As part of the College Studies curriculum, every student must take two courses in the Junior Seminars category. This category is divided into Liberal Arts Seminars and Integrative Professional Seminars. To complete your Junior Seminar requirement, you can take one of each, or two Liberal Arts Seminars (click here to see how Junior Seminars fit into the College Studies curriculum). In addition to the Liberal Arts Seminars listed in the PhilaU catalog, new courses are added to these categories periodically.  For the Fall 2008 semester, the following new courses are being offered in the Liberal Arts Seminar and Integrative Professional Seminar categories.

PLEASE NOTE: you can also fulfill this requirement with the other 300-level courses in the LIT, HUMN, SOC, HIST and COMM categories.  200-level courses in these categories will NOT fulfill the requirement.

Integrative Professional Seminars

JSINT-371-1  What Color is Your iPod?  The Impact of Creative Industries in Today’s Society (Prof. Natalie Weathers)

Explore the ways that the creative industries contribute to today’s experiential and information based economy.  Students will study the ways that fields such as industrial design, fashion design, graphic design and architecture contribute to society, innovation and the economy.

Prerequisites: SOC-2xx, WRTG-21x

JSINT-371-2  African and Caribbean Visual Cultures (Prof. Rick Shain)                             

Encounter the truly global dimension of design, especially the non-western visual traditions of Africa and the Caribbean.  Students will examine both “high” visual culture (haute couture in Africa; colonial architecture in the Caribbean) and “popular” forms of visual expression (Congolese painting, Trinidadian Carnival), and learn how they relate both to one another and to more “universal” design traditions.

Prerequisites: SOC-2xx, WRTG-21x

Liberal Arts Seminars

JSLA-351-1  America in the Age of Mass Media (Prof. John Devoti)

Examine how the development of U.S. popular culture and mass media (film, recording, broadcasting, and the internet) has reflected and shaped American history.  Students will also consider how technological changes and global influences have affected American mass media culture.

Prerequisites: SOC-2xx, WRTG-21x

JSLA-350-1, -2, and -3   Creative Writing: Shaping Narrative and Experience through Poetry and Fiction

(Professors Valerie Hanson, Nathaniel "NR" Popkin, and Richard Sands)
In this hands-on course, students develop their knowledge of how to shape narrative and experience through two main forms of creative written expression: poetry and fiction. Students read and analyze poetry and short fiction; experiment with these forms through drafts and revisions; and develop critiquing skills in a supportive workshop environment. Students showcase their work in a final portfolio and a reading open to the University community.
Prerequisite: SOC-2xx, WRTG-21x