London First-Year Experience
Scribner Seminar Course Descriptions

JLSSP 100 Coming of Age in London
Instructor: Pat Oles, Associate Professor of Social Work

Coming of age—the transition from adolescence to adulthood—is a complicated process involving expectations, opportunities, commitments, and responsibilities; it brings changes to family, peer, and other relationships and new social roles. This period of life, now called emerging adulthood, varies across cultures and social classes; in the western world, the transition is taking longer than ever. In this course, students examine the developmental experiences of emerging adults in the US and the UK and consider their plans for this exciting and fascinating time of life.  In other words, students study themselves! The course involves readings in sociology, psychology, and anthropology, as well as film and it engages students in small scale research projects focused on everyday life in London.
 
JLSSP 100 The British Past in Film
Instructor: Daniel Nathan, Associate Professor of American Studies

Films powerfully influence how people understand the past. “For many,” writes historian Mike Wallace, “because cinematic modes of perception seem so real, moviepast is the past.” This course critiques how British and American filmmakers have represented the British past. It examines feature films as historical documents that reflect (and sometimes reproduce) the ethos or cultural politics of the period in which they were made and first viewed. The intent of the course is not to critique films as straightforward history or to assess their accuracy and reliability. Most feature films do not make bold “truth” claims about their subjects; they are usually content to remain loosely—sometimes very loosely—connected to their historical referents. Moreover, it would be foolish to expect commercial filmmakers to provide moviegoers with historical truth when myth and fantasy are so much more profitable. Rather, the course encourages students to engage in a dialogue between the past and the present, and to consider the ways in which one particularly vibrant form of popular culture informs (and sometimes clouds and subverts) historical understanding.