Our Program Tracks

HONR 1110: Literary Traditions

This seminar engages the creative imaginations of diverse peoples from the ancient world through the 13th century through their art and literature. It examines diverse forms of literary expression as pathways to the place lore and endured truths of these peoples as well as models for eloquence and for personal and cultural reflection. The literature of the Greeks and Romans, among the most influential in the history of the world, receives special emphasis (including authors such as Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and others), as do later works from the European tradition, such as Dante's Divine Comedy or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. But the seminar also typically explores the work of writers from Asian and other non-Mediterranean cultures, thereby enabling conversations about commonalities and divergences across cultures. Influential texts featured in this seminar may also include the Chinese poets of Tang and Sung Dynasties (e.g., Tao Yuanming, Du Fu, Su Dongpo, or Li Qingzhao), Japanese poets of Heian Court (e.g., Ono no Komachi or Izumi Shikibu), and/or selections of Arabic and Hebrew lyric poetry (e.g., The Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma or Usama ibn Munqidh's Book of Contemplation), among others.

HONR 1020: Philosophy from Antiquity to the Medieval Golden Age

This course examines the beginnings of philosophy, including its relationship with religion and theology, from a variety of traditions and geographical locations such as Ancient Greece, China, and India, tracing some key themes and movements from the era of Antiquity through the Medieval Golden Age of the 13th and early 14th centuries. It asks essential questions, including what is human excellence? What can we know? What is the relationship between faith and reason? What does it mean to be human? How should we live?

HONR 1230: Ancient and Medieval Worlds

The great variety of human societies across the globe that existed thousands of years ago (roughly 1300 BCE to 1300 CE) represent a valuable historical laboratory. In this course, we will encounter these societies in historical context and learn the theory and methods of historical inquiry. The movement of people, goods, and ideas connected societies in the Mediterranean world and into Europe, Africa, and Asia. We explore how premodern peoples imagined themselves and experienced the world around them. We consider how intellectual production, cultural expression, religious frameworks, social hierarchies, and government and economic organization developed over time. We will study critically the ways in which historical narratives are constructed from written and material evidence and consider how deeper understanding about the remote past can contribute to the ongoing human experiment.

HONR 2110: Literary Renewals

Students in this seminar will read selections of medieval and early modern literature from the 14th to 18th centuries and consider how these works engage with societal, political, and religious concerns and the tensions arising from them. Students will consider such topics as the roles of literature in the public and private spheres; diverse notions of identity on the basis of gender and sexuality, nation, race or ethnic group, social status, or religious belief; the ways in which the production and circulation of literary texts participated in intercultural encounters of various kinds; the operations of literary influence; and the rapid changes in literary style and aesthetic preferences that foreshadow some of the concerns of modernity. Readings will include representative works from the European tradition such as Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, the works of William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, or others. In addition, the seminar will engage the work of major literary voices from non-European cultures, Hindu poet Mirabai, for example, or Ottoman poets Bâkî and Nejâtî, or Japanese poets of the Edo period. In this way, the seminar will demonstrate the global importance of literature in the lives of diverse peoples from multiple cultures.

HONR 2210: Global Culture: Connections and Conflicts

This history course will explore significant and selected developments in global culture and society from the 14th through the 18th centuries. This was a time marked by exploration, exploitation, and experimentation in which the structures of modern life began to emerge. This course considers the challenges posed by increasing connections throughout the Atlantic world and the rise of global empires. The approach will be one that seeks to discern the relationships and tensions between cultural, social, economic, and intellectual spheres. Using a historical framework, we look at primary sources and recent scholarship to probe the complexities of connection in the late medieval and early modern periods. Topics may include religious dialogue and upheaval, military conflict, medicine and disease, women and gender, notions of science, material and consumer culture, the development of the market, centralized political culture and the absolutist state, and imperialism and colonialism.

HONR 2000: Philosophy: Passages to Modernity

Modernity is often hailed as an age of progress, but it is also an age of deep tensions and contradictions with global impacts: the rise of science, but also of distrust and loss of meaning; celebration of the individual, but seemingly at the cost of a stable identity; promotion of freedom and equality, but also colonialism and collective oppression; the age of universal reason, but also of skepticism towards faith and tradition. By studying themes and movements in philosophy from the 14th through the 18th centuries, this course aims at initiating a thoughtful evaluation of how such philosophical traditions inform modern understandings of the world and ourselves.

HONR 2300: Science and Society

This multidisciplinary historical seminar examines the paradigm shifts in scientific thought that fundamentally changed the kinds of questions people asked and the methods and tools they developed to answer those questions. Spanning the 16th to the 18th centuries and/or the 18th to the 20th centuries, depending on the Honors track in which the course is offered, this seminar focuses on understanding science as a function of human society. It examines not only intellectual revolutions, but also how modes of science responded to and influenced daily life, social order, issues of race, class, and gender, perceptions of humanity and the self, global worldviews, and perceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Topics may include physics and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, medicine, mapping, timekeeping, mathematics, biology, early mechanics and industry, early environmentalism, or the social and environmental impacts of science and technology. The lab component of the seminar allows students to explore first-hand the iterative process of science in both its historical and contemporary applications.

HONR 2120: Revolutions and Revivals in the Long 19th Century

Beginning with the events surrounding the French Revolution, and concluding with the first World War, artistic and cultural production in the long nineteenth century began to engage and thematize social and political issues of rupture and revival. This course will investigate how visual and literary artists used their various media to intervene in some of the tumultuous questions of their day: the limits of reason, the effects of industrialization, the landscapes of urban expansion, the rise of science and technology, the movements in human rights, and the relationship between aesthetics and social justice.

HONR 2510: Capitalism and Its Discontents

This course is a philosophical examination of capitalist economics. It first examines its classical defense (Adam Smith), and then examines figures who worry about it, including Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, and Joseph Stiglitz. It also examines possible alternatives, including indigenous economics, Buddhist economics, communist anarchy (Kropotkin), and communism (Marx). It also examines the economics of the global ecological crisis as well as global economic inequality. This class is neither a dismissal nor a defense of the status quo, but rather an examination of a broad range of issues at the heart of this timely issue.

HONR 2250: Human Rights in the Modern World

This course will focus on one of the major problems afflicting the modern world - the widespread violation of human rights - from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. After considering the evolution of the idea of human rights (including analysis of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the course explores historical cases of the abuse and protection of human rights over time. We will examine the denial and defense of rights for different communities and groups such as women, people of color, workers, LGBTQ+ persons, children, migrants and refugees, disabled persons, torture victims, and disappeared persons. Some of the historical themes examined are colonialism, slavery, industrialization, democracy, dictatorship, warfare, revolution, genocide, migration, and environmental change. Students may also pursue directed research on specific human rights issues of particular interest to them.

