HONORS PROGRAM
Course Descriptions for Spring 2010
ANTH 4180-880
TPC: Intelligent Design vs Evolution
David Greene
Even though the scientific theory of evolution based upon naturalistic observation and testing is accepted by the vast majority of modern natural scientists as a powerful explanation of how we have evolved over time, the majority of Americans, including most with college degrees, believe that it is not sufficient. Rather many follow religious explanations, dependent upon supernatural forces, powers or God, with regard to human origins and other evolutionary questions.
Currently, the idea of Intelligent Design which argues that complex biological systems, including human beings, have come into existence through the action of an intelligent designer existing outside of the natural world, and therefore not because of natural causes, is thought by many to be a better explanation of human origins than is naturalistic evolutionary science.
What better focus for a critical thinking course than to examine the two sides of this controversy! Through some lecture, much reading, class discussion and some critical writing we will grapple with it. The critical writing will consist of one short, five or so pages, and critical examination of a topic in the controversy, and a term paper of greater depth and complexity. The goal is not to convert students to one or the other of the opposing positions, but to gain understanding of both. Indeed, perhaps there are compromise positions that have merit. In any case, along the way each of us will have to hone our critical thinking skills.
Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
ASTR 2010-880
Modern Cosmology
Michael Shull
This class offers an introduction to cosmology, intended primarily for non-science majors. However, all students are presumed to have the mathematical literacy appropriate for admission to the University of Colorado, including basic algebra and quantitative reasoning skills. The overall goal is to make you familiar with current astronomical views on the Origin and Evolution of the Universe. We will discuss current evidence for the expanding (and evolving) universe and its content (stars, galaxies, gas, radiation, dark matter, dark energy). By the end of this semester, you should be able to critically evaluate news articles written on these topics.
For detailed information on the course, please visit http://origins.colorado.edu/~mshull/honors-cosmology/.
PREREQUISITES: None. MATHEMATICAL SKILLS REQUIRED: While this class is largely non-mathematical, dealing with concepts in the physical universe, you will be expected to use some simple proportional and algebraic relations and to manipulate and interpret numbers and physical units. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: natural sciences.
CLAS 1115-880
Greek Literature/Translation
Andy Cain
Students read about mythological heroes and historical individuals from Achilles to Socrates in Greek literature. Class discusses why the Greeks told stories the way they did and what those stories might have meant to them and might mean to us.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
CLAS 2019-880/1
Pompeii
Diane Conlin
Introduces the towns and villas buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Explores the layout and decoration of ancient Roman houses, the variety of artifacts uncovered as evidence for daily life and the history of the excavations. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: historical context.
CLAS 2020-880
Science in the Ancient World
E. Christian Kopff
The beginning of the transition in human understanding from the mythical worldview to a scientific way of thinking happened at a certain time and a certain place among certain historically situated individuals. The fact that it occurred in Greece from the sixth to the fourth century B.C. and the personalities and characters of the key figures in this process have influenced the history of science down to the present day. As is true also of democracy, for instance, and history, science has a history and its origins and history continue to shape and even determine its present situation, even for those, especially for those who do not know its origins and history.
In this course students will read and discuss important documents in the development of scientific ways of thinking. We will investigate parallel developments in ancient and modern science and try to determine the historical and human relationships between what may at first glance appear very different ways of viewing the natural world. By trying to understand the historical roots of science and scientific thinking, we hope to come to a better understanding of modern science and the situation of modern humanity.
Students will be asked to read and discuss the reading, present oral reports, and write one five-page and one ten-page paper. No Greek or Latin required. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: natural science.
ENGL 3060-880
Modern and Contemporary Literature
Claudia Van Gerven
In the early 20th century, Ezra Pound advised his generation to “make it new.” But to paraphrase Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being new. So in this course, we will be examining closely significant poetry, drama and prose from the early 20th century into the early 21st in order to interrogate each generation’s construction of the new. We’ll look at innovators from the 1920’s to tomorrow. We’ll look at how different genders, ethnicities, classes, etc. innovate.
And we’ll experiment with the experiments of our day. We’ll look at ergodic literature-- everything from the I Ching to hypertext (think Ernest Hemingway meets Choose Your Own Ending books), erasure poetry (a cross between poetry and altered books), cross genre literature—anything prose poems to poems embedded in pictures, etc.
