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University of Florida

FALL 2025 UF QUEST 1 COURSES

ABOUT UF QUEST

UF Quest invites students to consider why the world is the way it is and what they can do about it. Students examine questions that are difficult to answer and hard to ignore in a world that is swiftly changing and becoming increasingly more complex. What makes life worth living? What makes a society a fair one? How do we manage conflicts? Who are we in relation to other people or to the natural world?

THE UF QUEST 1 REQUIREMENT

UF Quest 1 courses fulfill the UF Quest 1 requirement and/or 3 credits of the General Education requirement in the Humanities (see the  UF Quest Requirement  page for more information). Some UF Quest 1 courses may also fulfill the International (N) requirement and/or count toward the Writing requirement. 

UF QUEST 1 COURSES

Click on the links below to learn more about the individual courses and to access course syllabi, which will be posted at least 3 days before the semester begins. Click the Campus, Honors, or UF Online button to filter by program or type in the search field to look for a particular subject, topic, instructor, etc.

CAMPUS HONORS UF ONLINE

CAMPUS

  • Instructor: Aaron Zubia, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What is America For?
  • Instructor: John Maze, Architecture
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to dwell between the heavens and Earth?
  • Instructor: Sarah Gamble, Architecture
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: 
  • Instructor: Art & Art History
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: Why is it important to safeguard humanity's tangible cultural heritage, and who are its rightful owners?
  • Instructor: Ashley Jones, Art & Art History
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How have people in different societies used the supernatural to try and understand and affect the natural world? What objects, words, rituals, and images have they employed to explain and harness the supernatural?
  • Instructor: Konstantinos Kapparis, Classics
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How did humans use the resources of nature and their intellect to find cures for diseases and alleviate pain and suffering?
  • Instructor:  Rachel Carrico, Theater & Dance
  • Format: Hybrid
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: When we see dance - from ballet to Beyoncé – how does it inform our ideas about race, ethnicity, and/or gender?
  • Instructor: Meredith Farnum, Theatre and Dance
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: When practicing conscious awareness of mind/body connections, what revelations can be made through an introspective study of how we see the world through our lived experiences?
  • Instructor: Eamon O'Connor, Digital Worlds
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What does the study of play and games have to teach us about living well?
  • Instructor: Zea Miller, University Writing Program 
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question:

    By relying on multidisciplinary knowledge, how will our work on AI bridge the humanities with the technical?

  • Instructor: Ali Mian, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How can we engage ethical issues in public life?
  • Instructor: Carolyn Kelley, University Writing Program
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How do humanities-based texts touch and shape our lives by teaching us about our sense of self and our relationships with other people whose intersectionalities of identity differ from our own? 
  • Instructor: Anthony Manganaro, University Writing Program
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Questions: What are the possibilities and perils of a posthuman future, and how should we prepare for it?
  • Instructor: Konstantina Christodoulopoulou, Mathematics and Chrysostomos Kostopoulos, Classics
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How have various mathematical ideas shaped our views about reality, our existence, and knowledge, and how has mathematics fostered human flourishing by encouraging us to find truth, beauty, creativity, and imagination in a variety of human endeavors?
  • Instructor: Bethany Taylor, Art & Art History
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to be an engaged citizen in the 21st century, and how can contemporary art be used to think through some of society’s most pressing concerns, and to spark dialogue, empathy, invention, and participation?
  • Instructor: Abdoulaye Kane, Anthropology
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How is blackness constructed differently across time and space?
  • Instructor: Drew Brown, AAS
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What is Black Popular Culture and how has it changed the world?
  • Instructor: Vandana Baweja, Architecture
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How is the transformation of architecture and urbanism by globalization processes such as - movement of capital, goods, knowledge, urban paradigms, and people - represented in popular films?
  • Instructor:  Jason von Meding, Construction Management
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: Do all humans have the right to safe and healthy shelter?
  • Instructor: Emily Hind SPS
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: 

    Thinking systemically and individually, how do phenomena like car culture, agriculture, and productivity impact your quest for a just and equitable society?

