HONORS COURSE ADDENDUM – SPRING 2015
(INCLUDING ENGL 105 AND ENGL 205 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS)
ANTH162Varieties of Human Experience
Hours: 3Goal: AE42 / GE3H / GE3S / NW / S / W
Class: 50246Instructor(s): Metz,Brent ETime: W 2:00 -2:50 PM
Description: This course offers “(a) global perspective on the variety of ways in which people organize their lives and conceptualize their world. Sample religious beliefs and philosophical ideas from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, native America, and Western Civilization are examined with the purposes of appreciating different ways of being human and considering how different cultures can co-exist and communicate peacefully in the contemporary world.” In this era of globalization and expanding communication, in which virtually everything we buy, sell, and express enmeshes us in global social webs, it is more imperative than ever that we understand the world’s populations. Anthropology is unique in its unprejudiced attention to all populations throughout history and around the globe – rich and poor, powerful and disadvantaged.To make sense out of the varieties of human experience, you’ll need a toolkit of anthropological concepts provided in class lectures and the readings.Any concepts and information that help us understand others will help us understand ourselves as humans, so they will be useful not only to any future anthropology courses that you might take, but to your careers and lives beyond the classroom.We will approach different societies not as fascinating curiosities, but as varying expressions of our common humanity that inform our own potential and limitations. By the end of the semester, you should be better able to appreciate human cultural diversity, your place in world history, and the responsibility that goes with it. If you apply yourself in this course, you will enhance your social sensitivity, curiosity about the world, ability to “think outside the box”, sense of human history, accuracy in interpreting others’ behaviors, organizational skills, critical reading skills, and logical thinking.Two major challenges will be to overcome a) the naïve assumption that our way of life is inevitable, progressive, and superior to all others, and b) the equally invalid proposition that all other cultures lead to perfectly functioning societies.
ENGL 105Freshman Honors English: The Short Story
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies Goal 2.1 of the CORE
Class: 57846Instructor(s): Carothers, JamesTime: MWF 10:00 -10:50 AM
Description: This course will examine the development of the American short story.
ENGL 205Freshman Honors English: Ways of Seeing
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies 1.1, 2.1 and 3.1 of the CORE
Class: 51878Instructor(s): Klayder, MaryTime: MWF 10:00 -10:50 AM
Description: The course will focus on the concepts of perception, perspective, and vision in literature. How do we see things? How do we view the world? How does literature show our different ways of seeing? We will consider different perceptions of art, nature, gender, and culture; we will investigate various cultural and personal perspectives; and we will address the notion of vision as a metaphor in literature. There will be four papers, a final exam, a project, and assorted short assignments throughout the semester.
Texts: Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; Donne, Selected Poetry; Dickinson, The Collected Poems; Edson, Wit; Joyce,A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Woolf, To The Lighthouse; Whitehead, The Intuitionist; Garcia, The Aguero Sisters;Silko, Storyteller, selected essays and poetry handouts.
ENGL 205Freshman Honors English: Digitizing Faulkner
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies 1.1, 2.1 and 3.1 of the CORE
Class: 63798Instructor(s): Lester, CherylTime: TR 11:00 -12:15 PM
Description: The seminar will focus on William Faulkner's 1929-1932 novels from Flags in the Dust to The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, and Light in August as well as a few of Faulkner’s short stories in view of current methods in the digital humanities for the organization and interpretation of literary texts. As a Faulkner scholar, the instructor is currently collaborating with the University of Virginia’s Digital Media Lab, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and SHANTI, to create a database and visual resources from the 15 novels and 48 stories that Faulkner set in the mythical Mississippi county of Yoknapatawpha. Students can expect to discuss and write about one of the most significant and influential authors of the 20th century and about innovative uses of technology in the field of literary studies.
