Honors (HON)

HON 221 Rebels&Revolutionaries:Art&Lit (3 credits)

In this course we will explore the works of 20th- and 21st-century visual artists and writers who have rebelled against the status quo and revolutionized the course of visual art and literature. We will delve into their texts and images through readings, discussions, and field trips, and consider what they teach us about our own time and our role in it.

Attributes: Art History Course, CCC: F&P Arts, Design & Creative, CCC: Literature, Literature Course, English Area 4- British/Irish, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Irish Studies Course, Undergraduate

HON 222 Leadership: Ancient&Mod Views (3 credits)

The Greco-Roman world produced some of history’s most celebrated leaders. Through its presidents and entrepreneurs, the U.S. has dominated the global political and economic scene since the early 20th century. The course examines ancient and modern examples of leadership to deepen students’ understanding and prepare them for future positions. Topics include: What motivates people to become leaders? What are the qualities associated with a successful leader? What flaws and weaknesses characterize a bad leader? How do leaders inspire others to share their vision? To what extent is the ability to lead determined, or undermined, by one’s gender, race, or socioeconomic status? How does one overcome such obstacles?

Attributes: GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 230 Creativity Honors (3 credits)

An interdisciplinary engagement with creative writing and philosophical questions around creation and human creativity. Questions can include: What is creativity? Does it differ from creation? How? Does human art create or only imitate the creations of God or nature? How has art, whether literary, visual, or otherwise, been practiced and understood? Can everyone be, or learn to be, creative? What stimulates, what obstructs creativity? Is creativity a human virtue? Why is it so valued in society today? Can individuals alone aspire to creativity, or can communities also be creative? More broadly, can we even explain human creativity? 

Prerequisites: ENG 101 and PHL 154

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student or Usci Legacy Honors attributes.

Attributes: CCC: F&P Arts, Design & Creative, CCC: Philosophy L2 Non Ethics, CCC: Writing Intensive, English Area 1 - Writing, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, GEP: Phil. Anthropology, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 235 Views of the Cosmos Honors (3 credits)

An introduction to the study of the universe from scientific, religious, literary, and philosophical standpoints. Surveys mankind's efforts to understand the nature of the cosmos, including its origins, evolution, and eventual demise. Viewpoints of many religious groups, cultures, writers, and scientific thinkers will be discussed and compared. Contemporary debates in cosmology will be fully explored without mathematics. Students who register for HON 235 must also register for a HON 235 laboratory. For example, if you register for HON 235 you must, at the same time, register for a section of HON 235L.

Prerequisites: ENG 101

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student or Usci Legacy Honors attributes.

Attributes: CCC: Literature, CCC: Natural Science, CCC: Writing Intensive, Literature Course, GEP: Art/Literature, GEP: Natural Science, Honors Course, GEP: Science Course w/Lab, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 235L Views of the Cosmos Lab (1 credit)

Students who register for HON 235 must also register for a HON 235 laboratory. For example, if you register for HON 235 you must, at the same time, register for a section of HON 235L.

Attributes: CCC: Natural Science, GEP: Natural Science, Undergraduate

HON 270 Honors Special Topics (3 credits)

Topics will vary by instructor each semester in which the class is offered.

Attributes: Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 300 Community Engaged Scholarship (3 credits)

In this course, students will work with a community-based organization to design and conduct research on an issue related to homelessness or affordable housing. Throughout the semester, students will learn about research methods, research ethics, and the particular urban context within which they will be working. More importantly, students will gain experience working alongside staff of a community-based organization to solve problems or assess needs and strengths. This is a service-learning course.

Attributes: GEP: Diversity Course, GEP: Social Science, Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 304 Global Shakespeares Honors (3 credits)

Shakespeare’s plays have been staged around the world, made into novels, films, ballets, musicals, and operas, set in the Wild West, medieval Japan, fascist Italy, and on fictional planets, blended with Bollywood Cinema, Chinese Opera, Zulu dance and Japanese Noh Theater. But what does it mean to incorporate the work of the canonical Western playwright into global artistic practice? Studying a handful of Shakespeare’s plays - both directly and in adaptation - we examine issues of race, gender, colonialism, disability, and religion, and confront the real-world violence behind these representations. While some suggest that the Western canon, with Shakespeare at its center, has been used primarily as a tool of cultural oppression; might reinventions of Shakespeare also be seen as acts of liberation or rebellion? Exploring these issues in both theory and practice, this course includes both the traditional scholarship of reading and analysis, and creative practice, as students will produce their own short film interpretation/adaptation of selected scenes.

Prerequisites: ENG 101

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student or Usci Legacy Honors attributes.

