Skip to main content
University of Florida

Fall 2026 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: John Maze, Architecture
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to dwell between the heavens and Earth?
  • 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: Ifigeneia Giannadaki, Classics
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What is democracy and in what ways has this form of government changed since its birth in ancient Athens? This course offers a comparative approach to democracy (ancient and modern), tackling some of the most pressing issues of our times, illustrating political history and political theory: political thought in action.
  • Instructor: Meredith Farnum, Theatre and Dance
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • 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
  • The Essential Question: What does the study of play and games have to teach us about living well?
  • Instructor: Dori Griffin, Art & Art History
  • Format: Hybrid
  • The Essential Question: How does design work as a tool for shaping, understanding, and communicating identity—“the fact of being who or what a person is”—in everyday life?
  • Instructor: Anna Peterson, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How can we engage ethical issues in public life?
  • Instructor: Konstantina Christodoulopoulou, Mathematics and Chrysostomos Kostopoulos, Classics
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • 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: Emrah Sahin, European Studies
  • Format: 100% Online
  • The Essential Question: How do stories travel, transform, and shape how humans understand themselves and one another from the medieval orient to modern global culture?
  • Instructor: James Essegbey, Literatures, Languages and Cultures
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How are Creole identities shaped by the confluence of diverse languages and cultures?
  • Instructor: Mariana Oliveira, SPS
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How might learning about Brazilian society help us improve our own?
  • Instructor: Vandana Baweja, Architecture
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • 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:  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: Anthea Behm, 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: Rachel Gordan, Religion
  • Format: 100 % Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What does it mean to consider the legacy of the Holocaust? How do our contemporary understandings of post-traumatic stress influence our understanding of how Americans continued to respond to the Holocaust?
  • Instructor: Karen Taliaferro, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question:
  • Instructor: Edit Nagy, European Studies
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What does diplomacy show us about building understanding and trust among people?
  • Instructor: Lillian Datchev, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: 
  • Instructor: Keiji Iwamoto, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
  • Format: 100 % Classroom
  • The Essential Question: Why Does Pikachu Sound Cute?

     

  • Instructor: Rachel Gordon, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What played central roles in American popular fiction since the terms “America” and “fiction” came into popular use in the 18th century?  
  • Instructor: Leisel Hamilton, University Writing Program
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: How can we make the environmental and cultural challenges facing the Gulf more visible, meaningful, and urgent for a general audience?
  • Instructor: Jason Meneely, Interior Design
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • 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: Carlos Casanova, Hamilton School
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question:
  • Instructor: Yujie Li, 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: 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: 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: Adela Halo, 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: Elenora Rossi, Linguistics
  • Format: 100% Online
  • 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 Laura Dallman, Music
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: Who are we in relation to the natural world?
  • Instructor: Tim Murray, Music
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • 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: Bron Taylor, Religion 
  • Format: 100% Online, Asynchronous
  • 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: Ali Mian, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What language is used to describe sciences and religions?
  • Instructor: Ariadna Tenorio Lopez, Spanish and Portuguese Studies
  • Format: Hybrid
  • 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: Matthew Strickland, 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
  • The Essential Question: 

  • Instructor: Benjamin Gaddis, Dial Center
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • The Essential Question: What do our stories of love reveal about the human desire for meaning, identity, and belonging?
  • Instructor: Alexander Angerhofer, Chemistry
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • 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: Yaniv Feller, Religion
  • Format: 100% Classroom
  • Gen Ed: Humanities, Natural Sciences, 2000 Words
  • The Essential Question: 

UF ONLINE

  • Instructor: Elenora Rossi, Linguistics
  • Format: 100% Online
  • 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
  • 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?