  • Instructor: Augusto Soledade and Kole Odutola, Theatre & Literatures, Languages and Culture
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What does the culture in music and dance tell us about ourselves?
  • Instructor: Emily Hind, SPS
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Instructor: Todd Best, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: Considering the vast amounts of messaging and information delivered through all forms of media, how might we collectively understand and discuss perceived reality and its imprint on our humanity? 
  • Instructor:  Arts in Medicine
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What is music and how can understanding the musical elements of emotion deepen our appreciation for music and its influence on individual and collective experiences? 
  • Instructor:  Dustin Hall, Women's Studies
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How does being born female dictate human experience?

     

  • Instructor: Art & Art History
  • Format: Hybrid
  • The Essential Question: How do contemporary artists address issues of identity and what are the political implications of various modes of representation, the right to represent, the influence of artists' identities on interpretation, and the relationship between art and broader fields discussing identity?
  • Instructor: Yaniv Feller, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What is evil and how have different traditions confronted it in ways that are meaningful for our lives today?
  • Instructor: Danielle Vantuinen, Music
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How have women expressed their agency, authorship, worldview, and their power through their contribution to various movements in music and how have women transformed the production and consumption of music?
  • Instructor: Jason Meneely, Interior Design
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How do humans instill values and construct meaning through the design of everyday things? How can the design process become a tool for transformational leadership and social change? What lessons can we learn from the past as we design for humanity's future?
  • Instructor: Karl Gunther, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to be wise and what does it mean to live heroically?
  • Instructor: Barnaby Crowcroft, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How can we explain this transformation? What is the nature of the political world in which we now live? How is it different to those that have come before – and why? What does it mean for a political community to be independent? 
  • Instructor: Amy Chandran, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How does our conception of nature shape our political realities and fortunes?
  • Instructor: Katie Marshalek, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Gen Ed: Humanities
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to be free and equal?
  • Instructor: Paul Lim, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What does religious freedom mean, and how has its definition evolved through history?
  • Instructor: David Dusenbury, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What is the place of feeling in modern life? What is the value of desiring things we can never have, or mourning things we have already lost? Can even positive experiences of love, longing, and awe create a “storm”? And can negative emotions like fear, dread, and confusion have a positive meaning?
  • Instructor: Robert Stone, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How do leaders use rhetoric to persuade others? What role does the art of rhetoric have in the making of politics, art, and community? 
  • Instructor: Carlos Casanova, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What is the common good and how is it harmonized with individual rights?
  • Instructor: Adam Lebovitz, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question:  Does it signify direct rule by the people in a massive assembly? Rule by elected representatives?
  • Instructor: Mattias Gassman, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What is immortality? Can we live forever? What would it mean to live forever, and should we want to? What part of us would live on -- and who, after all, are we?
  • Instructor: Meghan Herwig, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: Why spy?
  • Instructor:  Patrick Hulme, Michael Leggiere, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Instructor: Michael Leggiere, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question:
  • Instructor: Ana Siljak, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to be a ‘person’? How does the person relate to other people, to society, and to God?
  • Instructor: Karen Taliaferro, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What exactly is liberalism, and what is the source of its “crisis”? Is liberalism responsible for its own failures? Does it encourage too much individualism? Does it lead to the dissolution of community, family, and religion? Does it promote exclusion and inequality? Has liberalism led us inevitably toward an illiberal future? What, if anything, can be done to preserve the liberal values of freedom and equality?
  • Instructor: Bob Kaminski, Hamilton Center
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Instructor: Eloise Davies, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What would the ideal society look like? Should we try to imagine a perfect world?
  • Instructor: Eleonora Rossi, Linguistics
  • Format: 100% Online
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How do we express emotions through language? Starting from studying how we express emotions by means of our language(s), we will understand the processes that are the basis of communication and emotion, from neural processes to facial expressions, bodily expressions, and the human voice. 
  • Instructor: Colleen Beucher, Music
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What power does music have over us and how does it shape our world?
  • Instructor Jillan Rogers, Music
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: Who are we in relation to the natural world?
  • Instructor: Charles Pickeral, Music
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How does music move us spiritually? Or, to put it another way: Why do organized sounds have the power to catalyze spiritual experiences? How does music shape our spiritual experience and how do our spiritual beliefs and practices shape our musical taste and aesthetic experiences?
  • Instructor: David Grant, Philosophy
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How AI is changing society, and how should we, as citizens, respond? Is AI generated art truly "art"? Is there a difference between AI-generated text and ideas generated by human thought? In a world of extraordinarily competent AI, is there anything uniquely valuable about our humanity?
  • Instructor: Quinn Hansen, Spanish and Portuguese Studies
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Period 
  • The Essential Question: How does soccer exemplify the dynamics of justice and power both on and off the field of play? 
  • Instructor: Bron Taylor, Religion 
  • Format: 100% Online, Asynchronous
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How are cultural creatives involved in popular culture (film, music, novels, museums, etc.) fusing science and spirituality to promote human-nature connections and environmentally sustainable societies - and what do these efforts portend about the planetary future?
  • Instructor: Ariadna Tenorio Lopez, Spanish and Portuguese Studies
  • Format: Hybrid
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: Who has a voice and who does not in deciding how natural resources are to be used? What is the process by which decisions are made about how to use natural resources? What are the criteria for deciding how to use natural resources?
  • Instructor: Manuel Simons, Theater and Dance
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • Description: The course explores the ways in which modern and contemporary American artists and writers have utilized self-examination as the basis for artistic creation.  Often merging the factual with the theatrical or dramatic, autobiographical performance and literature personalizes the values, incidents and relationships that shape human experience and give life meaning.
  • Instructor: Fernanda Bretones Lane, History
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: Were pirates pariahs, or were they vigilantes seeking justice against tyrant monarchs, and what does this tell us about the motivations of people for engaging in piracy?

