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2026-2027 Academic Year

Fall 2026

FYSM 100 First-Year Seminar
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will: - Critically analyze information and ideas - Examine issues from multiple perspectives - Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason - Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and - Create clear academic writing The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.

ENGL 101 The American Comic Book
Cross-listed with FMST 220-01. This course explores the history, aesthetics, and business aspects of the American comic book. Attention will also be given to the comic book's relationship with other media, such as animation and live-action film and television.

FMST 220 The American Comic Book
Cross-listed with ENGL 101-03. This course explores the history, aesthetics, and business aspects of the American comic book. Attention will also be given to the comic book's relationship with other media, such as animation and live-action film and television.

FMST 320 Cybernetics
Cross-listed with ENGL 351-01. This course approaches cybernetics as a framework for thinking about how beings, machines, and environments respond to one another through shifting patterns of communication and control. We will explore how writers, filmmakers, and theorists have used cybernetic ideas to rethink knowledge, perception, ecology, and the shifting relations that join humans to the systems they inhabit. Moving from mid-century reflections on information and self-regulation to contemporary narratives that imagine automation, networks, adaptive environments, and ecological feedback, the class traces how cybernetic thought has opened new ways of understanding relation, agency, and interdependence. Texts may include fiction by E. M. Forster, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ted Chaing; theory by Norbert Wiener, Evelyn Fox Keller, and W. Ross Ashby; and films and television such as The Matrix Reloaded, Westworld, and Ghost in the Shell.

ENGL 351 Cybernetics
Cross-listed with FMST 320-01. This course approaches cybernetics as a framework for thinking about how beings, machines, and environments respond to one another through shifting patterns of communication and control. We will explore how writers, filmmakers, and theorists have used cybernetic ideas to rethink knowledge, perception, ecology, and the shifting relations that join humans to the systems they inhabit. Moving from mid-century reflections on information and self-regulation to contemporary narratives that imagine automation, networks, adaptive environments, and ecological feedback, the class traces how cybernetic thought has opened new ways of understanding relation, agency, and interdependence. Texts may include fiction by E. M. Forster, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ted Chaing; theory by Norbert Wiener, Evelyn Fox Keller, and W. Ross Ashby; and films and television such as The Matrix Reloaded, Westworld, and Ghost in the Shell.

Spring 2027

ENGL 220 Intro to Literary Studies
In literary studies, we explore the work texts do in the world. This course examines several texts of different kinds (e.g., novel, poetry, film, comic book, play, etc.) to investigate how literary forms create meanings. It also puts texts in conversation with several of the critical theories and methodologies that shape the discipline of literary study today (e.g., Marxist theory, new historicism, formalism, gender theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, etc.). This course helps students frame interpretive questions and develop their own critical practice. Prerequisite: 101. This course is the prerequisite for 300-level work in English.

FMST 320 The Technological Sublime
Cross-listed with ENGL 351-02. This course examines how prose fiction, film, and philosophy have wrestled with the idea of technology as something that strains or surpasses human capacities for understanding, prediction, and control. From theoretical accounts of enframing and acceleration to narrative worlds shaped by opaque systems, distributed intelligences, or emergent forces, the works we'll explore in this class stage encounters with a technological sublime that pushes against inherited ideas of agency, meaning, and humanity itself. Texts may include fiction by William Gibson, Octavia Butler, and Dan Simmons; essays by Martin Heidegger, Rosi Braidotti, and Nick Land; and films such as Blade Runner and T2.

ENGL 351 The Technological Sublime
Cross-listed with FMST 320-02. This course examines how prose fiction, film, and philosophy have wrestled with the idea of technology as something that strains or surpasses human capacities for understanding, prediction, and control. From theoretical accounts of enframing and acceleration to narrative worlds shaped by opaque systems, distributed intelligences, or emergent forces, the works we'll explore in this class stage encounters with a technological sublime that pushes against inherited ideas of agency, meaning, and humanity itself. Texts may include fiction by William Gibson, Octavia Butler, and Dan Simmons; essays by Martin Heidegger, Rosi Braidotti, and Nick Land; and films such as Blade Runner and T2.