HONR 2030: Crises in Contemporary Thought

If the 18th and 19th Centuries produced some optimism about humanity and its prospects, the 20th and 21st centuries, with their unprecedented wars, ecological devastation, and global anxieties, led to grave doubts about the Western cultural heritage. Reading some of this period's most trenchant thinkers, we will examine some of its most vexing questions. For example: What remains of religion and the belief and trust in God? Is the humanistic heritage all it is cracked up to be? Does capitalism enhance the quality of life on earth or does it produce misery and ecological devastation? Do we any longer believe in progress and the goodness of life? Do the contemporary global crises provide any new openings for other ways of thinking and living?

HONR 2130: Representation and Culture in 20th-21st-Century Literature/Art

This course starts roughly with beginning of the 20th century, around the crisis of WWI and culminates with the post-9/11 moment and the global resurgence of authoritarianism and political polarization in the 21st century. We will examine the literary and artistic responses to technological modernity, colonialism, historical trauma, and the rise of global capital. In this interdisciplinary course, we will consider how artists and writers engage crucial forces that structure our world today through a variety of techniques, practices, and media. Topics students will encounter include: aesthetic experiments in European and US modernisms; fragmentation, the stream-of-consciousness novel, and the ethics of representation after the Holocaust; photomontage and the representation of war; identity, race, and gender in the society of spectacle; postcolonial reassessments of history; climate fiction and ecological thought; the status of photography, painting, electronic media, and text in an era of intensifying identity politics.

HONR 2520: Modern Selves and Global Society

This course investigates a 20th/21st-century response to the Enlightenment ideas of freedom and rational autonomy. This response focuses on the rise of a class of questions that relate to ideas of the self, identity and community within society and society's institutions. Particular attention is paid to the effects of modernization and globalization. Authors covered include such thinkers as Dewey, Du Bois, Freud, Levinas, Mead, Foucault, Nussbaum and Rawls.

HONR 1010: Origins of Philosophy

With the beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece, China, and India, some of the great questions of culture and the life of the mind presented themselves. What is human excellence? What can we know? What makes a human life distinctively human? How should we live? In the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle, as well as selected works from classical India and China, these questions and others are examined.

HONR 1110: Ancient Literatures

This seminar engages the creative imaginations of ancient peoples through their literature. It examines diverse forms of literary expression as pathways to the place lore and endured truths of these peoples as well as models for eloquence and for personal and cultural reflection. The literature of the Greeks and Romans receives special emphasis. Several Greek and Roman writers (e.g., Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and others) are among the most influential in the history of the world and among the most widely translated. But the seminar also typically explores the work of writers from Asian and other ancient non-Mediterranean cultures, thereby enabling conversations about commonalities and divergences across cultures. In tandem with HONR 1010 and HONR 1210, this seminar introduces first-year Honors students to the Intellectual Traditions track of the University Honors Program.

HONR 1210: Polis, Republic, and Empires

The vast variety of human societies across the globe that existed thousands of years ago (roughly 3000 BCE - 500 CE) are a historical laboratory of experiments with government by relatively many, by relatively few, and by a sole ruler, among other systems. Along with these political questions, the dynamics of cultural expression, religious framework, economic organization, and social hierarchy in these communities of the remote past can be both familiar and strange to us. In this course you will encounter one or more of these ancient societies in historical context as you learn the theory and methods of historical inquiry. You will study critically the ways in which historical narratives are constructed from written and material evidence, and you will consider what understandings about the past are useful for improving the ongoing human experiment.

HONR 1030: Faith and Reason in Global Perspective

This course examines a variety of medieval traditions through the study of their critical appropriation and synthesis of classical philosophy with religion and theology. Some of the central questions considered are: What is the relationship between faith and reason and between theology and philosophy? Can the existence of God be proven? What is the nature of sin and evil? What does it mean to be human? Are human beings free? What is the soul? What role does embodiment play in being human? Authors studied include, for example, Augustine, Boethius, Avicenna, Anselm, Ibn Tufayl, Maimonides, Zhu Xi, Dōgen, Aquinas, and Christine de Pizan.

HONR 1130: Intersections in Medieval Literatures

In this course students read and study literary works composed between the 5th and the 15th centuries. Readings may include Dante's Divine Comedy, selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, the Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma, Usama ibn Munqidh's Book of Contemplation, selections of Arabic and Hebrew lyric poetry, the Japanese poets of Heian Court (e.g., Ono no Komachi or Izumi Shikibu), and/or the Chinese poets of Tang and Sung Dynasties, among others. The seminar analyzes how these medieval works are influenced by intercultural encounters and how they engage with societal, political, and religious concerns. Students will examine and discuss how literary works construct or question notions of identity in a medieval historical context on the basis of gender and sexuality, nation, race or ethnic group, social status, or religious belief and explore how tensions may arise from different ways of understanding these identities and their various configurations and intersections. These works raise questions about issues such as love, secular or religious, war, politics, and the like, which can provide new perspectives on our own contemporary understanding of them.

HONR 1230: Medieval Worlds

From the fifth century to the fifteenth, the world was interconnected by the movement of people, ideas, and goods. But globalization at this time was different than today. This course looks at how the medieval world contained both local identities and global connections, from the legacy of ancient empires to the development of new religions. It considers the role of political boundaries, religious practices, intellectual communities, trade networks, craft traditions, and disease in shaping lives across a number of places, such as parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By the end of the period the Americas had been drawn into networks of trade and exploitation developed in the Mediterranean, and the course addresses these early interactions across the Atlantic ocean. Throughout, we will keep an eye on how the modern configurations of these problems and issues relate to the medieval context. Using a historical framework, we look at both primary sources in translation and recent scholarship to probe the complexities of connection in the medieval period. We learn to tell stories about the past with a variety of texts and objects. Topics may include religious dialogue, military conflict, medicine and disease, women and gender, notions of science, and material culture.

HONR 2110: Literatures of the 16th through the 18th Centuries

The period widely called the Renaissance or Early Modern Period in the English-speaking world, witnessed tremendous religious, social, political, and cultural changes, and the upheavals that attended them. Perhaps because of the many conflicts that occurred during this period, it also featured a burgeoning of artistic and literary achievement as writers reshaped traditions in response to their turbulent times. This was the era of William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, and Aphra Behn in England; Gaspara Stampa in Italy; Miguel de Cervantes in Spain; François Rabelais, Louise Labé, and Molière in France; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in what is now Mexico; and a host of others. This seminar will feature a selection of works by these and/or other writers of this period. It will consider such topics as the roles of literature in the public and private spheres; the ways in which the production and circulation of literary texts participated in intercultural encounters of various kinds; the operations of literary influence; and the rapid changes in literary style and aesthetic preferences that would lead subsequent poets and scholars to see these works as foreshadowing some of the concerns of modernity. In addition, the seminar will engage the work of major literary voices from non-European cultures, Hindu poet Mirabai, for example, or Ottoman poets Bâkî and Nejâtî, or Japanese poet and travel writer Matsuo Bashō. In this way, it will demonstrate the global importance of literature in the lives of diverse peoples from multiple cultures.