ENGL 205Freshman Honors English: Literature of Race in America
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies 1.1, 2.1 and 3.1 of the CORE
Class: 61803Instructor(s): Fowler, DoreenTime: TR 11:00 -12:15 PM
Description: Course description: What is race? What is whiteness? Is race an essential identity? Is it socially constructed? Is race a form of ethnicity? And what role does political struggle play in the construction of race? These are questions that theorists of race are currently debating. In “The Literature of Race in America,” our objective will be to locate the theories of race difference that inform the works of white and black, fiction and non-fiction writers. We will examine how these writers question, critique, and counter the troubling Western notion that racial identities depend on difference and that difference is secured by the exclusionary tactics of racism. The course will be discussion-based.
Course requirements will include two papers (approximately 5-6 typewritten pages); response papers; quizzes; and a midterm and take-home final exam.
Texts: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; Mark Twain, Puddn’head Wilson; Nella Larsen, Passing; William Faulkner, Selected Short Stories; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me; and Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark and "Recitatif."
ENGL 205Freshman Honors English: Nature, Technology and Literature
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies 1.1, 2.1 and 3.1 of the CORE
Class: 63799Instructor(s): Drake, Phillip Time: TR 11:00 – 12:15 PM
Description: This course examines the ways conceptions of both nature and humanity develop and evolve alongside technological changes in recent centuries, as well as the implications of these changes in both historical and contemporary contexts. We will explore these issues through a diverse set of texts that include environmental literature, science fiction, science writing, and more. These genres each introduce conventions and perspectives that texture articulations of natural-ness and human-ness. Our inquiries and discussions will cover a range of subjects, including questions about literary and rhetorical conventions, scientific practices, economic enterprise, colonialism, globalization, gender, race, and individuality. The broader goal of the course is to foster critical tools and perspectives to better conduct ourselves as social and ecological actors. Assignments will include three major papers, a final exam, a presentation, and several informal reaction papers.
Texts: Shelley, Frankenstein; Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Le Guin, Word for World is Forest, Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; Gibson, Neuromancer; and shorter works will be posted on Blackboard.
ENGL 205Freshman Honors English: Writing the Self
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies 1.1, 2.1 and 3.1 of the CORE
Class: 61653Instructor(s): Graham, Maryemma Time: MW 7:35-8:50 AM
Description: This course will look at the literature of autobiography and involve students in writing both criticism and autobiography.
ENGL 360 / HNRS 492Travel Writing and Costa Rica (otherwise known as Pura Vida)
Instructor(s): Klayder, Mary
Description: Winter break plus Monday 5-6 between October 20 and December 1. The spring 2015 course and overseas twelve-day program offers students the opportunity to investigate a variety of current issues in Costa Rican politics, culture, ecology and tourism through lectures, field trips to sites of interest and individual research projects.
ENGL 492 / HNRS 492The London Review
Instructor(s): Klayder, Mary
Description: The London Review will allow students to plan and research a visit to London, to spend Spring Break of 2015 visiting London, and to create a publication of reviews and essays about their stay. Students will spend the weeks in the semester before Spring Break deciding on the productions and exhibits they plan to visit. They will conduct research on those events, each student specializing in a particular aspect of the visit. After returning from London, the class will spend the remainder of the semester publishing the London Review 2015. Each student will be responsible both for writing reviews and for helping to put together the journal.
ENGL 598Honors Pro-Seminar: Mapping London: The City, The Century, and The Literature of Change
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies Goal 6 of the CORE
Class: 61463Instructor(s): Klayder, MaryTime: MW 11:00 -12:15 PM
Description: This course will examine London through literature of the twentieth century, beginning with Virginia Woolf and ending with Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan. We will discuss the effect of war and political change on the long and pervasive history of the London landscape. We will also explore how that space has absorbed and accommodated demographic and cultural differences. We will read a number of books together including such titles as Mrs. Dalloway, The Heat of the Day, The Buddha of Suburbia, Small Island, White Teeth, Life after Life, and Saturday (some of these titles might change). We will also discuss the ways in which different genres have both presented and critiqued the London spaces. In class discussions and assignments and through individual projects, we will look at various forms of fiction, including the popular British mystery, as well as drama, nonfiction, poetry, and film as vehicles for the London experience. In addition to weekly readings, students will write two short responses, provide leadership in at least two discussions, and complete an independent project within the framework of the topic. This course fulfills the Honors Pro-seminar requirement for Departmental Honors in English as well as the English 314 or equivalent requirement for the English major.
