There's more than one way to find success in college and the path to getting there is different for every student. Our goals in this course are to connect with fellow students and the instructor as you become a contributing member of the community, both at UMass and beyond; start planning your individual academic goals and pathways toward achieving them; explore the different majors in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and start thinking like a social scientist.

There's more than one way to find success in college and the path to getting there is different for every student. Our goals in this course are to connect with fellow students and the instructor as you become a contributing member of the community, both at UMass and beyond; start planning your individual academic goals and pathways toward achieving them; explore the different majors in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and start thinking like a social scientist.

This seminar will support your transition to college and introduce you to a topic in public health and health sciences. The first six weeks will provide foundational skills for students to thrive at UMass. The last seven weeks will focus on exploring a public health and health sciences topic.

This course is centered around the art and life of Beyonce Knowles Carter, the Houston-born musical and cultural monolith. Using her illustrative career as a lens, this course explores topics such as gender, race, class, and identity to examine larger questions about popular culture, art, and the world around us. Particular emphasis will be placed on Beyonce's visual works, including her distinctive visual albums Lemonade (2016) and Black is King (2019).

This seminar offers first-year students the opportunity to free themselves from content-specific writing prompts, audience expectations, the blue light of screens, even the confines of the classroom - and just spend time engaged in the act of putting pen to paper and seeing what happens, where it goes, and how it feels. Students will try out different ways of writing that feel comfortable (except for the occasional hand cramp!), creative, calming (or, alternatively, energizing), and maybe even cathartic.

This seminar offers first-year students the opportunity to free themselves from content-specific writing prompts, audience expectations, the blue light of screens, even the confines of the classroom - and just spend time engaged in the act of putting pen to paper and seeing what happens, where it goes, and how it feels. Students will try out different ways of writing that feel comfortable (except for the occasional hand cramp!), creative, calming (or, alternatively, energizing), and maybe even cathartic.

Can the "lie" of art reveal truths about our society? Whose stories are told onstage and what can this telling teach us? In this course, we will use plays as an entry point to discuss race, gender, sexuality, ability and class--and where "we" fit into their intersections. Working with playwrights like Jackie Sibblies Drury, Young Jean Lee, and Larissa FastHorse, we will build community and learn alongside each other about societal structures, artistic activism, and ourselves.

Can the "lie" of art reveal truths about our society? Whose stories are told onstage and what can this telling teach us? In this course, we will use plays as an entry point to discuss race, gender, sexuality, ability and class--and where "we" fit into their intersections. Working with playwrights like Jackie Sibblies Drury, Young Jean Lee, and Larissa FastHorse, we will build community and learn alongside each other about societal structures, artistic activism, and ourselves.

This seminar will explore questions of queerness within the Shakespearian comedy, Twelfth Night. We will consider constructions of queerness during the Renaissance to inform discussions of how "queer" comes to be defined both in the past and the present. Furthermore, this class will consider the ethics of ascribing queerness to Twelfth Night - is it appropriate for readers to map out modern ideas of queerness onto characters like Viola, Olivia, Orsino, and Sebastian, when that might not be what Shakespeare intended? Is it problematic to speculate on Shakespeare's own identity?

Design permeates every aspect of our lives, from the objects we use on a daily basis to the signs we look at and even the places we occupy. How can we actively form our environments to better suit us as individuals, as a community, and as part of the global experience? Students will be introduced to a variety of design fields and techniques, providing the tools for critical thinking, developing design empowerment and seeing their environment through a designer's perspective.