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

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 1260-880
Intro to Women’s Literature
Claudia Van Gerven
We will begin this course by asking the question, "Is there such a thing as a woman?" Or put another way, "Why study women's literature? Is the category of woman a meaningful one? If so, what are its meanings?" We will look at some major British and American authors to see what sorts of things they imply about the category of women. Do women have distinctly female experiences? Can those experiences be represented? Do language and literary traditions necessarily distort these experiences? Do all women share some experiences as women or are women's experiences unique for each individual? What are the effects of race, class, ethnicity, or sexual preference on women's experiences and ways they can be represented? Students will be assigned two short 3-5 page papers, one long-term project which will be presented to the class as a whole. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: culture and gender diversity.

ENGL 3000-880
Shakespeare for Non-Majors
Richelle Munkhoff
“Shakespeare” is many things: a man writing in a specific historical time and place, drawing on particular literary traditions and social customs; a businessman interested in and conscious of precise audiences and venues; a collection of texts that have come down to us over four centuries influenced by a series of printing and editorial practices, as well as by changing conventions of staging and production; and, most familiarly, an icon recognized around the globe often as a figure of individual genius, but one infinitely malleable, adaptable to different settings, contexts, media.  

In this course we will explore these various avenues, and especially the last, to understand why Shakespeare remains important long after most of his contemporaries have slipped from popular cultural memory. This class will be primarily discussion-based examinations of the Shakespeare’s language as poetry, but since his words were meant to be enacted on stage, there will also be a performance component to the course. Readings will likely include Richard III, Henry V, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, as well as at least one of the plays from the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 2009 season. Assignments will include a facsimile project – working with portions of Shakespeare’s texts as they originally appeared in print; a research essay; and a performance project – based on either viewing or attending a production of one of the plays, or adapting a scene from one of the plays, either individually or as a group; and a final exam. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.

ENGL 3060-880
Modern and Contemporary Literature
George Moore
Modern and Contemporary Literature will introduce you to some important works of the Modernist Period from the early years of the twentieth century, and some of the better more contemporary works of fiction, poetry and drama in English from authors in America and elsewhere. Among the Modernists we will read are James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Although the contemporary works tend to change with the years, and each new batch of contemporary writers, some of the standards we might read are by Toni Morrison, J.M. Coetzee, Sharon Olds, Tony Kushner, Edward Jones, Cormac McCarthy and others. The course is designed around seminar style discussions and short, critical essays. Students will have the opportunity to improve their analytical skills, as well as their reading skills. Literature is the social barometer of every age, and it opens up the individual’s possibilities for understanding the world beyond simply ideas on the written page. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.

ENGL 3677-880
Jewish-American Fiction
Paul Levitt
 I take Jewish-American literature to include not only Jewish writers talking about Jewish subjects, but also Jewish writers
talking about non-Jewish subjects. We will read short stories, essays, poetry, novels, and plays. A good place to start would be the Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature.  The course will emphasize close reading and literary questions, not religious ones. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: culture and gender diversity.

ENGL 4224-881
Modern British and Irish Novel: Twentieth-Century British and Anglophone Women Writers
Jane Garrity
During the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, Britain viewed itself as the powerful economic center of a large empire. Many literary texts of the period helped to perpetuate England’s centrality and primacy, yet when people think of the classic texts of British imperialism they most frequently invoke novels by male authors: Rudyard Kipling’s Kim; Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India. This course will instead explore some of the competing accounts of national and imperial identity produced by British women both before and after the apogee of empire. In the first half of the course, we will explore the links between British modernism and the attendant imperial culture, analyzing female modernists’ rhetorical strategies and representations of empire. Some questions we will ask include: how were these women’s texts shaped by colonial and imperial ideologies? How can these works be seen as resisting or challenging the notion of England’s presumed moral and cultural superiority? How do they reflect and critique the twin myths of progress and empire? In the second half of the course, we will look at the aftermath of empire in several postcolonial texts by women writers. The term “Anglophone Literature” refers to writings in English from countries connected to Britain either by imperial rule or by the presence of British immigrants, yet does not include England itself. This course extends the definition of that term to study England as a location of Anglophone Literature, as produced by the island’s natives, immigrants, and cosmopolitans. 

