Senior Tutorial Program

Instructor: Mr. Rehrig

The Age of AI will explore the new emerging technology of generative AI. Students will explore the ethical, environmental, educational, geopolitical, social implications, and other impacts of generative AI. Students will be tasked with thinking holistically about the potential role of generative AI through a wide variety of readings, including news articles, book excerpts, scientific papers, and short stories. No previous understanding or experience with generative AI is necessary, but students should come ready to authentically engage with generative AI. Students will also need to be judicious in being able to utilize generative AI transparently as directed and allowed by the instructor.

Instructor: Mr. Sanchez

This course examines the philosophical questions raised by artificial intelligence and recursive machine learning, challenging students to explore intelligence, consciousness, and what it means to be human in an age of advanced machines.

1. Minds and Machines – Investigate AI through philosophy of mind, covering consciousness, the Chinese Room argument, and whether machines can truly think.
2. Ethics and Agency – Explore AI’s moral responsibilities, the concept of artificial moral agents, and the challenge of aligning AI with human values.
3. Knowledge and Reality – Examine AI’s understanding of intelligence, the limits of machine learning, and whether AI can truly “know” or “understand.”
4. Society and Future – Address AI’s impact on society, including governance, existential risks, and the ever-growing reality of artificial general intelligence.

Students will engage with classical philosophy and contemporary AI research through readings, discussion, and writing assignments.

Instructor: Mr. Doughty

Why has Japanese media taken such a strong hold in the global entertainment space? What are the folkloric roots and foundations for these stories? This class seeks to illustrate the connection and evolution of traditional Japanese folklore into contemporary media. The class will begin with an immersion into folkloric stories as Momotarō (The Peach Boy), Kintarō (Kintaro, the Golden Boy), and Yatagarasu (The Eight-Span Crow). After reading these specific tales, we will look to broader collections based on the themes of foxes and Buddhism. With this foundation, we will turn to contemporary manga and anime. We will discuss the development of printmaking into short form storytelling and the formation of the modern shonēn genre. Through this evolution we will investigate the use and misuse of folkloric themes in the modern age. Our course will end with the reading and watching of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto. His series encompasses the rich history of manga and anime while simultaneously conducting a unique investigation into the future of our technological world.

Instructor: Mr. Mufuka

Arthurian Legends are some of the most popular stories and tales that originated from England at the beginning of the Dark Ages. This period, which immediately follows the fall of the Roman Empire, is often depicted as a time of chaos and disorder. During this epoch, stories arose concerning a powerful warlord, named Arthur, who united Britons against the invading Saxons from Germany. Like most legends the historical accuracy of these accounts are called into question but what remains undeniable is the legacy these stories have had on the cultural identity of not only the British but of western civilization. Although the legends state that King Arthur conquered by the sword, what makes him timeless is that he ruled by a code that “might is not right but might for right.” The round table is a metaphor for equality and Camelot a notion of what is possible for human society. In this course, we will begin with a discussion of a boy, a sword and a destiny; A destiny so closely tied to the famous iconography of Excalibur, the Round Table, Camelot and the Holy Grail. Through examining these symbols we hope to uncover how the writers of the day understood the individual’s relationship to the Self, Community and the Divine.

Instructor: Mr. Knudsen

A monumental figure in American theatre, Black playwright August Wilson was instrumental in developing and evolving a theatrical vision that, in his words, “feeds the spirit and celebrates the life of Black America by designing its strategies for survival and prosperity.” Wilson’s crowning achievement is his Century Cycle, a series of ten plays that includes the Pulitzer-Prize winning pair of Fences and The Piano Lesson. With each play set in a different decade, the Cycle chronicles the experiences of Black Americans throughout the 20th century. In this tutorial, we will read each of the ten plays and examine them as literary scholars, as people living in contemporary America, and as human beings. We will hopefully have the privilege of attending a production of King Hedley II at the Arden in Philadelphia, and will watch several film adaptations as a class. Assignments will include response journals, analytical essays, and a capstone project.

Instructor: Mr. Edmonds

In recent years, critics of President Donald Trump have repeatedly called him a “fascist”—ranging from his opponents on the progressive Left to General John Kelly, the retired Marine who served as Trump’s White House Chief of Staff from 2017 to 2019. Indeed, a Google search for "Donald Trump fascist" returns nearly 6 million results. But are such accusations against Trump justified or simply a reflection of our hyper-polarized political moment? A look back at history may offer some perspective. 

