Catalog description: Research in the Disciplines promotes further development of competence in reading, thinking, and writing, with emphasis on the intellectual and practical skills required for the research paper.
As a Core Curriculum course, Research in the Disciplines enables students to hone the skills of writing and revision while researching a topic of interest within the course section's topic. Many of our section topics are interdisciplinary, and all engage with important and interesting questions for research.
Students in this course will select their own research topic, and then work to advance the conversation about it from a critical and analytical point of view. They will learn the process of searching for books, journal articles, and Internet sources; develop strategies for managing notes and citations; extend their synthetic and analytical skills; respond to instructor and peer feedback; and learn how to differentiate between and assess scholarly, credible, and non-credible sources.
- SAS Students: 201 meets either the Revision-Based (WCr) or the Discipline-Based (WCd) Writing & Communication goals.
- SEBS Students: 201 meets the WCd Core Curriculum Requirement.
- Other Students: click here. 201 meets requirements for most schools at RU. Please check with your advisor.
Transfer Students: If you were exempt from English 101/College Writing because a transfer advisor deemed that you satisfied the WC core requirement at another university, you may wish to register for 301: College Writing and Research. This course meets all the same core requirements as 201 but is designed specifically for transfer students. Information on 301 may be found here.
201 Topics, Spring 2026
Consult your Course Schedule Planner for specific times and locations.
Art and Authenticity
Instructor: Lynda Dexheimer
Authenticity is the coin of the realm in the arts—but what does that really mean? In this research writing course, students will explore the complexities of authenticity in artistic expression while developing essential research and analytical writing skills. From Renaissance painters borrowing techniques to hip-hop artists sampling beats, the boundaries of originality and influence have always been blurred. In today’s digital world, AI-generated deepfakes and machine-made art challenge traditional notions of authorship and artistic identity.
Through critical readings, discussions, and independent research, students will examine historical and contemporary debates surrounding authenticity in literature, music, dance, and visual arts. They will analyze how artists borrow, transform, and remix ideas while considering ethical and philosophical questions about creativity and ownership. Assignments will emphasize argument-driven writing, source evaluation, and effective integration of research into academic essays.
This course is designed for students eager to refine their research skills while engaging in meaningful discussions about the evolving nature of artistic truth. No prior expertise in art or music is required—just a curiosity about how we define originality in an age of endless reproduction.
Architecture, Public Space, and Behavior
Instructor: Puja Sahney
We have all hung out in a café, eaten dinner with friends at a restaurant, or attended a summer barbeque in our neighborhood park. These are public spaces of daily interaction that we visit and revisit throughout our lives. What does spatial arrangement, architecture and organization of public spaces reveal about behavior, community, cultural identity, social order and traditional values? This course will look critically at the cultural importance we attach to public spaces by looking at the architecture and behavior of people in these spaces. Students will learn how to ask questions of design, décor, and spatial management of social spaces to arrive at new understandings of the way space shapes human interactions, relationships, and attachments to the environment. In addition to public spaces, the course will also cover domestic spaces like the living room or the formal dining room where visitors are hosted. Domestic objects that shape spatial uses in public rooms of the house will also be discussed.
You will begin by finding a topic that interests you. Please choose a topic that you sincerely care about, since you will be expected to stay with this topic throughout the semester. You will do ethnographic research to collect data on that space. Ethnographic research refers to research that you do through personal observation, participation and/or interviews. For your ethnographic research, I will ask you to observe/examine a space of your choice. This space might be a house, kitchen, restaurant, coffee shop, classroom, religious institution building like a temple or church, a dorm, concert hall, dance stage, yard, garden, and so on. After you have identified the space, you will examine how that space is being used by the people, people’s behaviors in that space, objects displayed in that space, and so on. Your goal should be to arrive at a research question about that space and then answer that question by observing that space at least 3 times. You will be required to submit fieldnotes for at least two of those observations. You are also welcome to interview people in that space to ask how they use that space and why. Your ethnographic research should be a combination of personal observations and interviews.
The Art of Cinema
Instructor: Elif Sendur
Why is cinema considered an art form? In fact, what does that claim actually mean? Since its inception, many film critics, filmmakers, and audiences have debated whether movies should entertain, inform, persuade, or transform the way we see the world. From national cinema movements to global blockbusters and streaming platforms, cinema exists as both a mass medium and an artistic form shaped by history, politics, technology, and aesthetics.
In this research writing course, we will watch some fundamental works of cinema and explore how cinema constructs meaning through images and sound. We will ask: How has film theory sought to define what makes cinema “art”? What happens when cinema crosses national borders? How do cultural and industrial contexts, such as Hollywood, Bollywood, anime, documentaries, or European modernism, affect our understanding of art? Why do certain films become part of the cultural canon, while others remain marginalized or rediscovered later?
