Winter 2008

Small Towns

The anatomy of a First-Year Seminar

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Objective: Experience a wide range of disciplines and ways of knowing.

Activity: Students read both fiction and nonfiction in diverse forms—a memoir, a novel, essays, editorials, and research papers. They watched videos of varying styles—fictional, editorial, and documentary.

Objective: Develop oral skills.

Activity: Students read aloud Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town.

Objective: Examine the idea of being different and its importance in the small town.

Activity: Students read The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman, the memoir of a Jewish girl from a merchant immigrant family, growing up in a small Tennessee town in the 1920s.

From The Jew Store:

I went with the Reeves in a pink organdy dress with a green sash. On my arm hung a pink sateen purse. The Reeves kin were at the church. Miz Reeves’ granny was there—a small wrinkly lady with veins on her hands like tree roots raising up on the ground. “My, what a nice little girl,” she said to me. “Are you a Methodist, too?”

I could see Miz Reeves, standing to one side of me, frantically shaking her head. “No, Granny,” she managed to say. “She’s the little girl from across the street.”

“The Jew child? Oh, Lord Jesus have mercy,” her granny said.

Objective: Learn basic research and library skills.

Activity: Students developed a research method plan, including an annotated bibliography, on a research question of interest. Topics included the effects of technology, the influence of religion, and the role of football.

Objective: Experience Northeastern Ohio.

Activity: Students attended the Loudonville street fair, toured Shreve, and listened to a panel discussion by town elders. Prof. Nurse: “I think the students have come to a new appreciation for the beauty of our surrounding area; I think they’ll be more comfortable leaving Wooster and going out into the region.”

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