FILM 2000-880
Beginning Filmmaking
Don Yannacito
This course will explore issues and concepts fundamental to the development of an understanding of the aesthetics of film from the standpoint of the producer or maker as well as aspects of the experience of viewers.

This course will provide students direct contact with significant forms of contemporary art and will develop their capacity to comprehend and evaluate these works of art. Students will develop skills of analysis and appreciation for “moving image art” and the medium of film and video through the reading of critical texts, the viewing of important film and video art work both within class and in the First Person Cinema Series which brings 5 or 6 visiting independent film and video artists to campus each semester. Students will write critical responses involving both the film/video screenings as well as the readings. The students will also participate in the making of several short film projects that illustrate key course concepts.

Our investigations into moving image art will include an analysis of works of art produced by so-called independent filmmakers and video artists.  The use of low budget super 8 film production strategies will provide opportunities for students to express
perspectives that may not be represented in major commercial enterprises.  

Through the use of super 8 film cameras and the lecture/film screening sessions, students will become acquainted with the process of film/video production in general. We will be examining both the technical and the aesthetic components of film and video production. We will also be examining the ways in which filmmakers manipulate these components, their tactics, and their strategies in order to determine how a film or video functions in relation to how it is viewed.

HIST 1040-880
Honors: Western Civilization 2
Martha Hanna
History 1040 Honors is designed to survey the historical events and forces which have contributed to the development of Western Civilization since the Reformation. Themes to be analyzed will include: the nature of political authority in early modern and modern Europe; the place and function of religion in European society; the origins, nature, and significance of revolution; the social and economic consequences of industrialization; the emergence of national identity and its political consequences; and the impact of two world wars. An essential function of history is to develop historical perspective by examining the social, political, economic, cultural, and military events of the past and determine how they have shaped the modern world. Consequently, this course will emphasize analysis, as well as examine controversial subjects and viewpoints. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: historical context.

HONR 1001
Calculus Co-Seminar
Anne Dougherty
This co-seminar is available to honors qualified students enrolled in APPM 1360, 2350 or 2360.
There are two goals of the honors calculus co-seminar: (1) To introduce students to the process of learning to independently read mathematics and communicate it to their fellow students. This is the first step in the process which may ultimately lead to the writing of an honors thesis. (2) To gain a deeper appreciation of calculus by studying
this subject from a historical perspective. Specific topics studied will include infinity, convergence and divergence, and the origins of differential and integral calculus.

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 3001-880
Co-Seminar in Human Physiology
Cynthia Carey
This co-seminar allows students to delve into the original medical literature in areas related to human or animal health and to learn about contemporary issues related to health that can't be covered in the lectures in human physiology.

Topics last year included childhood obesity, cochlear transplants, rheumatoid arthritis, stem cell research, spinal cord injuries, gender differences in endurance sports, exercise at high altitudes, benefits (or not) of herbal remedies, etc.

HONR 3056-880
Experience of Education
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 3560-880
Science and Mysticism
John Stocke
Has modern science proven or validated the mystical religious experience? Or does a basic conflict remain between these diverse human endeavors? The similarities and differences between science and mysticism will be investigated through readings, discussions and practical, experiential exercises. The discussions and exercises will be designed to encourage both an intellectual and a non-intellectual understanding of the course material.  

HONR 4000
TPC: Masterpieces of Medieval Literature
Andrew Cain
In this course we will explore the often fantastical world of medieval literature, where mythical monsters roam enchanted forests and chivalric knights risk their lives to rescue damsels in distress. Readings will include the epic poems Beowulf and the Song of Roland, the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes and Sir Gawain and the Greek Knight, troubadour love lyric, and the fairy tales of Marie de France. We will seek to appreciate these works on their own artistic terms as cornerstones of the Western literary tradition. Significant attention also will be paid to the specific social, cultural, historical, and religious circumstances out of which this literature arose. To this end, we will attempt to determine what a critical reading of these works can really tell us about daily life, warfare, entertainment, love, and religion in the Middle Ages, not to mention what it can reveal about the aspirations and prejudices of the medieval mind.