The course will be structured as a seminar which means the course will be principally discussion. You, therefore, are the center of the course. There will be two shorter critical papers and one longer final project, as well as an on-going on-line discussion.
Approved for arts & sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
ENGL 3116-880
Topics: Modern Literature and Science: The Prospect of an Evolutionary Universe
Eric White
In the first half of this course, we will reflect upon a scientific perspective on cosmic history according to which the temporal unfolding of the universe may be understood as a stochastically self-organizing turbulent flow. After exploring the imaginative import of this perspective with reference to touchstone discussions of the aesthetic concept of the sublime, we will turn to a selection of modern literary texts -- Virginia Woolf's THE WAVES, Jean-Paul Sartre's NAUSEA, and Italo Calvino's COSMICOMICS -- that collectively deploy a comparable figuration of existence as shapeshifting and metamorphic. In the second half of the course, we will undertake an excursion into a related problematic: the evolutionary becoming of terrestrial life.
We will thus consider a series of science-fiction narratives including H.G. Wells's ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" and Octavia Butler's XENOGENESIS trilogy. In this last portion of the course, we will invoke a further aesthetic concept -- the grotesque -- to facilitate our articulation of the aesthetic significance of the prospect of an evolutionary universe.
ENGL 3226-880
Folklore I
Cathy Preston
This course is designed as an interdisciplinary introduction to the non-institutionalized part of our lives: the stories and jokes we tell, the songs we sing, the games we play, the customs and belief practices that we participate in, and the material objects we make. While, in English department courses, students normally learn to read a variety of differently situated literary texts, in this course students will learn to document and “read” a variety of differently situated traditional, vernacular, and emergent cultural performances as texts. By the phrase “differently situated” I mean the ways in which one’s everyday-life experience is enmeshed within the group and self-identity politics of class, gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, religion, age, occupation or region. Drawing on theoretical and methodological frameworks developed in the disciplines of literary theory, anthropology (and its subdiscipline, ethnography), sociology, history, communications, cultural studies and folklore, we will work as a class to define the nature and function of folklore in our contemporary world.
FILM 2000-881
Beginning Filmmaking
J. Liotta
This first film production class introduces the student to both the practical and conceptual aspects of vision and construction with the medium of film, using Super 8 film as their acquisition medium. Basic techniques include : fundamentals of perception and the motion picture, understanding the material of film, proper use of cameras and projectors, the interdependence of time light and motion, editing strategies, and the sound/image relationship.
Students are encouraged to develop skills in several workshops and assignments. Screening and analysis of historical and contemporary works will be a key activity, along with regular critiques of student work, readings and short essays. The course is designed to introduce students to the moving image as a cultural object as well as a creative tool for self-expression. Students will need to purchase materials and rent the necessary equipment from the Film Studies Program . Prereq., FILM 1502
FILM 3002-880
Cold War, Warm Hearth: American Film in the 1940’s & 50’s
Melinda Barlow
This course examines the relationship between American films of the 1940s and 1950s their cultural and historical context. Major fears, dreams, issues and events that shaped the decades will be explored, as will directors and stars who rose to prominence during the period. From the political innocence of the pre- war period to the anxiety generated by women working during wartime; from the euphoria of victory to the veterans’ struggle for re-integration; from the post-war hope for peace and prosperity to the growing fear of communist infiltration; from sexual and racial repression to the first stirrings of movements for liberation, the 40’s and 50s were a tumultuous twenty years which left an enduring imprint on American film. Films by Capra, Wyler, Cukor, Aldrich, Wilder, Kazan, and Sirk will be screened, emphasis will be placed on learning how to synthesize historical readings, lead class discussions, and research and write incisive critical essays that combine historical information and textual analysis.
FILM 3081-880
American Film in the 1980 to the present
Melinda Barlow
This course examines the relationship between American films from 1980 to the present and their cultural and historical context. Major fears, dreams, issues and events that shaped the decades will be explored, as will directors and stars who rose to prominence during the period. From the rise of Reaganite masculinity to the backlash against women and homosexuality; from the lure of postmodern nostalgia to the retrospective revision of history; from new views on the traditional American family to the omnipresence of media and the rise of surveillance culture, the last 25 years have left an enduring imprint on the history of American film. Films by Scorcese, Lynch, Spike Lee, Ang Lee, Fincher, Livingston, Jarecki and Mendes will be screened, and emphasis will be placed on learning how to synthesize historical readings, lead class discussions, and research and write incisive critical essays that combine historical information and textual analysis.
