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Courses By Theme

Theme: The Idea of America: 1999-2001;
2003-2005

Honors Core courses for this theme will examine competing assumptions about what the Americas mean and include, and points in our history or cites in our culture where these myths and ideals have been reinforced or betrayed.

Honor 150: Honors English

The Growth of an American Metropolis: Chicago
Course examines the city of Chicago as a microcosm of America in general, in its pattern of immigration, the growth of its economy and in its contradictions of progress and exploitation, exhaustion and rebirth. Students research and write about Chicago in many of its diverse manifestations: culture, history, technology, politics and religion.

Diversity and Social Justice in America
Course examines the concept of diversity and its value in personal and public life. Students develop an understanding of diversity and social justice through self-examination, reading, discussion, writing and service learning. Topics for essays focus on the Individual, Diversity and Social Justice; Gender, Diversity and Social Justice; and Race, Class, Education and Social Justice.

Honor 151: Honors Philosophy

The American Constitution and Greek Philosophy
Some of the most respected scholars of the intellectual origins of the American Constitution suggest that the idea of America is a Greek idea. In this course students read and examine plays, poems, letters and speeches that enable them to accomplish an informed reading of Socrates’ famous speech called the Apology. The question that will inform the readings is the question of the original Greek idea of democracy.

Honor 152: Honors Social Sciences

The Peopling of America
The idea of America is a cultural concept whose origin and persistence is dependent upon the social constructions of diverse peoples. How class, “race,” ethnicity, gender, status, role, region, nation and state interplay in this construction is one dimension of the American idea. How these lead to a conception of national identity that requires some compromise of each category is another. Whether nation or national identity have salience in the context of a modern world system or a post modern mélange of uncertainties and complex negotiation of identity is a third. These three issues will be explored by focusing this course on the ideas of both peopling and peoplehood in America.

Self Interest and The Common Good in American Society: Negotiating Competing Claims on our Lives and Resources
The purpose of this course is to motivate students to analyze and critique the tensions between the forces of self interest and practices and institutions promoting the common good in American culture. Such tensions are mediated, for better or worse, by market and nonmarket organizations, including government structures and nonprofit organizations. This course will help students understand the nature of these tensions and their origins, and will examine the economic and political organizational forms that have helped individuals and society negotiate them.

Visions of America in the Mass Media
A large body of research literature concerning the impact of mass media on adults and children has been evolving since World War I. We will review the major theories that have developed from media research and will examine how mass media shapes us and our vision of America. Students will explore key issues addressed by mass media communication researchers, some of the most significant findings and the benefits and limitations of social scientific research. Projects will engage them in an extended comparison of the vision of America offered by mass media, and visions of representative groups of Americans.

Honor 250: Honors Humanities

Cold War Politics and Culture in America
In this course we will tackle the Honors Program theme of American identity by examining a historical period, roughly 1947-91, during which that identity came under terrific pressure. The course is structured as a series of textual encounters. Students will be provided with a wealth of secondary materials to inform their responses to the print and film texts that dramatize the various political and ideological exertions of the time.

American Protest Music
For some the Idea of America is quite distinct from the Ideal for America. This course is centered on the efforts of musicians who sought to attain an Ideal for America because they found the reality of America to be seriously deficient. From the start music in America has been used to move the nation to a better future and this course will enable students to examine the nation from a variety of critical perspectives. From the 1910’s through the 1960’s, the basic chronological sweep of the course, radical change and societal upheaval were transforming the United States. The acoustic guitar, the voice, the harmonica, the banjo and other instruments supported oppressed Americans in their struggle for the American Ideal. The course examines the social and political contexts of blues and folk music from the early workers’ struggle up to the antiwar resistance of the 1960’s. We will examine song styles and lyrics; the role of organizations and producers that supported, and sometimes exploited, progressive music; and magazines and newspapers that promoted it.

Honors 252: Honors Computer Technology

Computers and Technology in American Culture
An introduction to computing with a focus upon ethical and social issues surrounding the use of technology in our culture.  Students design a class web page that explores "The Idea of America" and synthesizes the readings and ideas they have discussed in their Honors seminars on this theme.

Honor 253: Honors Science

Science, Technology and American Food and Medicine
This course examines the scientific, technological and cultural contexts of vital issues impacting the provision of healthy food and effective medical procedures and services in America today. A variety of learning techniques are employed, including discussion of readings, case histories, films, labs, debates, and hands-on activities. The course will enable students better to analyze current issues in science and technology. Issues to be addressed include animal research, biocide use in food and medicine, food and drug regulation and related controversies in the field of genetics.

Ecology, Environment and Conservation in America
In this course, The Idea of America will be examined from an ecological perspective, focusing on the interactions between the biological and physical components of the environment. It will examine the impacts humans have on the environment and their role in conserving the environment and its interactions. We will explore the threats to biodiversity in the Americas, the impacts of human activity on ecosystems and the biosphere, and the roles and responsibilities of Americans in protecting and conserving their natural resources. Throughout the course students will gain a deeper understanding of the scientific method and they will be engaged in a critical evaluation of media statements and public policies in this culture pertaining to human impacts on the environment.

