University Writing Program

The UWS curriculum consists of two major units: a comparative analysis and an extended unit on research. The comparative analysis unit consists of a close reading predraft assignment, a comparative analysis essay and a comparative genre analysis assignment. The CGA asks students to read writing from varying disciplines and work independently and in groups to identify how writing across the disciplines varies and is similar in content, style, and organization. The research unit consists of an extensive research proposal and a research essay.

As part of the University Writing Seminar, students attend one or more Critical Conversations in which faculty from different departments meet to discuss a topic chosen for that academic year; for 2021-2022, for example, the topic was "Community." This part of the course brings first-year students into direct contact with scholarly discourse and the variety of ways in which Brandeis faculty engage with each other and the world.

Students are invited to continue the conversations in follow-up, small-group discussions. Each University Writing Seminar also assigns an experiential-learning activity to expand the boundaries of the conventional classroom.

The University Writing Seminar for Multilingual Students (UWS-MLS) is an option for students to participate in a learning community with fellow students whose first or strongest language is not English. This course is the same as a standard UWS in terms of credit, curriculum, and learning goals, but sections are taught by faculty with training and experience to address the concerns and needs of multilingual writers. Topics specifically focus on multicultural or translingual themes. As in every UWS, UWS-MLS challenges students to formulate meaningful ideas, support those ideas with evidence and analysis, and convey thinking clearly and persuasively. Every seminar teaches transferable writing skills that students will use across the Brandeis curriculum and beyond. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, revising, and working collaboratively in peer groups and individually with instructors. All students must complete a UWS or UWS-MLS during their first year at Brandeis. 

UWS-01A-1: Exploring Multilingual Identities
Jui-Hsin Renee Hung
Fall 2024: Monday, Wednesday 4:05-5:25 pm (tentative and subject to change)
Spring 2025: TBA
As global citizens, many of us speak more than one language. Our linguistic repertoires are tools we can draw on that reflect our diverse life experiences. Our ability to switch between languages raises questions about what truly defines us: Is it the language we speak, the culture we come from, or the future we envision? In this course, we will embark on a journey of identity exploration through engaging with readings, popular films, and TV series such as Kim’s Convenience, and other multimodal texts. We will explore our multilingual identities through discussions and writing of various forms to uncover the complex yet beautiful interplay between languages, cultures, and personal identities. By considering how identities are formed and demonstrated, we will rethink the concept of identity, challenge its traditional notions, and develop an understanding of the evolving nature of multilingual identities in this dynamic world. As we share and discuss what made us who we are, we will also read each other’s stories and reflect on our collective understanding of multilingualism and identities, as we all bring our unique voices to this community and each of our stories will shape what it is and means. 

The University Writing Seminar for Multilingual Students (UWS-MLS) is an option for students to participate in a learning community with fellow students whose first or strongest language is not English. This course is the same as a standard UWS in terms of credit, curriculum, and learning goals, but sections are taught by faculty with training and experience to address the concerns and needs of multilingual writers. Topics specifically focus on multicultural or translingual themes. As in every UWS, UWS-MLS challenges students to formulate meaningful ideas, support those ideas with evidence and analysis, and convey thinking clearly and persuasively. Every seminar teaches transferable writing skills that students will use across the Brandeis curriculum and beyond. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, revising, and working collaboratively in peer groups and individually with instructors. All students must complete a UWS or UWS-MLS during their first year at Brandeis. 

UWS-01A-2: Success Across Cultures
Scott Moore
Fall 2024: Tuesday, Friday 11:10 am - 12:30 pm (tentative and subject to change)
“Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” “Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied.” (“Everyone is the blacksmith of their own fortune.”) “Zìlì gēngshēng” (“Self-reliance”). In today’s global world, ideals of self-making and merit-based success transcend cultural and geographic boundaries. Some critics have argued that meritocracy — a system rewarding talent and effort over birth privilege — is “the closest thing we have today to a universal ideology.” But to what extent is modern society actually meritocratic? Does meritocracy necessarily lead to greater equality, social justice, or a sense of fulfillment? And how are meritocrats represented when they manage to succeed (or fail)? Tracing concepts of merit and mobility through the American dream and other cross-cultural ideologies of success, this course will examine aesthetic representations, popular writing, and scholarship across multiple disciplines. By the end of the course, students will have developed the analytical and academic research skills to contextualize and interrogate different cultural representations of success, merit, and mobility of their own choosing.

