ANTH 3000-880
Primate Behavior
D. Greene
We human beings are primates. We share many biological and behavioral features with the nonhuman primates. We also share a common evolutionary past with them and in particular with monkeys and apes. It is often said when observing the sometimes amusing behavior of monkeys and apes that it is amazing that they seem so like us. From the perspective of comparative primatology it would be more appropriate to turn around the comparison and say we behave so much like they do! This course will develop the foundations for the behavioral analysis of wild or free-ranging primates. We will emphasize socioecological and sociobiological perspectives within primate ethology, the study of primate behavior. These perspectives will guide us as we survey the behavior of selected examples of the Primate Order. Where appropriate we will engage in comparative analysis of nonhuman primate behavior and our own behavior.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: natural science.

ENGL 3060-880
Modern and Contemporary Literature
C. VanGerven

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 3060-881

Modern and Contemporary Literature: American Culture at the End(s) of the 80s

Benjamin J Robertson

Benjamin.j.robertson@colorado.edu

Contrary to popular belief, there was more to the 1980s than New Wave music, legwarmers and Alf. The Reagan era was characterized by, among other things, a backlash against the cultural politics of the 1960s, an increased attention to the self, AIDS paranoia and attendant scapegoating of homosexuals, a cultural obsession with the white male body, national concern over setbacks in Vietnam and the Middle East, and a fear of nuclear holocaust not felt since the Cuban Missile Crisis. This section of Modern and Contemporary Literature will investigate fiction of the period that takes on these concerns as well as key texts that either foreshadow these issues in the 1960s and 1970s or look back at them from the perspective of the 1990s. We will pay special attention to literary representations of 1) the manner in which late Cold War politics and rhetoric influenced American identity; 2) claims of the “end of history” leading up to and following the collapse of communism in eastern Europe; and 3) an evolving technological landscape that promised both transcendence and destruction. Time permitting, we may also discuss filmic and musical texts that relate to these points.

Evaluation will be based upon written work (including a research essay), in class presentations and discussion, and quizzes.

Tentative reading list

• Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School
• Pat Cadigan, selected short stories
• Octavia Butler, Dawn
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or, the Evening Redness in the West
• Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
• Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
• Don DeLillo, Underworld

 Approved for arts & sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.

ENGL 3226-880
Folklore
C. 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 4604-880
Colloquium in Film Aesthetics: Magic, Wonder, & Cinema.
M. Barlow
Magic and cinema have always been intertwined: Georges Méliès used magic lanterns on stage; Harry Houdini starred in serials in the teens; experimental filmmaker Joseph Cornell and animators the Brothers Quay each uniquely recast cinema’s “magical” potential; and recent narrative films from The Others (2001) to The Prestige (2006) have registered a revival of interest in the paranormal while exploring technology’s capacity for generating wonder. Described by Descartes as a “sudden surprise of the soul,” the experience of wonder has long been linked to cinema. In this course, readings in the history and theory of wonder illuminate an eclectic mix of narrative, experimental, and animated films that examine the relationship between magic, cinema, and related phenomena (like optical toys, automata, and spirit photography) and investigate the fascinating, contradictory relationship between science and faith, technology and transcendence. This is a serious seminar for upper level undergraduates. Oral presentations, research papers, and a commitment to daily, lively discussion are required. Special emphasis will be placed on developing a style of writing that is analytic and lyrical, and thus able to evoke an experience of wonder.

HONR 1001-882
Co-Seminar in The Solar System
D. Duncan : http://casa.colorado.edu/dduncan
You must be concurrently enrolled in ASTR 1010 or ASTR 1020
On the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first astronomical observations with a telescope, we'll be exploring his discoveries and their impact on science and society, both then and today. Our seminar will start with the roots of cosmological thought from ancient Greece, and then go on to explore Galileo’s many discoveries and the intense and long-lasting controversies that they sparked. We’ll finish with our current view of an expanding, even accelerating, universe. Throughout, we will highlight the changing scientific and philosophical ideas that have shaped our view of the universe. Seminar activities will include readings and short research topics from both historical and scientific sources, and in-class planetarium shows and demonstrations. We'll also use the telescopes at the Sommers-Bausch Observatory to replicate some of Galileo's historic observations. Come join us for a closer look at one of the most intriguing, influential and controversial explorers of all time!