Theme: The Good Life: 2001-2003; 2005-2007

Honors Core Courses for this theme will examine competing theories about what constitutes justice, fairness and health in human cultural and physical life, and the implications of these assumptions.

Honor 150: Honors English

The Moral Imagination in Modern World Literature
In this course, we will focus on the question: how does one live a good life? Toward that end, we will examine how this question is addressed by Modern World Literature. We will read “Neighbor Rosicky” by Willa Cather, A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen, The Death of Ivan Illych by Leo Tolstoy, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Students will write four short essays and a term paper on one of the emerging themes of the course.

Diversity and The Good Life
This course will focus upon developing an understanding of diversity - its value in personal and public life - and an understanding of the concept of culture. What is the value of cultural diversity in a variety of settings, including home, school, work and the political sphere? Readings and discussions will provide the foundation for writing projects that reinforce skills in mastering the formal conventions of various essay genres, paragraphs, sentences and word usage. Students will learn how language is a value laden tool, and that the language user is always a language chooser who promotes or inhibits further thinking, communication and action. Students will conduct primary and secondary research throughout the semester to develop their grasp of key issues and to support their assumptions and claims.

Defining “The Good Life”
In this course we will apply the principles of clear, critical thinking and effective writing by engaging students as readers, writers, and researchers. To this end, the course will examine the principles of rhetorical analysis via our selected theme: The Good Life. As we examine selected texts, we will raise questions that ask: “What constitutes the good life? Is the definition singular, or is it plural? Do we define what is good, or is this decision made by other people or institutions? What is our ethical responsibility toward others? By raising these and other questions, students will come to examine the limits of identity, culture and value.

Honor 151: Honors Philosophy

The Examined Life
This course offers an introduction to Socratic Philosophy, examining what is Socratic Philosophy and what it has to offer us. We will discover that Socratic Philosophy is a way of questioning, and that, in contrast to earlier and later philosophers, Socrates’ questioning is oriented towards ethical, political and human questions. What does it mean to live well? What is human excellence? What are the “just,” “the good,” and “the beautiful”? Socrates asks how ought one to live, and in the course of the semester we will see that addressing his question in anything but a merely academic enterprise.

Honor 152: Honors Social Science

The Good American Life; The Good American Society
Since the time of Plato, one strand of the discourse of the good life has suggested that it is inextricably intertwined with the good citizen. Likewise, much concern has been given to the question of what constitutes the good society—a context in which the good life is made possible. In this course we will focus upon the nexus at which these three elements—the good life, good citizen, good society—meet. We will focus specifically on these three terms in our own national context—trying to come up with some conclusions about what constitutes the good life in contemporary America. We will examine what the American context says it values as good, how it distributes those values in theory and practice, and whether or not we agree with those values and that distribution. We will examine the “liberal consensus” that roots American values in freedom and political equality, as well as the older tradition of classical republicanism that promotes the value of virtuous citizenry in a virtuous community. The major project for the semester will be to write a public policy philosophy for the United States—this will be an individual, group and class project.

Difference in Making Law and Society
What counts as the good life? How has American ideology shaped a conception of the good life? What components of this ideology do we share? This course introduces students to the complex and subtle ways that social inequality is produced and reproduced through U.S. law and social practices. We will explore race, class, sex and gender hierarchies as interrelated systems, none of which can be fully understood without reference to the others. We will examine how any individual’s multiple statuses combine to produce sets of privileges and constraints. We will consider the impact of social inequalities upon families in this country and evaluate access to various components of the good life. The course examines 19th and 20th century roots of contemporary social arrangements in U.S. law and society, and challenging abstract theories of gender, race, class, culture and power.

Good Life Values in Conflict: A Divided America?
Political rancor has risen to such high levels that  the 1990’s were frequently viewed as an era of “culture war.”  The culture war is about competing visions of the Good Society, one focused on individual rights, minority protection, and economic equality, the other focused on community standards, social stability and economic individualism.  The combination of very closes elections and a 25-year legacy of culture wars leads many observers to see this country as divided politically and ideologically.  This course explores the extent of this division, its sources and the implications of our findings for politics and policy.  We begin and end with the question:  How divided is America?

Honor 250: Honors Humanities

The Question of the Good Life
Honors Humanities this year is devoted to the question of the good life. We will be concerned with how the question of the good life arises in the course of living a life, with what the question entails, and with how it might be developed. The course is divided into three parts. 1. How a good life comes into question: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illych. 2. What is involved in thinking about how to live: Plato’s The Republic. 3. How we live—thinking about the good life today: Delbanco’s The Real American Dream and Wolfe’s Moral Freedom.