HONR 2210: Early Modern Culture and Global Expansion

This course will explore significant and selected developments in European culture and society from the Renaissance through the period of early globalization. The approach will be one that seeks to discern the interconnections and tensions between the cultural, social, economic, and intellectual spheres that marked the transformation of Europe from the beginning of the fifteenth century through the end of the seventeenth century. Points that will be highlighted include the development of the market and early consumer culture, the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the development of the absolutist state and centralized political culture, and the early phases of European imperialism and colonialism. Our intent in this will be to come to a better understanding of the manner in which early modern European life was lived in terms of its values, beliefs, and ideals, so as to better define the nature of early modern European culture.

HONR 2300: Science and Society

This seminar examines the paradigm shifts in scientific thought during the 16th-18th centuries that fundamentally changed the kinds of questions people asked and the methods and tools they developed to answer those questions. Understanding science as a function of human society, this course examines not only intellectual revolutions, but also how modes of science responded to and influenced daily life, social order, issues of race, class, and gender, perceptions of humanity and the self, global worldviews, and perceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Topics may include physics and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, medicine, mapping, timekeeping, mathematics, biology, and early mechanics and industry. The lab component of the seminar allows students to explore first hand the iterative process of science in both its historical and contemporary applications.

HONR 2020: The Modern Age of Philosophy

Modernity is the age of deep tensions and contradictions: the rise of science, but also of distrust and loss of meaning; individual freedom and rights, but also colonialism and collective oppression; the age of universal reason, but also of skepticism towards God and tradition. By examining the writings of key thinkers from 17th century onwards, including Descartes, Hume, Locke, Douglass, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Baldwin and Nietzsche, this course will undertake a critical appraisal of the modern age. One main objective is to initiate a thoughtful evaluation of the "modern" ways in which we still understand the world and ourselves.

HONR 2120: Revolutions and Revivals in the Long 19th Century

Beginning with the events surrounding the French Revolution, and concluding with the first World War, artistic and cultural production in the long nineteenth century began to engage and thematize social and political issues of rupture and revival. This course will investigate how visual and literary artists used their various media to intervene in some of the tumultuous questions of their day: the limits of reason, the effects of industrialization, the landscapes of urban expansion, the rise of science and technology, the movements in human rights, and the relationship between aesthetics and social justice.

HONR 2510: Capitalism and Its Discontents

This course is a philosophical examination of capitalist economics. It first examines its classical defense (Adam Smith), and then examines figures who worry about it, including Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, and Joseph Stiglitz. It also examines possible alternatives, including indigenous economics, Buddhist economics, communist anarchy (Kropotkin), and communism (Marx). It also examines the economics of the global ecological crisis as well as global economic inequality. This class is neither a dismissal nor a defense of the status quo, but rather an examination of a broad range of issues at the heart of this timely issue.

HONR 2030: Crises in Contemporary Thought

If the 18th and 19th Centuries produced some optimism about humanity and its prospects, the 20th and 21st centuries, with their unprecedented wars, ecological devastation, and global anxieties, led to grave doubts about the Western cultural heritage. Reading some of this period's most trenchant thinkers, we will examine some of its most vexing questions. For example: What remains of religion and the belief and trust in God? Is the humanistic heritage all it is cracked up to be? Does capitalism enhance the quality of life on earth or does it produce misery and ecological devastation? Do we any longer believe in progress and the goodness of life? Do the contemporary global crises provide any new openings for other ways of thinking and living?

HONR 2310: Electricity, Energy, Evolution

This multidisciplinary historical seminar examines the emergence of modern science and technology in the 19th century leading to Big Science institutional global impact in the 20th and 21st centuries. It includes the study of animal electricity, natural history in South America and early environmentalism, the history of invention in the Industrial Revolution, the content and impact of Darwin's theory of evolution, and selected topics of social or environmental impact in current science and technology.

HONR 2320: The Measurement of Inequality

This course presents mathematical and statistical methods for measuring multiple dimensions of inequality. The course also looks critically at the assumptions and social constructs embedded in inequality metrics. Methodological discussion is accompanied with guided practices on real data using statistical software. Students apply inequality metrics to data, gaining insight into past and present levels of inequality and into how policies to address inequality are empirically evaluated. Topics include the distribution of income and wealth, racial inequality, gender inequality, and environmental inequality.

HONR 2130: Representation and Culture in 20th-21st-Century Literature/Art

This course starts roughly with beginning of the 20th century, around the crisis of WWI and culminates with the post-9/11 moment and the global resurgence of authoritarianism and political polarization in the 21st century. We will examine the literary and artistic responses to technological modernity, colonialism, historical trauma, and the rise of global capital. In this interdisciplinary course, we will consider how artists and writers engage crucial forces that structure our world today through a variety of techniques, practices, and media. Topics students will encounter include: aesthetic experiments in European and US modernisms; fragmentation, the stream of consciousness novel, and the ethics of representation after the Holocaust; photomontage and the representation of war; identity, race, and gender in the society of spectacle; postcolonial reassessments of history; climate fiction and ecological thought; the status of photography, painting, electronic media, and text in an era of intensifying identity politics.

HONR 2250: Human Rights in the Modern World

This course will focus on one of the major problems afflicting the modern world, the widespread violation of human rights. The first part will examine the theoretical evolution and general history of the idea of human rights. We will consider the problem of human rights from historical, legal, philosophical, and theological perspectives and explore the nature of different types of human rights, including political rights, socioeconomic rights, women's rights, Indigenous rights, workers' rights, children's rights, and immigrant and refugee rights, as well as the relationships among them. The second part will analyze the historical reasons for the abuse and protection of human rights in the 20th C through several case studies. We will consider such themes as underdevelopment, democracy, dictatorship, revolution, genocide, global migrations, and globalization. The third and final part of the seminar focuses on human rights in the contemporary world, giving us the chance to analyze in greater depth the approaches, issues, and themes introduced earlier in the course and offering students the opportunity to pursue directed research on specific topics that are of particular interest to them.