Among animals, individuals choose mates based on biologically informative features such as long colorful tail feathers, large canines, or a red, swollen posterior. We typically assume that human attraction (and love) is much more nuanced and complex ... but is it? Many features that humans find beautiful or attractive, such as small waists, curvy hips, and large eyes, can be tied to biological explanations. Even behavioral features, such as nurturing behaviors, may be attractive for adaptive reasons. In this course, we will explore and write about biological explanations for these and many other aspects of human attraction. Using an evolutionary perspective, we will examine global patterns of attraction and challenge stereotypes of beauty. Do nice guys really finish last? Do traditionally attractive features in western cultures — such as low body weight — actually provide an evolutionary benefit, or might some preferences be culturally derived? For the final essay, students will supplement library research with data collection to produce an interdisciplinary research paper.

Elissa Jacobs

Close

Forensic science has helped to identify the dead, to solve crimes, and to bring culprits to justice. Forensic techniques, later discredited, have also led to false convictions: a man     was found guilty of rape and spent decades in prison before DNA tests confirmed his innocence; a convicted arsonist was proven innocent but had been exe­cuted years earlier.

This course invites students to explore the achievements and shortcomings of forensic science. We will investigate the work of forensic scientists, take a look at real-life cases to learn about the history and effectiveness of investigative techniques, and analyze how forensic science has been portrayed (and transformed) in popular television series such as CSI or Bones.  

Katrin Fischer

Joey and Chandler, Woody and Buzz, Thelma and Louise, Will and Grace, Harry and Lloyd, Romy and Michelle, Hermoine and Harry: over the years, popular culture has offered a plethora of “friendship” examples through its depictions of “besties” and “bosom-buddies.” These examples naturally reflect the changing societal values and cultural norms from which they emerge. This course will examine many depictions of friendship and consider what assumptions they convey in their time and place. Through reading a chosen novel or short story, watching a television episode of Friends or Black Mirror, or critically examining a movie like Toy Story or Clueless, we will seek answers to questions like: What are the benefits of friendship? What role does gender play in friendship? What do friendship-depictions tell us about how audiences view and participate in friendship? What assumptions about friendship are made in these depictions? 

Carey Slaeker

Humans often consider themselves to be "the moral animal," distinguished from other animals by our complex and socially derived systems of morality, characterized by empathy and cooperation. However, when comparing humans with the rest of the animal world, are we really so different? In this course, we will examine through discussion and writing the degree to which human morality is grounded in our evolutionary past. We will explore the development of human morality during childhood and adulthood through the lens of evolution and will look at classic scientific tests of morality/ethics (e.g., the trolley problem). Additionally, we will engage with evidence for morality in non-human species and probe the degree to which our primate relatives engage in altruistic, empathetic, and moral behaviors. During the final paper, students will have the freedom to choose their own topic and to utilize interdisciplinary literature in their exploration of the nature and nurture of morality. Usually offered every year.

Elissa Jacobs

Storytelling plays a crucial role in our lives. We draw on stories to make meaning of ourselves and others, to shed light on our experiences, and to express who we are or would like to be. The same holds true for businesses. Storytelling is not only a core competency of business leaders but an indispensable component of functional organizations. Successful companies take pride in compelling stories; troubled companies tend to lack institutional stories and a culture of storytelling. Capable business leaders are effective storytellers, and strategic storytelling has been a proven means of initiating change and of turning companies around. This course invites students to investigate the power of stories and storytelling in business contexts. By analyzing texts from various media, we will discuss questions such as: What characterizes effective stories? What is the importance of storytelling and story-making in companies? How can storytelling bring about organizational change? Which traits do storytellers and business leaders share? What is the connection between storytelling and leadership?

