Both inside and out, our bodies harbour a huge array of micro-organisms. Although invisbleto us, they play key roles in determining our health, our emotional state, and even our IQ! This seminar course will employ popular science and newspaper readings and videos to inform in-class discussions of how our microbiome has become one of the key issues in discussions of human health. Join me as we learn how to encourage a healthier microbiome to flourish inside us!

Are you interested in fiction writing but don?t know where to start? In this course, students will participate in a professional-grade writer?s workshop geared for beginners. With the guidance of the instructor, an award-winning graphic novelist and ethnographic writer, they will read seminal short fiction and instructive texts and participate in group and individual writing exercises. Students will learn to talk about and analyze short fiction and will develop their own pieces through formal workshopping with peers and consultation with the instructor.

America imprisons a huge number of people ? roughly 2.3 million. The jails that hold these individuals are in our communities (including Northampton and Greenfield), but the incarcerated people and their family are generally invisible, to the point that many community members have no idea they live, shop and go to work right next to compounds that imprison hundreds ? sometimes thousands ? of their former neighbors, co-workers and fellow students. How do people get to prison? Who goes to prison? What is life in jail like? What happens when people get out of prison?

The rise of human civilization is marked by the development of ever more advanced materials: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. How will future historians refer to our time? The Silicon Age, or Perhaps the Age of Polymers? Polymers encompass a broad spectrum of our world from the mundane, such as plastics for packaging, to the cutting edge, such as the wings of advanced aircraft, or flexible electronic devices. The DNA that encodes the blueprints for life, and the proteins that build our bodies, are also polymers.

Water is one of the basic elements needed for life systems to exist and survive. While it is abundant in supply, it is not always available where it is needed. This course will cover concepts and issues related to water resources through regional and global ecosystem perspectives.

Through videos, podcasts and discussion we will focus on famous and not so famous examples of scientific hoaxes and malfeasance from Piltdown Man to Theranos. Primarily we will answer the question: "Did good people do bad science or did bad people use good science wrong?" Classes will be discussion based.
We will also spend time exploring what the campus has to offer and how you as a first year can engineer your experience

This Faculty First-Year Seminar interrogates the representation of race and gender in American cinema. Engaging
historical, literary, and filmic texts, this course examines major historical transformations that have shaped the
development, performance, and portrayal of identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It focuses on the
interlocking relationships and representations of whites and blacks, as well as the sexes.This seminar moves along chronological and thematic axes to investigate racial and gender formation and the

Have you always wanted to learn to play the ukulele? Do you love to sing by yourself and with others? This seminar will help students explore their musical side in a fun and supportive environment. Students will: (1) learn ukulele basics, including tuning, chords, strumming patterns, and fingerpicking, as well as a variety of songs they can play and sing by themselves or with others; (2) learn about the history of the ukulele and its iconic performers and ensembles; (3) create and perform their own ukulele and vocal cover song arrangements.

In The Meaning of Life: Masterpieces of Russian Literature and Spiritual Inquiry, we will focus on some of the most famous short works of Russian fiction ever written, by classic authors such as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov - and discuss the ways in which each writer grapples with the Russian ?cursed questions?: Why are we here? What is a ?successful? life? What is the nature of true love? What is our moral responsibility to self and society?

Handmaid?s Tale- Exploring Our Reproductive Future :Margaret Atwood?s book The Handmaid?s Taleand subsequent television series has become a dystopic backdrop to contemporary reproductive politics. At the same time, we read about the promises of new technologies -genetic engineering, artificial reproduction, designer babies -that open up possibilities of future worlds with ?superior? peoples. How much is hype and how much real? What does the future of reproduction hold? We will discuss and debate these issues in our weekly seminars.