Honors

Check out the link at the bottom of the page to find the courses for Fall 2007

Honors Courses, Spring 2008

HONR112 HONORS CORE II Issues in Social Sciences: Energy - Is Our Time Running Out?

HONR112 HONORS CORE II Issues in Social Sciences: Paradise Restored: A History of Ornamental Gardens in Europe and America

HONR 112 HONORS CORE II Issues in Social Sciences: History, Film and American Memory

HONR 112 HONORS CORE II Issues in Social Sciences: The Sociology of Animals and Society

HONR 212 HONORS CORE IV Issues in Natural Sciences: Conservation: From a Global to a Local Perspective

HONR 212 HONORS CORE IV Issues in Natural Sciences: People and the Environment in the Mid-Atlantic

HONR 212 HONORS CORE IV Issues in Natural Sciences: Darwinism, Then and Now

HONR311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Latin American Literature: Lost in Translation?

HONR311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: In a Violent World: Conflict and Closure in the 20th Century American Novel (Crosslisted with ENGL 300)

HONR 311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: London and the Lakes (Crosslisted with ENGL 399)

HONR 311 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Politics and Film (Crosslisted with POSC 399)

HONR 312 Honors Research/Creative Project

HONR 490 Honors Thesis Preparation

HONR 495 Senior Honors Thesis

Honors Section of a Traditional Course: MATH 190 Liberal Arts Mathematics: The Mathematical Landscape, Quantitative Reasoning and So Much More

Honors Section of a Traditional Course: HIST 102 World Civilizations

Outcomes Portfolio

 

HONORS CORE II
 

Issues in Social Sciences

Energy - Is Our Time Running Out?   

  MWF 2:00-2:50 with Dr. Piet de Witt

HONR 112.041

         The United States’ preeminence as an economic and military superpower is based in large part on its access to and use of energy.  We are, however, dependent upon foreign sources for two critical forms of energy: crude oil and natural gas.  The oil crises of the 1970s rudely reminded us of the consequences of our dependence on foreign sources of energy; however, Americans seem to have forgotten the lessons of those crises even as our dependence grows.  These overseas energy resources are produced in regions of the world susceptible to political unrest and even take over by movements that do not share our national interests.  Additionally, our reliance on fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) as primary energy sources has prompted considerable concern about the effects of their use on the earth’s climate.

In this course we will survey the past and current energy situations of the world and the United States.  We will discuss our production and consumption of fossil fuels as well as analyzing our current and future use of nuclear energy.  Finally, we will evaluate the promise and limits of alternative energies, such as solar, wind, and biomass.  We will study the role of energy conservation in reducing our energy use.  The goals of this course include improving your knowledge about our available energy alternatives and liberating you from the tyranny of past arguments and prejudices.  America’s time to ignore this issue may be running out, and your generation may have the responsibility of making the most important decisions in history about our energy future.  

Satisfies a Group II-B requirement

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HONORS CORE II
 

Issues in Social Sciences:  

Paradise Restored: A History of Ornamental Gardens in Europe and America

     MW 3:00 - 4:15 pm with Dr. Charlotte England

HONR 112.042

         It could be argued that ornamental gardening has always been about humanity’s reach exceeding its grasp. This class will look at the different ways that gardeners, designers, and the monied classes who have been so useful to them have conspired to break through the limits of the ordinary and create landscapes where fantasy, allegory, heroic architecture, philosophies of nature, displays of power, and various kinds of wilderness could console any postlapsarian depression caused by exile from Eden. Come and examine power gardening, the leisured eccentricities of the landowning classes, and the nineteenth-century development of a gardening industry aimed at making the rest of us Caesars on our own half-acres. We will consider gardens as cultural artifacts that reflect the societies that created them and mark our journey with milestones of period documents ranging from Pliny’s Natural History through the seventeenth-century travels of John Evelyn and Jane Loudon’s advice to suburban lady gardeners of the Victorian period. Join me to debate the merits of zebras and professional hermits as garden ornaments, to unpack the environmental puns of Renaissance clergymen, and to argue about what constitutes ‘wilderness’ as we navigate an amazing variety of attempts to recreate paradise on earth.  

Satisfies a Group II-B requirement.