Katrin Fischer

According to Charles Darwin, "A naturalist's life would be a happy one if [they] had only to observe and never to write." Unfortunately (or fortunately!), much of a naturalist's practice involves writing. In fact, the same holds true for those in other scientific fields — scientists must not only do science, but they, too, must write science. But what exactly are professional scientists writing? What motivates their composing and to whom do they write? What rhetorical choices do scientists make when communicating complex information? In this course, we'll examine the discursive and generic requirements scientists face when composing in different contexts for different audiences. By considering a number of professional scientific genres, including research articles, grant applications, poster presentations, and public talks, we will explore questions of accessibility, writerly agency, persuasion, and objectivity. You'll even have the opportunity to interview faculty members in the disciplines to learn about the writing tasks you might encounter as a working professional in your field. By the end of this course, you'll have a more sophisticated understanding of professional writing in the sciences, and as such, you'll be asked to produce a Scientific American-esque essay that makes an argument about a novel scientific innovation.  

Allison Giannotti

Video games afford opportunities to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds in an interactive and engaging manner. The creativity and imagination behind game design necessitate the interaction of a wide range of skills: coding, graphic design, storytelling, musical composition, and sound design.

How is it that we can spend hours picking up virtual weeds in Animal Crossing, be fearful of turtle shells in Mario Kart, or experience immense satisfaction when leveling up our Pokemon or beating a boss in Dark Souls? This course addresses these questions by tracing the development of video games from the early pixelated heroes of Mario and Pac-Man to online spaces that involve the global participation of millions of people, such as League of Legends and Call of Duty. Students are required to think critically about the virtual worlds they inhabit and consider how video games implement play, immersion, and engagement and how their unique function as an interactive medium has evolved throughout the latter half of the 20th century to the present day. The interdisciplinary nature of game studies allows students to think and write critically on an array of topics concerning narrative, immersion, gender, music, technology, and game design

James Heazlewood-Dale

This course considers music as a radical political tool for social justice. Guided by different genres of music and different social justice issues, we will listen to politically resonant songs in order to explore how music not only actively participates in and shapes our culture, but also offers modes of resistance to regimes of power. From the pro-labor and anti-war politics of folk music, the anti-establishment and anti-normative bents of punk, and the racial and social justice orientations of hip-hop, students will examine how music fights power, encourages activism, and effects social change. This course is designed in such a way that students may participate fully regardless of the level of their prior musical knowledge or experience. All of the music we will be examining involves texts that are linguistic, sonic, and occasionally, in the case of music videos, visual. Our study of these musical texts will be enhanced through various critical and theoretical approaches to the intersections of race, gender, and class. For final research papers, students will be encouraged to develop a research topic about music and social justice issues that are meaningful to them. 

Ethan King 

Our contemporary moment has been marked by various catastrophes and crises: the pandemic, the climate emergency, the refugee crisis, widening economic disparities, rising nationalist extremism, and racial inequalities and police violence. These crises have combined to create a present moment of profound uncertainty and growing unrest, and daily life has become undergirded by a rising tide of anxiety. Using contemporary events and recent cultural texts as sites of inquiry about the global tumult of our present, students will consider how the convergence of the everyday and the catastrophic frame our “new normal,” as well as how distinctions between normalcy and emergency are connected to media narratives, corporate agendas, and political rhetoric and policy. Altogether, the course invites students to examine our experience of the contemporary world from multiple lenses and encourages students to research, learn, write about, and potentially reimagine the social, economic, and environmental challenges of our time.

Ethan King

The ocean, the open road, and the automobile all entice us to travel. From Thelma and Louise, a female buddy road crime film, to acclaimed food critic Anthony Bourdain, who samples foods from across the globe, travel has long worked in popular culture to offer the tantalizing possibilities of reinvention, of getting lost, of escape into the new. However, travel is more than just a romantic fantasy about self-transformation. In fact, British travel essayist Pico Iyer argues that our travel experiences are always structured by our preconceptions about ourselves and the world; for Iyer, we can never completely escape from ourselves. Building on the ideas of Iyer and others, we will investigate what we do when we travel and the motivations that drive the urge to explore. How does travel relate to identity, gender, and self-discovery? In this course, we will probe this question and others by watching films and reading texts from a variety of genres and disciplines, examining the desires, pressures, and delusions that propel us to hit the open road or take flight. Building on ideas from the course, students will be encouraged to write papers that engage with issues related to travel and self-exploration that they find compelling.