HONR 2520: Modern Selves and Global Society

This course investigates a 20th/21st-century response to the Enlightenment ideas of freedom and rational autonomy. This response focuses on the rise of a class of questions that relate to ideas of the self, identity and community within society and society's institutions. Particular attention is paid to the effects of modernization and globalization. Authors covered include such thinkers as Dewey, Du Bois, Freud, Levinas, Mead, Foucault, Nussbaum and Rawls.

HONR 1040: Philosophical Encounters

This course explores the origins of philosophical thought, including its relationship with religion and theology, from a variety of traditions and geographical locations, such as Ancient Greece, China, and India, by considering some of the key themes and movements in philosophy from antiquity to the 13th century. By exploring a few essential conversations of early philosophical and theological thinkers, this class will attend to studying and practicing the thoughtful dialogue necessary to engaging with questions about human existence, knowledge, faith and reason, community, freedom, and embodiment.

HONR 1150: Foundational Fictions

People have always relied on the creative imagination to construct a sense of themselves as a community in relation to and often at the expense of other groups. In this literature seminar we will explore how ancient and early medieval authors created and debated stories about themselves, developing foundational literary fictions with lasting historical and cultural impacts. Starting with classical epics and other poetry, such as Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, or Ovid's Metamorphoses, we will explore how ancient texts both constructed the history and values of places such as Greece and Rome and at the same time raised complex questions about them. We will then explore how medieval authors from a variety of traditions and geographical locations likewise adapted those histories and values to their own context and further imagined their own foundational stories. We will consider the conquerors, the conquered, and those whose stories were left on the margins or even unmentioned to raise new questions about the relationships between literary expression and identity.

HONR 1220: Community and Belonging in the Premodern World

This history course investigates the people of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean Sea and its coastlines and neighboring regions, a multicultural and dynamic space at the intersection of three continents and the site of intensely productive and conflictive interactions. In these areas political communities and institutions emerged, changed, and sometimes disappeared over a period of thousands of years (roughly 1300 BCE to 1300 CE). These political developments, along with the dynamics of economic organization, social hierarchies, and cultural expression, can be both familiar and strange to us. In this course you will see how debates about communal decision-making, religion, economic systems, gender, and power, among other social questions, played out in a variety of settings and with a variety of results. You will become familiar with the theory and methods of historical inquiry so that you can study critically the ways in which historical narratives are constructed from written and material evidence and make informed judgements about what lessons to draw from the past for the future.

HONR 2010: Philosophy of the Citizen Subject

Studying themes and movements in philosophy from the 14th to the 18th centuries, this course helps students understand how earlier debates laid the foundation for or anticipated modern ones, such as those on faith and reason, the place of humanity in nature, law and citizenship, freedom and equality, subjectivity, selfhood, and rights, slavery and colonialism. Recognizing the significance of different stages of these debates, a main objective of this course is to initiate a thoughtful evaluation of the ways in which we still understand ourselves and our society through critical and historical perspectives.

HONR 2240: Empire and Revolution

This history course traces increasing global interconnections through the growth of commerce and trade, the permutations of empires, and more intensive exploitation of labor and natural resources from the 14th through the 18th centuries. We will consider the impacts of these and other transformations on social identities and relations, state formation, religion, intellectual and scientific thought, and the human impact on the environment. The course will conclude by comparing revolutionary movements in different regions of the world and considering what they reveal about theories of revolution and the nature of sociopolitical change.

HONR 2150: Writers in the Public Sphere

From the beginnings of recorded history, people have carefully wrought language, in both oral and written forms, for a variety of social purposes. Some, like the bards of Celtic Ireland, or the shamans of various indigenous peoples, or the poet laureates of our more contemporary times, served as official spokespersons for their peoples and sought to memorialize the stories, beliefs, and customs of their times. For others, like John Donne and the Inns of Court coterie poets of Early Modern England, writing poems was a way to demonstrate one's fitness for public office; it allowed prospective employers to gauge one's wit and rhetorical savvy. Singers, lyricists, and writers of lays and other forms celebrated and challenged the cultural conventions and assumptions of their times. Dramatists from multiple time periods and nations treated the world as a stage onstage and so furthered the public discourse on a variety of subjects, from politics and religion to gender relations and social norms. For still others, like John Milton or the satirists of the 18th century, writing became a way of speaking truths the world may not wish to hear, while writers from other cultures, Matsuo Basho and others from the Edo period in Japan, sensitized their readers to truths about existence and the natural world. This seminar introduces several significant voices to illustrate the range of ways writers participated in the public sphere right up to the age of revolutions that began in the late 18th century.

HONR 2300: Science and Society

This multidisciplinary historical seminar examines the paradigm shifts in scientific thought that fundamentally changed the kinds of questions people asked and the methods and tools they developed to answer those questions. Spanning the 16th to the 18th centuries and/or the 18th to the 20th centuries, depending on the Honors track in which the course is offered, this seminar focuses on understanding science as a function of human society. It examines not only intellectual revolutions, but also how modes of science responded to and influenced daily life, social order, issues of race, class, and gender, perceptions of humanity and the self, global worldviews, and perceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Topics may include physics and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, medicine, mapping, timekeeping, mathematics, biology, early mechanics and industry, early environmentalism, or the social and environmental impacts of science and technology. The lab component of the seminar allows students to explore first-hand the iterative process of science in both its historical and contemporary applications.

HONR 2040: Ethics and Moral Philosophy

This seminar examines the nature of moral responsibility and the practice of moral reasoning. Classic and contemporary authors will guide a philosophical examination of foundational ethical questions, such as: Are there moral principles that hold true in all times and places? Does the existence of moral responsibility depend on a religious foundation? Do human beings have a nature, function, or set of capacities that provide a framework for moral responsibility? Is it best to understand moral responsibility as a duty to promote good states of affairs, to respect individual rights, or to balance and combine the two? To what extent does moral responsibility extend across international borders? Does moral agency belong to individuals, groups, or both? Do human beings have responsibilities not only to existing persons but to future generations, nonhuman animals, ecosystems, and the like? The course will build on students' earlier readings in virtue ethics (Aristotle) and natural law theory (Aquinas), and will examine modern ethical theories such as utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) and duty-based ethics (Kant), as well as critiques and extensions of classic Western ethics from authors of the Global South, feminists, and/or postmodern authors.

HONR 2540: Modern Political Theory

This seminar provides an introduction to modern political philosophy through an examination of major political theories and developments from the age of absolutist monarchies to contemporary times. Major topics include the sovereign state, social contract theory, constitutional governments, democracy, and socialist thought, as these were developed in the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Toqueville, Mill, Marx, Foucault, and others.

HONR 2550: The Evolution of Economics

John Maynard Keynes wrote, "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood." This course critically investigates the evolution of the dominant ideas that guide the economic aspect of modern society. The study ranges from the mid-17th century to the late 20th century. Authors covered include Turgot, Smith, Ricardo, Pareto, Keynes, Arrow and Sen.

