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Every year, first-year students take a Drew Seminar (DSEM) during their first semester; the DSEM is an exciting course, taught by full-time faculty in their areas of interest and expertise, that focuses on the development of transferable skills such as critical thinking, academic writing, oral presentation, and interpersonal communication. These courses are not your run-of-the-mill seminar experience!

In your DSEM, you can look forward to invigorating discussions, visits from guest speakers, and a range of co-curricular activities that will make the course content come alive, all while creating a community with your faculty and peers that sets the stage for your next four years. A strong sense of community is a hallmark of the Drew experience, both inside and outside the classroom, and the DSEM exemplifies that the two go hand-in-hand.

Full course descriptions:

HUMAN GOODNESS: CONFUCIAN ETHICS AND THE FOUNDATION OF EAST ASIAN CULTURES 
Confucianism is an ethical way of life propagated by Confucius in the 6th–5th century BCE and followed by the people of East Asia – China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam – for more than two millennia. Although transformed over time, Confucianism is still the substance of learning, the source of values, and the social code in East Asian societies. In this seminar we will explore three key ethical concepts of Confucianism:

  1. Rites, the embodiment of human goodness
  2. Learning, the path to human goodness
  3. Filial Piety, the demonstration of human goodness. We will also discuss contemporary challenges to Confucian ethics.

THE AFRICAN DIASPORA IN THE AMERICAS: EXAMINING THE BLACK EXPERIENCE ACROSS CONTEXTS AND SPACES 
This seminar examines the concept of the African diaspora by using material from the African continent, the Caribbean, and across the Americas to examine the role race has played in work, migration, and community-formation. Thinking broadly, we will encounter material that crosses boundaries of space, language, and empires. Through interdisciplinary readings, we will look at the ways that people across the African diaspora live, work, and sustain their lives. This class opens up diverse paths of inquiry as students attempt to answer questions, clear up misconceptions, and challenge assumptions about the presence of Africans and their descendants in the Americas

LATINOS IN HOLLYWOOD: REPRESENTATIONS, STEREOTYPES, AND IDENTITIES
From West Side Story to In the Heights, from I Love Lucy to Jane the Virgin, from the Latin Lover to Jennifer López and Sofía Vergara… This Drew seminar examines U.S. Latinx images and representations in film and television from the silent era to the present day, along with their historical and sociopolitical frameworks. We explore the construction and perpetuation of Latinx stereotypes in mainstream media productions, and also consider how film and television have been used as political tools to subvert some depictions and promote others. In examining the history of U.S. Latinx participation both behind and in front of the camera, the seminar analyzes the interconnections between Latinx representations on the big and small screen and the shifting discourses on class, gender, ethnicity, and multicultural identities in the United States.

FROM WEST AFRICA TO AMERICA: FOOD, MUSIC, AND CULTURE OF THE PLANTATION 
This seminar will explore how the different cultures — African, Indigenous, and European — that made the societies of the Americas came together to create something new, whole, and vibrant in the New World despite the brutality of slavery. From the US to Cuba, from Brazil to Argentina, we’ll examine the food, music, and popular culture that grew out of the unique circumstances of the plantation and reflect upon what this can tell us about contemporary ‘American’ society.

SOFT DATA: ART AND ILLEGIBILITY 
This seminar explores theoretical and practical approaches to visualizing invisible, illegible, or otherwise undiagnosable afflictions in the body by tracing intersectional strategies from medical humanities, art, and disability studies. We will begin with a history of diagnosis and its discontents, focusing on the role that evolving medical imaging technologies play in reorienting our relationship with the body. From there we will study narrative medicine and examine a wide range of soft data practices from various creative and medical disciplines. In contrast to the networked and institutionalized hard data bodies that stand in for the individual, soft data is gathered through subjective and embodied experience and can be used to synthesize, track, and defamiliarize our relationship with our unruly selves.

