Summer Courses for the Class of 2027

Wesleyan is offering students in the Class of 2027 the opportunity to take a course remotely from home over the summer before matriculating in the University this fall.  The summer course curriculum includes four small writing-intensive First-Year Seminars (FYS). All incoming students are encouraged to complete one FYS within their first year at Wesleyan. For more information on the FYS program, see: https://www.wesleyan.edu/admission/admittedstudents/first-year.html 

The course registration process will be open to incoming first-years over the summer via their Academic Road Map.  Every student who submits course preferences during this time period will have an equal chance of getting scheduled into a class. Students will be notified of their final course schedule by late June.

No additional charge will be incurred for incoming students who enroll in one of the courses listed below; tuition for these special courses is included in the regular academic year tuition fee. [Note that this program for the incoming class is entirely separate from Wesleyan's Summer Session, which offers courses every summer with a tuition cost.]

Summer courses for the incoming class will take place from Tuesday, July 5 through Wednesday, August 10. The class meeting times listed are the hours when the entire class will meet together; while some classes have greater or fewer synchronous meeting times, all courses will require the same total amount of academic work over the five weeks.

We hope you will join us!

ENVS209F.01 Interrogating Sustainability (FYS)
Professor: Elan Abrell  Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: W/Th 1:00PM-2:30PM

In 1987, the United Nations' publication "Our Common Future" -- also known as the "Brundtland Report" -- elevated sustainability as a central concern in international policymaking. The report focused on sustainable development as an essential method for achieving sustainability, defining it as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Since then, sustainable development and other methods for fostering sustainability have played an important role in debates related to environmental, economic, and social policies at multiple scales around the world. In this course, we will interrogate the concept of sustainability, examining its history, its impact on environmental policies and social and economic development, critiques of the sustainability concept, and alternative visions for securing equity between current and future inhabitants of the earth. As a first year seminar, the course will use a variety of scaffolded writing assignments along with readings, discussions, and films to explore concepts including the commons, climate change, water scarcity, petrochemical and plastic pollution, land use, biodiversity loss, industrial agriculture, One Health, degrowth, ethical consumers, and circular economies.

GOVT102F.01 Politics: Fundamental Concepts (FYS)
Professor: Basak Kus  Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: W/F 2:00PM-4:00PM

This First Year Seminar introduces students to the concepts that remain central to political life: capitalism, class, race, gender, state, citizenship, power, civil society, democracy, anarchy, populism, and fascism, to name a few.

MUSC119F.01 Jazz in the 1960s (FYS)
Professor: Noah Baerman  Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: T/W/F 1:00PM-3:30PM

The 1960s were a turbulent but stimulating time for the world of jazz. The R&B-based soul jazz movement was at its peak and often at odds with the still-developing avant-garde aesthetic. Certain other influences, such as those of Brazilian and African music, were becoming widespread in jazz for the first time. Older forms of jazz like bebop, big band music, and traditional jazz (aka "Dixieland") were struggling to remain viable and relevant. Rock music's surge in popularity was threatening the commercial solvency of jazz while acting as a musical and cultural force to which all jazz musicians had to react in some manner. Meanwhile much of this decade's jazz is inexorably linked to the political and social upheaval of the era, particularly those aspects relating to Black Americans' sense of identity and struggles for equality.

In this course, we will broadly explore the various movements that made up the jazz of this decade. We will delve more deeply into the music of some of the most important figures in jazz during this time, such as Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Stan Getz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jimmy Smith, Yusef Lateef, and Sun Ra. We will study musicians who typified a particular movement, those who assimilated several into a personal style, and those who moved freely among factions. All the while, we will be contextualizing the music within the social and political climate of the decade and the broader artistic and commercial landscape of music at the time.

MUSC125F.01 Music and Downtown New York, 1950-1970 (FYS)
Professor: Eric Charry  Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: M/W/F 1:00PM-3:00PM

This course will explore the history, interconnections, and simultaneous flourishing of four distinct music communities that inhabited and shaped downtown New York during two particularly rich decades in American culture: Euro-American experimentalists; African American jazz-based avant-garde; blues and folk revivalists; and Lower East Side rock groups. Much of the course will be devoted to understanding their points of convergence and divergence, especially in conversation with broader currents of the time (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement and related notions of freedom, shifting youth subcultures, and avant-garde aesthetics). We will read about and listen to recordings of a wide variety of musicians, identify aesthetic and cultural trends, and study the local industry that supported them. Student research, interpretation, and writing will be emphasized throughout the semester.

PSYC105F.01 Foundations of Contemporary Psychology (FYS)
Professor: Lisa Dierker Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: W 10:30AM-1:30PM

This course will introduce the field of psychology through digital projects that include data collection and analysis, video production/editing, graphic design, and script writing. Students will learn about contributions of the brain to our behavior, sensation and perception, emotions, development, learning, mental health, memory, our social world, and more.

PSYC117F.01 Psychological Science and the Good Life (FYS)
Professor: Anna Shusterman Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: T/Th 2:00PM-4:00PM

How can we use psychological science to help improve our coping, resilience, and well-being? We are in an intense period of adjustment - historical change in how society functions, a recent shift to a world with Covid-19, and, for you, the transition to Wesleyan and college. Fortunately, psychological science has given us many helpful research findings about how the mind and brain work, how to improve well-being, and how to change our own behaviors and mindsets for a better life. In this course, we will learn about the scientific findings that point us toward well-being, and we will practice the skills that are supported by such evidence. The aim of the course is to leave with a better understanding of psychological science, a toolkit of research-supported practices we can use in our everyday lives, and a supportive community.

REES208F.01 Otherness & Belonging (FYS)
Professor: Roman Utkin Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: M/W/F 2:00PM-3:30PM

One of the many haunting utterances of Fyodor Dostoevsky's most famous antihero, the Underground Man, is "I am alone, I thought, and they are everyone." Like him, the other protagonists of this course are outcasts, dissidents, and strangers - jaded office clerks and repressed misanthropes, queer activists and "enemies of the state" - who refuse to conform to societal norms, disrupt conventions by saying the unsayable, and write and make art from the margins, the realm of undesirables. Focusing mainly on Russia and Eastern Europe, we will analyze representations of otherness and belonging in fiction, non-fiction, and film. We will explore narratives of undesirability through the thematic prisms of exile and immigration; gender and sexuality; mental illness; prison writing; ethnic difference; religion; and unrequited love. The concept of undesirability will also be our point of entry for constructing arguments about community, privilege, and a society without outsiders.

THEA145F.01 Clash of the Titans: Classical vs. Contemporary Voices in Theater and Film
Professor: Maria-Christina Oliveras Grading Mode: Student Option  Meeting Time: T/F 1:00PM-4:00PM

This course will explore how classic texts have informed and inspired contemporary writers of theater and film, and how seemingly disparate parts of the canon enrich and illuminate one another. We will dive into close readings of plays, exploration of scenes from an actor's point of view, supplemental viewings and reflections/critical analyses of films and plays, and an original adaptation. Plays by Euripides, Luis Alfaro, James Ijames, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Lucas Hnath are currently under consideration. Film viewings include Black Orpheus and Hamlet.