HONR 2180: Storytelling for Social Change

This class considers why and how storytelling is essential to just action. It prepares students to thoughtfully engage with writers and thinkers who use storytelling in a variety of forms, including literature, to address pressing social and political problems. To do so, it focuses on a few key themes that complement the topic of social concern chosen for the capstone sequence. Through a consideration of storytelling and a study of the rhetoric of public debate, students develop the essential skills of effective writing and public speaking for diverse audiences on significant issues.

HONR 2580: Promoting the Common Good: Crafting Social Policy

This seminar is a focused study of a prominent question of social concern (inequality, representation, provision of healthcare, environmental degradation) and how society has responded to this concern. The topic as well as the perspective of this class will vary with and reflect the disciplinary background of the faculty member leading the course. Analysis of the particular social issue will be both theoretical and empirical. The explicit aim of this course is to envision a policy response that reflects content of the Society, Policy and Citizenship track within University Honors, a policy that is ethical and politically and economically feasible. The seminar concludes with a capstone project produced in conjunction with the other courses featured in this term.

HONR 2280: Power, Inequality, and Justice in Historical Perspective

This seminar explores histories of social, political, and economic inequality and efforts to promote justice and human rights in the modern world. The course considers how identities and relations in terms of class, gender, race, culture, and nationality have intersected with and shaped dimensions of power and inequality over time. Some of the historical themes covered may include colonialism, slavery, capitalism, urbanization, industrialization, warfare, revolution, neoliberalism, migration, technology, sustainability, and climate change. Students will also practice the critical analysis of a range of primary source materials and the use of evidence for historical inquiry and communication.

HONR 1010: Origins of Philosophy

With the beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece, China, and India, some of the great questions of culture and the life of the mind presented themselves. What is human excellence? What can we know? What makes a human life distinctively human? How should we live? In the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle, as well as selected works from classical India and China, these questions and others are examined.

HONR 1150: Foundational Fictions

Whether conquering or conquered, different peoples have relied on the creative imagination to construct a sense of themselves as a community in relation to and often at the expense of other groups. In this seminar we will explore how ancient and medieval authors constructed and debated stories about themselves. Starting with classical epics and other poetry, such as Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, or Ovid's Metamorphosis, we will explore how classical texts both constructed the history and values of Greece and Rome and at the same time raised complex questions about them. We will then explore how medieval authors adapted those histories and values to their own context by, for instance, rewriting the story of Troy and also by imagining their own stories, including the myth of Arthur. We will consider the conquerors, the conquered, and those whose stories were left on the margins or even unmentioned to raise new questions about the relationships between literary expression and identity. Throughout the quarter, students will hone their writing and speaking skills to become more adept participants in the public sphere of the Honors program.

HONR 1210: Polis, Republic, and Empires

The vast variety of human societies across the globe that existed thousands of years ago (roughly 3000 BCE - 500 CE) are a historical laboratory of experiments with government by relatively many, by relatively few, and by a sole ruler, among other systems. Along with these political questions, the dynamics of cultural expression, religious framework, economic organization, and social hierarchy in these communities of the remote past can be both familiar and strange to us. In this course you will encounter one or more of these ancient societies in historical context as you learn the theory and methods of historical inquiry. You will study critically the ways in which historical narratives are constructed from written and material evidence, and you will consider what understandings about the past are useful for improving the ongoing human experiment.

HONR 1030: Faith and Reason in Global Perspective

This course examines a variety of medieval traditions through the study of their critical appropriation and synthesis of classical philosophy with religion and theology. Some of the central questions considered are: What is the relationship between faith and reason and between theology and philosophy? Can the existence of God be proven? What is the nature of sin and evil? What does it mean to be human? Are human beings free? What is the soul? What role does embodiment play in being human? Authors studied include, for example, Augustine, Boethius, Avicenna, Anselm, Ibn Tufayl, Maimonides, Zhu Xi, Dōgen, Aquinas, and Christine de Pizan.

HONR 1220: The Politics of Medieval Communities

This course investigates the medieval Mediterranean world, a multicultural and dynamic space at the intersection of three continents and the site of intensely productive and conflictive interactions. New states replaced the older Roman and Persian empires that had ruled over much of northern Africa, western Asia, and Europe, and some of these became imperial themselves. In these areas political and religious communities and institutions emerged, changed, and sometimes disappeared over a period of a thousand years (roughly 500 to 1500 CE). We will see how debates about religious identity, economic systems, representation in decision-making, gender, and power, among other social questions, played out in a variety of settings. From the end of Roman antiquity to the beginning of truly global interconnection in the early Renaissance, groups defined and organized membership in the community in many different ways, and this course focuses on the way these ideas and practices shape emerging notions of politics, society and rights in the modern world.

HONR 2150: Writers in the Public Sphere

From the beginnings of recorded history, people have carefully wrought language, in both oral and written forms, for a variety of social purposes. Some, like the bards of Celtic Ireland, or the shamans of various indigenous peoples, or the poet laureates of our more contemporary times, served as official spokespersons for their peoples and sought to memorialize the stories, beliefs, and customs of their times. For others, like Du Fu and the Confucian poets of T'ang Dynasty China, or John Donne and the Inns of Court coterie poets of Early Modern England, writing poems was a way to demonstrate one's fitness for public office; it allowed prospective employers to gauge one's wit and rhetorical savvy. Singers, lyricists, and writers of lays and other forms celebrated and challenged the cultural conventions and assumptions of their times. Dramatists from multiple time periods and nations treated the world as a stage onstage and so furthered the public discourse on a variety of subjects, from politics and religion to gender relations and social norms. For still others, like John Milton or the satirists of the 18th century, writing became a way of speaking truths the world may not wish to hear. This seminar introduces several significant voices to illustrate the range of ways writers participated in the public sphere right up to the age of revolutions that began in the late 18th century.

HONR 2020: The Modern Age of Philosophy

Modernity is the age of deep tensions and contradictions: the rise of science, but also of distrust and loss of meaning; individual freedom and rights, but also colonialism and collective oppression; the age of universal reason, but also of skepticism towards God and tradition. By examining the writings of key thinkers from 17th century onwards, including Descartes, Hume, Locke, Douglass, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Baldwin and Nietzsche, this course will undertake a critical appraisal of the modern age. One main objective is to initiate a thoughtful evaluation of the "modern" ways in which we still understand the world and ourselves.

HONR 2240: Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World

Beginning with the theological, social and political unrest that resulted in the religious upheavals known as the Reformation this course will trace how these movements led to the political, cultural and intellectual revolutions of the 17th and 18th Century. In the first part of the course special attention will be given to the early history of the Jesuits and what this history tells us about the global impact of these religious upheavals. The second part of the course will compare revolutions in England, France and the Atlantic World in order to critique theories of revolution that have long dominated the discourse about this era.

