HONR 112 Issues in Social Sciences: Media and the War on Terror

HONR 112 Issues in Social Sciences: The Search for Utopia

HONR 112 Issues in Social Sciences: Gardens and Edens

HONR 212 Issues in Natural Sciences: Redesigning Nature

HONR 212 Issues in Natural Sciences: Hot Topics in Earth Science

HONR 311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Grotesques in Literature

HONR 311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Poetry and Politics

HONR 311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Performance, Body and Mind

HONR 311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Cultural Impact of WWI

HONR 312 Honors Research/Creative Project

HONR 490 Honors Thesis Preparation

HONR 495 Honors Thesis

HONR 496 Honors Thesis Consult

HONR 112-041 Issues in Social Sciences: Media and the War on Terror

MW 3:00-4:15 PM Haven Simmons

Media Coverage of terrorism arguably influences government policy and national security. Media portrayals and dissemination of information are significant to public opinion about terrorism. The term "War on Terror" was applied frequently by the Bush administration in concert with the media. It coincided with the explosion of traditional media, cyberspace, cable television pundits and global communication, often referred to as the communications revolution. This course studies the relationship of media, government and terrorist organizations in the context of agenda-setting, a mass communication model for studying media influence. Agenda-setting reveals symbiotic and adversarial aspects of the media-government relationship. In addition to international terrorist organizations, this course examines domestic militias, individual terrorists, and purported terror groups, such as the American Indian Movement and the anti-war protesters of the 1960s.

Satisfies a Gen Ed Group IIIB Social Science Requirement

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HONR 112-042 Issues in Social Sciences: A More Perfect Union: Humanity’s Search for Utopia

TR 12:30-1:45PM Michael Lewis

At the heart of the social sciences is the desire to create the perfect human community through a science of society. For every partial success at moving the world towards Utopia, there seems to be a corollary failure--a French Guillotine for every American Ballot Box--and sciences of society of have created not just utopias, but dystopias as well. Some would argue that Utopia is a na�ve dream; many believe that the search for Utopia is dangerous. Nonetheless, idealists endure, and attempts at Utopia persist. In this class we will consider the enduring dream of Utopia, from the Enlightenment (and the birth of the social sciences) to the present, and our readings will range widely, from Margaret Mead to Karl Marx, from the 18^th century to the present. We will discuss contemporary world debates particularly including current attempts at creating the good society--are global environmental crises that have accrued from industrialization, politics of the nation-state, and global consumerism (all products of earlier attempts at Utopia) pushing us to reconsider what a Utopia should or might be? Can Utopia be local, or must it be global, in an interconnected world of mass media and mass markets? Are all attempts at Utopia ultimately going to restrict individual freedom in favor of community stability--what would Thoreau think of a Utopia, for instance? By the class' end, you will be asked to create your own vision of Utopia--as Eric Clapton sings, “You can change the world.” This class will help you to decide--change it to what?

Satisfies a Gen Ed Group IIIB Social Science Requirement

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HONR112-043 Issues in Social Sciences:
Alternative Edens: Our Gardens, Ourselves

MWF 11:00-11:50AM Charlotte England

In Milton's Paradise Lost Adam and Eve are both the earth's first people and its first gardeners; paradise, it is implied, needs to be kept up by the men and women created in God's image, and gardening is the work of those in a state of bliss! Throughout history and across civilizations the garden has been both a practical and a philosophical necessity; a place to grow what we need and to express ideas about theology, art, politics, nature and technology. This class will visit gardens actual and archetypal to understand the people and cultural forces behind them. Expect a truly interdisciplinary experience as we explore the history of garden design, changes in philosophical conceptions of paradise and wilderness, the politics of power gardening, the origins of plant sciences and the birth of the modern environmental movement. Meet zen masters, conquerors and kings, poets, philosophers, scientists, explorers, eccentrics, activists, entrepreneurs and opportunists - all of them gardeners. In addition to more standard assignments you will sometimes need to put on your walking shoes, take up a trowel, make field observations, and undertake hands-on investigation of created environments. This class will change the way you walk through the world, expand your aesthetic, philosophical and historical horizons, and enable you to role play Adam and Eve in the SUCIE garden on campus; join us for the work of paradise!

