Spring 2024 Honors Program Course Information

ANTH 2100: 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.

 Classics
Back to course list

CLAS 3119-880 & 881:  Archaeology of Death (+ recitation)
Sarah James
Mortuary archaeology is primary to both field and theoretical archaeology because of the invaluable information it provides about the human past. This seminar’s goal is to give you a solid grounding in archaeological approaches to the study of funerary practices in order to elucidate aspects of pre-modern societies. While this course focuses on the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and their neighbors (from ca. 3000 BCE-400 CE), we will also integrate case studies from around the world to illustrate core concepts. Each culture has unique processes to deal with death that are often a reflection of long-standing traditions, customs, and beliefs. The physical traces of these practices survive as tombs, cemeteries, individual burials, and other ritual markers and tell us much about past behavior, social structures, and concepts of the afterlife.  Same as ANTH 3119.  *Please note:  Our CLAS offerings are in a larger setting for the main course (CLAS 3119-880), and the recitation is taught by the professor instead of a Teaching Assistant (CLAS 3119-881).  The recitations are limited to 17 students in the traditional discussion-based Honors class style.

 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Back to course list

EBIO 1220: General Biology 2 (sections 880 & 881)
Robert Buchwald
Are humans currently evolving? Should you be concerned about eating genetically modified plants? What, exactly, is a cephalopod? We will answer all these questions and more in EBIO 1220 – a concentrated introduction to evolution, the diversity of life, and ecology & conservation biology. As an honors class, we will also incorporate several outside readings, critical thinking exercises and presentations, such as “Biology in the News,” “Nutrition Myths, Truths & Quackery,” and “Natural Selection Misconceptions.” This course is intended for EBIO (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) majors, other science majors (such as Psychology, Kinesiology, Biochemistry, etc.), as well as other majors for which biology is a requirement. EBIO 1240 (laboratory) is a co-requirement for potential EBIO majors and as specified by your particular major (please see your departmental advisor if you have questions). Students who simply need to satisfy the Natural Sciences core requirement should consider taking EBIO 1030, 1040, & 1050, “Biology—a Human Approach,” which are lecture/lab courses for non-Biology majors. If you have questions about this, please see me or your departmental advisor. Although it is not a pre-requisite, this course assumes that you have taken EBIO 1210 or its equivalent, since lectures in EBIO 1220 often rely on knowledge gained from EBIO 1210. If you have not taken EBIO 1210 or the equivalent or are concerned about your background, please see me.

 English
Back to course list

ENGL 3246-880: Topics in Popular Culture:  Franchise Cultures
Ben Robertson
Twenty-first-century audiences have witnessed the birth and rebirth of countless tentpole properties and multimedia franchises. Old favorites such as James Bond, Star Wars, and Star Trek have continued to be popular even as they reboot themselves and challenge their own histories. New franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Twilight saga, and Assassin’s Creed demonstrate again and again how Hollywood, major publishers, and video game developers have come to focus on big budget, sprawling narratives and worlds to the exclusion, and detriment, of smaller, more personal, and original productions. However, even as cultural production became increasingly focused on spectacle and seriality, blogs and social media offered fans and amateur critics opportunity and means to voice their opinions—often directly to the producers themselves—to a degree never possible during the twentieth century.

This class will study several franchises in the context of several related disciplines, including literary studies, cinema studies, and media studies and use these materials to ask several questions, including:

•    What are the dimensions or contours of franchise as an aesthetic form?
•    What does this form help us understand about twenty-first-century cultural production?
•    How does franchise challenge conventional/historical scholarly assumptions about form, textuality, method, and so on?
•    What new scholarly assumptions and methods must we develop to adequately address franchise?

Our primary texts will mainly be films and series on various streaming services with perhaps one graphic novel (Watchmen) thrown in. Secondary sources will come from contemporary media studies, game studies, comic studies, and related fields. Course evaluation will include formal writing assignments, presentations, and a project, the nature of which we will determine as a class.  Click here to see the flyer for ENGL 3246.  For more information or for questions about the class, please contact me at benjamin.j.robertson@colrado.edu.