HONR 1001-884
Co-Seminar in Stars and Galaxies
E. Ellingson : http://casa.colorado.edu/~elling
You must be concurrently enrolled in ASTR 1010 or ASTR 1020
Students will gather their own data and make images using the Sommers-Bausch Observatory telescopes and a sophisticated night-time digital camera. We will image Jupiter and the 4 moons discovered by Galileo, and use the images to determine the planet’s mass.
We will observe star clusters through red and blue filters in order to determine the color and brightness of the stars, and then determine which clusters are old, and which are young. We will also make pretty digital images of nebulas that students can save for fun, maybe even using them as their own “screen savers.”

HONR 1001-885&886
Co-Seminar in Applied Math
A. Dougherty
You must be concurrently 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 1810-880
Honors Diversity Seminar
A. Keasley
This seminar offers students a foundation for understanding diverse perspectives as intergral components for cutting-edge scholarship. Students will construct and refine their knowledge about traditional themes through reading cross-disciplinary multicultural authors and completing two 7-page papers.
Some of the themes that will be covered are: The American Dream and the University Education; Ways of Seeing and Knowing ; In the future... Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: culture and gender diversity.

HONR 2500-880
TPC: Creativity and Problem Solving
E. Porps
The basis of a creative relationship with one’s work and every day life situations is the understanding and practice of the creative process. Exploration of this process results in an increased awareness of the problems and inherent solutions comprising the development of our personal and professional lives.
In an academic environment, the study of creativity and its process is naturally and helpfully integrative of the basic nature and techniques of the separate disciplines associated with Science, Business and Art. The complement of the creative process is problem solving which is also naturally applicable within all disciplines.

HONR 2500-882

TPC:  Science Controversies, Success and Failures

A.Franklin

This course will deal with the nature of science by discussing scientific controversies as well as scientific successes and failures. It is in the resolution of scientific controversies that scientific methodology is illustrated most clearly.   The high point of the course will be a discussion of the Mendel-Fisher controversy in genetics. Gregor Mendel  (1822-1884) is regarded as the founder of modern genetics. It is well known that his work was neglected until its “rediscovery” in 1900 by DeVries, Correns, and von Tschermak. It is less well known that in 1936 the distinguished British statistician and geneticist, R.A. Fisher analyzed Mendel’s data and found that the fit to Mendel’s theoretical expectations was “too good to be true.” Using χ2 analysis Fisher found that the probability of obtaining a fit as good as Mendel’s was only 7 in 100,000. Fisher’s work was also overlooked. The first published comments on it appear appeared in 1964, about the time of the centenary of Mendel’s paper, and since then more than 50 papers, letters, and discussions in books have been published on the controversy as to whether Fisher had shown that Mendel had falsified his data. We will read the original papers by Mendel and Fisher, a historical overview of the controversy, and several of the most important papers published on the controversy.  The question of whether this controversy has been resolved will be discussed in some detail.  An example of both a scientific success as well as a scientific failure was the discovery that Nature is not symmetric with respect to left and right. We will discuss how the suggestion came about and how it was experimentally confirmed. An interesting aspect of this episode is that there were experiments performed 25 years earlier that, at least in retrospect, showed the lack of symmetry. We will discuss why no one, including the experimenters themselves, realized their significance.  Another controversial issue is Kettlewell=s evolutionary biology experiments on the Peppered Moth, Biston betularia. The typical form of the moth has a pale speckled appearance and there are two darker forms, f. carbonaria, which is nearly black, and f. insularia, which is intermediate in color. The typical form of the moth was most prevalent in the British Isles and Europe until the middle of the nineteenth century. At that time things began to change. Increasing industrial pollution had both darkened the surfaces of trees and rocks and had also killed the lichen cover of the forests downwind of pollution sources. Coincident with these changes, naturalists had found that rare, darker forms of several moth species, in particular the Peppered Moth, had become common in areas downwind of pollution sources. The argument was that the darker moths were better able to avoid being eaten by birds in polluted areas , but were at a selective disadvantage in nonpolluted regions and this is what Kettle well’s experiments demonstrated. Recently, doubts have been raised concerning Kettlewell’s experiments and he has been accused of scientific fraud. This controversy has important implications for the discussions of evolutionary biology and the intelligent design view. WE will read both Kettlewell’s original work as well as several commentaries on that work. The difficulty of actually doing science will be illustrated by looking at the 30 year history that led to the suggestion of the neutrino, a particle with no electric charge, a very small mass, and which barely interacts with matter. We will also discuss how this elusive particle was discovered.  Other episodes to be discussed include the Meselson-Stahl experiment, the “most beautiful experiment in biology,” which demonstrated how DNA replicated; the possible fraud by Robert Millikan in measuring the charge of the electron; the 30-year solar neutrino problem; and the early searches for gravity waves.