Satisfies a Gen Ed Group IIIB Social Science Requirement

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HONR 212.041 Issues in Natural Sciences:
Redesigning Nature from the Gene to Genomics

MWF 10:00-10:50AM Richard England

How can we use scientific knowledge to improve on living nature? While to some the mere question seems heretical, others have offered diverse answers. We are already eating genetically modified crops; cloned meat has been approved by the FDA for human consumption; recent studies claim that gene therapy allows us to improve the lives of infants born with autoimmune disorders. Speculations about a post-human future abound: are we playing God? interfering with evolution? or simply using science to understand and redesign our experience of the natural world? This class will review the history of genetics and eugenics, introduce the science behind current controversies, and investigate how we should approach scientific discoveries which raise medical, ecological, ethical, and economic questions.

Satisfies a Gen Ed Group IVB Natural Science Requirement

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HONR 212.142 Issues in Natural Sciences:
“Hot Topics” in Earth Science

M 6:00-9:00 PM Brent Zaprowski

This course is designed for honors students who want to learn how to critically evaluate contemporary Earth Science topics of public interest as reported in the media. Students will first explore the philosophy that guides all scientists and look at the relationships between scientists, the media and the public. What is “real” science? What is pseudoscience? What is propaganda? Students will then learn about the fundamental physical processes behind controversial Earth Science issues such as global warming, recycling, and evolution. Finally, students will explore and discuss the differing “viewpoints” on these topics as reported in the media, and learn about how policy makers use science to make policy decisions that affect their everyday lives. How should we deal with global warming? Should recycling be mandatory? The answers may not be as simple as you think! The class will use a combination of videos, magazine and newspaper articles, blogs and book excerpts to delve into these "hot topics" in Earth Science.

Satisfies a Gen Ed Group IVB Natural Science Requirement

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HONR 311.041 Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Grotesques in Literature

MW 4:30-5:45PM Gary Harrington

In this course we will examine characters who are displaced, addled, alienated, and flat-out bizarre. This gallery of rogues, outlaws, and eccentrics includes Miss Lonelyhearts, a journalist who finds himself totally inadequate to responding in his column to the very serious problems of his clientele; the self-designated Misfit, who tries to kill his way to Christ; Alex, a thug from a dystopian future who finds himself in danger of becoming a clockwork orange; Lucio, a pimp who has a more refined moral sense than do the members of religious orders with whom he interacts; Christy Mahon, who tries to murder his father twice and offers to do so a third time, a proposal which delights his father no end; and the anonymous narrator of The Third Policeman, who inhabits an alternative universe which has everything and nothing to do with sausage-shaped galaxies, pancakes, bicycles, and an academic lunatic. The methods of delivery in these texts are often as outlandish as the characters they depict: Grendel delivers not a first-person but a first-monster narrative; Alex and his “droogs” speak a hybrid “nadsat” language; Nagg and Nell spend the entire play in ashbins. Certainly these figures and their circumstances are grotesque. However, students will discover that these unfortunate creatures are not only appalling but appealing, surprising as well as sordid, and both awful and amusing. Some of the course texts are: Endgame, A Clockwork Orange, The Wild Palms, Measure for Measure, Miss Lonelyhearts, and selected stories by Flannery O’Connor.

Course is cross-listed with ENGL 300-002

Satisfies a Gen Ed IB Literature Requirement

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HONR 311.042 Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Poetry and Politics

TR 11:00AM-12:15PM Ivan Young

W. H. Auden's claim that "poetry makes nothing happen" has been debated since he first wrote "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" in 1939. Could Auden, a poet active in the socialist cause in Franco's Spain, mean that Yeats, whom he admired and who had championed Irish independence, was impotent to make anything happen with his words? Or, taken in context, was Auden's struggle in reconciling the social and artistic voices of poetry? In this course, we will ask what, if anything, poetry has done in the political realm and where it has done it. We will also examine what "political" means in the context of poetry and what real life impacts its messages have. We will begin with Dante Alighieri's Inferno, a text that clearly invokes the politics of the 13th-century Florence which Dante loved and from which he had been exiled, partly for his political stand. We will also explore other "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" countercultures, such as those of the free-loving Shelley, Charles Baudelaire's Decadence, and Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen's anti-war poetry as part of our journey forward to present day political causes in poetry. We will consider contemporary voices particularly, such as exiled Chilean dissident Pablo Neruda and Nigeria's Chris Abani, who was imprisoned on more than one occasion for his writing and was ultimately sentenced to death. Can we reconcile the Aesthetes call of "art for art's sake" with Percy Bysshe Shelley's claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world"?