 Geography
Back to course list

GEOG 3742-880: Place, Power, and Contemporary Culture
Abby Hickcox
This course takes a geographic approach to place, power, and culture, examining different ways to understand each and how the three relate to each other to shape our society and ourselves.  By the end of course, you will be able to discuss the complexity of culture as a “way of life” and as a lens through which to understand the way we live in our world.  You will see the role of culture in creating a “sense of place,” even while dynamics of globalization move through places, and people move from place to place.  You will develop the tools to analyze spatial inclusion and exclusion as cultural operations of power.  The first part of the course introduces key terms such as culture, place, and globalization.  Part 2 focuses on material culture, the study of how objects shape our lives.  Part 3 introduces space, landscape, and power and explores their relationship with one another.  The final part of the course is devoted to students developing their own case study analyses of culture, place, and power.

HONR 3220‐880: Advanced Honors Writing Workshop: Honors Thesis/Research Writing
Andrea Feldman
Section 880 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. 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 and Sciences Core Curriculum: Written Communication.  Restricted to students with 57-180 credits (Juniors or Seniors).  Must be taken for credit. No P/F.

HONR 3220‐881: Advanced Honors Writing Workshop: Honors Journal
Abby Hickcox
Section 881 provides practical learning and development of writing skills through the creation of this academic year's Honors Journal publication. Students will read and select the best undergraduate scholarly and creative work for publication from academic fields including: art, creative non-fiction, fiction, gender & ethnic studies, humanities, open media, natural science, poetry, and social science. The course includes extensive practice in reading for, summarizing, and evaluating arguments and in structuring cogent arguments for diverse audiences. Development of basic skills in graphic layout using Adobe InDesign will be included in the course. Students will reflect on effective writing in different disciplines. Restricted to students with 57-180 credits OR consent of instructor.  See the flyer for HONR 3220-881-Honors Journal class here.

HONR 3900‐880: Honors Internship Course
Ali Hatch
Engage in hands-on work in the community and gain practical knowledge and real-world experience. The course is designed to help students combine professional experiences with an academic component that involves critical thinking and interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving. Benefits of the course include acquiring professional skills and knowledge, building a network of connections, developing insights on possible career options, and applying classroom material to real-world experiences.  Have questions about the class?  Contact Dr. Hatch here.

 Mathematics
Back to course list

MATH 2510-880:  Introduction to Statistics
Braden Balentine
This is an introductory course in statistics. We will cover some of the fundamental ideas and tools used in statistics. Topics that we will cover include elementary statistical measures, statistical distributions, statistical inference, hypothesis testing and linear regression. We will also go over some of the basics of probability as they are necessary for our understanding of statistics.

 Philosophy
Back to course list

PHIL 1400-880:  Philosophy and the Sciences
Carol Cleland
The subject of this course is science. Its purpose is to introduce students to philosophical thought about the nature of science. We begin with questions such as the following: What is the scientific method? How does it differ from other methods for obtaining knowledge? What does the objectivity (unbiased observation?) and rationality (logic?) of science consist of? In what sense can science be said to make progress? Is historical science (paleontology, etc.) inferior to experimental science? Do theoretical entities such as electrons and DNA really exist or are they merely useful fictions for organizing observations into powerful theoretical systems for purposes of prediction and explanation? To bring these difficult philosophical issues to life, we will discuss a number of exciting scientific discoveries, puzzles, and debates including the nature of space and time in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the problem of making good sense of quantum mechanics within the framework of classical physics, the empirical status of string theory (which supposedly provides the long awaited “unified field theory” in physics), the debate over the cause of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (66 million years ago) and end-Permian mass extinction (250 million years ago), and contemporary thought about the origin and evolution of life on Earth. We will end with a critical discussion of the history and current status of scientific thinking about climate change (aka global warming).  Click here to see the flyer for PHIL 1400

PHIL 3200-880:  Social and Political Philosophy
Michael Huemer
This course will address fundamental issues about how society works and how it ought to work. There will be five units, addressing the following sorts of questions:

Unit 1: Political Psychology & Democracy: How do we form political beliefs, and how should we do so? How do voters make decisions, and how should they? How do democracies really make policies?
Unit 2: Property: Why should we have property? How should it be distributed? Is capitalism unjust?
Unit 3: Political Authority: What gives the state the right to tell everyone else what to do, and why should we obey them?
Unit 4: Anarchy: Could there be an orderly society without government? What is the best form of anarchism?
Unit 5: Student-Suggested Topics: I will take suggestions from students, select some popular topics, then find readings on them for this unit.

PSCI 2004:  Survey of Western Political Thought
Jeffrey Chadwick
Studies main political philosophies and political issues of Western culture, from antiquity to 20th century.

