Three SHPRS First-Year Discovery Seminars are exploring exciting and current topics through different activities and site visits. All three seminars are available in Spring 2017, so register for your seat as soon as possible!
Take a look at what courses are offered and hear from the professors themselves.
LIA 194: Discovery Seminar: Time Capsule 2017, Make History
Professor Catherine O'Donnell
If in one hundred years, someone were to open a box and from its contents understand Arizona State University in the year 2017, what should the box contain? Participants in this seminar will get to decide that question, creating a time capsule of physical and digital objects to be opened only after generations have passed. In order to do so, we’ll think about the nature of ASU’s community and connections to the wider world; about the way historical sources from podcasts to protest signs capture and fail to capture an historical moment, and about the challenges that changes in culture and technology will pose to future Sun Devils’ ability to understand what mattered to us and why. Individuals from the College and community will offer suggestions, answer our questions, and provide guidance about how to preserve materials. At the end of the semester, we will assemble our selected items and seal the capsule. Join our seminar and find out how we learn about the past while you explore the present and send a message to the future.
What is Prof. O'Donnell most excited to teach about?
I think I am most excited to have students think about the many communities they move through each day – circles of friends, digital communities, political and religious groups, athletic clubs, the university, the country, international organizations, communities that are important but nearly impossible to define – and how to make that visible to people 100 years from now. I think it will be a fun way of exploring the challenges historians face as we try to piece together lives and events from the past, and I also think it’s an opportunity to contemplate the lives we make day by day.
LIA 194: March Madness: College Basketball and American History
Lecturer Victoria Jackson
For two weeks in late March each year, Americans at home, work, and school; in airports, subways, and restaurants—nearly everywhere imaginable—tune in to watch the NCAA basketball tournaments. Most of them have filled out “March Madness” brackets and are competing with family, friends, classmates, and co-workers to determine whose “picks” are most successful. In recent years, even the president makes his selections on a whiteboard in the Oval Office for official “Presidential Brackets.” How did these championship tournaments become an entrenched part of the American experience in the spring time, and how has March Madness changed over time? In this seminar we will begin to answer these questions as we explore topics including fandom, identity and community; technology and media; and the history of NCAA basketball. It just so happens that Arizona State University is the institutional host of the 2017 Men’s Final Four!
What is Prof. Jackson most excited to teach about?
I am most excited about sharing the experience of hosting the Final Four with first-year students!
LIA 194: Exploring Religion in Phoenix
Professor Jason Bruner
Centuries of settlement, migration, and violence have profoundly impacted the people and landscape of the "Valley of the Sun”. Today, the greater Phoenix area is home not only to Native American tribes and nations who have lived in the region for centuries, but also to a tremendous variety of ethnic and religious communities, some of whom settled here as refugees. Jewish synagogues, Swaminarayan temples, and Islamic community centers exist among evangelical mega-churches, Roman Catholic churches, and Mormon wards. This course explores the religious diversity of our “back yard” through visits to religious sites and meetings with local religious leaders in the greater Phoenix area.
What is Prof. Bruner most excited to teach about?
I love showing students the tremendous diversity of practices, beliefs, ethics, and styles that exist within religious communities and traditions. With this course, we will be able to think about this diversity in our own community.
For more information and class descriptions, please click here.