Attributes: CCC: F&P Arts, Design & Creative, CCC: Diversity, CCC: Literature, CCC: Writing Intensive, GEP: Diversity Course, Literature Course, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 310 Welcoming the Stranger HON (3 credits)

This course will examine how ancient communities grappled with welcoming the stranger and how various communities negotiated interpersonal relations. In addition, the course will focus on how to articulate an ethical response to the issue of migration in light of the diverse theological and philosophical ethical perspectives on the topic. Key themes in the historical and religious traditions will include: the biblical representation of the ger (stranger); ancient comparative hospitality rituals; and legal discourse in rabbinic and contemporary Jewish sources. Key topics in the theological and philosophical ethical traditions will include: distinctions between forced migrants in theory and law– including internally displaced people, asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants, and ecological/environmental migrants. These distinctions will be explored through both an empirical/legal lens as well as an ethical lens informed by the overlapping consensus of the post-war Universal Declaration of Human Rights tradition and Catholic Social Teaching.

Prerequisites: ENG 101

Attributes: CCC: Mission: Ethics Social Justice, CCC: Religious Studies, GEP: Ethics Intensive, Honors Course, GEP: Religious Difference, Team Taught, Undergraduate

HON 311 Paradoxes, Prob & Proofs (3 credits)

Can a sentence be both true and false at the same time? Can a theorem be true if it has no proof? Can there be different sizes of infinity? Can a single solid ball be decomposed and reassembled to create two balls each with the same volume as the original? These questions all lie at the juncture of philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. This course examines the questions that have emerged in the 20th century about the nature of mathematical truth and the status of our mathematical knowledge. This is an interdisciplinary course that considers questions from both mathematical and philosophical perspectives.

Attributes: CCC: Mathematics, CCC: Philosophy L2 Non Ethics, Honors Course, GEP: Math Beauty, Team Taught, Undergraduate

HON 316 Tragedy in Lit & Philosophy (3 credits)

This course, focused on classical, Shakespearean, and modern examples of tragedy, will seek to answer the following questions: Why do we enjoy seeing representations of tragic suffering? What does this tell us about human nature and our societies? Would a life without tragedy be fully human? What is the relationship between tragedy and trauma?

Attributes: CCC: Literature, CCC: Philosophy L2 Non Ethics, CCC: Writing Intensive, Literature Course, English Area 3 - Shakespeare, English Area 4- British/Irish, English Early Lit, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, GEP: Phil. Anthropology, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 324 Russia as a Global Power (3 credits)

This course will examine Russia’s rise and role as a global power in the 20th and 21st centuries. After suffering a devastating defeat in World War I, Russia, as the Soviet Union, remade its economic, cultural, and military power to be central to the defeat of the Axis states and then challenged the U.S. throughout the Cold War. The breakup of the Soviet Union set Russia’s position back again, but since 2007, Putin has been increasingly assertive around the world. Combining the disciplines of History and Political Science, students will study the ebb and flow of Russian power using the tools of both disciplines. By examining secondary and primary sources, as well as theories of empire, war, state formation, and authoritarianism, students will achieve a strong understanding of Soviet and Russian foreign policy and the conceptual tools for better understanding post-Soviet Russia in the global arena.

Attributes: CCC: Mission: Global Citizenship, CCC: Social Science, GEP: Social Science, GEP: Globalization Course, Honors Course, International Relations Course, Team Taught

HON 328 Anthro & Philo of the Body HON (3 credits)

This multidisciplinary course examines critical questions raised by the human body and our lived experience. We ask how our natures as complex human persons with rational, biological, and spiritual elements are both formed in response to bodily experience and how, in turn, these elements impact our experience and sense of the possible. This leads us to inquire into the ethical norms and responsibilities that have been fashioned around the body, as they pertain both to oneself and others. Specific topics may include: cultural relativism; the sources of normativity; the ethics of suffering and enduring; the ethics of pleasure; duties and possibilities of kindness; ordinary and transformative lived experiences; the corporeality of inequality and injustice.

Attributes: CCC: Diversity, CCC: Philosophy L2 Non Ethics, GEP: Social Science, Honors Course, GEP: Phil. Anthropology, Team Taught, Undergraduate

HON 360 OxfordTutorial:TechRevolutions (3 credits)

This interdisciplinary course is devoted to the study of the cultural changes produced by changing technologies, from prehistory to the present and future. We may consider the prehistoric control of fire and its effects on human anatomy; the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9; the Black Plague vs. future global depopulation; the first agricultural revolution; or artificial superintelligence. Looking at earlier technological revolutions and their impacts on human society can tell us much about our own society and its prospects amidst the extraordinary technological and cultural upheaval to come. Technological revolutions can also highlight numerous philosophical issues about human beings, organizations, and societies, and these will also be explored.

Prerequisites: ENG 101 and PHL 154

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student or Usci Legacy Honors attributes.

Attributes: CCC: Philosophy L2 Non Ethics, CCC: Writing Intensive, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Oxford Tutorial, GEP: Phil. Anthropology, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 361 OxfordTutorial:IndiaPartitions (3 credits)

This course will query the singularity of the Indian Partition of 1947 through an examination of both historical and literary sources that reveal multiple experiences and narratives of what may be better thought of as long processes of differentiation not just between states, but between peoples and communities in the subcontinent. The main goal of this course is to introduce students to the history of Partition, and to prompt students to analyze the different modes of expression that have emerged from it, including short stories, poetry, novels, oral narratives, and films.

Prerequisites: ENG 101

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student or Usci Legacy Honors attributes.

