Spring 2025 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 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. For the day and periods that the classes meet, please consult the Schedule of Courses.
CAMPUS
- Instructor: Paige Glotzer, History
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, Diversity, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: "How does one change what is not just?" 2). "Who has the power to make change?" 3). "What is powerful about social justice?"
- Instructor: Kenneth Sassaman, Anthropology
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 4,000 Words
- The Essential Question: How can Indigenous values about the relationship between nature and culture help us address the challenges of climate change, food insecurity, public health, and social justice?
- Instructor: Ifigeneia Giannadaki, Classics
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- 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.
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Victoria Pagan, Classics
- Format: 100 % Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: To what extent do representations of gardens in literature and art increase our enjoyment of the gardens we visit in real life?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Rachel Carrico, Theater & Dance
- Format: Hybrid
- Gen Ed: Humanities, Diversity
- The Essential Question: When we see dance - from ballet to Beyoncé – how does it inform our ideas about race, ethnicity, and/or gender?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Jamie Ahlberg, Arina Pismenny, Philosophy
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- The Essential Question: How can we engage ethical issues in public life?
- Instructor: Marsha Bryant, English
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How would your life change if you lived during the American 1950s, and how would that shape your UF experience?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Kaitlin Henderson, Theater & Dance
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, Diversity, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How can we use performance to uncover and highlight hidden histories?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Thomas Vozar, Humanities
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Are we better than the Ancient Greeks and Romans? What do we owe them, and how have we surpassed their achievements? What does it mean to define ourselves as “modern” in contrast to classical antiquity?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Art & Art History
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Why is it important to safeguard humanity's tangible cultural heritage, and who are its rightful owners?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Digital Worlds
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Artificial Intelligence: What is it? What is it used for? What is at stake? Each week we will explore AI core concepts from three perspectives: Art, Science, and Fiction. By the end of this course, you will be able to separate the facts from the hype and learn how to leverage fiction to prototype the future.
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Amber Ross, Philosophy
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Big 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Colleen Beucher, Music
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What power does music have over us and how does it shape our world?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Mariana Oliveira, SPS
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How might learning about Brazilian society help us improve our own?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Whitney Wilson, Arts in Medicine
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What is the nature of compassion? How does compassion contribute to quality of life? and What role do the arts play in understanding compassion and in people acting compassionately?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Nicholas Serrano, Landscape Architecture
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- The Essential Question: How do landscapes mediate culture, frame everyday life, and shape identities in the American South?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Frederick M. C. van Amstel, Art & Art History
- Format: Hybrid
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Alex Green, Humanities
- Format: 100% Classroom,
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: What is the relationship between religious belief and human reason? How much of life do we attribute to divine providence, and to what extent do we rely on human initiative, effort and creativity? Are the positions of faith and reason reconcilable, or are they in perennial conflict?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Vandana Baweja, Architecture
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 2000 Words
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: James Hooks, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- The Essential Question: How does belief in God shape the way one views the natural world?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Katerie Gladdys, Art & Art History
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 4000 Words
- 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: Mattias Gassman, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Online
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Kole Odutola, Languages, Literatures and Cultures
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How do learners conceptualize the various spaces they operate in?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Michael Leggiere, English
- Format: 100% In-Person
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- The Essential Question: Can war be just? What is a 'just cause'?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Carol Demas, Math
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Imani Mosley, English
- Format: 100% In-Person
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- The Essential Question: Who makes tomorrow's music? Who controls tomorrow's music? Who owns tomorrow's music?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Tiffany Lu, Music
- Format: 100% Online
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: How does music crystallize moments in our history, memory, and collective experience as humans?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Pasha Agoes, Dial Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, Diversity, 2,000 Words
- The Essential Question: What is orientalism and colonialism, and how do these ideas promote further global and intercultural awareness and understanding?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Roy Holler, Jewish Studies
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, Diversity, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: In what ways does the phenomenon of racial passing challenge and shape traditional understandings of identity, privilege, and social constructs, and how does literature and film, particularly within the context of Jewish and African American cultures, serve as a lens through which we can critically examine these complex dynamics of race and ethnicity?
- Instructor: Anton Matytsin, History
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: David Dusenbury, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- 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: Jose Ruiz-Resto, Music
- Format: 100% Online
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What role do music entrepreneurs play in empowering various sectors of society, encompassing philanthropy, digital commerce, and for-profit industries, through the convergence of music, technology, missions, and entrepreneurship?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Paula Golombek, Linguistics
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, Diversity
- The Essential Question: How does language inform and express our identities as individuals and members of distinct speech communities?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Barnaby Crowcroft, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Today, we live in a world which, for perhaps the first time in human history contains – officially at least – no empires. 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Eric Kligerman, LLC
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How is political violence represented, conceptualized and memorialized across shifting literary and visual texts? What ethical questions arise in our engagement with representations of traumatic limit events and the experience of horror these events entail?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Amy Chandran, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How does our conception of nature shape our political realities and fortunes?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Daniel Manley, Landscape Architecture
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What is nature? How can we incorporate nature into urbanized areas to provide societal benefits and allow people to connect with nature and place in everyday urban life? How can we use this knowledge across multiple professions to improve quality of life and affect positive change in our urban communities?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Eloise Davies, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: What would the ideal society look like? Should we try to imagine a perfect world?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Aaron Zubia, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What is America For?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Adam Lebovitz, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Perhaps the greatest complication in invoking democracy today is that few theorists can agree on the word’s meaning - what is democracy?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Carlos Casanova, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What is the common good and how is it harmonized with individual rights?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Meghan Herwig, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Why spy? Spying has long been an important part of how countries relate to each other and defend themselves, but why do they do it?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Danielle VanTuinen, Music
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Christopher Smith, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How can pop culture from a foreign culture inform our conversation on what makes a fair and just society and how we can manage conflict?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Charles Pickeral, Music
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International
- 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: Quinn Hansen, Spanish and Portuguese Studies
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: How does soccer exemplify the dynamics of justice and power both on and off the field of play?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Manuel Simons, Theater and Dance
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: Why do writers and performers tell stories about themselves? And what do these 'stories of the self' reveal about our human condition and the societies in which we live?
- Syllabus
HONORS
- Instructor: Alison Reynolds, University Writing Program
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 4000 Words
- The Essential Question: How can stories teach us about the human condition?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Patrick Scanlon, University Writing Program
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: What effect does the magical have on our thinking and research pursuits?
- Instructor: Margaret Clifford, Arts in Medicine
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Robert Stone, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities, 2,000 Words
- 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?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Karl Gunther, Hamilton Center
- Format: 100% Classroom
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What does it mean to be wise and what does it mean to live heroically?
- Syllabus
UF ONLINE
- Instructor: Rachel Carrico, Theater & Dance
- Format: 100% Online, Asynchronous
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: When we see dance - from ballet to Beyoncé - how does it inform our ideas about race, ethnicity, and/or gender?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Tiffany Lu, Music
- Format: 100% Online
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: How does music crystallize moments in our history, memory, and collective experience as humans?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Jose Ruiz-Resto, Music
- Format: 100% Online, Asynchronous
- Gen Ed: Humanities
- The Essential Question: What role do music entrepreneurs play in empowering various sectors of society, encompassing philanthropy, digital commerce, and for-profit industries, through the convergence of music, technology, missions, and entrepreneurship?
- Syllabus
- Instructor: Christopher Smith, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
- Format: 100% Online
- Gen Ed: Humanities, International, 2000 Words
- The Essential Question: How can the medium of Japanese animation (anime) be used to explore social, political, cultural, and economic issues of global relevance today?
- Syllabus