The Ignatius Seminars, the Liberal Arts Seminar, and the FLL Hager Scholars Program all present exciting opportunities for first-year students to challenge themselves in the classroom, work with highly skilled faculty members, and bond with fellow students in a small class environment.

IGNATIUS SEMINARS

The Ignatius Seminars are a set of one-semester, three-credit courses available in the fall, in which faculty lead weekly discussions on topics they are particularly passionate about.

16 Ignatius Seminars will be held this fall, including classes led by , , and .

“I’m so grateful for the remarkable setting this course has given me, to grapple with the deepest questions of life and human existence,” said Dalton Nunamaker (C’22), who took Dean Celenza’s seminar, “Thinking Through Writing,” last fall. “I recommend every first-year applies for the Ignatius Seminar that best aligns with their interests!”

LIBERAL ARTS SEMINAR

Another option for students seeking an intensive one-semester program is the Liberal Arts Seminar (LAS), a six-credit course that explores the cultural history of the Mediterranean region through both fiction and nonfiction works. The LAS fulfills the Writing, Theology, and Engaging Global Diversity core requirements.

 of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and  of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies will lead this year’s LAS.

“The LAS facilitates deep friendship and respect between students. It connects you to kindred spirits immediately upon arriving to Georgetown, both professors and other first-years,” Ema Bargeron (C’22) said. Two teachers in the classroom means richer and more multifaceted discussions on historical topics that are relevant today.”

FLL HAGER SCHOLARS

The FLL Hager Scholars Program provides an opportunity for first-year languages and linguistics majors to partake in an intensive multidisciplinary program over the course of the entire academic year.

In addition to one course per semester in their declared language or linguistics major, Hager Scholars take a series of courses that fulfill core requirements in other disciplines, taught by faculty who are particularly interested in the ways that language study informs their fields.

“The Hager Scholars arrive at Georgetown with a diversity of language interests and experiences, so in the program they are both students and teachers,” said , Vice Dean for Undergraduate Education and a member of the Hager Scholars faculty. “From the get-go, they’re learning to make connections between linguistics and theology, literature and culture, history and philosophy — all through the lens of language.”

APPLY

Further information on the Georgetown ������̳ first-year seminar programs, including student testimonials and application instructions, can be found here.

Fields, the Idol Family Term Chair in the , will lead the seminar “Blackness as an Organizing Strategy: Black Participation in Post-Civil Rights Social Movements,” open to incoming first-year students in the Fall 2018 semester.

RACE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Fields arrived on the Hilltop last fall after spending six years at Stanford University.

He was drawn to both the faculty in the Department of Sociology and the university as a whole.

“There’s a contingent of young, next-generation scholars who are doing fun, interesting, theoretically compelling work here. The prospect of coming to join that crew was really appealing,” Fields. “The university itself also seemed committed to grappling with the same kind of issues that really animate my work — issues of race, culture, and society.”

ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM

Fields’ interest in unusual overlapping identities — as he puts it, “people who do things you wouldn’t expect them to do” — led him to conduct a yearlong academic study on young women who have taken up knitting. While working on that project, he started thinking about other similarly incongruous groups, eventually arriving at a unique specialty: Black Republicans.

“It’s not a monolithic experience. Black Republicans have lots of different experiences within the party, depending in part on their motivations for being there,” Fields said. “There’s a perception of Black Republicans having weak or nonexistent Black identities, and I haven’t found that to be the case at all.”

Fields published a book, , in October 2016. While the national political landscape has shifted significantly since then, his insights are still very much applicable.

“Things have changed, but the broader themes of the book are actually playing out,” Fields said. “One of the biggest messages was that you will know Black Republicans by the white leadership of the party — and that’s certainly the case.”

EXPANDING RESEARCH

In recent years, Fields has expanded his research on Black identity and shifted its focus to representation of Blackness in the commercial spheres. He’s well suited to study the subject, having worked for six years in advertising before pursuing a graduate degree.

“I wanted to look at a context where racial identity operates almost like a human capital skill,” Fields said. “If Coca-Cola or McDonalds says ‘We want to market our products to black audiences in a compelling way,’ a black advertising agency can say ‘Hey, we can do this.’”

Fields will explore multiple levels of Blackness in advertising, from the experience of Black people working in agencies to the mainstreaming of multicultural marketing to the incorporation of race issues into business culture.