HONR 2300: Science and Society

This seminar examines the paradigm shifts in scientific thought during the 16th-18th centuries that fundamentally changed the kinds of questions people asked and the methods and tools they developed to answer those questions. Understanding science as a function of human society, this course examines not only intellectual revolutions, but also how modes of science responded to and influenced daily life, social order, issues of race, class, and gender, perceptions of humanity and the self, global worldviews, and perceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Topics may include physics and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, medicine, mapping, timekeeping, mathematics, biology, and early mechanics and industry. The lab component of the seminar allows students to explore first-hand the iterative process of science in both its historical and contemporary applications.

HONR 2160: Literatures of Resistance

Significant shifts in political and economic systems invite resistance in various forms, and yet many who dare to speak truth to power or express "subversive" points of view are silenced and/or persecuted. This course will examine various literatures that were considered subversive, dangerous, or in violation of dominant doctrines of a particular time and place. We will explore the contexts that influenced writers to engage in literary acts of resistance, and we will consider why and how writers subverted prevalent ideologies. Many writers risked their lives to demand that readers see the limitations of a particular worldview and shift perspectives, and we will consider the legacies of writers who dared to challenge dominant ideologies of their time.

HONR 2250: Human Rights in the Modern World

This course will focus on one of the major problems afflicting the modern world, the widespread violation of human rights. The first part will examine the theoretical evolution and general history of the idea of human rights. We will consider the problem of human rights from historical, legal, philosophical, and theological perspectives and explore the nature of different types of human rights, including political rights, socioeconomic rights, women's rights, indigenous rights, workers' rights, children's rights, and immigrant and refugee rights, as well as the relationships among them. The second part will analyze the historical reasons for the abuse and protection of human rights in the 20th C through several case studies. We will consider such themes as underdevelopment, democracy, dictatorship, revolution, genocide, global migrations, and globalization. The third and final part of the seminar focuses on human rights in the contemporary world, giving us the chance to analyze in greater depth the approaches, issues, and themes introduced earlier in the course and offering students the opportunity to pursue directed research on specific topics that are of particular interest to them.

HONR 2530: 18th- and 19th-Century Social Theory

The main goal of this course is that you become well acquainted with the intellectual tradition known variously as The Age of Reason/Classical Liberalism/Modernity. This intellectual heritage is the basis of the legal, educational and social institutions in this country. It is not possible to participate intelligently in current discussions about government, economics, the family, crime, "political correctness," sex, science, religion or any form of social morality without first understanding this intellectual tradition. In this course we will explore these historical discourses and trace the implications to contemporary intellectual debates. The world we live in is framed by this tradition. In order to comprehend and navigate this world successfully, you should develop a critical understanding of these ideas and how they shape your life. Authors studied include such thinkers as Bentham, Comte, Mill, Durkheim, DuBois, Wollstonecraft, and others.

HONR 2040: Ethics and Moral Philosophy

This seminar examines the nature of moral responsibility and the practice of moral reasoning. Classic and contemporary authors will guide a philosophical examination of foundational ethical questions, such as: Are there moral principles that hold true in all times and places? Does the existence of moral responsibility depend on a religious foundation? Do human beings have a nature, function, or set of capacities that provide a framework for moral responsibility? Is it best to understand moral responsibility as a duty to promote good states of affairs, to respect individual rights, or to balance and combine the two? To what extent does moral responsibility extend across international borders? Does moral agency belong to individuals, groups, or both? Do human beings have responsibilities not only to existing persons but to future generations, nonhuman animals, ecosystems, and the like? The course will build on students' earlier readings in virtue ethics (Aristotle) and natural law theory (Aquinas), and will examine modern ethical theories such as utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) and duty-based ethics (Kant), as well as critiques and extensions of classic Western ethics from authors of the Global South, feminists, and/or postmodern authors.

HONR 2540: Modern Political Theory

This seminar, which builds on the discussions of the polis during the first year, provides an introduction to modern political philosophy through an examination of major political theories and developments from the age of absolutist monarchies to contemporary times. Major topics include the sovereign state, social contract theory, constitutional governments, democracy, and socialist thought, as these were developed in the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Toqueville, Mill, Marx, Foucault, and others.

HONR 2550: The Evolution of Economics

John Maynard Keynes wrote, "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood." This course critically investigates the evolution of the dominant ideas that guide the economic aspect of modern society. The study ranges from the mid-17th century to the late 20th century. Authors covered include Turgot, Smith, Ricardo, Pareto, Keynes, Arrow and Sen.

HONR 2180: Rhetoric for Public Debate

This seminar develops the essential skills of effective argumentative writing on policy or other significant social issues within the social sphere. It provides a study of the rhetoric of public debate that emphasizes writing for diverse audiences, marshaling evidence for strong persuasion, constructing logical arguments, and appealing to an audience's sympathies and reason. Consideration also will be given to the genres of public discourse and the development of a flexible prose style that can be adapted to a variety of rhetorical situations and audiences.

HONR 2360: Statistics for Policy Analysis

This course provides an introduction to the statistical methods that help inform decision makers and the public when considering public policy. The emphasis of this class is on application. Students will work with raw data related to the quarter's theme. Students will also be introduced to computer applications used to generate statistical results. Topics include: descriptive statistics, probability, random variables, estimation, hypothesis testing, and regression.

HONR 2580: Promoting the Common Good: Crafting Social Policy

This seminar is a focused study of a prominent question of social concern (inequality, representation, provision of healthcare, environmental degradation) and how society has responded to this concern. The topic as well as the perspective of this class will vary with and reflect the disciplinary background of the faculty member leading the course. Analysis of the particular social issue will be both theoretical and empirical. The explicit aim of this course is to envision a policy response that reflects content of the Society, Policy and Citizenship track within University Honors, a policy that is ethical and politically and economically feasible. The seminar concludes with a capstone project produced in conjunction with the empirical methods and rhetoric courses featured in this quarter.

HONR 1010: Origins of Philosophy

With the beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece, China, and India, some of the great questions of culture and the life of the mind presented themselves. What is human excellence? What can we know? What makes a human life distinctively human? How should we live? In the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle, as well as selected works from classical India and China, these questions and others are examined.

