Fall 2019 Honors Program Courses

Fall 2019 Honors Program Courses

We provide course descriptions written by instructors whenever possible (scroll further down this page to see them).
For official descriptions, visit the University Catalog.

Reminder: Continuing student enrollment in lower-division fall semester classes is limited to seven, as we save spaces for the incoming first-year student class.

For official descriptions, visit the University Catalog.Course Descriptions (written by the instructor whenever possible)

ANTH 2100-880: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Kate Fischer
This course is an introduction to the discipline of cultural anthropology and the substantive issues, methods, and concepts of the discipline. Cultural anthropology is the study of how human beings organize their lives as members of society, and the ways in which they make their lives meaningful as cultural individuals. This field of study involves encountering, interpreting, and communicating about the human situation in all its variety. Cultural anthropology is a vast discipline with far reaching objectives. Cultural anthropologists study and apply their expertise to many problems worldwide. While we cannot possibly cover the breadth and depth of the discipline during one semester, this course will offer an appreciation and understanding of culture and different ways of thinking about the diversity we encounter in our everyday lives. Therefore, the primary goal of this course is to provide you with the ability to apply an anthropological perspective to understanding how people are influenced by and are part of the historical, social, economic, ecological, and political processes that occur across the globe. It is my hope that this course will instill in you a sense of curiosity about people and cultures around the world, provide you with a set of tools for understanding difference, and offer you a deeper insight into your own experience as a cultural being.

CLAS 1509-880+881: Trash and Treasure: Art and Archaeology of the Ancient World
Elspeth Dusinberre
Trash & Treasure, Temples & Tombs introduces the art and archaeology of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, seeking to gain greater understanding of these cultures' approaches to identity, power, religion, death, and the human body. Different types of evidence elucidate different aspects of ancient societies: trash, the stuff of archaeology, shows us as much about how people really lived as monumental architecture does about how they wished to portray themselves. The course examines art, architecture, and rubbish to learn about ancient humanity. Exploring intercultural interactions across three continents and 3000 years allows us to break down preconceptions about "civilizations" or directionality of "influence" and to develop new ways of understanding diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural collectivities in the contexts of antiquity. The course examines peoples and places through the lens of Mediterranean Studies, considering identity construction, inter-communal relations, cross-cultural exchange, innovation and artistic production, movement and migration, the development and expression of hegemonic power and of empire, socioeconomic diversity and marginalized populaces, and the role of economics and commerce in these processes. Readings include primary sources in translation as well as secondary texts; Web-based projects help students travel widely on the Internet.

EBIO 1210-880: General Biology 1
Robert Buchwald
EBIO 1210 and EBIO 1220 together serve as an introduction to Biology in the 21st Century. These courses are prerequisites for nearly every subsequent EBIO course. In the first semester (1210), our focus is on processes at the cellular level. We will learn what types of molecules all living things are made of, the structure and organization of cells, how DNA is read and translated into proteins, the magic of mitochondria and the fundamentals of photosynthesis. To complement class lectures, we will watch many movies and animations and have class discussions relating course content to your everyday life. Students will also give research-based presentations to the class on topics such as: Health Myths & Facts, Frontiers in Genetics, and the Human Ecosystem. Guest speakers and field trips will round out the course. EBIO 1210 and EBIO 1220 are recommended for science majors. Non-science majors should consider EBIO 1030, 1040 & 1050.

ENGL 2665-880: Introduction to American Literature I
Martin Bickman
This course focuses on American literature before 1900, but instead of a survey it will focus on basic concepts and structures of thought and feeling in in the three major genres of American writing: fiction, non-fiction prose, and poetry.  Two main areas: (1) the dialectic between history and myth--i.e., the ways basic mythic motifs such as the journey into the howling wilderness or the pastoral promise of the landscape have ordered, informed, even created the “facts” of American experience, and (2) the search for a redeeming language, or for one at least commensurate with the realities of American experience.  There will be writing for each class period and attendance and commitment to creating an intellectual community is required.  The basic texts are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Short stories and The Scarlet Letter, Henry Thoreau, Walden, Whitman, Song of Myself and other poems, Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. These are "canonical" classic writers, but I hope to show you how subversive and radical they really are, to "de-monumentalize" them so their thought become dynamic and a prod to social action and justice.