In 1935, amid the rise of fascist governments in Italy and Germany and the economic upheaval of the Great Depression, novelist Sinclair Lewis published a new book with an ironic title. In It Can’t Happen Here, Lewis challenged the complacency of Americans, warning that it very much could happen here. In this tutorial, which will span literature, history, and film, we will examine fascism—in fact and fiction, past and present—and students will decide for themselves whether “it” can happen here (or, indeed, whether it already has).

Instructor: Mr. O’Connell

In 1886, Thomas Huxley asked, how is it that “a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue?” In this tutorial we will study how our perceptions relate to our thoughts, how our thoughts produce our experiences, and how our experiences give rise to a sense of self. Although cognitive scientists are still struggling to answer Huxley’s question, their struggle has generated abundant insights and fascinating follow-up questions. Lisa Feldman Barrett (in How Emotions Are Made) will challenge the conventional view that emotions are produced in response to external events. Anil Seth will challenge us to accept that we are all hallucinating all the time. Donald Hoffman will argue that natural selection favors animals that misperceive reality. Finally, Elizabeth Camp and Robert Wright will present arguments for the constructed nature of personal identity. We will conclude by considering the doctrine of non-self: the idea that our personal identities are illusory.

Instructor: Mr. Hoopes

Film Noir is one of the most iconic and American of film genres, and its legacy thrives in cinema today. Contemporary films like The Dark Knight, Se7en, Blade Runner, and John Wick all draw their tone and technique from the original film noir style. In this tutorial we will watch and explore several classic films from the 1940s and 1950s, including The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and Touch of Evil, and we’ll compare those to more recent films like Chinatown, Brick, and Momento. We’ll examine character development, lighting and composition, plot elements, and music and sound, and we’ll find and uncover film noir’s tangled connections to many present-day movies.

Instructor: Dr. Shrem

For centuries, French cuisine has been an international symbol of gastronomic pleasure, providing a culture in which people could live out their food fantasies. Whether it’s the celebrity chef and their luxurious ten-course haute cuisine meals or the ubiquitous Michelin guide and cinema’s iconic depictions of restaurant critics, such as Anton Ego from the animated film Ratatouille, popular culture worldwide is not merely fascinated by French gastronomy, but it is also fixated on replicating everything from its language and rituals to its professionalization of the kitchen.

In this tutorial, students will study the development of the cultural field of gastronomy from the 18th Century “Age of Enlightenment” to Napoleon’s empire. By focusing on the cultural figure of the gourmand—the person who eats plenty and appreciates fine food—students will examine the ways in which eating went from being an act of survival to a form of artistic expression. Our culinary exploration will start with a feast for the eyes—18th Century prints and paintings of festivity, namely Jean-François de Troy’s Lunch of Oysters (1735) and Jacques-Philippe Le Bas’s The Attributes of Fine Food (1739). By placing these works in correlation with Voltaire’s poem “Le Mondain” (1736), Condillac’s Treatise on Sensations (1754), and Montesquieu’s Essay on Taste (1757), students will examine the semantic transformation of the French noun “gourmandise,” from indicating gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, to suggesting culinary knowledge and patriotic virtue.

This tutorial will study the progression (domestication) of the gourmand from being perceived as lowbrow to highbrow, from being characterized as a buffoon to a civilized professional, that of the restaurant critic. After reading some of the first examples of restaurant reviews from Grimod de La Reynière’s Almanach des Gourmands (1803-1812), students will develop their own food writing.

Instructor: Ms. Lazar

The development of this tutorial arose from controversial issues around gender that have been a part of our society for quite some time, but have come to the forefront of popular discussion as a result of the 2016 presidential election. This tutorial will examine the following issues through the lens of gender: healthcare, immigration, science and environment, labor and wages, and education. In order to stimulate our discussion and writing, we will read several articles as well as the following three books: Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei, Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok, and Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, I look forward to engaging in discourse with you about these topics.

Instructor: Dr. Pitts

Many folks believe that sports and politics do not and should not mix. In this tutorial, we will explore this belief, engaging the intersections of sports with larger social and political concerns such as racial justice and equality, gender identity and equity, mental health awareness, and equal pay. The tutorial is organized both thematically and mostly chronologically. We will begin the course with a viewing of David Zirin’s compelling documentary, Not Just a Game: Power, Politics & American Sports, which provides a good overview of the numerous connections between politics and sports. Then we will delve into specific political issues that have been manifested in specific sports such as American football, boxing, basketball, soccer, tennis, volleyball, cheerleading(!), and more. Readings will include excerpts from Michael Serazio’s The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture and Robert Scoop Jackson’s The Game is not a Game: The Power, Protests and Politics of American Sports, in addition to articles from journals and popular magazines.