Collin Cook

Despite being united by the common desire to win, few relationships in popular culture are as fraught as the relationship between athletes and the various organizational structures—teams, leagues, coaches, agents—of sports. Indeed, given the amount of money at stake, the sports industry’s many competing interests make it a productive case study for thinking about this ever-shifting balance of power. Beginning with the film Jerry Maguire, this course will track these ongoing power negotiations by looking at a variety of relationships within sports, attempting to understand how different actors—athletes, coaches, owners—try to win, maintain dominance, and get paid. How do organizations respond, for example, when individual players like Tom Brady and Aaron Rogers upset the traditional hierarchies that govern teams? Are some coaching styles—such as those of Steve Kerr or Phil Jackson—better suited than others to balancing the competing personalities and interests of professional sports? To further engage with the topics we discuss, students will be encouraged to write papers that grapple with sports-related questions and issues of power dynamics that are of interest to them.

Collin Cook

 The Times They Are A-Changin …When Bob Dylan wrote this song in the early1960s, it was the time of political and military upheaval in America. Dylan was trying to rally people to come together to bring about needed change in our society: culturally, socially, and politically. The decade marked revolutionary ideas and turmoil, and the most prevalent included individual freedoms, Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, the Viet Nam controversy, Woodstock, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Gay Liberation, and more. Students played a major role in bringing about change as campus protests occurred across America. To explore their role, we will start by examining primary sources and personal narratives between 1960 and 1974 from the extensive archive at Brandeis. Through a series of writing assignments, this UWS will provide students an opportunity to examine the Sixties phenomena, first through the lens of music, then through a comparative analysis of controversies, and finally through research into movements that accomplished social change. 

Marsha Nourse

This course offers an examination of hip-hop as a form of social commentary, focusing on how hip-hop artists use their music to address social, political, and cultural issues. Through readings, discussions, and listening exercises, we will explore how hip-hop artists have commented on topics such as racism, police brutality, poverty, and other social issues.

Students will be encouraged to engage in critical thinking and discussion about the social issues addressed in hip-hop music, and to analyze how these messages are conveyed through the music. 

By the end of the course, students will have an understanding of how hip-hop can be used as a form of social commentary, and will have developed the skills necessary to analyze any genre of text that addresses social issues.

 Joshua Lederman

In recent news, Adnan Syed – the lead figure in the seminal true crime podcast Serial – was released from prison after 23 years. Syed had been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Hay Min Lee, but the podcast shed enough doubt on the conviction that a court eventually overturned it, leading to Syed’s release. At the same time, many have noted that the emergence of true crime podcasts and docuseries has its roots in the exploitation of people’s misery for the entertainment of the masses (and the financial benefit of the media outlets). In this course, we will examine the ethics of this genre. We will read texts in ethical philosophy (authors like Kant, James, and Mill), as well as arguments about true crime series themselves. In the end, we will have examined some of our own beliefs about right and wrong, and will have conducted a critical investigation into the culture that surrounds us. 

 Joshua Lederman

Rigorous controlled experiments have now confirmed what has always intuitively seemed true: being beautiful has its advantages. But how do we define, identify, and recognize beauty? Why do we seek it out; why must we strive so hard to achieve it? And why does it often have such an ugly underbelly? This course will examine culturally and historically contingent ways of defining beauty, analyzing how constructs of racialized, classed, and gendered attributes at different historical moments factor into what counts as beautiful, fashionable, or desirable. We also will parse the values and ideals promoted by our own moment through a wide variety of selections from recent pop-culture and mass-media campaigns: music videos, such as Beyonce’s “Pretty Hurts,” reality TV clips, such as America’s Next Top Model, Instagram trends including #iweigh and #freethepuff, and advertisements for cosmetics and clothing, such as Aerie’s “real” campaign and Sephora’s “We Belong to Something Beautiful.” Nonfiction articles, book chapters, and documentary clips on the globalized beauty industry (cosmetics, plastic surgery) will offer critical and theoretical lenses to consider where and how beauty works.

