FWIS 100
Fall 2026 Course Topics

Children’s literature is often characterized as simplistic and unsophisticated, lacking true literary depth. Appearances, however, can be deceptive. In this class, we will examine several samples from modern (1865-present) British and American children’s literature as we investigate questions such as:

• How does children’s literature appeal to dual audiences of children and adults?
• How do these texts define children (yet simultaneously encourage children to break free from those definitions)?
• How does children’s literature balance its simultaneous goals to educate and entertain?

Over the course of the semester, we will talk, write, and present extensively about these questions, as we learn to read children’s literature both for pleasure and for a new understanding of our own assumptions about children and their books.

In this first-year writing seminar, we will read, write, and discuss texts that take location as their subject. We will begin by considering the places one knows intimately—homes, landscapes, workspaces—with selections from The Poetics of Space, Walden, and poems and essays by Marie Howe, Michael Ondaatje, Michelle Zauner, and many others. Our discussions will then consider what it means to be a stranger—and to be estranged from familiar places—as we work through texts by James Baldwin and Herman Melville, and view films such as Chantel Ackmerman’s News From Home (1976). These discussions will culminate with Emily Wilson’s revolutionary translation of Homer’s Odyssey, as we reflect on what it means for one to return home after becoming estranged.

In addition to reading and viewing these primary materials, we will take many on-campus field trips, acquainting students with Rice University’s galleries, green spaces, and resources. These readings and excursions will be supplemented by many lessons on the craft of writing and scholarly research. As we continue to refine our understanding of both “place” and “poetics” throughout the course of the semester, students will learn to write compelling essays for a rapidly changing world.

From our time zones to our sports leagues to the way we drive our cars, plan our towns, and even picture the world, ideas of “The West” are inescapable. In American Culture, the “Wild West” or a “Frontier Wests” is particularly deeply ingrained, with narratives of cowboys, lawmen and gunfights still dominating our books and our screens. This class takes the Wild West as a starting point and asks a crucial question: how many “Wests”are there actually? As such, this FWIS 100 class approaches the American west from a variety of different perspectives, identities, and genres. How do Black drovers and lawmen such as Nat Love or Bass Reeves disrupt the cowboy archetype? How do the domestic spaces of midwestern homesteads and California suburbs fracture or enrich a pioneer/settler aesthetic? What histories lie beneath (and on top of) America’s “amber waves of grain”? Through discussion of films, novels, short stories, and television episodes, students will be encouraged to devise, analyze, defend, and narrate their ownideas of the American West. In the process, they will be asked to write and communicate in multiple genres, including screenwriting.

Recent cultural movements encourage a more serious exploration of popular music. This course will participate by taking a critical look at what songs mean, what songs/ albums/genres express, what our interest in music express, and how writing about music can lead us to great insights.

It has now been confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record for our planet. Climate scientists have warned that we are “at the brink of irreversible climate disaster,” with warming oceans, melting glacial ice, and unprecedented droughts and floods. Life in the Anthropocene, our current age of human-induced climate change, continues to impact our social relations, as people around are differently impacted from these environmental consequences. In ever more precarious times, how are we to understand such complex human and natural entanglements?

In this course, we will read texts from anthropology, geography, as well as works of fiction to introduce students to the various ways humans cope with climate change. Furthermore, by following social movements and activist circles, the class will introduce the concept of Environmental Justice. In particular, this class will introduce how climate and environmental justice groups engage in the broader Houston area.

The time and effort required to get into college—and the many demands on our time once we get there—can distract us from a very important question: What is college for, exactly? In other words, what is the real purpose of a college education? This course will allow you to consider this question and the many competing (and sometimes contradictory) answers that others have offered about the purpose of higher education. Along the way, we’ll reflect on larger questions about ambition, professional achievement, and the pursuit of wisdom, happiness, and meaning. To help us formulate our own understanding of the purpose of higher education, we’ll also look to literary and philosophical texts from Plato and Paulo Freire to J.D. Salinger and Zena Hitz. By writing and reading in a variety of genres, we’ll develop the academic skills and scholarly habits of mind that will help you thrive in college, while reflecting on how to make the most of your college years.

Some of the most iconic moments of Hollywood cinema have taken place in the shadow of the motorcar. This class asks students to think critically about what it means to depict the automobile through film and to consider how these depictions, and their meanings, might change with different historical, artistic, and political contexts. Class discussions and writing tasks are based around the viewing of several carefully curated movies, including John Lasseter’s Cars (2006), Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), and Denise Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017). With the aid of these films, we will consider a range of critical topics, thinking through questions of risk, belonging, fugitivity, and dwelling. As a field with a rich cultural and critical history, studying the automobile in American Cinema provides the ideal opportunity to think broadly about a wide variety of academic questions while gaining a depth of writing and communication experience.

What historical objects have survived from the African diaspora in the Americas? In this course, we will look at objects that embody this ongoing history, from the 16th to the 21st century, from the US to Brazil, ranging from monuments, small leather pouches, quilt works to culinary dishes. In their variety, these objects represent different dimensions of Black lives in the Americas, including their spirituality, artistic practices, abolitionist fights, foodways, and memorialization. Reading canonical as well as recent publications on Afro-diasporic culture and history, students will acquire a strong understanding of the historical contexts in which these objects have been produced and used. Throughout the semester, students will submit various writing assignments to practice describing material objects in a clear and concise way, while developing effective writing strategies by discussing select passages from assigned readings. This course is designed to celebrate the agency and creativity of Black people in the Americas throughout history and to counter historical narratives that focus solely on their suffering and oppression.

After her historic 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent defeat, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton described the presidency as the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” remaining for women in American politics. Women remain significantly underrepresented across all levels of U.S. politics, holding only about 30% of elected offices, with even greater disparities for women of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other marginalized groups. In this course, we will trace women’s efforts to achieve political change, focusing on key struggles related to voting rights, equal pay, and reproductive freedom. We will also examine the cultural, structural, and institutional barriers that shape women’s pathways to political power. As the semester concludes, we will consider what difference women make once in office, strategies for achieving more equitable representation, and the prospects for electing a future Madam President. Through a series of scaffolded writing assignments, including a policy analysis and an examination of a real-world political campaign, students in this course will develop their ability to craft and clearly communicate evidence-based arguments related to women’s political representation.

“Film Noir” is a French description of a distinctly American phenomenon. This course will challenge students to write about that phenomenon from a variety of critical and disciplinary perspectives. From its emergence in 1930s crime novels like Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, to the solidification of its tropes in post-WWII films like The Maltese Falcon, to its genre-crossing influence on works like Blade Runner and Fargo, the Noir has always offered a cynical critique of American exceptionalism and the notions of prosperity that inform it. This course will challenge students to look past the hard-boiled detectives and dashing femme-fatales to see the complicated cultural ambiguities that always lurk within the overt mysteries that the genre offers its audience. The course will challenge students to write about a wide variety of media, including novels, film, graphic novels, video games, and television, and to engage with the substantial body of critical work that already surrounds the genre.

Our culture is fascinated with its own destruction. From zombies to nuclear war, ecological disasters, aliens, disease, and killer machines, Armageddon takes many forms. Structured around ways in which we have imagined the world ending, this course charts the cultural consciousness of apocalypse. What’s at stake in envisioning our annihilation? The reading selection changes each year, but in the past we have considered novels and films such as Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, the Wachowski sisters’ The Matrix, and Yeon Sang-Ho’s Train to Busan. As a writing intensive course, Post-Apocalyptic Literature and Film will teach you college-level critical writing and reading skills along with a healthy dose of doomsday phobia.