HIST 1015-880 – Students must also be enrolled in HONR 1001-881
History of U.S. to 1865
Fred Anderson
Surveys American history from first settlement until end of the Civil War. Also available through correspondence study. Meets MAPS requirement for social science: general and U.S. history. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: United States context.
HONR 1001-881 – Students must also be enrolled in HIST 1015-880
Co-Seminar in History of US to 1865
Fred Anderson
The members of the co-seminar will explore in depth the major themes raised in each week's lectures through close readings and discussions of primary sources, under the guidance of Professor Anderson.
HIST 1108-880 – Students must also be enrolled in HONR 1001-880
Intro to Jewish History
David Shneer
Surveys Jewish history from the earliest times to the present. Includes biblical history; Judaism in late antiquity, medieval and early modern times; and special emphasis on the 19th century to the present, including American Judaism, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Zionism and Israel. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: historical context.
HONR 1001-880 - Students must also be enrolled in HIST 1108-880
Co-Sem in Jewish History
David Shneer
The members of the co-seminar will explore in depth the major themes raised in each week's lectures through close readings and discussions of primary sources, under the guidance of Professor Shneer.
HONR 2251-880
Introduction to the Bible
E. Christian Kopff
The Bible, sixty-six works of history, law, prophecy, poetry and letters, is one of the great legacies of the ancient to the modern world. Students will read works that still influence issues that arise today and will likely arise tomorrow, while developing an historical perspective on the ideas, institutions and cultures which helped to shape the works and their authors. These cultures include the empires of Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome.
Students will develop their own insights into Biblical texts and their ancient and contemporary significance by close reading, class discussion, a quiz and oral and written reports and papers. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: historical context.
HONR 3056-880
Experience of Learning
Mary Ann Shea
This course will be more than just one more course. Instead of giving you yet one more compartmentalized skill or chunk of information, the course will take as its primary subject matter you yourself in the process of learning. Through frequent writings and discussion, you will be asked to prove and reflect upon yourself as a student while you are a student and examine your experiences. From the basis of this immediate self-analysis, we will approach wider questions, such as how our educational structures both help and hinder learning, the relations among the various systems and languages we learn and between the formulations and “reality”: the fit between how knowledge is made and how it is learned in our culture. To stimulate our observations and extend their implications, we will read some autobiographical and fictional accounts of learning and teaching. We will also learn something about the history of education, about epistemology – a branch of psychology, and especially about some of the recent conflicts between behaviorism and more developmental and cognitive approached to learning.
The main goal of the course, however will be to move beyond understanding to action for constructive change. You will be asked to do some observation and teaching in the schools, but, even more importantly, to take an active role in reshaping the rest of your college education in accordance with what you have discovered in this course. Hopefully this will mean not only rethinking and reformulating your own habits and course of studies, but working politically and socially to widen the perspectives and improve the learning structures of the entire campus.
Along these lines, I have tried not to hamper this course beforehand with too man preconceptions and restrictions. I will order four books. The first book, John Holt’s How Children Fail, is written in the form of the kind reflective journal I will ask you to keep. The other books are George Dennison’s The Lives of Children, Eleanor Duckworth’s “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, and Michael Johnstone’s in the Deep Heart’s Core. We will be doing much more reading on e-reserve and additional readings than this, but I would like the shape of the course and the interests of the students to help determine what we read. Almost everything else about the course, such as grading, other requirements, ways of proceedings, are up for discussion and examination. You should be prepared then to tolerate a certain amount of risk, confusion, and open-endedness.
HONR 3220-880
Advanced Writing Workshop
Rolf Norgaard
This course introduces honors students to inquiry and argumentation as they are rendered in longer prose forms. As such, the course provides excellent preparation for writing an honors thesis. With the collaboration and thoughtful feedback of your colleagues in class, you will have the opportunity to engage in independent scholarship in your area of expertise.