“I’m really excited about that project — I think it’ll start to explore the ways race gets incorporated into the institutional missions and business practices of companies, not just at the individual worker level” he said.

May 29, 2018 –  We’re already excited to welcome the Class of 2022 to the Hilltop in just a few months. For now, we encourage you to learn more about our special academic options for first-year students: the Liberal Arts Seminar, the FLL Hager Scholars Program, and the Ignatius Seminars.

Each of these application-based programs offers an opportunity to begin your academic journey at Georgetown with an exploration of a particular topic in a small group environment. Participants will learn through rigorous coursework and small class discussion, all led by some of the university’s most dedicated and accomplished faculty members.

Students interested in any of these programs must . This allows students to be matched to their seminars with time to finish filling in their schedule when general pre-registration opens in July.

IGNATIUS SEMINAR

Ignatius Seminars are three-credit classes taught in the Fall semester only, each focusing on a specific topic in the humanities and social sciences that its faculty leader specializes in. Topics in 2018 range from the interaction of psychology and Shakespeare to the history of Washington, D.C.

This year, students who apply for our Ignatius Seminars also have the opportunity to take a class with one of three senior University administrators.

University President John J. DeGioia will teach an Ignatius Seminar entitled, “Pursuing Common Good.” Provost Robert M. Groves will teach an Ignatius Seminar entitled, “Looking at the World through Different Lenses.” The dean of Georgetown ������̳, Christopher Celenza, is also headed into the classroom this fall with his Ignatius seminar entitled, “Thinking through Writing.”

Students and professors alike consider the Ignatius Seminar to be a valuable experience for first-years interested in exploring deep subjects in a small class environment.

“The engaging and exciting learning environment of my Ignatius Seminar was a one-of-a-kind experience,” said Isabel Short (C’21) who took a seminar last fall.

“Part of what the Ignatius Seminars are about is giving students the chance to grow in every possible way and to integrate the learning of the spirit, the body, the mind, all the parts of the human person, to give students a chance to live that out,” said Associate Professor of Theology Erin Cline, who is in her second year of teaching the Ignatius Seminar “Human Flourishing, East and West.”

LIBERAL ARTS SEMINAR

The Liberal Arts Seminar (LAS) is a rigorous six-credit class exploring a new topic in the liberal arts over the course of the entire academic year. This year’s Seminar will focus on the history of the Mediterranean Sea region.

Long a route for trade, pilgrimage, and exploration, the Mediterranean has been the battlefield of empires and has become both a vista for nostalgic artists and a graveyard of migrants. The 2018-2019 Liberal Arts Seminar will explore the Mediterranean as a laboratory of exchange, contact, and border crossings, and how literature, culture, and knowledge have circulated around the Mediterranean from the Middle Ages to the present on waves of thought, story, and song.

The LAS is co-taught this year by four professors: Elliott Colla of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature Program; Emily Francomano of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature Program; Nicoletta Pireddu of the Department of Italian and Comparative Literature Program; and Jonathan Ray of the Department of Theology.

“The purpose of literature and of culture is not that of identifying with a reality in order to be reinforced with what you have thought so far. It’s more a matter of meeting the other, discovering that there are other ways of looking at reality, and this can only make us global citizens.” Pireddu said.

“I think the team teaching dynamic and the nature of the interdisciplinary course itself are something that are somewhat unique to Georgetown,” Ray added. “It introduces [students] to a lot of skills and a lot of themes that you can use in your courses for the rest of your time at Georgetown.”

FLL HAGER SCHOLARS PROGRAM

Named in honor of Dr. Serafina Hager, a long-serving Italian professor and dean, the FLL Hager Scholars Program seeks to showcase and celebrate the incredible strength and diversity of language study at Georgetown.

In addition to a course in their declared language or linguistics major, Hager Scholars take a series of courses that fulfill core requirements in other disciplines, taught by faculty who are particularly interested in the ways that language study informs their fields.

“The FLL Hager Scholars program provided an excellent way of immersing myself in a variety of fields related to languages and linguistics,” said French major Olivia Giacomo (C’21). “I have gained a greater understanding of and appreciation for cultures around the world, which will stay with me throughout my studies at Georgetown.”