Freshman Seminar

What happens when catastrophic or traumatic or painful events–war, or exile, or forcefully moving from one country to another—happened to your parents or grandparents, and not to you, but you hear about them over the dinner table, or at odd moments, or sometimes in the silences between their words? Did those events, even if you didn’t experience them yourself, have an impact on your mind and heart? Whether it’s called “haunting,” or whether it shapes your political commitments, or affects you through some secret process of which you are barely aware, this course departs from the assumption that what happened to the generations before you makes a big difference in your life, but that it’s hard to know exactly how that difference works. Sometimes, though, that impact can be an impetus for great creativity. We’ll read works of fiction, memoir, and view films where the next generation speaks out–and we’ll create some new works of our own. Creative, smart, excited Berkeley first year students of all backgrounds! This seminar is part of the Food for Thought Seminar Series.