HONR 1210: Polis, Republic, and Empires

The vast variety of human societies across the globe that existed thousands of years ago (roughly 3000 BCE - 500 CE) are a historical laboratory of experiments with government by relatively many, by relatively few, and by a sole ruler, among other systems. Along with these political questions, the dynamics of cultural expression, religious framework, economic organization, and social hierarchy in these communities of the remote past can be both familiar and strange to us. In this course you will encounter one or more of these ancient societies in historical context as you learn the theory and methods of historical inquiry. You will study critically the ways in which historical narratives are constructed from written and material evidence, and you will consider what understandings about the past are useful for improving the ongoing human experiment.

HONR 1450: Inquiries in Theology and Religious Studies

This seminar explores some of the most pressing social, cultural, political, medical, scientific, economic or technological issues for Innovations students through an engagement with religions and their theological traditions, including Catholic and Jesuit traditions. It asks students to analyze these issues and the ethical problems they create through the disciplinary perspectives of theology or religious studies.

HONR 1140: Literary Innovations I

This seminar focuses on innovations in literature from the ancient to the medieval and the Renaissance worlds, 1500 BCE to 1700 CE. It follows the movement of literary genres from oral epic to acted drama, and from written poetry and tales to printed scripts and manuscripts. We will meet innovative writers and their classic creations: for example, from Gilgamesh to the Gita, from Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey to Shakespeare’s Hamlet or The Tempest, from Sappho’s Odes to Julian’s Showings, from Chaucer’s Tales to More’s Utopia. Through the study and analysis of these works, they will learn the rise and fall of genres, the development of literary traditions and communities and their intertextual echoes, allusions, and counter-texts. All of these literary innovations will parallel, challenge, and deepen our understanding of the issues and debates in Greek, Roman, and Christian global history, philosophy, and theology.

HONR 2020: The Modern Age of Philosophy and Ethics

Modernity is the age of deep tensions and contradictions: the rise of science, but also of distrust and loss of meaning; individual freedom and rights, but also colonialism and collective oppression; the age of universal reason, but also of skepticism towards God and tradition. By examining the writings of key thinkers from 17th century onwards, including Descartes, Hume, Locke, Douglass, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Baldwin and Nietzsche, this course will undertake a critical appraisal of the modern age. One main objective is to initiate a thoughtful evaluation of the “modern” ways in which we still understand the world and ourselves.

HONR 2220: History of Revolutions

The first part of this course will compare the revolutions in England, France and the Atlantic World in the 17th and 18th centuries order to critique theories of revolution that have long dominated the discourse about these events. With this theoretical underpinning this course will then examine case studies of revolutionary responses to industrialization, political underrepresentation and colonialism in the 19th century. This course concludes with an examination of the extent to which the Russian Revolution represents a new model of revolution in the 20th C.

HONR 2140: Literary Innovations II

The second “Literary Innovations” seminar tells the story of innovations in literature from the revolutions of the late 18th century to the present. Just as the rise and diminishment of empires (French, British, German, American, Russian, Chinese, etc.) and World Wars I and II produced a variety of social and cultural ruptures during this period, literature also experienced seismic shifts in the revaluing and repurposing of genres, the rise of the novel as a dominant form, the rapid increase and prevalence of experimentation (e.g., free verse, stream-of-consciousness narrative, pastiche, metafiction, etc.), and the promotion of access to literature across the globe. Breaks with long-established literary traditions resulted in new trans-national literary movements (e.g., Romanticism, Modernism, Post-modernism, etc.). The prolific translation and mass distribution of literary works across national boundaries encouraged writers from many cultures to draw upon wider influences than ever before and to find audiences beyond their nations to create new works and make their voices heard. Through an examination of several significant writers, from Wordsworth to Bishop, from Austen to Borges, from Ibsen to Beckett, this seminar delves into the complexities of literary expression in our recent past.

HONR 2420: Artistic Innovators

Like the “Literary Innovations” seminars, this seminar explores major innovators in the arts more broadly, those artistic masters who have greatly impacted the arts through their original work. The primary focus for this course will be on either drama or classical music. How did major dramatists or composers reshape received traditions to create new, innovative work that changed the course of their chosen media? What does the idea of “innovations” mean in the performative arts?

HONR 2030: Crises in Contemporary Thought

If the 18th and 19th Centuries produced some optimism about humanity and its prospects, the 20th and 21st centuries, with their unprecedented wars, ecological devastation, and global anxieties, led to grave doubts about the Western cultural heritage. Reading some of this period's most trenchant thinkers, we will examine some of its most vexing questions. For example: What remains of religion and the belief and trust in God? Is the humanistic heritage all it is cracked up to be? Does capitalism enhance the quality of life on earth or does it produce misery and ecological devastation? Do we any longer believe in progress and the goodness of life? Do the contemporary global crises provide any new openings for other ways of thinking and living?

HONR 2510: Capitalism and Its Discontents

This course is a philosophical examination of capitalist economics. It first examines its classical defense (Adam Smith), and then examines figures who worry about it, including Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, and Joseph Stiglitz. It also examines possible alternatives, including indigenous economics, Buddhist economics, communist anarchy (Kropotkin), and communism (Marx). It also examines the economics of the global ecological crisis as well as global economic inequality. This class is neither a dismissal nor a defense of the status quo, but rather an examination of a broad range of issues at the heart of this timely issue.

HONR 2520: Modern Selves and Global Society

This course investigates a 20th/21st-century response to the Enlightenment ideas of freedom and rational autonomy. This response focuses on the rise of a class of questions that relate to ideas of the self, identity and community within society and society’s institutions. Particular attention is paid to the effects of modernization and globalization. Authors covered include such thinkers as Dewey, Du Bois, Freud, Levinas, Mead, Foucault, Nussbaum and Rawls.

HONR 1010: Origins of Philosophy
With the beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece, China, and India, some of the great questions of culture and the life of the mind presented themselves. What is human excellence? What can we know? What makes a human life distinctively human? How should we live? In the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle, as well as selected works from classical India and China, these questions and others are examined.

HONR 1210: Polis, Republic, and Empires
The vast variety of human societies across the globe that existed thousands of years ago (roughly 3000 BCE - 500 CE) are a historical laboratory of experiments with government by relatively many, by relatively few, and by a sole ruler, among other systems. Along with these political questions, the dynamics of cultural expression, religious framework, economic organization, and social hierarchy in these communities of the remote past can be both familiar and strange to us. In this course you will encounter one or more of these ancient societies in historical context as you learn the theory and methods of historical inquiry. You will study critically the ways in which historical narratives are constructed from written and material evidence, and you will consider what understandings about the past are useful for improving the ongoing human experiment.

HONR 1450: Major Debates in Theology and Religious Studies
This seminar provides a case study of a major debate or set of major questions that have informed the development of civilization from ancient times through the Renaissance. It asks students to analyze the historical roots of this debate from a disciplinary perspective and examines its long-term effects. The topic for this seminar will change each year, in accordance with the specialty of the professor teaching it.