NEW YORK VOICES: LITERATURE OF NEW YORK 
This seminar explores a broad array of literature written in and about New York City as well as the scenes and circles from which it emerges. From the transnational energies that put the early Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on the map to the poetry scene that inspired punk in the 1970’s, New York communities have provided inspiration for new modes of expression, literary innovation, and cultural belonging. Tracking the histories of several of these communities, we’ll consider geographically specific movements like the Harlem Renaissance and Greenwich Village bohemianism as well as broader topics like cosmopolitanism, class stratification, print culture, and performance.

WORLD LEADERS OF OUR TIME 
This seminar introduces the theories and empirical studies of political leadership in the post-WWII era. Through in-depth case studies, students will focus on the leadership styles, decision-making, and policy legacies of five prominent world leaders. They will explore how these figures steered significant efforts during turbulent times of political, economic, and social change, shaping national trajectories and impacting contemporary international affairs. Along the way, the seminar draws on a variety of topics from nation-building and self-determination, economic development, democratization, regional integration, security and defense, social reconciliation, and climate change. By the end of the course, students will develop a deeper and more contextualized understanding of the role of political leadership in addressing enduring world challenges.

ACTING THROUGH THE AGES: THE ACTOR AND THE TRUTH 
What has dictated and defined the actor’s role in theatrical art from ancient to modern times, and what has constituted artistic success? We will study methods by which actors of various eras, in various parts of the globe, have been asked to “hold the mirror up to nature,” and by what standards they have been judged. Using historical documents, manifestos, critical responses, photographs, and films (and by trying out various techniques ourselves) we will chart the principal artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that have guided these human chameleons from the masked thespians of the ancient world to the thoroughly unmasked performers of our own moment in theatrical time. Along the way, we will consider dominant issues of race, gender, archetype, and stereotype as they have influenced artistic and critical endeavor surrounding the actor’s art.

RADICALISM, RESISTANCE, AND REBELLION IN MODERN AMERICA
Why do Americans seem not to agree on much of anything? Has this always been the case? Historians have referred to the U.S. as an “unfinished journey,” or as a nation in progress for this reason. The whole of the 20th century is filled with examples of resistance, protest, and rebellion. From the struggles of workers who fought and died to establish the weekend and minimum wage to at the turn of the century to the massive uprising against “Globalization” at century’s end, conflict and struggle have characterized most of the American experience. And although these conflicts result in change, much of it positive, the basic tensions remain. So, we have long fought over such issues as civil rights, war & peace, the role of government, and capitalism. The fact is, conflict has likely played a larger role in bringing about change in America than most people realize.

LGBTQ VOICES ON STAGE 
This seminar examines the evolution of US-American LGBTQ performance in the 20th and 21st centuries, focusing on how queer theater-makers used performance to express identity, resist marginalization, and respond to major historical events such as the McCarthy Hearings, Stonewall, and the AIDS crisis. Students will explore how LGBTQ artists navigated the politics of visibility, used queer coding, and expanded the boundaries of traditional theater spaces to amplify their voices.

GENDER, RACE AND STE(A)M
Why did Barbie complain about Math being tough? What does power have to do with the development of STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, inclusive of fields such as economics, finance and psychology)? How does Art fit into the concept of STE(A)M? This course will focus on how power structures and biases shape creativity and innovation in terms of both science and art through the lenses of gender and race globally. We will first address how and why women and people of color are (under)represented in STEM, with an emphasis on differences between the US/Europe and global south/Muslim majority countries, where gender and race gaps are much less in evidence. Then we will turn our attention to the question of innovation with a focus on whose priorities and voices are amplified within STE(A)M. Finally we will look at how science and art intersect when it comes to innovation and creativity. While art and science are often viewed as distinct fields, we will discover the multitude of ways they are in fact deeply intertwined and both shape and are shaped by gender and race dynamics. The importance of policy in terms of potentially correcting historic power dynamics will also be explored.