This tutorial is also about writing and academic inquiry, where you will continue to learn to read, question, and respond to the arguments of others and to write about issues that you’re interested in. Over the course of the tutorial, you will learn to discern nuance, identify uses of rhetoric, and gain an understanding of language’s power that will allow you to think beyond potentially easy or misleading narratives. Assignments will include summary/response essays, an essay related to a topic/sport you deeply care about, and a student-created short documentary about sports culture at SAS. Currently, your instructor is not the biggest sports fan (except for the sports her children play), although she is a former soccer mom and a 1990s NBA superfan.

Instructor: M. Wilson

In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to traverse and document the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, resulting in the creation of about 140 maps depicting the territory. Not only do these maps present the geography of space in the West, they portray notions of land, nature, sovereignty, and empire that were reflective of their historical moment and goals, and have subsequently shaped ideas of the West, indigenous people, and American exceptionalism. Maps have been used throughout history to understand and communicate aspects of the world, environment, and people around each and every one of those. Using maps and cartography as our guide, this tutorial will encourage students to reflect on the following questions: how do maps depict physical, social, and imaginative spaces? How have maps been used to reflect and shape experiences and perceptions of the world? What decisions do mapmakers wrestle with as they try to convey the current or historical world? We will read scholarly sources and closely analyze maps, including ones depicting the early colonies, Westward Expansion, social concerns like red-lining and urban planning, and our hometowns.

Instructor: Dr. Pears

North Africa is a region steeped in history and tradition, an area of the world that has captured imaginations for centuries, and yet can be deeply misunderstood. Cities and landscapes from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have served as backdrops to an endless number of novels and films from the so-called West (France, the United States, Great Britain). Their cultural heritage, language, customs and people have often been seen through Westerners’ eyes, a gaze that prioritizes exotic otherness. Yet, North Africans have a vibrant artistic output of their own. In this tutorial, we will read texts and watch films exclusively from authors and filmmakers of Moroccan, Algerian, or Tunisian origin: Kaouther Adimi, Our Riches (2019); Leila Slimani, The Perfect Nanny (2016); Rachid Bouchareb, Outside the Law (2010); Kaouther Ben Hania, Four Daughters (2023). Using an interdisciplinary approach that will include cultural, historical, and literary analyses, we will discuss how these artists have chosen to represent their histories, cultures, and peoples to the rest of the world. This tutorial, thus, invites students to enter into scholarly conversation from the perspective of North Africans. In order to develop the analytical skills necessary to have deep conversations about the material, students will be asked to prepare guided discussion questions in advance. Written assignments will include short essays, film reviews, and a final reflection paper.

Instructor: Sra. Ramírez

One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of Latin America’s novels by excellence and one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel García Márquez wrote it in 1967. One of the most important characteristics of this novel is that García Márquez breaks with all “realism” and introduces myth in fiction. He constructs a mythical past in which fantastic elements are part of daily existence. Macondo, the town that the Buendía Family founds, is more than just a place in the world; it is a state of being. We will discuss the novel within the frame of Latin America’s history and the creation of memory. Among the topics of discussion are: solitude, love, solidarity, history of Buendía Family as metaphor of Latin America’s history, incest, chastity, dreams, time, selfishness, public vs. private spaces, and death.

Instructor: Ms. Cusick

Students will read and study the literary and structural conventions of an array of literature written by American and international authors. Through a brief overview of several literary theories and major literary movements, students will have the opportunity to situate their study of a number of readings within cultural, thematic, and temporal contexts. Students will also analyze the transformation from the page to the screen. In addition to a brief introduction to key filmography terminology and theoretical approaches, students learn how to read and analyze film as they do with traditional literature. The selected texts and films will reflect a variety of voices, themes, and genres. Authors studied might include Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien. In addition to the required readings, the class will choose works at the beginning of the course, and paper topics consequently emerge.

