First-Year Writing Seminars
Offered fall or spring. 3 credits. No knowledge of German is expected. Letter grades only.
Course Coordinator for TA-taught FWS seminars: D. McBride
GERST 1121: WRITING BERLIN
Seminar 101: TR 10:10-11:25, C. Strateman
Berlin is a city that reinvents itself by rewriting itself. In this writing seminar, we’ll study a variety of literary, visual, and sonic texts to create a mythical map of the city from its emergence as modern metropolis in the 1920s, reduction to rubble in World War II, refuge for the disaffected in the 1980s, and rebirth in the 21st century. As we make our way through the linguistic, visual, and aural landscape of its ever-changing topography, we’ll create our own stories of a mythical Berlin in dialogue with texts written by the displaced persons who breached its walls and navigated its illicit economies. We’ll also become more critical readers and viewers, as well as better writers.
GERST 1122: LOVE AND DEATH IN VIENNA
Seminar 101: MWF 10:10-11:00, D. McBride
Seminar 102: TR 8:40-9:55, A. Reynders
Singing boys. Dancing horses. Waltzing debutantes. Those fortunate enough to live in a city where each day begins with a pastry and ends with a two-liter bottle of wine must live a charmed existence! Not according to Freud. After decades of treating the morbid Viennese, he concluded that human nature must be torn between two warring forces: a love instinct and a death drive. In this FWS we'll explore both sides of Vienna's enigmatic character, its life-affirming hedonism and its self-destructive nihilism, through the lens of narrative fiction on page and on screen. Along the way, we'll learn to read and view more critically by writing our way through the best literature and cinema of the multi-ethnic metropolis on the Danube.
GERST 1126: PHILOSOPHIES OF VIOLENCE
Seminar 101: TR 10:10-11:25, S. Thomas
Violence is a complex concept with a nuanced history. Beginning with Kant and progressing through the discourses of Engels, Benjamin, Arendt, and others, this seminar will employ close readings of philosophical texts to problematize violence’s conceptual history. Through in-class discussions you will learn how violence’s various conceptualizations have shaped the political, religious, and scientific landscapes of modern life. In addition to learning this discrete body of knowledge, you will use weekly writing activities and assigned essays to develop your own critical voice. By semester’s end you will have gained a critical eye towards the institutional dilemmas of contemporary life, and through those eyes you will be empowered with the voice to change it.
GERST 1127: WRITING SPORTS: BEAUTY, POLITICS, COLLECTIVITY
Seminar 101: TR 11:40-12:55, N. Spadoni
Why do sports fascinate and inspire us? How and to what extent can this sports fascination shape politics, identity, and collective experience? How have we expressed this fascination through writing and media, and are there lost or forgotten ways to do it? Rather than a superfluous pastime, sports acquired, over the last century, a central role of intensity and influence in our global society, and in this sense this seminar will explore the many ways in which sports rose to a prominent object of writing— lyrically, philosophically, journalistically, academically. Students will develop analytical and creative writing skills through a series of scaffolded, process-writing exercises to produce five academically viable essays in a variety of styles and genres.
GERST 1128: CATASTROPHE
Seminar 101: MW 8:40-9:25, K. Nousek
From nuclear accidents to glacial melt, literature and the arts can capture anxieties about global catastrophes beyond comprehension and register seemingly invisible traces of radical changes to landscapes. In what ways do cultural forms grasp, question, and creatively transform world-negating events? How can creative texts use cultural memories to reinvigorate worlds with meaning after traumatic disasters? Using texts about impacted and disappearing places in central and eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and Antarctica, we will investigate global catastrophes through intercultural lenses to explore the strategies and solidarities that arise in response. Scaffolded essay assignments with guided drafting and peer reviews will help students identify complex, interconnected impacts on local and global communities.
GERST 1129: PHONINESS AND AWKWARDNESS
Seminar 101: TR 1:25-2:40, W. Wang
What does being “genuine to oneself” mean? Can one really know what is authentic, or is all self-presentation a form of pretense? This course delves into the tension between phoniness and awkwardness as it appears in narrative fiction. If one rejects phoniness, one may appear awkward or out of sync with social norms. Yet embracing pretense erodes authenticity. What is the “self” to which one is genuine? Writing in this class is inseparable from critical reading. Assignments include weekly short responses and five 5-page essays. From sentimentalism to satire, readings include presentations of “phoniness”, e.g. Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and Nabokov’s “Pnin”. We will explore how phoniness implicates aesthetic, moral, and economic values.
GERST 1170: MARX, NIETZSCHE, FREUD
Seminar 101: MW 11:40-12:55, M. Villalobos
A basic understanding of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud is a prerequisite for participating in critical debates in the humanities and social sciences. Our seminar will explore key terms in the revolutionary models of critical analysis these thinkers pioneered: historical materialism, post-metaphysical philosophy, and psychoanalysis. This will mean articulating points of contrast as well as convergence. Discussions and writing exercises will focus on texts that created the discursive framework for critiquing society and culture today. Our method will proceed from the premise that critical reading, thinking, and writing are inseparable moments in the same operation of critique. The question that guides that method will be: Do alternative ways of thinking exist in opposition to the ones we view as natural, inevitable, or universal?
Please direct any questions regarding our Fall 2025 FWS course offerings to Anne Chen at aac262@cornell.edu or to the FWS instructor.