Scheduling your first semester of classes can be daunting — waking up early to log into the GWeb Information System, colloquially known as Banweb, just to discover that the American history course you had planned your entire course load around filled up before you could even type in your GWID.

But don’t worry just yet — GW is introducing a few new courses this semester that might make your class choices a little more interesting and your schedule spreadsheets less stressful.

Take a look to see what could be waiting for you in the lecture hall.

Gender, Sexuality & Citizenship
Department: American Studies
Professor: Chad Heap
Consider how gender and sexuality have affected American citizenship in recent years. Study the privatization of sexuality through the state, the role gender and sexuality have played in immigration and military service and how we judge people based on their sexuality.

Nuclear Security
Department: International Affairs
Professor: Nicole Snyder
Prepare for yourself a high-power, low-profile career within international affairs. Apply your knowledge of physics to the growing field of nuclear security. This comprehensive course will cover the basic physics behind nuclear weapons and will teach you how to deter nuclear proliferation.

The ABC’s of Poetry: How Poetry Matters
Department: English
Professor: Jennifer Chang and Jonathan Hsy
Explore poetry and its evolution as a creative practice from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. This class is team-taught with one professor who is a poet and the other a literature scholar to force students to re-think literary interpretation and creative composition of poetry. Jennifer Chang, one of the professors of this new course said this is a course for readers and writers, and students will engage in both critical and creative reading and writing.

“We hope that through the course students will discover the material reality of poems — poems as objects and cultural actors, poems as ‘matter’ and as dynamic interactive experiences,” Chang said.

Lesbian History & Culture
Department: Women’s Studies
Professor: Bonnie Morris
Take look at lesbian identity, community and legal rights. Get to know the lesser-known heroines of LGBT history and activism through music literature and film. This course is required for the LGBT Sexuality Studies minor.