GEOG 1972-880: Environment-Society Geography
Abby Hickcox
The goals of this class are to increase your understanding of key contemporary environmental issues and to introduce you to the ways in which the field of geography has approached the interaction between society and nature. In pursuit of these goals, the class will survey global and regional environmental issues and problems, with an emphasis on their social, political-economic, and cultural dimensions. The study of these issues evokes one of the most profound questions of our times: What is, and what ought to be, the relationship between humans and the environment? We will address this question through an examination of selected environmental issues, varied social responses to environmental change, and the different ways in which human societies have transformed the earth. We will also ask:  How do we understand “nature”?  What drives human modification of the earth, and how are specific groups of people differently affected by those modifications? What kinds of assumptions have led to the creation of certain environmental problems (and for whom are they problems)? Topics covered include: population and consumption; environmental hazards; ecology; environmental ethics; biodiversity and environmental conservation; anthropogenic climate change; and water use. Through this class, you should find that geography offers an integrated way of understanding environment and culture that is increasingly useful for addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems and their potential solutions. Formerly GEOG 2412.

HIST 2166-880: The Vietnam Wars
Steven Dike
In this class, we will study the history of a series of conflicts that occurred in Vietnam from about 1930 to 1975. These struggles involved Vietnamese nationalists, Vietnamese communists, French colonialists, Japanese occupiers, and Americans (along with others) in the final phase of these wars. This is a complicated history, but my goal is that all of you will leave this class with a deep knowledge of the issues, people, and conflicts that shaped Vietnam and the other nations that fought there in these decades. We will examine the American experience in the war, as well as the American home front. Students will write an independent research paper on a topic of their choice.

HONR 1810-880: Honors Diversity Seminar
Alphonse Keasley
Students will develop an appreciation for, and experience with, diverse perspectives. In particular this includes: racial/ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, and class perspectives, for constructing knowledge as they proceed through their undergraduate studies. Three themes provide the framework for the course: education for the next century, the 21st century citizen, and the modern individual in a diverse society. Topics explored include privilege, stigmatization, targeted and non-targeted grouping, and oppression. Engaging in independent research and experiential, empathetic experiences is required.

HONR 3220-880: Advanced Honors 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.

HONR 4000-880: Racism in American Culture
Abby Hickcox
Why does racism persist in a “colorblind” America?  What is the role of culture in perpetuating ideas about race?  Is popular culture racist?  How do we come to understand race as a reality?  This course addresses the legacies of racism and colonialism in the United States and how racism is perpetuated and resisted through cultural forms.  We will examine histories of privilege and oppression, including discourses on immigration, whiteness, structural racism, nationalism, biological racism, diversity, and multiculturalism.  We will trace the ways in which racial meanings develop, dominate, and decline over time and identify the prominent racial discourses of contemporary American culture.   

HUMN 4835-880: Literature and Social Violence
Cathy Comstock
This seminar focuses on both literary and non-fictional texts about social violence, so that we can compare the understanding and effects made possible through different media, including film in some cases. We’ll study gang culture, homophobia and AIDS, the effects of racism and poverty on gutted-out neighborhoods and school systems, and the politics of hunger. We’ll also look at sources of great hope and positive action, such as Mountains Beyond Mountains, The Freedom Writers’ Diary, Angels in America and other ways in which both art and social action can make a transformative difference. All this is combined with the option to get extra credit by doing volunteer work in community agencies, since the personal experience with the effects of social violence helps us to understand the class materials—and our culture overall—more deeply. As a means of approaching works from across the disciplines and beyond, we will be learning how to do discourse analysis of the language of both the texts and our society. In this way the class will focus especially on our methods of making meaning and how those meanings act to maintain or transform our cultural structures. The class texts include Do or Die, Angels in America, The Bluest Eye, Freedom Writers’ Diary, Savage Inequalities, Gandhi the Man, and Tortilla Curtain. Service Practicum (optional but preferred), HUMN 3935: The optional outreach work for the course can be taken for an additional one credit hour (requiring 2-3 hours of service a week), or for an additional 3 credit hours (an internship requiring 8 hours of service a week), resulting in a total number of either 4 or 6 hours of credit (when the 3 credits for HUMN 4835 are included).

MATH 1300-880: Calculus 1
Ira Becker
Topics include limits, derivatives of algebraic and trigonometric functions, applications of the derivative, integration and application of the definite integral. The honors-aspect of this course will include deep discussions of the underlying fundamental assumptions of calculus (the continuum) and why various aspects of calculus work as they do.