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HONORS Core II

Issues in Social Sciences:  

History, Film and American Memory

M 7:00 - 9:45 and W 6:00 - 7:15 pm with Dr. James Burton

HONR 112.043

         A study of a cross-section of Americans carried out in 2000 found that over forty percent of those interviewed cited films and television programs among their primary means of connecting with history.  What does this mean for the study of history?  What does it mean when a medium with no obligation to present “the truth” becomes so central to the way we remember the past?  In this course we will examine several episodes from American history, the ways in which historians have presented them, and how they have been portrayed on the silver screen.  We will interrogate the limitations as well as the unique opportunities that narrative cinema offers for the study of history.  The course will focus on various strategies of representation (of both written and filmed history), political perspectives, and the industrial contexts of production, and we will also examine the cultural affect of cinematic history.  All of this should lead us to advance beyond a facile fact-fiction binary and to develop analytical skills to evaluate what/whose history we are actually seeing and why.  We will screen films on Monday and conduct discussion on  Wednesday.

Satisfies a Group II-B requirement

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HONORS CORE II

Issues in Social Sciences:

The Sociology of Animals and Society

  TR 9:30-10:45 am with Dr. Shawn McEntee

HONR 112.044

       We have shared our lives and our livelihoods with animals the whole of human history.  Animals have been food and provided shelter, assistance, and companionship in a wide variety of ways in different parts of the world.  Today, in the U.S. and in other post-industrial countries, animals are in our wills, we purchase burial plots for them, spend copious amounts of money on them, and ‘manufacture meat’.  This course is a sociological examination of the roles animals play in human lives and a critical review of the intertwining of human and animal lives from interpersonal relationships to global industry.  Sociologists explain these relationships with theories ranging from symbolic interactionism to global structural materialism and link human relationships with animals to other ‘isms’, for example racism, sexism, and classism.  Do you practice speciesism? 

Satisfies a Group II-B requirement.

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HONORS CORE IV

Issues in Natural Sciences

Conservation: From a Global to a Local Perspective

MWF 9:00 - 9:50 am with Drs. Kim and Richard Hunter

HONR 212.041

         The news is filled with evidence that the world is changing: global warming, tsunamis, deforestation, sea level rising, and the extinction of key organisms.  What can be done to protect the ecosystems we depend on for our existence?  How do we preserve threatened and endangered species?  What role do governments play in conservation?  How do they work beyond borders?   Can conservation be a business in which we invest?  This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to conservation, beginning with a global perspective focusing on the most threatened ecosystems.  We will examine the history of regional conservation efforts, the biodiversity of the area, and the role of governments in promoting or discouraging conservation.  Additionally, we will examine the conservation efforts surrounding the Chesapeake Bay Region. Come and participate actively in the future of conservation—and find out what you can do to make a difference in your own back yard and on the planet.

Satisfies a Group III-B requirement.

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HONORS CORE IV

Issues in Natural Sciences

People and the Environment in the Mid-Atlantic

MWF 10:00-10:50pm with Dr. Alex Aguilar

HONR 212.042

         The Mid-Atlantic is a region of transition between the subtropical southeastern U.S. and the temperate northeast.  As such, it is a place where organisms from the north mingle with those of the south—resulting in a high degree of natural diversity.  In addition, the region contains a variety of physical landscapes ranging from the pine barrens of southern New Jersey, to the wetlands of the Chesapeake Bay, to the mountain forests of the Appalachians.  The last important element of the Mid-Atlantic is, of course, its human inhabitants.  The region has been inhabited for thousands of years, and it is today heavily populated.  People have not only extensively modified this place, but they have also imbued it with meaning.  This course explores the relationship between people and the environment in the Mid-Atlantic region.  The class will cover its environmental history, including ways in which the environment has been perceived and managed since pre-Columbian times.  We will discuss how its various landscapes have come about and how they continue to evolve under natural and human influences.  We will learn about these landscapes by delving into the history, literature, culture, and physical geography of the area.  To obtain a first-hand appreciation of our subject, the course will include several field trips exploring the diversity of the region.  

Satisfies a Group III-B requirement.   

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HONORS CORE IV

Darwinism, Then and Now

  TR 12:30 - 1:45 pm with Dr. Richard England

HONR 212.043

         Since the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, scientists and intellectuals have argued about the radical implications of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.  At the dawn of the twenty-first century, debates still draw inspiration from Darwin’s work and echo the controversies that first sounded in Victorian lecture halls.  In this course we will explore the continuities and discontinuities of Darwinism by reading primary scientific texts from the nineteenth century and the present day.  In our readings, discussions, and debates we will explore the nature of scientific thought, the science behind evolutionary theory, and the philosophical issues that mark the boundaries between science and other fields of human endeavor.  Darwin’s work changed the course of science and history: this course will challenge the ways you think about science!