PSCI 2116:  Introduction to Environmental Policy and Policy Analysis
Jeffrey Chadwick
Teaches a systematic general framework for the analysis of environmental policy issues. Analyzes the interaction of environmental sciences, ethics, and policy across a range of environmental policy problems. Stresses critical thinking and practical applications.

PSCI 4341-880:  Media and Politics in the U.S.
Janet Donavan
We will examine the role of media in the U.S. political process from a behavioral and institutional perspective. We will start the course with an overview of the current state of research on the roles of media in politics. Then, we will turn to how technological developments in the 21st century have changed the media system and the political process. Finally, we will examine how media can or should be used to foster political engagement in a democratic system, such as the U.S. In the course, we will use coverage of the campaign for the upcoming 2024 election as a case study for understanding the ideas we are learning in the course.  Click here to see the PSCI 4341 flyer.

PSYC 1001:  General Psychology
Jennifer Schwartz
How are we able to perceive the world around us? Why do we dream? How does alcohol impact the brain? What makes each individual’s personality unique? Do young children think differently than adults? How do we learn? Are people with psychological disorders dangerous? How do psychologists help people lead richer more fulfilling lives?   This course is designed to address these and other questions by giving you an introduction to the content and methodology of the field of psychology.  It will give you an overview of some of the major sub-disciplines within psychology. It will also expose you to both seminal and cutting-edge research studies within these domains, as well as encourage critical interpretation of research findings. To guide and integrate our exploration, we will focus on several theoretical frameworks and ongoing debates that cut across specific sub-fields and define the study of psychology as a whole. You will be connecting these ideas to your own life by applying class content to the reading, listening, watching, interacting, and experiencing you do every day.  The goals of this course are to stimulate you to further explore the field of psychology and to provide a foundation of knowledge and critical thinking skills that will benefit your academic, career, and personal paths, whatever they may be.

PSYC 3303-880:  Abnormal Psychology
Jennifer Schwartz
This course provides an introduction to the field of abnormal psychology:  the scientific study of abnormal behavior.  The class will provide a survey of mental disorders, including clinical presentation, major etiological theories (biological, psychological, and psychosocial approaches), and the most widely used and empirically supported approaches to treatment.  We will also discuss relevant research. You will be encouraged to think about not only what we know about abnormal behavior, but also what we don’t know.  We will tackle some of the major controversial issues and unresolved questions that psychologists face as they seek to better understand, prevent, and treat mental disorders.  While the course emphasizes a critical thinking and scientific approach to the understanding of abnormal behavior, it also aims to provide students with a rich understanding of the human experience of psychopathology, enabling all of us to be more empathic toward, and inclusive of, those who struggle with mental illness and their friends and loved ones. Thus, an additional theme of the course is to explore the stigma surrounding mental illness, and how it can be exacerbated and/or eliminated. To these ends, the class will culminate with presentations in which students analyze a portrayal of mental illness found in popular culture (recent selections include Kanye West, the main character, Rebecca, in the television show, “Crazy Ex Girl Friend,” and “The Bachelor” franchise).  Requires a prerequisite course of PSYC 1001 (minimum grade of C-)

  Sociology
Back to course list

SOCY 2031-880:  Social Problems
Ali Hatch
This course explores social problems in contemporary American society. We will examine how these problems arise and consider possible solutions. Since this is a survey course, we will consider a wide variety of different social problems from a sociological perspective, including timely topics such as racial and economic inequality, opioid addiction, and the impacts of living during a pandemic.  From the Course Catalog: Examines various social problems in the U.S. through a traditional sociological framework focused on race, class, and gender. Considers such problems as economic, racial, and gender inequality as manifestations of broader structural dynamics rooted in unequal relations of power. Addresses topics such as mass incarceration, poverty, segregation, drug use, immigration, and war and terrorism.

SOCY 3314-880: Violence Against Women and Girls
Ali Hatch
This course is an overview of gender-based violence. We will analyze the political and cultural structures that perpetuate gendered violence, and explore how gendered violence intersects with race, class, and sexuality. This course focuses on violence against women and girls, and the relationship between gender inequality and violence. Specifically, utilizing a feminist sociological lens, this course will cover various manifestations of gender violence, including (but not limited to): hate crimes motivated by trans and homophobia, rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, trafficking, pornography, and femicide.