You will develop independent research projects on cinema and its diverse forms, grounded in your own cinema experience. Assignments will emphasize argument-based research writing, close analysis of media and images, and academic sources. No prior knowledge of cinema or media is needed.
Booktok Goes to College
Instructor: Michael Masiello
Young people, it is often said, don't read. A recent article claimed that even students at elite colleges cannot make their way through an entire book—not even a novel! And yet there are corners of social media in which predominantly young people have made reading a kind of lifestyle choice. BookTok, Bookstagram, and BookTube are responsible for the runaway successes of many bestselling authors. From Colleen Hoover to Sarah J. Maas to works of contemporary literary fiction, these social media-driven publishing phenomena appear online and in bookstores in sections with labels like "BookTok Sensations." To this we can add the success of forms like manga. So the kids, it would seem, are reading—or some of them, at least, are reading something. But what effect does this kind of reading have on the kinds of critical and aesthetic judgment college humanities courses strive to teach? Is all reading equal? Is the old saw, "at least they're reading," valid, or is it rather the case that with friends like Hoover and Maas, literature doesn't need enemies? In this course, we will take a multimedia approach to the internet cult of reading's apologists, critics, influencers, and haters, and we will try to figure out what role book-reading plays in the lives of digital natives, what role it should play, and how we can tell the difference, if one exists. What is more, we will ask whether powerful commercial interests are driving young consumers to participate in a kind of monocultural conformity to a few staple texts and tropes, or whether the power of the internet has had the liberating effect of creating diverse communities of reading. Central to the whole business will be questions of culture, taste, and aesthetics in an attention-deficient age.
Complementary Medicine: Mind, Body, and Spirit
Instructor: Simon Wickhamsmith
As we live longer, and for some of us in more stressful and polluted environments, we need to think carefully about how we preserve and increase our mental and physical health. Our general predilection for pharmaceutical drugs and surgery, as a relatively modern phenomenon, has overshadowed - and to some extent precipitated the rejection of - the holistic medical practices which have been used for millennia throughout the world. Some aspect of such holistic (so-called “alternative”) practices will be the focus of your work this semester, as we explore how (or indeed whether) the natural world and the spiritual world can heal and transform our lives.
Conspiracy Theory
Instructor: Will Schwartz
In this course, students will have the opportunity to build skills in critical reading and thinking, scholarly research, and analytic writing within the larger topic of conspiracy theories. What is a conspiracy theory? We all acknowledge that conspiracies exist; in organized crime, corporate fraud, covert politics and war. So when we call something a conspiracy theory, what are we really saying about it? How are we using the notion of the “conspiracy theory” to police or subjugate different narratives, knowledges, and forms of dissent? Our aim in this class isn’t to prove or disprove individual conspiracy theories, but to use conspiracy theories and the discourse around them to investigate the production of knowledge itself. Research topics to consider include: sociologies of power, how individual governing bodies function conspiratorially, how conspiracy theories generate, social panic around conspiracy theories, the role of the media in subjugating knowledge or enforcing political consensus, how conspiracy theories are formed through memes and folkways, the role of the internet in all of these processes. But ultimately, you’ll follow your interests to determine a topic of your own.
Custom and Culture
Instructor: Puja Sahney
In this course, students will have the opportunity to build skills in critical reading and thinking, scholarly research, and analytic writing within the theme of ethnography of everyday life. Do you have a family recipe that dates back several generations? Did you have a quinceañera, a bar mitzvah, or a sweet sixteen? Do you wear the same shirt to every Rutgers home game? From ethnic customs to daily cultural practices, ethnography is the study of everyday life as we experience, live, and enliven it. Based on firsthand observations and primary interviews, ethnography explores daily life, social needs, and cultural habits and behaviors through a critical lens. In this course students are invited to explore local customs and practices in the United States, across cultures, and around the world. Research topics might include (but are not limited to) hometown rituals, local festivals, ethnic enclaves, dance clubs from Kansas to Korea, traditional forms of medicine, Greek life on campus, Halloween costumes and customs; crafts from Chinese calligraphy to Amish quilting and Ukranian pisanki; roadside shrines, local icons, folk medicine, urban legends, and sacred spaces. What do the places and practices we hold dear say about our connection to the past, the present, and the future? What do they reveal about ourselves and our place in community? Bring your curiosity and explore!
