PATHS Discovery Seminars

Building on Oxford's established Discovery Seminars, PATHS is Oxford's innovative program designed to demonstrate how humanities education directly enhances career readiness and professional development. Through this program, students develop "skills that future employers deeply value: ethical leadership, collaborative teamwork, critical thinking, effective communication, and creativity."

Oxford College and Emory College of Arts & Sciences have been awarded a $275,000 grant from the Teagle Foundation as part of its prestigious Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative. This Teagle-funded initiative supports Oxford's efforts to reinvigorate the humanities by showing students "how art, music, literature, philosophy, history, languages, and other disciplines not only broaden and elevate their college experience, but also enhance their career path, whatever that might be."

Read More about the Teagle Implementation Grant

PATHS participants connect across disciplines through shared transformative texts, exclusive cultural programming, and collaborative experiences that transform individual learning into community impact.

Fall 2025 Course Offerings

Beyond the engaging course topics available with DSC courses, PATHS participants connect across disciplines through shared readings, exclusive cultural programming, and collaborative experiences that transform individual learning into community impact.

Adaptation & Storytelling

Instructor: Prof. Nick Fesette 

Class Time: M/W 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Creating interesting images and telling good stories are crucial skills. In this course you will devise, rehearse, and perform original theatre pieces based on stories by other writers and artists, in order to develop the scholarly processes of research, composition, revision, and presentation. You will also write about yourself and use this source material to make performances. This course is for actors and non-performers alike.

Meet Nick Fesette

Fantasy & the Supernatural in Literature & Cinema

Instructor: Prof. Maria Gonzalez Davis 

Class Time: M/W 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Why is the use of fantasy and the supernatural so popular in literature and cinema? How does the use of fantasy relate to the social, scientific and religious context of the time in which it was produced? How does it relate to you? These and many more questions will be answered in this course! In this discussion-based course, you will observe how Freud’s exploration of the unconscious provides a useful lens to read and interpret Romantic works, such as "The Sandman", which anticipates concepts like the uncanny and the double. You will read a variety of literature from different countries that focus on the fantastic, including Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", Gabriel García Márquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", Henry James’s "The Turn of the Screw", and many others.

Meet Maria Gonzalez Davis

Leadership in Ancient Greece & Rome

Instructor: Prof. Henry Bayerle 

Class Time: M/W 11:30 am-12:45 pm

How do Ancient Greek and Roman definitions of leadership relate to ours? How can ancient and modern ideas about leadership be used to understand the culture of Greece and Rome? This discovery seminar serves as an introduction to two fields: the academic study of the ancient Mediterranean and leadership studies. We will compare current theories of leadership with the ideals expressed by ancient authors such as Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, with a focus on leadership traits, styles, goals, and behavior. We will examine the relationship between leadership and different political systems: Athenian democracy, Spartan oligarchy, and the Roman monarchy, republic, and empire. We will also explore how ideals of individual leadership can contribute to the success of teams in hands-on group projects. Additional real-world scenarios will be presented in visits by academic, military, and corporate leaders.

Meet Henry Bayerle

Understanding Arab/Moslem Societies through Literature & Film

Intrsuctor: Prof. Anouar El Younssi

Class Time: Tu/Th 1:00 pm-2:15 pm

This course considers how literature and film from the Arab/Moslem World address questions of social justice and human rights. Literary and cinematic works from the diverse territories of the Arab/Moslem world show a wide range of responses to these critical questions. We will consider how literature and film reflect, respond to, and have the power to influence politics and society at large. An important thread in this course relates to the events of the so-called “Arab Spring”—a series of pro-democracy protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across North Africa and the Middle East starting in late 2010—and their repercussions. Another key theme the course investigates is Arab/Moslem “feminism” as it pertains to women’s struggle to gain more/equal rights. We will also tackle the notion of the “other” as it unfolds in literary and cinematic works, and make links to historical periods, including Colonialism and Decolonization.

Meet Anouar El Younssi