Instructor: Ms. Pressman

How have Americans imagined nature and the wilderness over the course of American history? How have we sought to shape—and how have we been shaped by—our interactions with the wilderness? What can the stories of James Fenimore Cooper, the work of the Hudson River School painters, and the plastic pink flamingo tell us about our changing relationship with nature? How has our understanding of what is “wild” affected what in the natural world we have sought to protect—and what have development patterns like suburban sprawl meant for our understanding of what is “natural”? How have interactions with nature shaped our conceptions of ownership, of gender, of class—even of American identity? This interdisciplinary tutorial will explore these and related questions, using a variety of sources from history, literature, art, popular culture, environmental ethics—and engagement of the landscape around us.

Instructor: Rev. Giansiracusa

The American dream has been defined as the grand promise of a better, fuller, and more prosperous life. At the present moment, however, it has lost its evocative power as a collective myth in many minds. One wonders: does it still represent a principle of hope, or has it become a form of cruel optimism? This course has a pressing mission in a time of prolonged political crisis. It aims to further a dynamic understanding of American dreams (for there are many and not just one), to apprehend their complexities and contradictions, to appreciate their diverse manifestations and historical shapes, and above all, to take measure of their presence and meaning in the world we now inhabit. In this course, we will study how feature filmmakers have created designs for living, indeed the most influential and resonant incarnations of American dreams. We will analyze popular narratives produced during crucial junctures in the modern history of the United States, from the Great Depression and World War II through the Cold War and the McCarthy era up to the early 1990s. We will consider the wide range of functions these productions have assumed and how they have, by turns, sustained and questioned the status quo. In some instances, they have interrogated, revealed, and even indicted social inequity; at other times, they have legitimated injustice and fostered exclusion. The class offers a representative sampling of classical Hollywood features as well as some exemplary independent American releases from 1932 to 1991, including Scarface, King Kong, Imitation of Life, Citizen Kane, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, A Raisin in the Sun, Rocky, and City of Hope.

Instructor: Ms. Barnett

“What I will propose here by way of a first foray, as entrance into this book of monstrous content, is a sketch of a new modus legendi: a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender.” So starts Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” a fundamentally revolutionary theoretical text that reimagines some of the western world’s most iconic monsters—think Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and Beowulf—as reflective of the cultures in which they were created. In this course, students will apply Cohen’s theory to present-day monsters, specifically feminine monsters, as perpetrators of violence and fear. By combining analysis of literary works by Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enriquez, Octavia Butler (among others), and films such as The Exorcist, Us, Jennifer’s Body, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and The Hunger, students will explore the pervasiveness of feminine monstrosities in modern media. Students will seek to answer the when, how, and why these characters become monsters—or are monstrified by others—and how these answers reflect the social anxieties and cultural paradigms in today’s world.

Instructor: Mr. Wolinski

Why are individuals and societies so fascinated by and assured of their own impending doom? Recent studies indicate that 56% of young people aged 16-25 believe "humanity is doomed" and more than a third believe it will happen in their lifetime. Some of humanity's oldest stories envision the cataclysmic end of the world. As students of history, we see that millenarian beliefs underpin major religious traditions, motivate political movements, and inspire countless works of art. As citizens living in the early 21st century, we are steeped in our own apocalyptic brew: climate change, pandemics and political instability dominate our news while zombie outbreaks and existential threats from space drive many of the most successful global media properties. Together, we will deeply read and respond in writing to the two central texts of the tutorial: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Dorian Lynskey’s Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World. Through frequent short supplemental readings, we will explore stories of the apocalypse from many societies and faith traditions throughout history, including Christian eschatology, Norse myth, and Native American traditions, as well as both peaceful and violent movements like the Jonestown Cult, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Shakers. Finally, students will choose from an extensive list of texts—fiction & nonfiction books, movies, tv, and music provided by Mr. Wolinski (or suggest their own)—to independently apply what we learn in class to a final essay. The End is Nigh, Seniors! Let's go out in peaceful and informed acceptance, perhaps even excited to discover what is behind the veil.

Instructor: Dr. Tisdale-Fisher

The beauty pageant stage has been considered an insignificant space, void of any real or considerable meaning. From the bathing beauty contests of the 1920’s, to the most recognized and consistent American beauty contests like the Miss America and Miss USA pageants, most critical thought has assailed the triviality of beauty pageants. Commonly, beauty pageants have been regarded as part of commoditization, power, and control that reinforces narrow cultural expectations and understandings of women, gender, and sexuality. Scholars have provided critical analysis of beauty pageants to more carefully consider the cultural production of these performative spaces and to illuminate the ways in which meaning is produced through the presentation of “ideal” (and also subversive) bodies. As such, beauty pageants must be read “as elements of mass consumer culture, [and as] a kind of entertainment that subtly influences the ways we see ourselves and our communities” (Cohen, et. al. 10).