In addition to participating actively in class discussions, students will be expected to complete a substantial research paper at the end of the course and several shorter writing assignments throughout the semester.

HONR 4055-880
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 2852-880
TPC: Music in the Rock Era
Daniel Jones
The focus of this course is popular music in the U.S. (regardless of place of origin) during the rock era, that is from ca. 1955 to the present. This is a non-majors course; no previous knowledge of music is required.

We will first briefly survey circumstances and musical styles just prior to the rock era (e.g., Tin Pan Alley, rhythm and blues, country) to gain some perspectives that will be useful for understanding musical styles and issues of the rock era. Following this, the main portion of the course is a chronologically-based survey of various popular musics of the rock era, rock-based and otherwise (i.e., mainstream pop, funk, hip hop, world beat, as well as rock).

Approaches to studying these musics will combine examination of the music itself with investigation of contextualizing issues: socio-historical circumstances and themes, technological advents, business practices, etc. Assignments will allow students to explore topics, issues, and styles of this era on their own as well as study the “official history” of popular music in the U.S. during this era. During the last roughly ¼ of the class, there will be a service learning component in which students go out into the community to study current “real life” circumstances and issues in popular music and culture.

PHIL 1000-880
Introduction to Philosophy
David Barnett
Philosophy 1000 is an overview of some central topics in philosophy. The purpose is to familiarize students with some basic philosophical issues and, more importantly, to encourage students to think in a more critical fashion. We examine problems concerning knowledge and belief, mind and body, freedom and determinism, the existence of God, the nature of right action, how we ought to act on a daily basis, and liberty and the authority of government. Approved for the Arts and Sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.

PHIL 1020-880
Intro to Western Philosophy
Robert Pasnau
The 17th and 18th centuries are often regarded as the beginning of modernity in Western Europe. It was an era of important scientific progress, and an era when the scientific method began to take shape most clearly, in the work of Galileo and Newton, among many others. It was an era when philosophy underwent dramatic change, moving away from the technical, Aristotelian approach known as scholasticism, toward the new modern style of Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes and John Locke. It was an increasingly secular era; an era when philosophers no longer felt obligated to adhere to specific Church doctrines.

This course will cast a wide net over intellectual developments during the early modern period. The focus will of course be philosophical, beginning with questions of method, knowledge, and perception, then moving on to ethics and then finally to the philosophy of religion. But along the way we will consider broader developments in literature, science, and politics. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: historical context.

PHIL 1100-880
Introduction to Ethics
Michael Tooley
An introductory study of major philosophies on the nature of good for humanity, principles of evaluation, and moral choice as they apply to contemporary moral problems. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: ideals & values

PHIL 1600-880
Philosophy and Religion
Christopher Heatherwood
In this course we attempt to answer questions concerning some important doctrines of the major Western religions, especially those concerning God. Possible questions include, Are there good reasons to think God exists?, Is it possible to have scientific evidence for God's existence?, Does the amount of evil in the world make God's existence unlikely?, Is it rational to believe in God in the absence of evidence?, Do moral truths depend upon God?, If God knows everything we will ever do, does this rob us of our freedom?, Is life after death possible?, If there is no God and no afterlife, is everything pointless? Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: ideals & values.

PHIL 3180-880
TPC: Critical Thinking: Irrationality
Bradley Monton
People are in general irrational, and moreover, they are irrational in systematically predictable ways. Or at least, this is what some philosophers, psychologists, and behavioral economists claim; in this course we’ll look at the evidence. We’ll also talk about what lessons can be learned. Some of the topics we’ll take up are crass –for example, there are ways of taking advantage of people’s irrationalities to get them to lose at poker, or buy a product they don’t need. Some of the topics are more serious – we as a society arguably misappropriate resources because of irrationally perceived risk. And other topics are purely philosophical – what is the nature of human reason, such that we are reliably irrational? What (if anything) can we do about it? Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.