Satisfies a Group III-B requirement 

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HONORS INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR

Latin American Literature: Lost in Translation?

MWF 11:00-11:50 am with Dr. Louise Detwiller

HONR 311.041

       Far too often literary canons within academia focus on literary traditions from the U.S., U.K., and Europe.  Where, however, are our hemispheric neighbors from the South?  Latin American literature often is folded into “World literature” or “Ethnic literature” courses in Literature Departments.  The literatures of twenty Spanish-speaking countries surely deserve more of an intellectual spotlight than this!  Moreover, Latin American literature often is represented only by male-authored “Boom” works such as García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude.  In this course, we will use a diachronic approach to the study of Latin American literary history and will scrutinize literary history from Pre-Encounter times to the present.  Further, we will uncover some lesser-known authors as excellent representatives of these time periods.  Lastly, we will continue to ponder why Latin American literature, even in translation, often seems to be lost on the academic horizon of liberal learning.

NOTE:  Spanish majors are not eligible for this course.  Spanish minors should not take this course if they have taken or plan to take SPAN 336.

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HONORS INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR

In a Violent World: Conflict and Closure in the 20th Century American Novel

MWF 1:00 - 1:50 pm with Dr. Adam Wood

HONR 311.042/ENGL300.007

       This course will investigate the uses of violence in the American Novel of the 20^th Century, paying particular attention to the forms and narrative techniques utilized in representing violent conflict.  How does Truman Capote’s ‘nonfiction novel’ In Cold Blood depict its grisly episodes?  Can we understand Patrick Bateman’s crazed obsessions in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho?  Topics may include the relationship between actual violence and literary representation, the relationship of fictive violence to history, realistic versus imagistic representations of violence, and the role that literatures of violence play in understanding and, possibly, combating violence as a fundamental human fact.  Further, we will deal with perhaps the most difficult question of all: why are we so drawn to violence?                                                                                                                                                                                Got a weak stomach?  Then don’t take this course!  Much of the material that we will read is extremely disturbing, all the more so the further into the semester we get.  But we will work together to uncover the mystery of such literature and, perhaps, of ourselves, through undertaking this dark journey.

Prerequisite: C or better in ENGL 102.

Satisfies a Group I-A Literature requirement

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HONORS INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR

London and the Lakes

TR 11:00 am - 12:15 pm with Dr. Lucy Morrison

HONR 311.043/ENGL399.040

       In this course we will undertake a study of one of the central fissures of early-nineteenth century British literature: the city and the country.  The Romantic Period saw the emergence of the “Lake Poets” as a cohesive group and also of the “Cockney” School of poetry—that opposition of style, subject, and geographical location will be central to the course.  We will begin our reading in the city of London with William Blake before moving to the country with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  We will travel with Jane Austen from country to city life before examining how John Keats endeavors to find nature at London’s edge. We will end with Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, exploring how the city ‘corrupts’ a country boy and how the Victorian age sees literary progressions into social territories.

We will spend a traditional half-semester in formal classes at Salisbury University before traveling to the U.K. for spring break in order to examine and explore many of the environs depicted in the texts under consideration.  Students will be required to read and write while overseas; there will be limited free time.  A separate packet of assignments for the abroad portion of the class will be provided to all students before departure, along with mandatory orientation sessions and paperwork being required.  Upon our return, we will reconvene in traditional classes to reflect upon what we have learned and can conclude about nature and the urban environment as they impact a variety of early-nineteenth century texts.  We will also complete our reading and discover the differences of having already visited the scenes of the texts we’re then exploring.

NOTE: This course includes a required Study Abroad experience for an additional fee of $2,000, with a deposit of $250 required during registration.

Prerequisite: C or better in ENGL 102.