Digital Personas
Instructor: Daniel Walsh
In this course, students will have the opportunity to build skills in critical reading and thinking, scholarly research, and analytic writing within the discipline of Digital Personas: What lies hidden behind the TikTok haircut, or behind the humble brag? This course explores the frontiers of selfhood in the wake of the digital revolution. To what extent is modern personhood defined by smartphone ownership, or social capital by social media curation? In this age of finstas and AI-generated content, what counts as authentic personhood or self-expression? Who among us truly belongs to cringe culture, cancel culture, or toxic fandoms? What traces of digital identity lurk within shadow data or the dark web? In what ways are algorithms shaping our behavior or conceptions of reality? How are virtual avatars transforming human embodiment? What impacts does the digital world have on subcultural affiliation, social organizing, and political activism? And what does digital selfhood look like in popular sci-fi movies, anime, or comics?
Documentary Film and Media Studies
Instructor: Mixon Robinson
This course explores aspects of law and culture studies, media and film studies, and performance studies. We will use these disciplinary frameworks to investigate the ways rules shape, and are shaped by, people performing in various artistic and everyday environments. You will be encouraged to pursue your own interests in cultural life and popular culture by investigating a documentary film (or films) that capture moments, movements, and/or artistic expression that you find especially meaningful.
Enigma and Inquiry: Questions Across Time
Instructor: Jacqueline Loeb
From unsolved crimes to classified histories, cosmic enigmas and mysteries of evolution, ancient civilizations and frontiers of science, this course invites you to navigate where the known ends and the unknown beckons. Students are encouraged to explore a question that compels and fascinates them, and to consider how the enduring quest for answers, justice, and knowledge shapes how we understand ourselves and our connection to others across time. Disciplines can include science, history, forensics, psychology, religion, criminology, ethics, and philosophy among others.
Fans and Fandom
Instructor: Julie Flynn
Fashion and Style
Instructor: Ian Bignall
From Coco Chanel and classic design to Supreme and aggressive “branding”; from “Get Ready With Me” videos to the most carefully gatekept of subcultural spaces; from the meaning of a diamond engagement ring to the niceties of body-modification culture. Whatever the subject matter, when we speak of “fashion” and “style,” we invoke forms of communication and culture with rules, values, and prohibitions worth exploring. And, of course, fashion, style, and their intersection are the beginning of our space of inquiry, but not the end. Students might explore topics treating fashion as historical phenomenon; as design art; as sociological practice; as self-expressive medium; or as industry. They might investigate manifestations of fashion, such as the department store and its demise; the rise (and rise) of the global online shop; or the cultural salience of thrifting. They may approach the topic space through any of the innumerable lenses one might apply: gender politics, racial identity, economics, and so on. Or they may venture elsewhere entirely, exploring the centrality of style in culture and media beyond fashion.
The Horror Genre: From Poe to Craven
Instructor: Francesco Pascuzzi
Why is the horror genre so popular? Why do we like to be scared? How has horror become such a celebrated form of entertainment? How do horror media and literature absorb and exploit our anxieties? In this course, we will look at the horror genre from the 19th century to today across different platforms from cultural, literary, and sociological perspectives. Follow your inspiration and explore your fears as you research and develop your own research project.
Law & Culture
Instructor: Mixon Robinson
We sometimes think of the law and legal language as occupying its own specialized domain – law offices, courtrooms, or halls of government. In this course we will explore legal documents, like Supreme Court cases and the US Constitution, to look for the ways they represent and impact daily life. This means reading the law alongside acts of cultural expression: works of art, film, music, and protest. Our focus will be on the legal and cultural meanings of moving freely through public space in the U.S. – as well as on the protest movements in American history that have demanded freedom. We will read widely about “freedom movements,” and you will be encouraged to explore your own interests by researching deeply into a particular moment in history, a particular legal or cultural document, or a particular movement.
Music and Musical Expression
Instructor: Anthony Alms
The Paradox of Post-Truth
Instructor: Debra Keates
The concept of "post-truth" is currently used to diagnose the the erosion of shared factual standards in public discourse. But the analysis of the problem is at cross-roads: collapsing all disagreement into accusations of lying or ignorance, risks eliminating any common sense of “truth” altogether.
This is an acute problem for research, which looks for independent solutions that must also adhere to disciplinary standards, and needs to advocate for interpretation and judgment while navigating between certainty and humility, between individual perspectives and shared common grounds.
Performance, Stress, and Nutrition
Instructor: Demetri Lallas
Performance, Stress, and Nutrition focuses on stage-readiness and fitness in aesthetic, scientific, and professional pursuits. Potential topics to consider include – What is a healthy relationship between artist and audience, physician and patient, intellectual and public? How might one achieve peak flow state? Can one ameliorate reception anxiety? What is the proper role of worry in activity? Can creativity become toxic? What is the optimal diet for a dancer, singer, nurse, teacher, critic, to optimize potential and longevity?