PHIL 3180-881
TPC: Critical Thinking: The End of the World
Bradley Monton
When (if ever) will the human race stop existing? When (if ever) will intelligent life (be it human or post-human) stop existing? When (if ever) will the universe stop existing? These sound like the sorts of issues that only people carrying signs on street corners talk about, but in fact these questions are discussed by reputable philosophers and physicists. This course will discuss those questions, and lots of related issues. For example, we’ll critically evaluate the so-called “doomsday arguments”, which attempt to predict how long intelligent life will last, based on how long it’s been around so far. We’ll also look at what contemporary physics says about the end of the universe, and take up various philosophy of physics issues related to this. (For example, given that the two most fundamental theories we have, quantum theory and relativity theory, conflict with each other, what ability do we have to use them to make reliable predictions about the end of the universe?) While an interest in physics on the part of the students would be nice, no serious background in physics will be presupposed.

This course is related to the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) 2008-09 theme of “Apocalypse and Transformation”, and we’ll hopefully attend some CHA talks in conjunction with this course.  Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.

PHIL 3200-880
Social and Political Philosophy
Diane Mayer
Justice is a central philosophical concept in social and political philosophy. In this course, we will be discussing distributive economic justice [both domestic and international], ending with a brief look at environmental issues. We will be reading some key contemporary views about distributive justice, and our goal will be to evaluate them critically.
environmental ethics, whether or not we have moral obligations to the environment itself and argues that alleviation of global poverty is one condition of environmental preservation. Prereq., 6 hours of philosophy course work. Approved for Arts & Sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.

PSCI 1101-880
American Political Systems
Lauri McNown
The United States federal government operates under a Constitution that was written 221 years ago making it the oldest written Constitution in operation in the world.  This course will take the Constitution not only as the starting point but as the foundation, and guidepost at every point along the way.  But, as important as the Constitution is the story and complexity of American politics develops from the interaction of political culture, competing groups, formal and informal institutions, the fragmentation and clashing of different interests, the accompanying economic system and the complex web of global politics.  

The goal of this semester is to gain a sense and understanding of the "ecology" of the American Political System. So, while we will take the Constitution as the central point for our study of American Government our focus will be on not only what is in the document, particularly the theory of separation of powers and checks and balances, but what is not in the document as well. We will discover how the gaps have been filled and what gaps remain. We will be especially interested in the interaction among the branches and actors. Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies or 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 (Blackhawk Down).

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 3101-880
Statistics and Research Methods
Mat Keller
Three hours of lecture and one two-hour lab per week. Introduces descriptive and inferential statistics and their roles in psychological research. Topics include correlation, regression, t-test, analysis of variance, and selected nonparametric statistics. Prereq., MATH 1001, 1011, or equivalent.

SLHS 2010-880
Science of Human Communication
Kathryn Arehart
SLHS 2010 explores the science underlying human communication. We focus on the speech chain, which is the process by which a thought is transmitted from the brain of a speaker to the brain of a listener. This process involves a complex interaction of acoustics, anatomy, physiology, neurobiology, and psychology.  We study how language is organized in the brain, how we produce speech, the acoustics of speech and music, the anatomy and physiology of the auditory system, and how we perceive speech in complex sound environments. Students have the opportunity to explore specific questions related to the science of human communication (e.g., What is the cause of verbal slip ups? How do the speaking voice and singing voice differ? What happens to the biology of language when someone has had a brain injury? Are spoken languages and visual languages (e.g., American Sign Language) organized differently in the brain? Is language unique to humans? How do children become part of the speech chain?). Readings are drawn from a text book and from current scientific publications (e.g., Scientific American). Approved for Arts and Sciences core curriculum: natural science.

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.

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 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 your total grade.