Sophia Richardson

In the battle between the original and the clone, who wins? If they are identical, does it matter? In this course we will examine what it means to make a copy or a clone, and what it might mean to be a copy or clone. We will analyze how different technologies of reproduction – mirrors, lenses, the printing press, cameras, computers, bodies – both motivate and alter the impulse to copy. As we analyze a wide array of media including literature, film, painting, photography, dance, and music, we will investigate how form shapes – and is shaped by – the anxieties and opportunities afforded by replication. What makes a good copy? Why is the relationship between original and copy so contested? How do cloning and copying – whether historical or present-day – force us to rethink the boundary between life and art, to renegotiate our ideas of what it means to be a human, a self, a unique individual? Texts may include clips from films such as The Matrix and television series such as Black Mirror as well as recent articles on innovations in artificial intelligence and bio-technology.

Sophia Richardson

The Zombie genre is a staple of horror. But in the same way that most art is a reflection of society, authors, filmmakers and creators have used the Zombie hoard to interrogate important issues in society. Max Brook’s World War Z is really a critique of the failures of global disaster preparedness. George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead has been broadly interpreted as a meditation on consumer culture. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend asks the question “what does it mean to be human?” The Un-dead are a blank canvas, ready to become what we believe them to be. In this way, they are an effective vehicle for cultural commentary. This class will use novels, comics, film and television to investigate the zombie genre as a form of social critique. Topics will include immigration and migration, disaster preparedness, sickness and death, the essence of humanity, mourning and loss, and climate change. This class will also draw on scholarly literature in history, English, medicine, sociology, and anthropology.

Sara Beth Gable

Autobiography is an extremely popular genre among comics artists. Masterpieces like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home are now common inclusions in high school and college curricula. These works share an uncanny ability to take difficult subjects — e.g. warfare, violence, and family trauma — and portray them in a human dimension that is accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds. Other texts in the genre depict lighter subject matter, but these also claim to represent the past through images drawn much later in time than the episodes that they depict actually occurred. What is it about comics as a medium that draws artists to reflect on their personal experiences and enchants readers to engage? What should we make of the connection between lived reality and its portrayal in comics? Are comics more or less “real” than other media like text, photography, film, and paint? 

In this course, we will pair autobiographical comics with theory from various disciplines: art and visual representation, history and narrativization, and psychology and memory studies. Students will be encouraged to write papers that investigate the relationship between comics, the self, and the notion of truth.

Rafael Abrahams

In January of 1969, black students and other students of color at Brandeis led an 11-day sit-in at Ford Hall, an administrative building, and issued a list of 10 demands that promoted racial justice. Brandeis students aren’t unique: students and young adults play a critical role in nearly every social movement. For generations, youth across the world have used innovative tactics to protest inequality, racism, violence, and human rights violations. Is the rest of the world listening? How do these movements form and how are they portrayed in media and pop culture? Why do they succeed or fail? This course utilizes documentaries, archives, pop culture, and scholarly histories to explore the tactics of student and youth-led groups through the intersecting lenses of race, gender identity, citizenship, and sexuality. Throughout the semester, students will reflect on these activists’ impact on social justice movements around the world as well as how authorities and media view their tactics. During the final paper, students will have the freedom to choose their own topic and to utilize interdisciplinary literature in their exploration of how youth activism shape our understanding of how to fight for change.

Anja Parish

In The Matrix, Neo believes he is the author of his own life. But is he really? As it turns out, intelligent machines have enslaved the minds of humans, and Neo is merely a cog in their grand scheme to access solar energy. While this film may seem far-fetched, philosophers have debated whether or not we truly have free will for millennia. At stake is our understanding of ourselves, our place in the world, and how we ought to judge the behavior of others. While the free will question is far from settled, the tools of science may be able to get us closer to an answer. From the fundamental structure of the universe to how our brains operate, science can help determine what kind of control is possible and how we actually make decisions. This course will examine the implications of theories and experiments in physics, psychology, and neuroscience for the free will debate. Course material may include readings from philosophy, science, and literature, as well as popular films like The Matrix and Minority Report.

