First Year Seminars

All new students at Franklin with the exception of Study Abroad students and transfer students with 30 or more credits will enroll in a First Year Seminar in their first semester. First Year Seminars are three-credit courses that can also satisfy other core and Major requirements as indicated in the descriptions.

First Year Seminars are taught by full-time faculty members who become the academic advisors for the students in the seminar. The students in each Seminar are also assisted by an academic mentor (an upper-division student chosen for his or her expertise in the subject matter) who participates in the class and helps new students understand the opportunities and expectations of academic life at Franklin.

First Year Seminar Topics

AHT 199 Renaissance Venice
Professor Orsi

Venice is different - from Florence or Rome or any other city. Surviving as an independent city-state for a thousand years, Venice at the height of its power, by the close of the fifteenth century, ruled an empire extending from the Aegean well into Lombardy. A center of trade and an embarkation point for pilgrimages to the Holy Land, it stood at the crossroads of east and west, north and south. This seminar will examine the major protagonists of the Venetian Renaissance-Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese-with respect to the international environment in which they lived and worked. Renaissance Venice will put Venetian art into its greater context and students will think about the implications of cultural exchange. Like all First Year Seminars, this course will cultivate the fundamental skills considered necessary for succeeding in college.

BUS 199 Managing a Crisis: How Companies React to the Unexpected
Professor Rocourt

Successfully managing a huge and complex global corporation can be difficult in the best of circumstances. But what happens when the unexpected occurs? A corporate emergency may originate from global economic pressures (an energy crisis or financial meltdown); military or political events (property destruction or expropriation); natural causes (floods, hurricanes, volcanoes); human error and equipment failure (oil spills, Three Mile Island); willful conspiracy by outsiders (Johnson & Johnson's Tylenol scare); or even from sudden changes in consumer and market preferences. Nassim Taleb's phrase - a "Black Swan" - reminds managers that preparing to cope with the unexpected before it actually happens can often be the key to company survival. In this course we examine the structures, behaviors, and management systems which may determine whether a company thrives or expires in the wake of the unplanned. Students will research specific instances of recent corporate crises as a means to develop general principles of sustainable management responsiveness to an ever changing global economic environment.

BUS 199 Business Ethics: Scandals in the Business Environment
Professor Shanahan

Since the 1980s numerous financial, accounting, and behavioral scandals around the world have challenged the view that businesses can be relied upon to conduct their affairs in an ethical manner, consistent with the political, social, and behavioral requirements of a democratic society. This course explores numerous specific corporate incidents, including Enron, Parmalat, World Com, Computer Associates, Adelphia Communications, and the various Japanese scandals, as a means to identify what should be the expected requirements for a business to operate in a fair and transparent manner in order to meet the obligations that are consistent with established social order and ethical norms. The goal of this course is to help students understand the role that businesses are expected to play within the larger society in which they operate.

CLCS 199 Your Place or Mine: Identity, Place, and the First Year Experience
Professor Long

This course introduces you to key concepts in space, place, and identity. The goal of this course is to present you with an opportunity to engage some of the fundamental themes in spatial theory by exploring your own experience as a first year student at Franklin College. You will be presented with introductory readings in humanistic, critical, and feminist interpretations of space, place and identity. You will have the opportunity to learn and practice key methodologies for understanding space and place such as: landscape interpretation and analysis, mapping exercises, interview methods, and creative writing. Major course themes include: Sense of Place and Rootedness, Power and Spatial Production, and Exclusive/Inclusive Space. Day trips to destinations of interest within Ticino will be included in the course.

COM 199 Global Social Movements and the Media
Professor Vogelaar

This course explores global social movements (including for example the human rights environmental, and anti-globalization movements) from a media perspective. In the course, we will define and explore what constitutes a global social movement, identify the major movements that characterize our era, explore their unique barriers and complications, and examine the ways in which media representation and technologies profoundly influence the success and failure of these increasingly significant social forces. Like all First Year Seminars, this course will also introduce students to some of the fundamental skills necessary for succeeding in college.

FRE 199 Gallicsisms: Myths and Realities
Professor Saveau

"L'Exception française" has come to symbolize France and its image of being a "spoil sport" among nations. In fact, the French reputation as a country of troublemakers has given rise to numerous clichés. Following Roland Barthes' definition "Clichés are the result of the spontaneous" these clichés need to be counter-balanced with an understanding of contemporary French realities. Students in this class will examine the myths and realities of Gallicisms (French customs, ways of thought, attitude towards oneself and the other) as seen from an outsider's perspective in domains as diverse as politics, history, language, sports, cinema, music, gas-tronomy, fashion and domestic life. This class will introduce some of the underlying factors that have enabled and perpetuated these myths. Taught in English.

HIS 199 A Brief History of Travel For Leisure
Professor Pyka

Being on the road is one of mankind's oldest activities. However, travel for leisure (even with the purpose of self-education) is a rather recent phenomenon, that occurred as a more organized phenomenon only in the Early Modern period with the growing interest of Northern Europeans in Italy as a place of beauty and learning since the Renaissance. For several centuries, the sons of the wealthy were sent south on the "Grand Tour" to experience the beauties of Switzerland and the rich historical and cultural heritage of Italy and the Mediterranean. With the growing middle classes adopting certain aspects of Aristocratic life styles and cultivating the ideal of self-perfection by education, travelling became in the 19th century more and more a mass phenomenon that eventually turned into modern tourism. This course follows this development by analyzing both primary and secondary sources with special attention to the impact travel and tourism in 19th and early 20th century had on the Ticino and Lombardy, thus introducing the student not only to the fundamental skills necessary for succeeding in college, but also to the wider environment of Franklin College.

IS 199 One Nation, Many Italies: Regional Identity and Contemporary Italian Literature
Professor Gebhardt

This seminar explores a variety of regional identities which contribute to creating a multifaceted modern Italian reality. To do this, we will focus on three novelists and three poets of the 20th century: Leonardo Sciascia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cesare Pavese, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Salvatore Quasimodo, and Eugenio Montale. We will analyze the historical, geographical, and cultural characteristics of their work. How do these writers' regional identities inform their writing (from questions of theme, to style, to vocabulary, to world views)? Students will be encouraged to look beyond the superficial image of a single, cohesive Italian national culture and to study the cultural impact of a multiplicity of coexisting regional Italian identities. Through selected readings which sample some of the most renowned authors of contemporary Italian literature, students will revisit the choral mysteries of rural Sicily, life in the post-war Roman ghettos, Resistance era Piedmont, and the rugged, inspiring beauty of the Ligurian Riviera. Like all First Year Seminars, this course will cultivate the fundamental skills considered necessary for succeeding in college.

POL 199 Limits to Growth Revisited: New Designs for Sustainable Societies
Professor Zanecchia

This course explores the major political and economic origins of environmental problems facing global societies, to include global warming and related issues of biodiversity loss, desertification, deforestation, fisheries depletion, hazardous wastes, and the environmental impact of industrial agriculture. As a point of reference, the course will trace the rise of today's environmental degradation in the context of the post-WWII era of globalization to include the rise and role of modern transnational corporations, international organizations such as the World Bank and IMF, and conventional models for economic growth in both the advanced and lesser developed countries. With this background in mind, the course will then present various models of development that might direct these same societies towards environmental sustainability, to include sustainable architectural design, energy efficiency and alternative agriculture. Guest lectures and field trips will be an integral part of the course.