HIST 1217

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  • Schedule of Classes - January 11, 2024 7:32PM EST
  • Course Catalog - January 11, 2024 7:07PM EST

HIST 1217
FWS: Meritocracy in America: From Slavery to Student Debt

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024. Courses of Study 2023-2024 is scheduled to publish mid-June.

How did you get to Cornell? Is the college admissions process racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise based on prejudice? What about the education system writ large? What does a letter of admission mean? Can a GPA, a test score, an application essay capture, and convey, who you are? Are you an impostor or the real thing? Can anyone earn, deserve, merit the kind of opportunities on offer in the Ivy League? Or the careers that can follow? Through history, memoir, fiction, and film—"The Big Test" and "My Bondage and My Freedom," "The Dispossessed" and "Legally Blonde"—this course will guide students to critically reflect on the meaning of merit in their own lives and our larger society.

When Offered Fall.

Satisfies Requirement First-Year Writing Seminar.

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Syllabi: none

  •   FWS Session. 

  • 3 Credits Graded

  • 20108 HIST 1217   SEM 101

  •  
    • MW McGraw Hall 145
    • Aug 21 - Dec 4, 2023

    • Petersen, C

  • Instruction Mode: In Person
    For more information about First-Year Writing Seminars, see the Knight Institute website at http://knight.as.cornell.edu/.