Matthew Paskell

Chat GPT has generated much anxiety in professional and academic arenas. Will AI eliminate jobs or become smart enough to manipulate humans? Films such as Her prey on these fears when the film’s protagonist falls in love with and takes advice from his AI assistant, Samantha. Looking beyond AI, the use of technology raises a host of other questions. For example, should social media companies restrict speech on their platforms? Do interactions in video games have different social rules than real life? These questions each come with their own distinct considerations but are united by a common theme—life in the digital age and the related ethical implications. Determining our moral obligations when using or developing technology has important consequences, ranging from our interpersonal relationships to the very fate of humanity. This course will examine ethical issues arising from various kinds of technological advancement, present and future. Course material may include readings from philosophy, science, and literature, as well as popular films like Ex Machina, Transcendence, and Her.

Matthew Paskell

A painter or sculptor might not change the world simply by installing their work in a museum or on the street, but they might change how we see the world. How does this process work? What kind of things can a piece of art allow us—or force us—to see about the society that we live in? And how can we use writing to come to grips with these new ways of seeing and being? This course invites us to ask questions about the possibilities and the limits of art to represent and effect social change. We will look at theories of how art can change the way we see the world and even how we act within it, look at famous case studies from artists like Banksy, Dana Schutz, Kerry James Marshall, and Kara Walker, and head to some museums or other public spaces for art ourselves to see these ideas in action.

Matthew Schatz

It has earned 10 billion dollars, created millions of fans, inspired thousands of books, dozens of TV episodes, and hundreds of baby Yoda toys. Since its premiere in 1977, Star Wars has become one of the most widely recognizable pop culture phenomena, with the franchise having expanded from a film trilogy to numerous television series, novels, comic books, video games, and its own theme park. But how did this massive world come to be? 

Star Wars has often been called a “modern fairytale”; like all fairytales, it reflects artistic and political contexts of its time. In this class, we will look at the literary sources – including samurai films, cowboy mythology, space operas, and 1930s serials – and the real-world social contexts that informed George Lucas, the director of Star Wars, and inspired other filmmakers working under the auspices of the Disney Corporation. Students will be encouraged to think critically about how the fictional world of Star Wars has been constructed by different authors, at different times. 

The breadth of the text of Star Wars and the interdisciplinary nature of this course allow everyone to engage in discussion and writing activities – you do not have to be a “hardcore” fan to contribute! 

Whether in high schools, universities, or international forums like the United Nations, young people are major actors in many contemporary movements for social change. Their activism is central to shifting the political and economic priorities of our society and imagining a more compassionate and equal society for all. In this class, we will look at examples of youth activism and activists from around the world, such as the youth climate movement and Greta Thunberg, to contemplate what makes youth activism unique and powerful. What are the issues, experiences, and ambitions that motivate young people to organize and advocate for change? What strategies or opportunities do youth activists leverage to gain legitimacy as social actors? What challenges do youth activists confront from institutions and people in power? 

sneha gantla

Have you ever wanted to trade lives with someone else? To experience a different consciousness? In Charlie Kaufman's film Being John Malkovich, office workers discover a tiny, mysterious door that turns out to be a portal into John Malkovich's mind. For 15 minutes, they get to be John Malkovich – and yet, they retain their own identity at the same time. What is it to be someone else? Is it to know what their body feels like? To hear their thoughts? To see through their eyes? Is it more than that? If the office workers are still themselves while 'inside' John Malkovich, do they really know what it is like to be John Malkovich? This course explores the strangeness of being a particular self, and of not being someone else. We will ponder various kinds of other minds, from strangers to enigmatic lovers, philosophical zombies to dogs and bats, and think about what knowledge is possible or desirable or ethical to seek. How are we shaped by and intertwined with others? 