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Instructor: Peter Morrone
From Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, popular science fiction and fantasy narratives, marketed as entertainment that allow escape from everyday life, also are capable of shaping values and visions of new ways to live. This course examines how fantasies, whether utopian, dystopian, or somewhere in-between, inform and influence our identities, our ideas, and our real-world experiences and relationships.
Science & Spectacle
Instructor: Demetri Lallas
What distinguishes the expert from the anti-intellectual, the skeptic from the optimist, the image from the real? Science and Spectacle investigates the intersection of advanced empirical activity and popular discourse. Broad contours of research projects include – Are nurses and physicians accurately depicted on television? Do comic books (and movies) do justice to quantum physics? Do politics, ideology, conspiracies, and other forms of magical thinking trump public health concerns? How does technology impact music creation and appreciation? Why has science fiction become “respectable”? What, empirically speaking, is “the good life”? Is STEM education underfunded? What is the evolutionary purpose of dreams, poetry, sports, celebrity?
Sports and Culture
Instructor: Timothy Hedges
Stress and Mental Health
Instructor: Raluca Musat
Are you stressed out? How does stress affect your writing process? How is stress created, defined, and experienced? Using psychological and sociological lenses, students will examine the way we use and manage stress. Through independent research, students investigate a contemporary issue in the field of Psychology or Sociology.
Stories We Tell: Everyday Life
Instructor: Debra Keates
How do we construct meaning and identity through everyday interactions with stories, objects, and each other? Drawing on philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory, students will examine how individual consciousness and social systems mutually shape one another through shared attention, intentions, and goals. Analyses of everyday phenomena—rituals, relationships, tasks, objects, expectations—will develop frameworks for understanding how stories mediate between individual experience and collective life.
For research, details of experiences become grounding evidence to study questions like: How do we become part of social communities and systems? How do material objects influence our sense of identity? How do cultural and social norms operate not simply as imposed rules but as shared, embodied dynamics modified through interaction?
Taboos and Transgressions
Instructor: Sara Blomquist
'Taboos and Transgressions' invites students to explore forbidden and stigmatized ideas and behaviors. Among other questions, it asks why some practices are shunned, and how unpopular beliefs can fight for greater legitimacy and acceptance. The course is curious about what cultural taboos signify, who makes the rules, and how the rules might be overturned. Subjects for student research projects can be drawn from the political, religious, social, cultural, and art-and-entertainment realms; the only requirement is that students be open-minded about the forbidden places their research journey might take them.
True Crime
Instructor: Lauren McConnell
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. All are masterful works of true crime– a genre capable of riveting its audience like no other. Across film, literature, and TV, true crime is the fastest-growing genre of the 21st century, with the podcast Serial breaking iTunes records in 2014 and has since been downloaded nearly 400 million times. True crime resides in a gripping and controversial league of its own– credited with training law school students in forensics, marshalling tens of thousands of amateur Reddit sleuths, and leading to the arrests of cold-case perpetrators. It is also criticized for sensationalism, one-sided narratives, and re-traumatizing victims and their families. How does true crime draw us into its storytelling vortex to evoke fear, compassion, empathy, outrage, incomprehension and even understanding? What are the ethical, social, legal, and psychological implications of true crime film, TV, podcasts, and books– both for audiences and the individuals they feature? Can a true crime documentary really teach us about sociopathy, forensics, and the dark corridors of the human mind? Can the genre yield something aesthetically “beautiful”– a work of art? Where is the line between documentary and the speculative conjecture of docu-fiction? In this course, students may explore any aspect of the true crime genre including specific cases, portrayals, and controversies, as well as the psychosocial, ethical, cultural, and philosophical questions that arise from these investigations.
What's the Point of Religion?
Instructor: Simon Wickhamsmith
What is the point of religion? Who are we? What are we doing here? What happens after death? Does prayer really work? Is organized religion a capitalist plot to control us all? Is ritual and prayer simply superstition, or does it transform the universe? Do we attend religious services for the sake of the community, or for ourselves, or both? (What is the point of atheism?) How can we use mundane language to describe our transcendent experiences (and can we even speak about this?)? Should we trust ourselves to find the divine in our own way, or should we follow the teaching of a single religion? Is it all just subjective anyhow? Is it not sufficient just to be good? Does the divine really have opinions (and how can we know?). How many gods are there, and how many angels can fit on the head of a pin? What do you think about this (and how will you ever know if you’re right? or if there’s anything to know?)?