Our informal theme for the semester will be “Composing Knowledge.” Through readings and individualized writing projects, this course encourages you to explore the role of language and rhetoric in “composing” what—and how—we “know.” Is knowledge a given, something to be consumed? Or is it constructed and composed, shaped by language and by communities of knowers that organize themselves through language? Working and writing together, we’ll explore the connection between language and inquiry. Specifically, we will examine assumptions about critical thinking, literacy, and communication that various disciplines hold, and how those assumptions relate to the expertise you acquire and share in your major. The theme is meant to provide a common backdrop to the individualized projects that lie at the heart of the course.
We will begin by reviewing fundamental strategies of analysis and argument, and by reading and responding critically to a set of articles that explore the theme of “Composing Knowledge.” You will then focus on some aspect of the theme that interests you or on a specific issue that bears on your work in your major as you form a research question and tentative hypothesis. With the help of Norlin Library Instructional Services, you will then become acquainted with advanced information literacy skills that can help you prepare a formal prospectus or plan for enriching your inquiry through research. Drawing on that research and on feedback on preliminary drafts, you will have the opportunity to develop a sustained argument (roughly 20-25 pages) that showcases the fruits of your inquiry. The course will also address oral presentation skills essential to presenting your work effectively before an audience. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: written communication.
HONR 3220-881
Advanced Writing Workshop
Andrea Feldman
This course introduces honors students to an analysis and argumentation as they are rendered in longer prose forms. As such, the course provides excellent preparation for writing an honors thesis. With the collaboration and thoughtful feedback of your colleagues in class, you will have the opportunity to engage in independent scholarship in your area of expertise.
Our informal theme for the semester will be cultural rhetoric. In responding to texts that represent cultural diversity, students will evaluate issues and relate them to their own experiences. Through these readings as well as class discussion of written assignments, students will learn to make reasoned arguments in defense of their own opinions. By examining diverse voices, this course helps students meet the challenges of academic writing. This course will extend your ability to adapt rhetorical strategies and arguments on cultural issues and diversity to address the needs of a range of different audiences and stakeholders.
The need for a cross-cultural writing course becomes more apparent as the United States becomes ever more interdependent with our worldwide neighbors. Students need to join this "global village" by thinking critically about the roles of writing and language in forging our society. Because language and writing are necessarily culturally bound, diverse aspects of our own culture are often neglected in traditional writing courses. This course offers a chance to examine and debate concerns which are all too often undervalued or ignored. Language--often a tool to disenfranchise--can thereby become a tool to meld.
Innovative uses of technology and active student learning:
The course includes interactive workshops and analysis of visual rhetorics, including podcasts, video clips, cartoons, and other visual media. The classroom allows students to form both large and small groups to critique and evaluate each others' papers. In addition, the technology allows us to analyze the visual rhetoric components of the course. In both large and small group settings, we will critique video streams, isolate individual frames for analysis, and integrate text within the visual media.
A large portion of the course centers on writing workshops and peer critiques of others' papers. Using small interactive groups, students will highlight areas of concern in their own and others' papers, make necessary changes, instantaneously correct errors, access online databases and search engines, and rework areas of concern in their papers. Students can also reach the course website and other course materials made available by the library.
Writing Process and the Workshop Format:
The course offers an opportunity to understand writing from the audience or reader perspective by focusing on the peer review of work in progress. Through this approach, you will discover how revision is central to the writing process. Your own writing will be the principal text; we will all work together as a team to improve each paper. We will adopt the attitude that any paper can be improved, and give constructive criticism to everyone. Your job will be to provide oral and written commentary on other students' papers when assigned to do so. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: written communication.
HONR 3270-880
Journey Motifs in Women’s Literature
Claudia Van Gerven
An old blues song suggests that "When a man gets the blues/he hops a train and rides. When a woman gets the blues/she tucks her head and cries." Women have often been characterized in the psychological and anthropological literature as passive, domestic, nesting. But women were among those to shape the tradition of travel literature in England and America. The 19th and 20th centuries have seen a number of women writers center their work around physical or metaphorical journeys.
In this class we will look at the trope of the male explorer and the female homemaker as they have been applied to psychological analyses to see in what ways women's journey narratives might destabilize such concepts. We will look at traveling mothers and stay at home fathers to see what they might tell us about Freud's family romance. We will examine the cultural baggage traveling women acquire and the devices female travelers have created to deal with such baggage. We will analyze ways in which space itself is gendered and the problems of homecoming for the female explorer.
