Writing in the Racial Archives SP23 (FYSM-10100-01)

FYSM 10100. FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR IN CRITICAL INQUIRY Required of all first-year students, the First-Year Seminar in Critical Inquiry focuses on the processes of critical inquiry in a writing-intensive, small seminar. Each seminar invites students to engage a set of issues, questions, or ideas that can be illuminated by the disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives of the liberal arts. Seminars are designed to enhance the intellectual skills essential for liberal learning and for successful participation in the Colleges academic program. First-Year Seminar may not be taken S/NC.

SM influencers made “DO YOUR RESEARCH!” 2021’s viral refrain, deploying it to stop conversation in favor of misinformation. Academics, by contrast, use research to open ideas to contestation and further elaboration. Fostering critical thinking and independence of mind, a liberal education aspires to cultivate human freedom. Antiracist writers Ibram Kendi and Jason Reynolds pursue this freedom by identifying a learning culture in which systemic and structural racism impacts knowledge production. Publishing Stamped amidst a smear campaign against CRT, they contend with critics who would call their book indoctrination. How would you respond to such a charge? Also engaging race and racism in American society, poet and essayist Ross Gay contends with a different challenge to his work. People have asked him, How can we be joyful in a moment like this? His reply? What’s not a time like this? This class invites you to imagine what an antiracist, joyful education at the College of Wooster might become for you. Our time together will invite you develop to your own definitions of joy, justice, and college-level learning. As you craft researched visions of what bears meaning for you, you will be forming the writing and research habits that will prepare you for the next four years.