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 and oral communication. 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 2015–16: 

• Castles, Foundations, Freedom: Walden and the Liberal Arts (Andrews)
• Telling Tales (Aparicio)
• Comrades in the Kitchen: Russian Food and Culture in the Soviet Century (Armstrong)
• The Glass Bead Game: Exploring Music from Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cha)
• Envisioning Identities: Self, Subgroups, “the Other” and Belonging (Chen)
• Archaeoastronomy (Christensen)
• The City: Down to “The Wire”? (Cook-Martin)
• The Alternative (Dobe)
• Crisis, Liberation, Justice, and Leadership (Drake)
• Exploring Autism (Ellis)
• Dystopian Visions: The Hunger Games Revisited (S. Ferguson)
• The Power of the Journey: The Road Trip (W. Freeman)
• Racism: Color, Culture, Class (Gibel Mevorach)
• Psychology of Humor (Gibson)
• African-American Literary Ties to Russian Intellectual Thought in the 19th and 20th century (Greene)
• The Ethical Shopper (Jakubiak)
• Changing Childhoods (Kamp)
• Language, Culture, and Censorship (Larson)
• M’m! M’m! Good! Food Choices and Their Consequences (Levandoski)
• Unpacking Western Encounters with Indonesia (Lussier)
• Food: Rituals, Technologies, and Policies (Lyons)
• The Ancient World: Homer and Fifth-Century Athens (Mease)
• Modernity, Morality and Genocide (Meehan)
• Our Hero(in)es, Ourselves (Mercado)
• From Text to Image: the French New Wave and the Transformation of the Cinema (P. Mosian)
• Feeling Music: Sound and Emotional Experience (Perman)
• Empires (Pollnitz)
• Science Fiction or Fact: Exploring Science, Policy, and Public Opinion (Praitis)
• Human Rights in the Modern World (Prevost)
• Words and Guitar: From Rock to Hip Hop (Roberts)
• The ART of Baby Making (Sandquist)
• The Origins of Capitalism (Silva)
• Word and Image (Simpson)
• Old English Re-Imagined (Smith)
• Icelandic Sagas (Wolf)