The course will be principally class discussion with occasional sermonettes - or maybe even rhapsodies - from the instructor. Since the class will depend upon your participation, you will be assigned certain tasks to enhance class discussion. There will be two to three short papers (3 to 5 pages) and one long project (20-25 pages). Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
HONR 3810-880
Privilege and Modern Social Construction
Alphonse Keasley
This course examines social constructions that lead to productive interactions between and among American social communities. Using case studies and humanistic accounts, students analyze the lived experiences of a unique group or successful citizens who routinely evidence productive practices of multicultural engagement. Through interactions with policy makers and community practitioners, students design and enact activities that allow them to reconstruct their personal patterns of privilege practices of their peer groups in various settings.
HONR 4055-880
Deconstructing Our Culture, Reconstructing Our Lives” formerly titled Discourse Analysis and Cultural Criticism
Cathy Comstock
Discourse analysis helps us to investigate the conventions by which we make meaning of our existence. How, that is, do we "read" the world and the discourses around us, and how does that reading shape our considerations and our actions? Deconstruction pokes around a little further and explores the vested interests or hidden contradictions in an ideological system by looking at that which has been marginalized in the service of its preservation. In other words, if one value is to reign supreme in a culture, what does it have to push to the side in order to hold its place as king of the mountain? And what would it do to our way of viewing life if we tried deposing the ruler and making the outcast the center?
In Western culture, for example, we have placed so much emphasis on high achievement and physical perfection that perhaps the great majority of us walk around feeling "disabled" in some way: not buff enough, not smart enough, not good-looking enough, not thin or rich enough . . . there's a way for everyone to feel bad, in the most prosperous, well-resourced nation the world has ever known! When our hierarchies are applied to other races and other species, to the very environment we rely on for life, the effects can be even more damaging. Hence, we may want to question our traditional power hierarchies and consider new kinds of relationship to the world and to ourselves, based on different premises and possibilities.
This class also gives you the opportunity to earn credit for doing outreach to communities in need. Although it is not required, such service enriches the class greatly. You can earn from one to three hours credit--the latter would count as an internship and could take the place of another class--and have the chance to help in an area you've always wanted to support. This service element is based on the assumption that when we offer our aid where it is most needed, we often come to realize in a profound and concrete way what it means to be marginalized by a culture's dominant ideology, and what a pleasure it is to help to dissolve those boundaries.
Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
HUMN 1020-880/881
Introduction to Humanities 2
Giulia Bernardini: lecture / Paul Gordon: co- seminar
Humanities 1020 is an interdisciplinary course on art, music, and literature. You meet three days a week, both in discussion classes and as a large group for the music and art lectures.
The basic assumption behind interdisciplinary studies is that knowing about more than one art form for any given period enriches your understanding, gives you more than one point of view, and provides more insights into a culture. Literature, music, and art each has its own “language” and structure of expression; they are, therefore, not simply different ways of asserting the same thing. There is no way to prove—and why would you want to?--that all the arts are fundamentally the same. Despite the uniqueness of each of the so-called “sister arts,” they do intersect with one another and reveal cultural values. Style is, in a sense, the encoding of cultural values. Therefore, part of our work in this class deals with interpretation and the reading of style. I also will emphasize for each period the general historical, social, and cultural contexts. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts or historical context.
MUEL 2772-880
World Musics
Daniel Jones
This course studies musical traditions using ethnomusicological concepts and approaches. This is a non-majors course; no prior knowledge of music or specific cultures is expected. This course is approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: cultural and gender diversity. The primary goals of this course are to: 1) become familiar with the views and concepts used in ethnomusicology, and 2) to practice applying these, both to a small number of world musical traditions and to more locally found musical traditions.