Daniel Schwartz

Why do people migrate? What is the impact of the circumstances and context of such moves? How do immigrants write about moving to new locations – leaving their old home and arriving at a new one? In this seminar we explore patterns of human migration, the political and cultural significance of such movement and the ways in which people narrate their experience. In exploring multiple types and contexts of migration, we consider multilingualism and translation, identity, borders, and cultural encounters and differences – topics that continue to pervade our public discourse. Our sources include literary texts, historical and legal documents, journalistic writing, personal narratives, and film. We discuss these readings and the choices made in them in terms of tone, word choice, audience and more, and use them to formulate our own critical ideas on topics such as home, belonging and navigating cultural differences.

Yael Kenan

Jerusalem is a city with multiple names, a long and tumultuous history, and myriad admirers. For millennia, it has been conquered, destroyed, and rebuilt. People have killed and died for it, traveled from afar to see it, dreamed about it and written poetry and prose commemorating it. Why has this city captured so many people’s imagination for so long? And what is it like to actually live in a city that has long been a symbol? 

In this course, we ask how Jerusalem became sacred and to whom, trace recurring instances of exile and of longing to return and discuss the city’s symbolic and political importance in the violent national conflict of the past 100 years. Our journey through Jerusalem’s many lives includes an array of texts and artefacts depicting the city across centuries and perspectives: religious texts, poetry, short stories, paintings, film and television.

Yael Kenan

This course explores the role of the television sitcom (or “situational comedy”) as a programming and cultural mainstay in American life. Despite being occasionally derided as mere entertainment, the television sitcom functions as a social and cultural artifact that often indicates the norms and values of its time and place. This course will analyze how sitcoms reflect and influence societal values. By dissecting the humor, characters, and underlying social messages of iconic sitcoms ranging from I Love Lucy to The Office, students will develop a nuanced understanding of how shifting societal values have been reflected in sitcoms, and how this popular entertainment form shapes the construction of social norms and social difference in American culture. We will also consider the transformational role of digital streaming platforms in the development and consumption of contemporary sitcoms.   

Ethan King 

From funky, blissed-out BTS hits like “Butter” and “Dynamite” to NewJeans’ playful presentation of innocent infatuation in “Super Shy” and “ETA,” K-pop has captivated audiences all over the globe. At first glance, it is easy to understand why: as an alternative to the various pressures felt worldwide – the aftermath of COVID, economic uncertainty, stifling social norms – the pastel-suffused, meticulously choreographed world of K-pop offers a decidedly brighter, untroubled vision of reality. On the other hand, films like Parasite, Memories of Murder, and Snowpiercer present a world governed by callous greed, inflexible hierarchies, and incomprehensible violence. Locating Korean music and films among current social and economic forces, this course will try to better understand their popularity. Beginning with BTS’s meteoric ascent during COVID, we will consider what kinds of pleasures K-pop offers and why those pleasures are deeply appealing for so many. By exploring the alternative models of community, identity, and belonging depicted in K-pop – and how those models are challenged in Korean films – we will obtain a deeper appreciation of the complexity of contemporary Korean media. No knowledge of Korean is necessary.

Collin Cook

Yes and no. On the one hand, each writing seminar has the same types of assignments and course policies. On the other hand, each seminar uses a different topic. 

Both options are viable, but students who take UWS in the fall can then apply what they’ve learned to their spring courses. Consult Academic Advising if you have further questions.

UWS is a full-credit course. It counts as one of the 32 courses required for graduation.

UWS instructors work closely with their students, providing one-on-one tutorials, sustained attention to individual development and extensive comments on drafts. With larger classes, instructors could not give this kind of individualized attention.

Depending on availability, students may change their UWS to another in the same semester.

UWS is a first-year requirement. If you do not fulfill it during your first year, you may be placed on academic probation.

An online writing assessment, taken in the spring before entering Brandeis, helps the Writing Program reach out to students who might most benefit from what the Composition Seminar has to offer. (Students wishing to enroll directly into CSEM without taking the online assessment may do so.)

International students must take UWS in their first or second semester at Brandeis. Nonnative English writers are strongly encouraged to sign up for free tutoring in the English Language Programs.

The Writing Center offers support for all students, including those enrolled in UWS, with 30- and 60-minute one-on-one tutorials available by appointment. The Writing Center also offers workshops on each of the major UWS assignments, including the lens paper and research paper.