Satisfies a Group I-A Literature requirement

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HONORS INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR

Politics and Film

T 6:00 - 9:45 pm with Dr. Taehyun Nam

HONR 311.044/POSC 399.001

       In this course, you will be introduced to classic works of political science and related films.  The latter will be treated as one possible medium of understanding politics, and the range of subjects will provide a rich collection of political cases.  In class, you will watch a film and afterward we will discuss the topic of the week (and so the extended timeslot is inclusive of film screenings).  For example, the class will watch Hotel Rwanda (2004) to learn about the genocide that killed 800,000 Rwandan citizens in 1994.  Afterward, the class will discuss Anderson’s book, Imagined Community, in order to reflect on the origin of ethnic identity and ethnic conflicts of today.  Watching Lord of the Flies (1963) and reading Hobbes’ Leviathan will give us an opportunity to consider how a society is formed and why conflict arises therein.   This format requires your engagement more than usual since there is no lecture per se; we will enjoy screenings and subsequent discussion together. To be successful, individually and as a group, you must be an aggressive reader and discussant—and we will learn together.

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HONORS RESEARCH/CREATIVE PROJECT

Drs. Richard England and Lucy Morrison

Day and Time TBA

HONR 312.041, TBA

                 Honors students intending to graduate with either Bellavance Honors or Bellavance Honors with Distinction will complete a research or creative project in a 300 - 400 level course of their choosing (this does not have to be an honors course) in their junior year, and will present their research or creative project at one of the symposia available for such presentations.  This one-credit pass/fail course will enable the Honors Director to monitor the progress of this work.

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HONORS THESIS PREPARATION

Dr. Richard England

Day and Time TBA

HONR 490-041, TBA

                In Thesis Prep, taken the semester 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 once a week with the Bellavance Honors Program director to discuss progress and problems.  This one-hour course is taken for pass/fail credit.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Honors Core
Limit: 20 students

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SENIOR HONORS THESIS

Dr. Lucy Morrison

Day and Time TBA

HONR 495-041

              The Honors thesis is a three-credit, focused, in-depth project in one’s major field.  Undergraduate theses are usually 50 pages or longer, though a few, particularly in the sciences, may be briefer.  Others, particularly in the social sciences, may be much longer.  Length is not the primary determinant of successful completion, however.  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 the Honors Core and HONR 490
Limit: 20 students

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HONORS SECTION OF A TRADITIONAL COURSE

(Open to Honors Students Only)

Liberal Arts Mathematics: The Mathematical Landscape, Quantitative Reasoning and So Much More

TR 2:00 - 3:15 pm with Dr. Kathleen Shannon

MATH 190.044

       Mathematics has always had a special place in our culture, as in most “developed” cultures, coming into play about the same time as language and developing alongside the written word.  So what is that place?  What is it about mathematics that makes it so prominent that you cannot get a Bachelor’s degree in Maryland without taking a course in it?  Why should an art major have to take it? And why do people fall in love with it?  High School mathematics courses and most of the college courses used to fulfill basic requirements give little clue as to the vast array of beautiful and useful mathematical ideas. This course will have two fundamental goals: to explore the mathematical landscape and to develop and explore quantitative reasoning and problem solving techniques.  Students should gain a greater appreciation for the discipline and a broader understanding of its place in our culture.  You will engage in discussions and complete writing assignments about the philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural aspects of mathematics.  At the same time, you will have the opportunity to strengthen your skills in the important areas of quantitative reasoning and general problem solving.  This course is designed for students whose major area of study does not have specific requirements in mathematics.

Satisfies a Group III-B or III-C requirement.

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HONORS SECTION OF A TRADITIONAL COURSE

(Open to Honors Students Only)

World Civilizations

HIST 102.041 TR 12:30 - 1:45 pm

HIST 102.042 TR 2:00 - 3:15 pm

Both sections taught by Dr. Melanie Perrault

       These courses are designed as an introduction to the history of the world from the sixteenth century to the present.  With such a grand scale, we cannot possibly cover each society in great detail.  Instead, we will use a comparative approach to examine important topics across different cultures, societies, and lands.  The central concern of this course is the development of “modern” cultures.  Over the course of the semester, we will discuss the tensions created when cultures collide and examine the impact of an increasing globalization on both individuals and entire countries.  One of the best ways to begin understanding a culture is to appreciate its food, so we will be cooking (and eating) meals from some of the major cultures we study this semester.  Students must be willing to participate in researching and preparing 5-6 meals.  Even if you are a lousy cook or have never turned on an oven, the goal is to have fun and share some (hopefully) tasty food with your classmates.

Satisfies a Group II-A requirement.

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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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