In the first few class sessions, we will introduce perspectives, concepts, and vocabulary used in the discipline of ethnomusicology. We will then survey (through our text and its recordings) a small number of music cultures from around the globe to see how ethnomusicologists apply these perspectives and concepts in efforts to understand how musical traditions are cultivated and sustained over time and through changing circumstances. Toward the end of class, students will conduct their own fieldwork projects on music traditions found locally in order to gain hands-on experience in applying for themselves ethnomusicological concepts and practices.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: human diversity
PHIL 1010-880
Introduction to Western Philosophy
K. Koslicki
Develops three related themes: the emergence in antiquity of a peculiarly scientific mode of thinking; the place of religious belief within this developing scientific world view; and the force of ethical speculation within the culture and political climates of ancient Greece and Rome. PHIL 1010 and 1020 may be taken in either order. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: historical context.
PHIL 1400-880
Philosophy and Sciences
C. Cleland
Considers philosophical topics and concepts related to the natural sciences, such as science and pseudo-science; scientific method; the nature of explanation, theory, confirmation, and falsification; effect of science on basic concepts like mind, freedom, time, and causality; ethics of experimentation; and the relation of science to society. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: natural sciences
PHIL 3100-880
Ethical Theory
C. Heatherwood
Studies major issues and theories in ethics. Prereq., 6 hours of philosophy course work. Prereq. or coreq., PHIL 3480. Restricted to juniors/seniors. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values
PHIL 3180-880
Critical Thinking-Contemporary Topics
B. Talbot
Looks at a selected topic such as nuclear disarmament, racial and sexual discrimination, animal rights, or abortion and euthanasia by examining issues through the lens of critical philosophical analysis. Reviews the reasoning behind espoused positions and the logical connections and argument forms they contain. Prereq., 6 hours of philosophy course work. Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
PHYS 1120-880
You must enroll in one linked recitation.
Sections range from 801 to 808. Please refer to the Schedule of Courses for the meeting times of the recitation.
Honors General Physics 2
Paul Beale
You must be concurrently enrolled in either APPM 2350, MATH 2400 or higher level mathematics course. Three lectures and one tutorial per week. This honors course is the second semester of three-semester calculus-based physics sequence for physical science, engineering and mathematics students. It covers electricity and magnetism, Maxwell’s equations, electromagnetic waves, electronic circuits and optics. This honors section of PHYS 1120 will involve extensive use of multivariable and vector calculus, detailed exploration of physical problems using both analytical and numerical methods, discussion of historical and philosophical foundations of physics, work on individual and group projects, and writing assignments and presentations. Students enrolled in this class need to be enrolled in at least Calculus 3 or higher level mathematics course. This course is intended for students majoring in physical science, engineering or mathematics; especially physics, astrophysics and engineering physics. Students in the course will also be enrolled in a 1-hour per week tutorial section of PHYS 1120. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: natural science.
PSCI 3011-880
The American Presidency
Lauri Mc Nown
Although the American system of government was designed as a "republic," the best description of it today is as a "presidential system" of government. In this course we will explore the historical foundations, development, and institutionalization of the presidency. The Constitutional evolution of the office will be examined. And we will study the Presidency as it relates to the system of separation of powers.
The course will begin with an examination of the historical basis for the presidency. Particular attention will be paid to the conception of the presidency as created by the Framers. This blueprint will be compared to the development of presidential powers. Special attention will be paid to the war making powers.
The second section of the course will focus on the more public aspects of the presidency. We will first discuss the nomination, financing, and election of the president. This will be followed by an examination of such issues as the relation between the president and the public, the media, and the concept of the personalized presidency as well as an examination of the theories of presidential personality.
The relationship between the President and Congress as well as the institutionalization of the presidency will be explored. The evolution of the Executive Office of the President will merit particular attention.
Finally, a series of case studies will be explored to illustrate the concepts, which will have been examined throughout the semester. We will begin with an in-depth examination of Watergate and then follow with student presentation of case studies of their choice.
Throughout this course we will monitor the performance and effectiveness of the Bush presidency.
Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: United States Context.
PSCI 3193
International Behavior
Steve Chan
This course will focus on crisis management and foreign policy decision making. It invites the students to examine and study a number of past episodes of intense tension and threat of military escalation. More importantly, the case method adopted for this course requires that students have to participate actively in the class and to learn from each other. While the general approach and objective of this course remain the same as I have taught it before, I have revamped its content in two ways.