The Figure of the Priest in American Culture
The Humanities Seminar for 2006-2007 proposes to link cultural and religious studies in an effort that will allow students to read and respond to texts from multiple genres and media. We have chosen to examine the image of the priest in popular literature and film as well as in texts written by and for members of the priesthood. We choose this focal point because it has itself become such a field of contention in American society, raising issues of class and privilege, gender and sexual orientation, church and state. We anticipate that this controversy will fuel our theoretical discussions with an urgency that you are perhaps unaccustomed to and in some cases uncomfortable with. But the image of the priest is only one object of our study; we are also concerned with the practice reading and interpreting the sign systems of our culture and how they guide (manipulate?) our attempts to construct meaning.

Honor 253: Honors Science

The Good Life, The Good Body: Human Anatomy and Physiology
This course provides a study of the human body from the perspective of the areas of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Homeostasis is emphasized as the unifying principle. The balance of the body’s internal conditions is vital for personal health. And the wellbeing of mankind is strongly related to a healthy environment. Both of these areas encompass the ability to live “The Good Life.” Students will learn the structure and function of the body’s organ systems and how homeostasis regulates them for survival. They will gain direct application and hands on learning as topics apply to their own living of “The Good Life,” including an analysis of their own energy consumption and expenditure.

Ecology, Environment, Conservation: Preserving the Good Life
“The Good Life” means different things to different people when considering ecology, conservation and the environment.  Some may think about how their life may change in response to ecological and environment changes, and how the good life of other organisms might change.  Many do not consider the role that ecosystems and other environmental factors play in determining the quality or even existence of a Good Life. This course is a mixture of lecture, discussion and projects that explore the interactions between biological and physical components of the environment.  It examines impacts that humans have on the environment and their role in conserving it.  Through a group project, students explore competing ideas of how human impacts and conservation influence “The Good Life” for all living forms.

Theme: The Global Community:  2007-09

Courses will examine  the interactions of humans with each other and with their environment  from within a globalist perspective, and explore the dynamics and challenges of cross cultural encounter and negotiation.

Honor 150: Honors English

The Global Community
In this course we will apply the principles of clear, critical thinking and effective writing by engaging students as readers, writers, and researchers.  To this end, the course will examine the principles of rhetorical analysis via our selected theme:  The Global Community.  As we examine selected texts, we will raise questions that ask:  “What constitutes a community?  Does our definition exclude or incorporate particular values or experiences?   How are individuals represented if they are “outsiders”?  we define what is good, or is this decision made by other people or institutions? How is a  community’s dynamics affected by issues such as race, class, gender, culture and sexuality?  By raising these and other questions, we will explore the dynamics and challenges that distinguish communities.

Honor 151: Honors Philosophy

The Examined Life, see above (adapted to The Global Community theme)

Honor 152: Honors Social Science

International Relations
This course will focus on international relations and US foreign Policy.  The emphasis will be on what constitutes right action for the US in the context of international relations, from both an empirical and moral standpoint.  The course begins with several weeks focusing on dominant traditions in understanding international relations, and their current formulations.  John Mearsheimer, representing a traditional Realist position, will be contrasted with Joseph Nye’s more Institutionalist approach.  Both approaches will be examined for their visions of “how the world works,” and “how the world ought to work.”  Supplementary readings will examine notions of justice in international relations.  The remainder of the semester will examine specific issues facing the international community.  The topics will be taken for the 2008 Great Decisions Briefing Book, published by the Foreign Policy Association.  Students will be divided into groups, responsible for presenting the topic to the class, providing supplementary reading materials, and organizing class discussions of the topics. 

Honor 250: Honors Humanities

The Concept of “World Religions”
This course will explore the idea and implications of “world religions,” a category developed early in the history of comparative religious studies.  Applied initially to Buddhism, Christianity, and (with some hesitation) Islam, the term designates traditions founded on claims of universal applicability, envisioning a community that transcended tribal, ethnic and national boundaries.

Today the term has fallen into disuse, in part because of its associations with imperialist grand narratives.  Still, the term serves to identify a central and troubling tension:  the effort to establish a universally applicable body of worldviews, values and practices out of traditions that arose in particular historical and cultural milieus.  Through background lectures and discussion of primary texts from each of these traditions, this seminar will explore the implications of these religious tensions.  How do thinkers in the three religions view membership in a tradition, how do they work to adapt notions of community based on shared kinship, culture and geography?  How do they address values and practices outside their original linguistic and cultural milieu?  How do universal claims incorporate or exclude those who are not members of the community?

Honor 253: Honors Science

The Chemistry and Politics of Water
This course covers the chemistry of  water pollution science and also explores the political and ethical issues generated by attempts to preserve a resource that transcends state and national boundaries and that is crucial to all life on this planet.  Lectures and labs and fieldwork will explore the biological aspects of water pollution.   Readings will survey the history of legal regulations and rulings governing water use,  as well as corporate and cultural  practices related to the use and abuse of this global resource.