FP 0006 is a 3-credit course offered in the fall term. The course focuses on writing and provides the same enrichment activities that FP 0001 offers, including:
- Diverse activities that complement the theme of the seminar, including those that introduce you to the city and its cultural resources;
- Enrichment experiences such as film screenings and lectures by faculty; and
- Opportunities for group study.
Class themes for Fall 2026 are listed below:
- On a Quest
Whether we call it a quest or a search, stories and films are fascinated by the idea. In this class we will be reading about and watching stories of quests from Medieval times to those in the future as depicted in science fiction. Sometimes people go on quests they choose to follow and sometimes they go on searches they are sent on by another. These might be religious or secular quests, taken on to arrive at some sort of material or spiritual personal fulfillment. The examples we’ll consider serve as a way of discussing, writing about, and understanding personal present-day quests you may see yourself as being on. You’ll write essays that consider questions people ask to initiate their searches and the nature and significance of asking good questions. This course is a kind of quest in itself, finding a way to ask important questions, reconsider searches, review goals, and reach tentative answers through reading, watching, discussing, and writing.
- What's Food Got to Do with It?
Food is everywhere. And not just on our plates. It is intertwined with identity, gender, power, memory, entertainment, and pain. This course examines Toni Morrison’s Paradise along with various essays to spur discussions around representations of food in literature and popular culture. Alongside our readings, we’ll experiment with different writing styles and strategies to create impactful, purposeful work with personal and cultural significance. We’ll learn how to leverage our connections to food to craft meaningful prose around topics of students’ choosing. Abundance, scarcity, representations of the body, othering, nostalgia, cultural celebrations, and more are all fair game. In the words of the ultimate American gourmand, M.F.K. Fisher, “with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perceptions of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves.” Bon appétit, and cheers to discovering a hearty appetite for writing!
- Capitalism: Do You Buy It?
We make choices about what to do with our money every day. Businesses invest millions of dollars every year to gain our money and trust, via advertising and marketing campaigns. The profits we help generate are then used to make decisions that affect our lives, communities, and planet. How can we be more aware of our role in this process? In this class we will investigate the rhetoric of corporate capitalism through readings, documentaries, and exploration of the ads we see and hear daily. We will also study how activists work to expose and critique the rhetoric of corporate capitalism. Together we will investigate the marketing messages we receive and our responses to them, in order to discover: Why do we buy what we buy?
- Doctoring the Story
In “Doctoring the Story” we use the figure of the medical doctor in graphic memoir, fiction, and archival documents to explore themes of transition, medical ethics, individuality, and community. How has the archetype of the troubled doctor been used to explore ethical dilemmas and ambiguity in literature and popular culture? How have physicians themselves told and “doctored” their own stories using creative and journalistic modes of composition? How does the abundance of doctor narratives in popular culture inform how we talk about community and public health at the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and (dis)ability? We will practice interdisciplinary and creative essay writing in response to these questions.
- Funny Story
Humor dominates much of American culture. Storytelling is such a powerful way to engage and influence. And funny stories can be so much, well, fun! While enjoying the pleasures of humor and narrative, this course will also take seriously and analyze comic genres and experiences with humor as powerful forces in our culture and personal lives. In this course we will read and analyze humorous essays by contemporary humorists, comedians, and critics from a diverse range of backgrounds, such as David Sedaris, Lindy West, Phoebe Robinson and Cathy Park Hong. Assignments also include watching recordings of stand-up comics who are masters of storytelling, including Richard Pryor and a selection of stand-up comics who are performing today. As we laugh, we will consider: how do humor and storytelling function in our personal lives? In what contexts is the power of humor used to benefit—or to harm? The course readings will provide models and inspiration for writers, who will draw on previous experiences in search of unusual, playful, and humorous ways to reconsider everyday life. Assignments include personal essays, creative nonfiction, and academic writing that offers writers the opportunity to experiment with style, take risks, try out playful techniques, and write with both rigor and a more authentic writing voice.
- Rereading Popular Culture
This seminar uses contemporary popular culture as its subject matter. We are all immersed in popular culture, both experiencing it and authoring it. Through an examination of the history and contexts of popular culture in the United States, we’ll discover how it has been formed into this all-pervasive construct. We will explore film, television, video games, fashion, food, and other cultural phenomena that tell us a great deal about who we are individually and as a society. We will also examine the extraordinary impact the digital age is having on our world, even as the Internet and the myriad devices we access it with continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Through a series of reading and writing assignments, as well as out-of-class explorations, we will develop new lenses and ways of seeing the dynamic world we live in with the aim of becoming more curious, critical, and active participants in culture.
- Idle Hands: Devil's Workshop?
Most of you are in college with the goal of getting “good” jobs. We all must rise and work, and we expect to work eight hours a day, if not more. But why? The answer isn’t as simple as “That’s the way it is.” Why do we Americans work as hard as we do? What makes a wage “fair”? What makes a job meaningful or menial? Are people right to look down at layabouts? In this first-year seminar, we will discuss your experiences and the roots of your beliefs, and we will dig deeper into the politics and culture of work by reading essays, oral histories, and short stories. You, too, will write essays that argue, explore, and narrate. In your own oral history project, you will interview family members, friends, and strangers about what work means to them.
- Borders, Barriers & Bridges
Who decides the location of a national border? How are borders amended as political contexts shift? What are the implications for porous or firm borders for the communities that surround them? How do borders and barriers influence our thinking and our connections to one another?
In this seminar you will read, write and engage with media that can help you to consider the role that literal and figurative borders, barriers and bridges play in your own experience of the places that matter to you. We will consider their influence on you, your thinking and how you understand aspects of local and national concepts of community in relation to what separates and connects us, as individuals and as groups. You will write essays from your own experience, your own research and undertake collaborative work with your peers, as we explore written, visual and performative explorations of how borders, barriers and bridges affect our past, present and future. We will engage in thoughtful and responsible discourse in our discussions, in your own developing writing and examine how authors and artists exhibit such care in their own work.
- The Urban Idea: Reading and Writing the City
What is a city? The Urban Idea: Reading and Writing the City is a seminar-style course, designed specifically for First Year Students, that will explore the many possible answers to that question. We’ll consider the city in its past, present, and future incarnations, exploring Pittsburgh’s cultural geography by looking specifically at demography and inequality, history and art, as well as architecture, urban planning, and the environment. To better understand our city and consider our role in its future, we’ll pair at least five experiential explorations of Pittsburgh (neighborhood walking tours, class fields trips, and self-guided explorations) with related reading and writing assignments. The course will feature both individual research and group collaboration to help us develop our curiosities about cities and try to connect our academic community to the diverse communities around us.
- Writing Our Way Out
How do individuals free themselves from various forms of imprisonment? And how do they use the superpowers of critical, creative writing in this struggle? In this class, we will address these questions in two ways: by exploring published texts and through conversations with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated student writers about our drafts-in-progress. We’ll explore ways of living, thinking, and writing in published works that aim to liberate us from various forms of social captivity including racism, addiction, and literal incarceration: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ letters to his son about breaking away from the confinements of racism; Natalie Diaz’s poems about liberating herself and her family from her brother’s dependence on methamphetamines; and John Edgar Wideman’s narrative dialogues with his incarcerated brother. We’ll consider the ethics of these authors daring to write publicly about the private struggles of their family members. Their texts will provide forms and ideas for creating liberating writing projects of our own, freeing ourselves from the limitations of the five-paragraph academic essay and from social strictures that we personally wish to transcend.