This tutorial will explore the pageant stage as a space where meaning has been ascribed to ideals of beauty, the feminine body, and womanhood. Conversely, we will explore the ways the pageant model has been used by historically marginalized communities to subvert notions of ideal womanhood and to present new imaginings of beauty, the feminine body, queer identity, and womanhood/personhood (i.e. drag and queer cultural presentations, ethnic/race-specific and disability pageants, etc.). We will examine popular cultural representations of pageantry in films, documentaries, and television, and engage the works of scholars like Maxine Leeds Craig, Judith Butler, and others.

Instructor: Rev. Becker

Humans have been gardening for millennia and for a variety of reasons. To be sure, cultivating foodstuffs is a central aim of the gardening process. Over the centuries, though, time has been spent in this space for medicinal, intellectual, and spiritual reasons, too! In this course, participants will be invited to ponder intentionally what it means for gardening to be an art and a science—a way of connecting with deep truths by observing and participating in interactions with the earth. Students will find themselves in conversation with philosophers, theologians, and everyday folk who have found gardening to be far more than a quotidian means to a mundane end. In addition to “standard” class meetings, this course will include one or two field trips on Sundays TBDs: one to New York City, and perhaps one to the Brandywine Valley. In New York City, we anticipate visiting The Cloisters and Wave Hill, two spectacular examples of urban and urban-adjacent gardening and environmental preservation. In the Brandywine Valley, we may likely be visiting one of the famous duPont estates and its adjoining grounds: Longwood Gardens (though other possibilities include Mount Cuba Center, Winterthur, or Nemours).

Instructor: Mr. Miller

The United States has a unique relationship with Latin America due to historical coincidence and geographical proximity. Perhaps no other country in Latin America has as special a relationship with the United States as Cuba. Cuba's destiny has been inextricably tied to the foreign policy decisions of the United States since before its independence from Spain. Indeed, Cuban independence followed directly from military intervention by the United States. The relationship has gone through many phases, beginning when both were colonies of European powers, through independence for one, then the other, through revolution, the Cold War and a fifty year estrangement during the Revolutionary Period, to the brand new age of regularized relations, to a refreezing of relations, to the present moment with a new U.S. president and the first leader of the island not named Castro since the 1950s. In this tutorial, politico-historical in nature, we will give a brief account of the pre-Cuban independence period, pay more attention to the pre-Revolutionary period and devote a good deal of concentration to the Revolution and how it affected the relationship between the nations. However, the most attention grabbing part of this tutorial will no doubt center on what has happened in the past six years. President Obama moved significantly toward normalization of relations with Cuba in his final two years in office, rolling back as much of the embargo of Cuba as possible using executive action, including the re-establishment of embassies in Washington and Havana. President Trump dismantled pieces of the Obama administration's adjustments to the relationship, though there are other parts that he has chosen to leave in place. We will examine the first moves of the Biden administration during our tutorial. Added to the mix, the death of Fidel Castro and the final retirement of his brother Raúl may augur changes on the island itself. In the past couple of years, the Cuban government has just proclaimed measures to allow increased private enterprise and initiative in the economy, even as it has cracked down on internal dissent. In a sense, during the last part of the tutorial, we will be following current events as they happen. By the end of the spring, we will make our best guesses as to how the next phase of the relationship between the United States and Cuba will develop. There is no better moment to take on this case study than right now.

Instructor: Mrs. White

With mere weeks left in your St. Andrew’s story—your story as a current student, that is—why not spend the remaining time you have on campus studying your school through the lens of a journalist? For 12 weeks, we’ll make St. Andrew’s our beat as we develop into journalists. We’ll answer questions like, ‘What is journalism, anyway?’ We’ll learn how to remove ‘I’ from the equation while also cultivating a voice. We’ll break down how to find a story, pitch it to The Cardinal, source it, write it, and fact check it. We’ll explore how to interview and quote our sources for news, and we’ll develop how to observe and linger over our sources when we transition to the art and creative elements of feature writing. We’ll utilize on- and off-campus events as stories to cover. We’ll talk about the historic roots of journalism, the stakes for journalists today, and explore the role of journalism in democracy and civic engagement. We’ll learn how to use the Associated Press style guide, we’ll read assorted news and features from publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and more. Our text will be The Elements of Journalism, 4th Edition by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.