9 Trendy First-Year Seminars

Since 2006, first-year seminars, or FSEMS, have been a signature student experience at the University of Denver. As part of the 4D Experience, FSEMS support all four dimensions that are crucial to thriving at DU and beyond.  As one of their first college classes, FSEMs introduce students to high levels of intellectual rigor with an intimate, small class setting where faculty act as mentors to support their academic and personal growth. The reflective nature of the classes helps students develop tools for exploring their character and creating a roadmap for pursuing careers and lives of purpose. 

“Starting college is amazing, fun and overwhelming. FSEM classes are designed to be an introduction to the academic expectations of college life,” says Monica Kosanovich, director of academic programs.

Courses also align with faculty and student interests, providing an academic framework for some of the biggest challenges and pop culture trends of our time. For years, Gender, Feminism, Power & Pop Culture: Decoding “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” was a hit with students. This year, the University is focusing on courses related to freedom of expression. 

“With a faculty mentor who gets to know you personally and a class of your peers, you will participate in meaningful learning opportunities to engage in free expression and critical inquiry,” says Kosanovich. “[Students] will end their first semester with the building blocks for approaching dialogue that supports free and open discussion of ideas with mutual respect.”

We gathered nine courses that are especially on trend this year.   

Your World Today: Current Affairs in Context

Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Kevin Archer 

A global pandemic, the fall of Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate change, consumer price inflation, immigration and political extremism are just a few of the many issues facing our world today. Using case studies and various social scientific approaches, this course will engage students in the process of critical inquiry in such a way that they gain the ability to understand and impact the world in a more meaningful way. 

Interfaith Civics 

Philosophy
Sarah Pessin

Chances are you don’t share your neighbor’s religious views and values. You might even find some of them offensive. So now what? In this course, students explore religious diversity within liberal pluralist democracies and the challenge of upholding religious freedom while preventing religious overstep. Students will explore their personal habits as well as  best practices around interfaith bridge-building and ethical civic leadership—including the ability to listen to, understand and dialogue across differences—as well as opportunities to participate in campus Spiritual Life projects that cultivate interfaith literacy and religious inclusivity.

Disability in Fiction

Languages, Literatures & Cultures
Angelo Castagnino

What role does fiction play in the public perception of disability? What does it mean to live in an ableist society? What can the educational system do to increase awareness about disability? What is the “social approach” to disability and what changes has it brought to Western societies? In the attempt to answer these questions, this course will explore the fictional representation of disability in several Western cultures, while introducing students to the tools that are necessary for a critically oriented approach to literature and films. In doing so, the course will address the role that fiction can play in dismantling preconceptions about people with disabilities.

True Crime Media: Journalism, Justice or Just Entertainment

University Writing Program
LP Picard 

We are in the midst of a true crime boom. The 2010s brought prestige true crime dramas, like the “Serial” podcast and the documentaries “West of Memphis” and “The Keepers.” In the 2020s, true crime content has exploded on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. But this boom—with its tiger kings, forensic-file investigations and murder make-up tutorials—has revealed more than just the marketability of the genre. It’s shed light on our own dark obsessions, raising important questions about the blurry lines between reporting, unpacking and sensationalizing. This seminar will explore the history and landscape of true crime entertainment, which goes back to at least the birth of modern journalism, if not all the way back to the violence captured in early cave paintings. 

The Soundtrack of a Revolution 

Lamont School of Music 
Roger Holland 

Music has often been a vehicle to express thought and emotion as well as an agent of change. In this course, students will examine the music of popular culture and its response to the social climate of the 1960’s and 1970’s as the United States wrestled with its conscience on the issues of civil rights, justice and equality. With a particular focus on the life and music of Nina Simone, we will closely examine the events in history that sparked outrage and response from musicians, who in turn sought to influence a change of heart and legislation in the land of the free and home of the brave.

From DNA to Diversity—and Beyond!

Biological Sciences 
Julie Morris

You are currently living during a revolution—a genetic revolution. Scan the news concerning any biologically related topic (from human health and disease to agriculture to endangered species conservation), and you will find a conversation about genes. These conversations are currently shaping procedure and policy that will have wide-ranging impacts on the future of medicine, food production, energy production, environmental stability and possibly even the nature of human nature itself! This seminar will explore the relationship of DNA and genes to each of these topics and provide students with the basic information we will all need to successfully navigate this revolution. 

Metropolitan Denver: Growth and Change in the Mile-High City 

Geography & the Environment
Andrew Goetz 

Since the late 1800s, the city of Denver has been one of the leading urban centers in the western United States. Originally founded by settlers mining for gold, Denver has become a major urban center for the western Great Plains and Rocky Mountain region and escalated to the ranks of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. This course explores the geographic, historical, environmental, economic, political, social and cultural factors that have contributed to the growth of metropolitan Denver and have shaped its character. 

Women’s Work

Economics 
Tamara Trafton 

What is women’s work? What work is counted and what work isn’t? Whose work is counted and whose work isn’t? How is that work valued? What affects the amount and type of work we do and the allocation between work that “counts” and work that doesn’t? This course provides students with measurement techniques, theoretical frameworks and empirical strategies to start to answer these questions—and to consider how we might change those answers. 

Religion and Hip-Hop Culture

Religious Studies 
Jason Jeffries 

Understanding religion as the “quest for complex subjectivity” or, more simply, the effort to make life meaningful in complex ways, this course explores the relationship between hip hop culture and religion. This will be accomplished by: (1) discussion of the history and content of rap music; (2) examination of religion in rap music; (3) exploration of the religious sensibilities of rap artists; and (4) discussion of the implications of the connection between rap and religion.