Attributes: CCC: Mission: Global Citizenship, CCC: Writing Intensive, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, GEP: Non-Western Studies, Oxford Tutorial, Team Taught, Undergraduate

HON 362 OxfordTutorial:Intrsectionlity (3 credits)

Intersectionality shows us that identity is shaped by multiple, interconnected biological and social features of persons such as sex, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, class, country of origin, immigration status, religion, etc. Intersectionality makes us aware of the ways in which social and political institutions (governments, religions, legal systems, the media, economic systems, e.g.) create multiple and interlocking systems of oppression and privilege that can be mapped onto categories of identity.  This course draws on the fields of Irish Literature and Philosophy to surface and understand complex often marginalized identities and experiences, and to more fully understand the nature of intersectionality itself. 

Prerequisites: ENG 101

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student attribute.

Attributes: CCC: Diversity, CCC: Literature, CCC: Philosophy L2 Ethics, CCC: Writing Intensive, GEP: Diversity Course, English Diversity, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Irish Studies Course, Oxford Tutorial, GEP: Phil. Anthropology, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 363 OxfordTutorialTudorGendPowrLit (3 credits)

Anne Boleyn was the most consequential queen in English history. To marry her, Henry VIII created the Church of England and forced his subjects to swear oaths confirming his control over it and their own allegiance to Anne and her heirs. Those who refused - including Thomas More - faced imprisonment and death. Anne reigned barely a thousand days before her execution for adultery. This course is about Anne, Henry VIII, the politics of their world and the literature by and about their court - including the poetry kept and commented upon by Anne's female friends and relatives.

Prerequisites: ENG 100 or ENG 101

Restrictions: Enrollment limited to students with the Honors Program Student attribute.

Attributes: CCC: Mission: Ethics Social Justice, CCC: Literature, CCC: Writing Intensive, English Area 4- British/Irish, English Early Lit, GEP: Ethics Intensive, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Justice Ethics and the Law , Medieval, Ren & Reform Studies, Oxford Tutorial, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 364 OxfordTutorial: Tech Rev II (3 credits)

This interdisciplinary course is devoted to the study of the cultural changes produced by changing technologies, from prehistory to the present and future. Readings in this course will not overlap with HON 360, so that interested students may take both courses.

Prerequisites: ENG 101

Attributes: CCC: Writing Intensive, GEP: Art/Literature, Honors Course, Oxford Tutorial, Team Taught, Undergraduate, GEP: Writing Intensive

HON 370 Honors Special Topics (3 credits)

Topics will vary by instructor each semester in which the class is offered.

Prerequisites: ENG 101 or ENG 100 or WR 101 or WR 110H

Attributes: Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 384 Jew/Chr: Theologies Compared (3 credits)

The course studies fundamental religious questions as understood from various Jewish and Christian perspectives. Christian and Jewish students will gain an understanding of the other religious community while also deepening their understanding of their own. Other students will encounter the two traditions through a comparative lens. Topics to be discussed include the experience of God; the Bible; how Christians and Jews understand their relationship to God and the world; worship and prayer; and the destiny of the created universe.

Attributes: CCC: Mission: Faith Reason, CCC: Religious Studies, GEP: Faith-Reason Course, Honors Course, GEP: Religious Difference, Undergraduate

HON 388 Jews&Chr: Bible Interpretation (3 credits)

Although Jews and Christians share many of the same scriptural books, their respective collections are differently organized and named. Christians refer to their collection as the "Old Testament," while Jews call their texts the "Tanakh" (an acronym for the Hebrew words for Teaching, Prophets, and Writings). Despite, or because of this commonality, Christians and Jews have often battled over these scriptures' meanings. This course explores the ways that Jews and Christians have interpreted key texts, separately and together, over two millennia of learning from and disputing with each other. It also examines why the Bible has been a source of conflict between the two groups, with a focus on certain key passages, and why that is currently changing - as evidenced in recent official Catholic instructions.

Attributes: CCC: Mission: Faith Reason, CCC: Religious Studies, GEP: Faith-Reason Course, Honors Course, GEP: Religious Difference, Undergraduate

HON 390 Descending Tower: Commty Rsrch (3 credits)

Engaged scholarship can take several forms. Broadly defined, it means connecting the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems. One key way of sharing these resources is through research--not "on" the community, but "with" the community. This type of research model is one in which projects are developed collaboratively by community organization staff, faculty, and students, building on the unique strengths of those involved. In this course, students will work with a community-based organizations to design and conduct research. Throughout the semester, students will learn about research methods and ethics, and the particular urban context in which they will be working. More importantly, students will gain experience working alongside staff of a community-based organization to solve problems or assess needs and strengths.

Attributes: Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 493 Independent Research I (0-6 credits)

Independent research, either for an Honors Independent Study, a College Honors Thesis, or a Research Concept Form

Attributes: Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 494 Independent Research II (0-6 credits)

Independent research, either for an Honors Independent Study, a College Honors Thesis, or a Research Concept Form

Attributes: Honors Course, Undergraduate

HON 495 Capstone (0-6 credits)

Honors capstone research

Attributes: Honors Course, Undergraduate