First, I have added new case material to its substance. Among the cases to be discussed are U.S. decision making in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Rwandan genocide, the invasion of Iraq, and the Bosnian and Kosovan interventions. As well, there will readings and discussion on intelligence warning before the Korean War, the Yom Kippur War, the Pearl Harbor attack, and operation execution in military episodes such as the implementation of the Cuban blockade, the Iran hostage rescue mission, and intervention in Somalia
Second, I have re-oriented the course to give more emphasis to different explanations of successes or failures in foreign policy. Among the explanations considered will be bureaucratic politics, organizational processes, groupthink, belief systems, loss aversion, reasoning by historical analogy, etc., etc. As before, I will also try to incorporate a couple of movies that highlight the course material.
The honor students enrolled in this class will have to keep up with substantial reading, participate in active discussion, and write a paper as class assignment.
PSYC 2606-880
Social Psychology
Diane Martichuski
Social psychology is the study of human interaction. This course is intended to provide an overview of the basic knowledge, theories, and research methods in social psychology. Course format will be lecture, as well as discussion of general social psychology topics and articles. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies.
PSYC 4684-880
Developmental Psychology
E. Wade-Stein
In-depth consideration of human developmental processes across the life span. Includes coverage of the major topics in human development, such as physical, cognitive, social, and personality development. Prereq., PSYC 1001. Restricted to juniors and seniors.
SOCY 2021-880
Nonviolence and the Ethics of Social Action
Paul Strom
This seminar will provide students with the opportunity to exam the phenomenon of nonviolence as a dynamic of social action and social change. Participants will critically analyze historical examples of the justification and methods of nonviolent social transformation and also explore contemporary social movements self-identified as committed to nonviolence.
Course objectives include familiarity with: selected examples of the history and practice of nonviolence as a social dynamic, including the Indian independence movement and the abolition, suffrage, and civil rights movements in this country; the ideas and strategies of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez; the contributions of Henry David Thoreau and Gene Sharp; and the perspectives on nonviolence derived from selected religious and feminist sources. Through the use of the world wide web, seminar participants will also be asked to locate and correspond with a group or organization currently active in efforts of social transformation and committed to the strategies of nonviolence.
SOCY 4461-880
Critial Thiking : Doing Justice
Sara Steen
In this course, we will turn a critical eye toward how societies “do justice” in response to violations of the criminal law. We will explore theories of justice, look at how societies across time and place have done justice, and focus intently on the current state of doing justice in the U.S.A. We will work on reimagining crime control by thinking about other ways of doing justice, and will talk about the political, social, and economic feasibility of other choices. Students will have a significant role in generating the course content for the semester, and are expected to actively participate in class.
WRTG 1250-880
Advanced First Year Writing
C. Van Gerven
Novelist, Philip Gerard says “Research is a habit, an attitude of open-minded alertness, a way of being in the world, of being alert for knowledge in any form—knowledge defined as some clue I didn’t have before about how the world works.” In this class we are going to conduct some creative research. We’re going to look at research not just as footnotes and quotes, but as a way of being– a way of being alert and attentive to the lives we live. We will research not just issues or ideas, but ourselves and our lives.
We’ll begin by researching who we think we are. We’ll search memories, family stories, photos, videos, interviews with old friends and relatives, etc. to find out about the selves we think we know, but may never really have attended to with “an attitude of open-minded alertness.”
Then we research a story or history that is important to us, but isn’t necessarily about us. Gerard also suggests that “stories lie buried under our feet, painted over on the facades of our cities and towns, silenced under the barrage of everyday noise, forgotten or lost by death, erased from the public memory, but the writer can find them.” We will pick a public issue we have a personal interest in and then research archives– paper, electronic, living (as in people), visual, audio, experiential and imaginative– in order to see how our personal experience might add to the public discussion.
Finally, we’ll research an academic issue that is compelling for us. We’ll research in order to find more clues about how our the world works. Research makes our world bigger, deeper, even quirkier– but always more interesting. We’ll look at academic research as a conversation about an issue that excites scholars to write, and we’ll add our own excitement and voices to that conversation.
The course will involve two short research papers (5pp) and one longer research paper (10-15pp). You will receive a portfolio grade and a paper grade for all three papers. The first two portfolio grades each will count for 10% of your grade. The first two papers each will count 20%. The third portfolio will count 15% and the final paper 25% of you total grade. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: written communication.