HONR 3220-880
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 4000-880
Sustainable Energy
F. Kreith
During the last century fossil fuels have provided an abundant and cheap source of energy that completely transformed the life of people on this planet. This transformation has been as profound as the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago and has led to an exponential growth in population as well as in consumption of non-renewable energy resources. But fossil fuels are becoming scarce, their cost is continuously increasing, and our current way of life is not sustainable. Consequently our industrial society that is based on utilization of fossil energy will have to change dramatically if it is to survive.

The goal of this course is to provide a framework for assessing policy options that can lead to a pardigm shift from fossil to renewable energy sources. We will examine available and future technologies in the context of their environmental impact as well as their technical and economic viability. The course will provide a basic understanding of the role of energy in our lives, how we produce it and use it, what we can do to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and to estimate the carrying capacity of a sustainable ecosystem on a global scale. The first part of the course will examine our current energy production system from a technical and economic perspective. The second part will deal with options of using renewable energy sources for a sustainable future. Finally, each student will be required to apply the tools learned in the course to estimate the long-term carrying capacity, including population, for a country of his or her choice and present the results to the class.

Pre-requisites for the course are college level courses in chemistry and physics, a basic course in calculus and ability to search data bases on the internet. If it can be arranged, the class will make field trips to a coal-burning power plant, a wind energy turbine, a photovoltaic electric system, a solar hot water facility installed in my home and a recycling operation in Boulder County. This course is open to students in engineering as well as to students from outside the engineering college and communication between students of different backgrounds will be encouraged. To achieve a proper balance and make sure students have appropriate prerequisites, we would like to interview students interested in this course. Please contact either Professor Kreith (fkreith@comcast.net) or Professor Garaway (garaway@colorado.edu) before signing up for the course.

HONR 4025-880
Heroines in Heroic Tradition
C. Van Gerven
Bill Butler in his The Myth of the Hero suggests that women have occupied only three positions in the on-going process of heroic tradition. They are either Amazons like Atlanta or Joan of Arc, pneumatic dollies like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, or soap-mothers like the women we see in TV commercials agonizing over ring around the collar. Given recent controversies about the roles of women in power, e.g. Hilary Clinton running for Congress, Martha Stewart in jail, questions of women in combat, etc., we perhaps need to re-evaluate heroic traditions as the stories that ground our sense of public endeavor. What do we mean by heroic? What is a heroine? Are heroines different from heroes? Are any traditionally feminine qualities heroic? Can women only be heroic by showing that they can do what male heroes do, e. g. fight battles, run for President, etc. or are there other arenas for heroic endeavor, other patterns of heroic action? We will attempt to answer these questions by reading several texts from various heroic traditions and then comparing them to modern retellings by female authors.
The class will be principally discussion with occasional sermonettes from the instructor. Since the class will depend upon your participation, you will be assigned certain tasks to enhance discussion. For example, you may be asked to prosecute or defend Snow White from the charge of being a "dumb bunny." There will be two short papers and one long project.

Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: culture and gender diversity.

HUMN 1010-880/881
Introduction to Humanities 1
G. Bernardini/P. Gordon
In this 6-credit, core-curriculum course dealing with the great works of the western humanities tradition you will study art, music and literature from the ancient Greeks (Homer, Sophocles, Plato) through the beginning of the “modern” era (Dante, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Shakespeare) in the 17th century. Two-thirds of your grade will be determined by your work in your small, seminar-size literature section; the other third of your grade will be made up by your grade from the art/music lectures, which coincide with the historical periods of the literature you are reading in our literature section. My emphasis in the literature section will be on “close reading,” literary analysis/interpretation, and improving your writing skills.
This course provides students with a chronological and integrated study of art, music, and literature in western culture. The course is a combination of lectures (three hours/week) and small discussion sections (three hours/week). We will begin with the Greeks, proceeding through the Middle Ages, and ending with the Renaissance.

Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts or historical context.

IPHY 3420-880: S. Nelson

IPHY 3420-881: M. Lynch
Nutrition, Health and Performance
A study of nutritional needs across the life span, focusing on the basic nutrients (including lipids, carbohydrates, protein, minerals, vitamins, and water) food sources, and nutrient utilization in the human body. Emphasis on nutritional needs from infancy to old age and includes life cycle occurrences such as pregnancy, lactation, and prevention of chronic diseases. Also includes applied and controversial aspects of human nutrition as well as an evolutionary study of human evolution.

Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: natural sciences

PHIL 2200-880
Major Social Theories
M. Huemer
Introductory study of major philosophies of the past in relation to political, economic, and social issues.
Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.

PHIL 3180-880
Critical Thinking/ Contemporary Topics
D. Mayer

Justice is, perhaps, the central philosophical concept in political philosophy. In this course, we will be discussing distributive or economic justice [both domestic and international], ending with a brief look at the media and democracy. We will be reading some key contemporary views defining the principles of distributive justice, and our goal will be to evaluate their arguments.

The overall social issue of examined in this course is poverty and wealth, especially poverty in the US. To understand what living in poverty is like, we begin with a very rapid reading of Kozol’s description of the lives of children in the inner cities of the US. This establishes the reality addressed by our overriding question: Is serious poverty just or unjust, right or wrong, or is it just a fact of life? We cannot answer this question without a justified conception of economic justice, a theory of how social goods ought to be distributed. [Social goods are goods produced as a result of social cooperation and include such things as jobs, education, security, welfare, income/wealth, political office, information (via media)]. We will examine major contemporary theories of economic justice: Rawls’ democratic equality theory (holding that we have a right to a minimally decent standard of living), Nozick’s libertarian theory (holding that taxation for social programs is a form of enslavement), Walzer’s theory of “complex equality” in the distribution of goods, and Cohen’s view that capitalism undermines freedom.

Recognizing that we live in the midst of rapid globalization and that our economy is increasingly dependent on the labor of impoverished people in developing countries, we will also take a look at globalization and world poverty, examining Pogge’s argument that “the existing global economic order is ethically indefensible,” that it violates the rights of the impoverished in the “global south”. We then return to the domestic scene to discuss the link between poverty and criminal justice. Reiman holds that ideology blinds us to the most serious threats to our persons and property, which come from white collar actions. Since ideology shapes the media, we end with a brief examination of the media and democracy. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.

PSCI 2012-880
Introduction to Comparative Politics
J. Fitzgerald
Most countries confront a variety of common political problems, including how to gain popular support, what kinds of political institutions are most appropriate and how to distribute burdens and benefits to different segments of the population. Concentrates on learning how to compare different political systems and provides illustrative examples from several countries in both the industrialized and nonindustrialized world.

Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies.

PSCI 3011-880
The American Presidency
L. McNown
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 and sciences core curriculum: United States context.

PSYC 3101-880/1
Statistics and Research Methods in Psychology
M. Keller
Introduces descriptive and inferential statistics and their roles in psychological research. Topics include correlation, regression, t-test, analysis of variance, and selected nonparametric statistics.