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New Honors Students! Click Here to Choose Fall
2009 Honors Courses
Check out the link at
the bottom of the page to find the courses for Spring 2009 and
Fall 2008
Honors Courses,
Fall 2009
HONR
111 Critical Thinking and Writing
HONR
211 Issues in Humanities:
Fantasy Writing for Children, 1700-2000
HONR
211 Issues in Humanities:
Violence in the Media- Causes and Consequences
HONR
311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: "Utopia meets Reality": Russian
Revolutions through Literature
HONR
311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Silicon Valley: Nerdvana from a Garage
HONR
311 Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Music and Landscape
HONR 312 Honors
Research/Creative Project
HONR 490 Honors Thesis
Preparation
HONR 495
Honors Thesis
HONR
496 Honors Thesis Consult
SPRING 2010 - HONORS STUDY ABROAD OPPORTUNITY - The
Cultural Impact of the First World War
HONR 111 Critical Thinking and Writing:
MWF 11:00-11:50
Richard England
TR 8:00-9:15
Charlotte England
TR 2:00-3:15
Caroline Porter-Long
Arguments bind us, divide us, batter us. Vying
for approval on paper, in quiet conversation, on millions of
televisions, or the battlegrounds of the web, arguments define
the boundaries of common sense, set personal and global agendas,
and control minds. Masters of persuasion make laws, reshape
traditions, and wage wars. To understand and create arguments we
must analyze their structure, language, and logic. In this class
you will learn to think critically about any kind of claim
through debate, research, and writing. This is not so much a
composition class as an arena for wrestling with ideas and
words. By December you will be a keener critic and better author
of provocative texts and persuasive speeches. Practice is the
only true teacher. This seminar class will require you to take
an active role in your own learning. Debate and research are
two foci of this class. In formal and informal debate on current
controversies you should defend your own beliefs with a calm
temper and a polite tongue. Respect the opinions of those with
whom you disagree.
One required honors course for entering honors
students that grants elective credit or general education credit
for ENGL 103 (cannot be substituted for with AP or IB English
credit: students with such credit may elect to take HONR211).
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HONR211.042 Issues in Humanities:
A Brief History of Fantasy Writing for Children
1700-2000
TR 11:00-12:15
Charlotte England
In the
fifteenth century William Caxton raised his young son on the
fables of Aesop; three hundred years later, Jean Jacques
Rousseau resolutely banished them from his fictional son’s
bookshelf! We will enter the debate about the philosophical
perils and possibilities of unrealistic fiction as it heats up
in the eighteenth century and go on to read a variety of later
fantasy and fairy tale texts with an eye to understanding how
they reflect important aspects of the cultures that produced
them. Along the way expect to examine late Victorian ideas about
cosmology, evolution and human society with Kingsley’s
Waterbabies,
explore Edwardian Social concerns in the hilarious work of Edith
Nesbit and Kenneth Grahame and revisit Oz and Wonderland (among
other magical realms) where grown-up concerns and cultural
ideals of childhood meet. Expect to do lots of writing, some
research into the roots of popular fairy tales and a certain
amount of philosophizing about the place of the fantastic in the
lives of real world children.
Satisfies a Humanities General Education
Requirement
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HONR211.041 Issues in Humanities:
Media Violence: Causes and Consequences
TR 12:30-1:45 Cynthia Cooper
Media violence is one of the most debated
social and constitutional principles in American society today.
While some critics label media violence as a corrupting force in
American culture, especially among children, others stand firm
behind the First Amendment rights of media producers. From this
viewpoint media are free from censorship and follow a
marketplace economy model--producing whatever the consumer
market will bear. But what if violent media products are also
potentially harmful? Should it be treated like other
potentially dangerous, yet legal, consumer products such as
liquor and cigarettes and have government restrictions been
enacted to mitigate the potential harms?
It is also essential to explore the economic benefits of violent
media products and to consider the role of violence as an
important dramatic tool. How do media producers determine the
“appropriate” amount of violence for a given storyline? Should
audience preference be a factor? These production issues will
be explored through our viewing of film and television programs.
This course explores the ongoing debate surrounding the
perceived effects of media content on human thought and
behavior. Course readings include research on various media
(video games, movies, television, music lyrics) and effects
theories (limited, mediated, and cathartic) with an emphasis on
applying these to specific real-life cases. The course also
studies recent attempts to mitigate media effects through
content regulation including Internet filtering devices and
ratings of movies, television, music and videogames. Students
will explore these issues through papers, projects and case
studies.
