internships with Texas state or federal judges; required travel component over spring break, with associated costs and lab fee. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 313 - INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH ABROAD
Short Title: INTRO TO RESEARCH ABROAD
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This course is designed to help undergraduate students develop skills to design, refine, and carry out an individual research project in an international context. This is a preparatory course for students who plan to apply for international scholarships such as Fulbright, Thinkswiss, Wagoner, DAAD or for students who will design an international research project as part of their study abroad program or their honors thesis.
UNIV 320 - ADVANCED ACADEMIC ADVISING PRACTICUM
Short Title: ADVANCED ADVISING PRACTICUM
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Designed for current members of the PAA program. This course will focus on individually designed and faculty guided action plans. Students will design plans that enhance the role, effectiveness, and/or educational breadth and depth of academic advising at the individual, college, or university level. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 321 - ADVANCED ACADEMIC FELLOWS/MENTORS PRACTICUM
Short Title: ADV FELLOWS/MENTORS PRACTICUM
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Designed for current members of the Academic Fellows/Mentors program. This course will focus on individually designed and faculty guided action plans. Students will design plans that enhance the role and effectiveness of the academic support provided by Fellow/Mentors at the individual, college, or university level. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 330 - MEDICAL EXPLORATION AND OBSERVERSHIP
Short Title: MEDICAL EXPLORATION
Department: Dean of Undergraduates
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture/Laboratory
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Do not add UNIV 330 Medical Exploration to your course schedule unless you have gone through the application process and have been approved to register by the course administrators. Registration in this course prior to being approved does not guarantee placement into this course. The UNIV 330 course is designed for currently enrolled undergraduate students to gain exposure to the medical setting and develop professional skills, while earning course credit. The purpose is to allow you to explore careers in the health professions through exposure to medical shadowing and the healthcare industry. To be considered for UNIV 330, fill out the UNIV 330 application and register for UNIV 003 by 11:59pm on Friday April 12th. Course Application: https://forms.gle/hMoCd16BzTZDbkZm8 Instructor Permission Required.
Course URL: forms.gle/hMoCd16BzTZDbkZm8
UNIV 395 - RICE SCHOLARS ABROAD PREDEPARTURE
Short Title: RICE SCHOLARS ABROAD PREDEPART
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This class is for students completing a Rice Scholars Abroad research project. It requires acceptance into that program and permission of the instructor. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 399 - RICE SCHOLARS ABROAD DIRECTED RESEARCH
Short Title: RICE SCHLARS ABROAD DIR RES
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Research
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This class is for students participating in the Rice Scholars Abroad program and is to be completed before the student goes abroad. Acceptance into that program and permission of the instructor are required. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 400 - STUDENT AFFAIRS INTERNSHIP
Short Title: STUDENT AFFAIRS INTERNSHIP
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum
Credit Hours: 1-6
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 401 - INDEPENDENT STUDY: INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SURVEY
Short Title: IND STUDY: INTERNATIONAL ED
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Independent Study
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: The independent study is intended for upper classmen who are considering working in the field of international education. Individualized meetings with the instructor and personalized coursework investigate ways to bridge current theoretical research in the field of international education with real-life practicalities in international education offices. Instructor Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 420 - PRE-DEPARTURE STUDY ABROAD SEMINAR
Short Title: PRE-DEPARTURE STUDY ABR SEM
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: This seminar provides a cultural introduction to study abroad students to help them maximize their international experience and engagement with host cultures. Students will acquire an introductory understanding of the prominent concepts in global citizenship, ethics, and responsibilities while abroad. The course will also introduce students to international research opportunities. Students may additional times outside the original posted time listed during the 2nd Half of Full Semester.
UNIV 477 - SPECIAL TOPICS
Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Lecture/Laboratory, Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Seminar, Independent Study
Credit Hours: 1-4
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.
Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level
Description: Topics and credit hours may vary each semester. Contact department for current semester's topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 500 - PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE COLLEGE TEACHING
Short Title: PRINCIPLES EFFECTIVE TEACHING
Department: Center for Teaching Excellence
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This course provides an overview of essential, research-based methods used by college instructors to enhance the quality of student learning. Topics will include course and syllabus design, student engagement, classroom management, and more. This course will culminate with the development of a syllabus and a statement of teaching philosophy.
UNIV 501 - RESEARCH ON TEACHING AND LEARNING
Short Title: RESEARCH TEACHING & LEARNING
Department: Center for Teaching Excellence
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Research
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This course explores scholarship on teaching and learning in detail with special attention to the breadth of approaches and methodologies. The culminating project will be a literature review in an area of interest.
UNIV 502 - PRACTICUM IN COLLEGE TEACHING
Short Title: PRACTICUM IN COLLEGE TEACHING
Department: Center for Teaching Excellence
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Prerequisite(s): UNIV 500 and UNIV 501
Description: This practicum allows students to design and deliver teaching demonstrations and to receive feedback on their work. The course will also focus on the place of teaching in the broader landscapes of higher education and the academic job market. Because of the highly practical and interactive nature of the course, students will be asked attend all classes. In order to develop a schedule of teaching demonstrations, we ask that students register for UNIV 502 two weeks before the start of the semester.
UNIV 555 - INTER-INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFER COURSE
Short Title: INTER-INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFER
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Transfer Courses
Course Type: Transfer
Credit Hours: 1-6
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: This course is used when a Rice student transfers coursework taken through the inter-institutional program at UH, BCM, UTHSC, TAMHSC, UTMB-Galveston. The transfer course will carry the title of the course at the respective university. Department Permission Required. Repeatable for Credit.
UNIV 594 - RESPONSIBLE CONDUCT OF RESEARCH
Short Title: RESPONSIBLE CONDUCT - RESEARCH
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Type: Seminar
Credit Hour: 1
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: Responsible conduct of research (RCR) is defined as the practice of scientific investigation with integrity. It involves the awareness and application of established professional norms and ethical principles in the performance of all activities related to scientific research. (Formerly BIOC/BIOE 594)
UNIV 599 - TEACHING PORTFOLIO
Short Title: TEACHING PORTFOLIO
Department: Center for Teaching Excellence
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Independent Study
Credit Hours: 2
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Prerequisite(s): UNIV 500 and UNIV 501 and UNIV 502 (may be taken concurrently)
Description: This independent study serves as a capstone to the UNIV sequence on teaching and learning. Students will meet individually with the instructor to plan and complete a teaching portfolio.
UNIV 677 - SPECIAL TOPICS
Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS
Department: University Courses
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Course Type: Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Seminar, Independent Study
Credit Hours: 1-4
Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Graduate or Visiting Graduate level students.
Course Level: Graduate
Description: Topics and credit hours vary each semester. Contact department for current semester's topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.