Claire Lobenfeld

What can pop music uncover about power? In this writing-intensive course, we'll look at pop music through the lenses of artistry, politics, and history while developing college-level writing skills that build a foundation for FYS II and upper-level Liberal Arts courses. Artists up for discussion include Lizzo, Britney Spears, Jojo Siwa, Chappell Roan, SOPHIE, and, of course, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. We'll read authors like Danyel Smith, Sasha Geffen, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Rawiya Kamier and hear from the artists themselves through music, interviews, performances, and documentaries. Class time will be spent writing, revising, and developing skills in critical analysis and making a claim in service of 15-20 pages of multi-draft, formal writing. Throughout the semester, peer-reviewing and one-on-one instructor conferences support the process.

FYS I prepares students for advanced study in the Liberal Arts by attending to the foundational skills of college-level writing and interpretation, such as close reading, critical analysis, academic argumentation, essay structure, and style. This first-year seminar focuses our attention on poetry. While it's common for students to find poems baffling or even alienating, we will practice the kinds of reading skills and receptive states of mind that open poetry up to understanding and enjoyment. By reading, discussing, and writing about a small number of short poems every week (drawn from a variety of poets, periods, and places) we will see how reading poetry well does not require elite or occult knowledge but patience, interest, attention, and curiosity. Students will practice reading slowly and closely and writing about poetry in a way that reproduces that slowness and closeness in their own prose. Students should expect to write 15 to 20 pages of formal, revisable writing.