Satisfies a Humanities General Education
Requirement
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HONR 311.041/POSC 399
Interdisciplinary Seminar:
“Utopia Meets Reality”: Russian Revolutions
Through Literature
TR 9:30-10:45
Greg Cashman
1917 is one of those bookmarks in history, a
time of momentous upheaval that marked a critical turning point.
In Russia the February Revolution overthrew the tsarist
government of Nicholas II; a second revolution, in October,
placed Lenin’s Bolshevik Party in power and began the world’s
first national experiment with socialism. “Stalin’s Revolution”
followed Lenin’s, creating the monstrous “Great Terror” of the
1930s. And at the end of the century, Gorbachev unwittingly set
off another revolution, whose end has not yet been determined.
We can learn much about the Soviet Union from Russian writers
who have struggled to tell the story of the great
transformations wrought by Lenin and Stalin (and Gorbachev).
This course will attempt to explore the philosophical aspects of
Marxist socialism, the attempt to “build socialism” in Russia,
the “messiness” and brutality of revolution and its social,
cultural, economic and political results by examining some of
the great works of Russian fiction, poetry, biography and film.
Revolutions are giant leaps into the unknown, and they often
have unintended consequences. The revolutionary “experiment” has
life-changing effects– socially, culturally, psychologically,
politically, economically—on those real people who are the
subjects of this great experiment.
The reading list for this class will include Boris Pasternak’s
Doctor Zhivago
(and we’ll be watching the film), Mikhail Bulgakov’s
The Master and Margarita
and
Heart of a Dog,
Yevgeny Zamiatin’s novella
We,
Eugenia Ginzberg’s
Journey into the Whirlwind,
Anna Akhmatova’s
Requiem,
and Vladimir Voinovich’s
The Fur Hat.
Familiarity with Russian history or politics is not necessary.
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HONR
311.042
Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Silicon Valley: Nerdvana from a Garage
MW 9-10:40 Stephen Adams
Do you have a profile on Facebook? Do you find your way in
cyberspace via Google’s search engine or on terra firma using
Google Maps? Do you buy and sell using eBay? Listen to tunes
downloaded from Apple? Print out that term paper using
Hewlett-Packard? Then you are a beneficiary of just some of the
manifold innovations from Silicon Valley, a two-county region
south of San Francisco with a long tradition of reinventing
itself. If it were a separate economy, the Valley would rank
twelfth in the world. In this class, we will examine the
significance of this high-tech region and determine how a
collection of orchards was transformed into what has been called
“the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the
planet.” We will explore the garage-based culture of the Valley,
and how geekdom became cool in the playground of Steve Jobs,
Bill Gates, and the Google guys. We will discuss whether Silicon
Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon and trace attempts
around the world to replicate this engine of innovation in
places with names like Silicon Forest, Silicon Island, Silicon
Bog, and Silicon Wadi. Be part of the Valley Crowd!
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HONR311.044 Interdisciplinary Seminar:
Music and Landscape
MWF 11:00-11:50
Derek Bowden
What can music tell us about places? Or how does landscape speak
to artists who make music? This course is an introduction to the
study of landscape interpretations through music analysis.
Students in this course will not act as music performers or
theorists, but as perceptive listeners. Listening to
compositions written as expressions of actual or imagined places
reveals ‘soundscapes’ otherwise left out of such works of art as
landscape painting, photography and literature. The study of
musical ‘soundscapes’ offers an aural dimension to the study of
past, present or imagined places. The course will begin with a
brief overview of landscape studies and methods used by
researchers and scholars in a variety of disciplines. Following
the introduction, students will spend the remainder of the
semester acting as musicologists, interpreting landscapes
through the study of selected musical compositions from a
variety of historical periods and geographic places.
Furthermore, students will gain an in depth understanding of the
importance of music in the expression of place and identity. No
previous musical or geographical knowledge is required.
Satisfies
General Education IIIA
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HONR312.041
HONORS RESEARCH/CREATIVE PROJECT
M 2-2:50 Richard
England
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
W 2-2:50
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
Time TBA 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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LOOKING AHEAD.....
SPRING
2010
SPRING BREAK ABROAD
HONR311 The Cultural Impact of the First World War
Day and Time TBA
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 19th
century, and the troubled disillusionment of the 20th
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 and Belgium during
spring break to 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.
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Click here for
the HONORS Courses Brochure for Spring 2009
Fall 2008
Courses
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