MUEL 2752-880: Music in American Culture
Daniel Jones
This course is a survey of various folk and popular musics of the United States. This is a non-majors class; no prior knowledge of music or cultural studies is expected. In this course, music is regarded to be an aspect of culture, and we will thus combine multiple evaluative approaches (e.g., historical, sociological, as well as purely musical) in order to gain insight into pieces of music and the process of music making as elements of culture. Our main goal in the first 1/3 of the course is to get a real sense of what folk culture is and how it operates in people’s (including our own) lives. We will also survey some main strands of folk culture that form the basis of “American” culture.  In the remaining 2/3 of the course, we will first discuss the nature of popular culture and then undertake a chronologically-based survey of various United States popular music styles from roughly 1840 to the present. Class activities and assignments are designed to give students opportunities to go beyond fact gathering/reiteration, to explore and experience for themselves how American folk and popular musics operate as part of everyday cultural life.

MUEL 2772-880: World Musics 
Daniel Jones
This course focuses on the field of ethnomusicology and applies this field’s concepts and approaches to various musical traditions.  Since this is a non-majors course, no prior knowledge of music or specific cultures is expected.  The primary goals of this course are to: 1) become familiar with the views and concepts used in ethnomusicology; 2) learn about a small number of world music traditions; and 3) to gain hands-on experience in applying ethnomusicological approaches. In the first few class sessions, we will introduce perspectives, concepts, and vocabulary used in studying music and 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.  Throughout the course of the semester, each student will also conduct their own ethnomusicological study on music traditions found locally in order to gain hands-on experience in applying practices of this discipline.

PSCI 1101-880: Introduction to American Politics
Janet Donavan
This course provides an introduction to the U.S. system of government and politics. We will emphasize interrelations among levels and branches of government, formal and informal institutions, processes, and political behavior. This semester, we will also focus on how each individual can affect the political process, and the importance of information and media literacy in a representative democracy.  Each student will choose a political issue to follow throughout the semester for a semester project, learning how the U.S. political system addresses the issue in government, elections, extra-governmental institutions and media.  

PSCI 2106-880: Policy Analysis
Kenneth Bickers
The Honors section of introduction to the analysis of public policies. The central goal of the class is to better equip students to think critically about alternative ways that public policies might be produced and delivered. This course utilizes the political economy approach to policy analysis, which explores ways that individual values and preferences get translated into collective processes and outcomes. This approach is directly related to debates about the operation of democratic systems. It treats governments, nonprofit organizations, and markets as sometimes competing and sometimes complementary instruments by which groups of individuals make collective choices to pursue public policy goals. 

WGST 3670-880: Gender, Race, Sexuality and Global Migration
Kate Fischer
This course engages in an interdisciplinary study of the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality that have created a multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial world, looking particularly at migrants and migrant communities. We will examine how constructions of gender, race, and sexuality are structurally determined and lived in the context of global migration, both contemporary and historical. While the course primarily focuses on women, it is impossible to ignore how race, sexuality, and class articulate with ideas about gender and how these socially determined characteristics intersect in identity construction and subjectivities. The goal of this class is to develop a critical understanding of how forms of privilege, inequality, and exclusion based on gender, race, sexuality, and national/ethnic origin are written about, comprehended, and contended with. In addition to reading a number of scholarly books and articles from across the social sciences and humanities, we will also use news articles, blogs, current events, and social media. Recommended prerequisites: WMST 2000 or WMST 2600. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: global perspective.

WRTG 3020-880: Inkslingers and Wordsmiths: Upper Division Writing
Olivia Miller
This course centers on the exciting graphic nonfiction genre. The hybrid genre combines visual and narrative art forms that have held the modern and contemporary hero myths, paranoias and fantasies of our time. Very recently, the genre has been used to explore marginalized groups and alternative aesthetics including race, gender identity, and class. In this class, we will study the genre critically in order to move forward and craft our own treatments, scripts, panels and pages. We’ll begin by considering the landscape by exploring a variety of graphic nonfiction texts. Then we will apply the visual and narrative techniques we learn to create graphic scripts and the accompanying storyboards using Comic Life software. Students will work page-by-page and panel-by-panel to create an autobiographical comic, memoir, and social critique. The course’s theoretical focus will be on visual narrative theory, writing and analysis, as well as research. While artistic ability can’t hurt in this class it is not a requirement, as stick figures and sketches work just as well and the Comic Life software will make the process simpler. However, a passion and curiosity for the genre is critical. The class will approach the genre in different formats including daily in-class writing exercises and discussions, an analysis essay, and a series of comic assignments include memoir, social critique and autobiography. Requisites: Restricted to students with 57-180 credits (Junior or Senior) College of Arts and Sciences students only.