Course is cross-listed with ENGL 300-004.

Satisfies a Gen Ed IB Literature Requirement

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HONR 311.043 Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Performance, Body and Mind

TR 2:00-3:15PM Tim Stock

In this course we will explore the relationship between the mind and body through philosophical writings and performance theory. While the integration of body and mind has been a long-standing theme of Asian philosophical traditions, the European tradition has placed greater emphasis on the their distinctness, often for the sake of attributing a primacy of mind over body. Our challenge will be to marshal philosophical resources to address this tendency towards rationalism by unraveling the complexities of our psychological and kinesthetic relationships to movement, speech, intention, emotion and communication. Within current philosophical theory and empirical research the relationship between body and mind is a live, and open, question. However, such issues are typically addressed within the contexts of psychology and the physical sciences of the brain. Against this trend, we will seek to appreciate the unique resources that performance lends to this venerable philosophical debate. Thus our overall goal will be to explore a fundamental philosophical question in both a theoretical context and in an applied creative context. Activities will include philosophical discussion, observing theatrical performances and participating in performance exercises.

Course is crosslisted with PHIL310-001 and THEA490-001.

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HONR 311.944 Interdisciplinary Seminar:
The Cultural Impact of WWI

TR 9:30-10:45AM Lucy Morrison and Stephen Gehnrich

The objective of this class is to try and understand why, and how, the First World War created a cultural break between the innocent and well-deserved optimism of the 19^th century, and the troubled disillusionment of the 20^th century. We will explore this apparent discontinuity by examining how people perceived the quality of their lives and the condition of the world in the years just prior to the War, through the War itself, and into the post-War period. These perceptions are reflected in the art, literature, and poetry of the times, and we will study these (along with video documentation) to try and “feel” what these people must have felt as their old world and ways of life were destroyed, and were replaced by what we now call “modernity.” We will also look at how the First World War is remembered today; how it has been memorialized, and to a large extent mythologized, and its continuing impact on our world. The course will include a trip to France during spring break. (The spring break portion of the course carries an extra charge, and will be offered only if there is sufficient enrollment.) During the trip, we will visit many of the battlefields of the war. Although the battlefields today are often only empty fields, the monuments, cemeteries, and memorials that commemorate the battles give a sense of the enormous struggle and loss that took place on those fields less than 100 years ago.

Course is cross-listed with HIST 399-901.

Satisfies a Gen Ed IIB History Requirement

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HONR312.041 HONORS RESEARCH/CREATIVE PROJECT

Day and Time TBA Lucy Morrison

Honors students complete a research or creative project in a 300-400 level course of their choosing (this does not have to be an honors course) and will present their research or creative project at a public symposium or conference.
One credit, pass/fail.

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HONR490.041 HONORS THESIS PREPARATION

Day and Time TBA Richard England

In Honr 490, before students begin work on the thesis, students select a thesis committee comprised of a thesis director (mentor) and two readers. The mentor and one reader are chosen from the student’s major department. The other reader is selected from faculty in one’s school. Additionally, students do preliminary research on their topic and write a two-page prospectus (which must be approved by their committee) describing what they hope to accomplish in their thesis. In addition to meeting as necessary with their mentor, students will meet together regularly with the Honors Program Associate Director to discuss progress and problems.
One credit, pass/fail.

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HONR495.041 HONORS THESIS

Day and Time TBA Richard England

The Honors thesis is a three or four credit, focused, in-depth project in one’s major field. What distinguishes an Honors thesis from a research paper in a regular classroom is the willingness of the student to go beyond the classroom and to assume the responsibilities associated with commitment to scholarship.

Prerequisites: Completion of HONR 490
Corequisite: HONR 496.041

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HONR496.041 HONORS THESIS CONSULT

Dr. Richard England

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OUTCOMES PORTFOLIO

Required of all students as of Fall 2007 (under the new curriculum), you need to locate your electronic portfolio on the K drive and start filling it with papers from your Honors classes. In it, you can also reflect upon your growth as a campus citizen in three of the following areas (Athletics, Community Service and Outreach, Culture and Diversity, International Study, Language Proficiency, and Leadership). Get busy and get doing!

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Click here for the Honors Course Brochure for Fall 2009

Click here for the Honors Course Brochure for Spring 2009

Fall 2008 Courses