Our first-year Fall semester course invited students to think critically about the materials they encountered in the course. Fall coursework is usually organized around a central theme that allows ingress into a study of U.S. culture, and we complement in-class readings with excursions and participation in on-campus and off-campus events.

This is a sample syllabus from the previous semester, where we studied the manner in which food shapes and is shaped by our various cultural and national identities.

They were asked to integrate the material into a series of response assignments that linked what they saw, heard, and read with the general themes and specific topics we presented in the course. The following is the assignment they were required to complete.

Over the course of the semester you will be asked to write four 1-page response papers. You must do one of each type, and you may do them in any order.

Topics

• One response paper must address a class reading and/or discussion
• One response paper must address an excursion
• One response paper must address a film or guest speaker
• One response paper must address a group presentation

Other Information

• Each response paper should be approx 350 words
• Each response paper should be labeled with its type (see above)
• In addition to its label, each response paper should have a title (i.e., your title should not be “Response Paper 1” or “Response Paper—Presentation”)

The final paper we asked them to complete prompted the students to independently perform the same exercise we did the entire semester: to link the particulars of everyday life to the larger expressions and politics of the culture of the United States. The following is an example of that assignment.

Your final paper should be a reflection on your first semester in American Cultures. You should consider what you’vxe learned over the course of the semester, what connections you’ve made between different aspects of American culture(s), and how our readings, presentations, and excursions have formed your knowledge. Your final paper should not, however, simply be a list of things that you’ve learned or things we’ve discussed. You should have a specific focus, how larger issues such as immigration, labor, gender, business, ethnicity, agriculture, and politics (to name a few) are linked to such mundane activities as eating and drinking. Also, your final paper should offer some new information. We should find something in there that we have not already heard or discussed in class.

In addition to essays like those described above, we asked the students to deliver oral presentations and to complete small in-class assignments designed to assess their mastery of course content.