Tutorials

In the tutorial every entering student explores a topic of interest to the student and the instructor in a small group, discussion-intensive setting. The objectives of the tutorial are to illuminate methods of inquiry rather than to cover topics comprehensively, focusing particularly on writing, critical reading, oral communication, and information literacy skills. In addition, the tutorial initiates the process of planning for a liberal education at Grinnell through advising conversations between students and their instructors. By promoting close working relationships between tutorial instructors and their students and by combining the roles of instructor and academic adviser, the College provides students with academic advisers attuned to the interests and abilities of their advisees.

A tutorial (4 credits) is required of all students who enter Grinnell as first-year students and of all transfer students below third-year student standing whose previous work does not qualify them for an exemption. A student must complete the tutorial with a grade of C or higher to meet the tutorial graduation requirement and to be eligible to enroll in a “Plus-2” or independent project. Students who receive a D or F in the tutorial must earn a grade of C or better in a course designated or approved by the dean’s office as Intensive Writing (IW).

Tutorials are offered only in the first semester.

The following tutorials are offered in 2010–11:

1. After the Future: New Russian Literature (Armstrong)
2. Infinite Jest (Arner)
3. August Wilson’s Literary Legacy: “The Pittsburgh Cycle” (Barlow)
4. Born to Run? (Bentley-Condit)
5. Watergate: The 1970s Scandal in Politics, Culture, and Memory (V. Brown)
6. Malaria: The Past, Present, and Future of a Deadly Disease (Carter) 
7. Music, Language, and Meaning: Understanding Music through Linguistic Models (Cha)
8. The Sistine Chapel and Renaissance Culture (Chasson)
9. Humanities I: The Ancient Greek World (Cummins)
10. Water (Cunningham)
11. Placing Ourselves: Landscape, Locale, and Identity (Delmenico)
12. Genetically Engineered, Organically Grown (DeRidder)
13. Got Limits? (Eckhart) 
14. Being Muslim in America (Elfenbein)
15. Philosophical Perspectives on Music (Gaub)
16. Chess and Bridge (Gibson)
17. African-American Literary Ties to Russian Intellectual Thought in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Greene)
18. Fame! A Cultural History of Celebrity (Henry) 
19. Art for Life’s Sake: Reading War and Peace in the 21st Century (Herold)
20. Women in Greek Tragedy (Hughes)
21. The Teller and the Tale (Ireland)
22. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (Jonkman)
23. Consuming Identities: Popular Culture and Constructing the Self (Ketter) 
24. M’m! M’m! Good! Food Choices and Their Consequences (Levandoski)
25. Food: Rituals, Technologies, and Policies (Lyons)
26. Sapere Aude!: The Enlightenment and the Liberal Arts (Maynard)
27. Thinking about the Self (Meehan)
28. The Immortal Vampire (Michaels)
29. From Text to Image: The French New Wave and the Transformation of Cinema (Moisan) 
30. Fools and Their Money (Montgomery) 
31. Tell Me Your Story, I’ll Tell You Mine: Storytelling and the Art of Survival (Nasser)
32. Animals and Imagination (Reynolds)
33. Corporations to the Rescue? (Roper)
34. Mapping the City (Sala)
35. Almost Human (Schimmel)
36. Medicinal De$ign (Sieck) 
37. The Politics of Sport and the Sport of Politics (Werner)