HONORS

  • Instructor: Alison Reynolds, University Writing Program
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How is our understanding of the human condition constructed through and by the stories that we hear and tell, and how can these stories help us understand health, suffering, illness, disability, or disease?
  • Instructor: Alexander Angerhofer, Chemistry
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: Who are we in relation to the natural world? How have humans understood their role in their natural world and their responsibility to it? How do portrayals of nature reflect our values or self-understanding? How have we as humans dominated nature and considered ourselves to be part of nature?
  • Instructor: Carol Demas, Math
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: What makes life worth living? How do we or should we examine a life? What is valuable in life? How is mathematics used in the arts to improve our lives?

UF ONLINE

  • Instructor:  Rachel Carrico, Theater & Dance
  • Format: 100% Online, Asynchronous 
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: When we see dance - from ballet to Beyoncé - how does it inform our ideas about race, ethnicity, and/or gender?
  • Instructor: Sharon Austin, Political Science
  • Format: 100% Online Asynchronous
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How has UF addressed racial issues throughout its history?  What actions need to be taken at UF to ensure that students receive equal educational opportunities and fair treatment regardless of their race?
  • Instructor: Eleonora Rossi, Linguistics
  • Format: 100% Online
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How do we express emotions through language? Starting from studying how we express emotions by means of our language(s) we will understand the processes that are the basis of communication and emotion, from neural processes to facial expressions, bodily expressions, and the human voice.
  • Instructor: Bron Taylor, Religion 
  • Format: 100% Online, Asynchronous
  • Class Periods
  • The Essential Question: How are cultural creatives involved in popular culture (film, music, novels, museums, etc.) fusing science and spirituality to promote human-nature connections and environmentally sustainable societies - and what do these efforts portend about the planetary future?