HONR 1240: Catholicism and Its Global Reach
Starting with an examination of the rise of the Catholic Church as the dominant institution in post-Roman Europe, this course will explore the central ways the Church defined its identity, spiritually and temporarily, and the ways it dealt with religious heterodoxy. The second half of the course investigates the collapse of Catholic orthodoxy in the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century and how the emergence of the Jesuits shaped the globalization of Catholicism in the early modern world.

HONR 1140: Literary Innovations 1
This seminar focuses on innovations in literature from the ancient to the medieval and the Renaissance worlds, 1500 BCE to 1700 CE. It follows the movement of literary genres from oral epic to acted drama, and from written poetry and tales to printed scripts and manuscripts. We will meet innovative writers and their classic creations: for example, from Gilgamesh to the Gita, from Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey to Shakespeare’s Hamlet or The Tempest, from Sappho’s Odes to Julian’s Showings, from Chaucer’s Tales to More’s Utopia. Through the study and analysis of these works, they will learn the rise and fall of genres, the development of literary traditions and communities and their intertextual echoes, allusions, and counter-texts. All of these literary innovations will parallel, challenge, and deepen our understanding of the issues and debates in Greek, Roman, and Christian global history, philosophy, and theology.

HONR 2020: The Modern Age of Philosophy
Modernity is the age of deep tensions and contradictions: the rise of science, but also of distrust and loss of meaning; individual freedom and rights, but also colonialism and collective oppression; the age of universal reason, but also of skepticism towards God and tradition. By examining the writings of key thinkers from 17th century onwards, including Descartes, Hume, Locke, Douglass, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Baldwin and Nietzsche, this course will undertake a critical appraisal of the modern age. One main objective is to initiate a thoughtful evaluation of the “modern” ways in which we still understand the world and ourselves.

HONR 2300: Science and Society
This seminar examines the paradigm shifts in scientific thought during the 16th-18th centuries that fundamentally changed the kinds of questions people asked and the methods and tools they developed to answer those questions. Understanding science as a function of human society, this course examines not only intellectual revolutions, but also how modes of science responded to and influenced daily life, social order, issues of race, class, and gender, perceptions of humanity and the self, global worldviews, and perceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Topics may include physics and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, medicine, mapping, timekeeping, mathematics, biology, and early mechanics and industry. The lab component of the seminar allows students to explore first-hand the iterative process of science in both its historical and contemporary applications.

HONR 2220: History of Revolutions
The first part of this course will compare the revolutions in England, France and the Atlantic World in the 17th and 18th centuries order to critique theories of revolution that have long dominated the discourse about these events. With this theoretical underpinning this course will then examine case studies of revolutionary responses to industrialization, political underrepresentation and colonialism in the 19th century. This course concludes with an examination of the extent to which the Russian Revolution represents a new model of revolution in the 20th Century.

HONR 2510: Capitalism and Its Discontents
This course is a philosophical examination of capitalist economics. It first examines its classical defense (Adam Smith), and then examines figures who worry about it, including Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, and Joseph Stiglitz. It also examines possible alternatives, including indigenous economics, Buddhist economics, communist anarchy (Kropotkin), and communism (Marx). It also examines the economics of the global ecological crisis as well as global economic inequality. This class is neither a dismissal nor a defense of the status quo, but rather an examination of a broad range of issues at the heart of this timely issue. 

HONR 2140: Literary Innovations 2
The second “Literary Innovations” seminar tells the story of innovations in literature from the revolutions of the late 18th century to the present. Just as the rise and diminishment of empires (French, British, German, American, Russian, Chinese, etc.) and World Wars I and II produced a variety of social and cultural ruptures during this period, literature also experienced seismic shifts in the revaluing and repurposing of genres, the rise of the novel as a dominant form, the rapid increase and prevalence of experimentation (e.g., free verse, stream-of-consciousness narrative, pastiche, metafiction, etc.), and the promotion of access to literature across the globe. Breaks with long-established literary traditions resulted in new trans-national literary movements (e.g., Romanticism, Modernism, Post-modernism, etc.). The prolific translation and mass distribution of literary works across national boundaries encouraged writers from many cultures to draw upon wider influences than ever before and to find audiences beyond their nations to create new works and make their voices heard. Through an examination of several significant writers, from Wordsworth to Bishop, from Austen to Borges, from Ibsen to Beckett, this seminar delves into the complexities of literary expression in our recent past.

HONR 2420: Artistic Innovators 
Like the “Literary Innovations” seminars, this seminar explores major innovators in the arts more broadly, those artistic masters who have greatly impacted the arts through their original work. The primary focus for this course will be on either drama or classical music. How did major dramatists or composers reshape received traditions to create new, innovative work that changed the course of their chosen media? What does the idea of “innovations” mean in the performative arts?

Note: All courses this quarter are non-Honors.

HONR 2520: Modern Selves and Global Society
This course investigates a 20th/21st-century response to the Enlightenment ideas of freedom and rational autonomy. This response focuses on the rise of a class of questions that relate to ideas of the self, identity and community within society and society’s institutions. Particular attention is paid to the effects of modernization and globalization. Authors covered include such thinkers as Dewey, Du Bois, Freud, Levinas, Mead, Foucault, Nussbaum and Rawls.

HONR 2320: The Measurement of Inequality 
This course presents mathematical and statistical methods for measuring multiple dimensions of inequality. The course also looks critically at the assumptions and social constructs embedded in inequality metrics. Methodological discussion is accompanied with guided practices on real data using statistical software.  Students apply inequality metrics to data, gaining insight into past and present levels of inequality and into how policies to address inequality are empirically evaluated.  Topics include the distribution of income and wealth, racial inequality, gender inequality, and environmental inequality.

Check with your Honors advisor prior to registration.

HONR 2400: Major Ethical Debates of the Modern World
This seminar focuses on key ethical debates influencing public policy issues of the last 50 years. As with the Major Debates from the first year, it asks students to analyze the historical roots of this debate from a disciplinary perspective and examines its long-term effects. The topic for this course will change each year, as will the discipline from which it is approached.

HONR 2030: Crises in Contemporary Thought
If the 18th and 19th Centuries produced some optimism about humanity and its prospects, the 20th and 21st centuries, with their unprecedented wars, ecological devastation, and global anxieties, led to grave doubts about the Western cultural heritage. Reading some of this period's most trenchant thinkers, we will examine some of its most vexing questions. For example: What remains of religion and the belief and trust in God? Is the humanistic heritage all it is cracked up to be? Does capitalism enhance the quality of life on earth or does it produce misery and ecological devastation? Do we any longer believe in progress and the goodness of life? Do the contemporary global crises provide any new openings for other ways of thinking and living?