ENGL 598Honors Pro-Seminar: Reading and Writing Autobiography
Hours: 3Goal: Satisfies Goal 6 of the CORE
Class: 61462Instructor(s): Graham, Maryemma Time: MW 3:00 -4:15 PM
Description: This course will look at the genre of autobiography theoretically, critically, and creatively.
HNRS492Infomania: Information ManagementSAME AS JOUR 302 CLASS #62514
Hours: 3Goal: U
Class: 63118Instructor(s): Ward,Douglas BTime: TR 1:00 -2:15 PM
Description: Information forms the heart of modern society, and individual success depends on developing solid strategies for finding, scrutinizing, interpreting, and presenting information. That’s the focus of Infomania. The class emphasizes the use of research, creative thinking and digital tools to solve problems and answer questions, challenging students to develop individual and group projects to meet learning goals they set for themselves. The class helps students become better researchers, better consumers of information, and better users of digital tools to help them make sense of their disciplines and the world. Prerequisite: JOUR 101. Students must be admitted to the School of Journalism or Journalism minor or in an approved concentration in order to enroll in JOUR 302. Not open to seniors.
HNRS492Citizen Philanthropy
Hours: 3Goal: U
Class: 64699Instructor(s): Stroup,Kala MaysTime: TR 2:45 -4:00 PM
Description: Service learning and civic leadership need to be grounded in knowledge about nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. This diverse, dynamic, and vital social sector has over 13 million paid professionals, $1.6 trillion in annual revenue and $4 trillion in assets with over 65 million volunteers who go to Darfur, work in food banks, deliver health services, protect our environment, uphold laws, defend basic human rights, work with youth, families and children and enrich our communities. Citizen generosity is a shared value and an investment in the health of our democracy and our future. This senior level honors course will explore the historic and economic roots of citizen generosity and the role the nonprofit/philanthropic sector has played in the development of this country.
This capstone course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the social context and structure of nonprofit organizations. This class will assist college students in transitioning to a lifetime of meaningful civic engagement as volunteer and community leaders. Basic research skills utilizing original materials and web sites, advanced communication strategies in interviewing and presentations, competencies needed for effective volunteer leadership, integration of disciplines, and knowledge about the nonprofit and philanthropic sector will be the learning outcomes. This course could be preparation for meaningful consideration of working professionally in nonprofit/philanthropic organizations or engaging in community service internships. There is no textbook, students will utilize multiple sources of data and information. This course meets the requirements of a service-learning component for KU certification.
Kala M. Stroup, a national leader in the nonprofit sector and former University President, will teach this course. Kala M. Stroup was a KU Watkins Scholar and participated in the early days of the KU Honors program as student, faculty and staff adviser. She has served as a faculty member at four universities and has served as a consultant at numerous universities in designing courses and academic programs around this subject/professional area.
HNRS495Exploring Public Service Internships
Hours: 3Goal: U
Class: 60677Instructor(s): Stroup,Kala MaysTime: By Appointment
Description: Identifying academic interests and the right internship opportunities in the public service might be a challenge: this tutorial is meant to help students articulate service and learning experiences. Using her contacts and experience as a national leader in the nonprofit/philanthropic/public service area, Dr. Stroup assists students in identifying internship opportunities in the public service arena that will be meaningful and have a significant impact both in a students’ academic career and beyond
HNRS495Non-Profit Leadership
Hours: 3Goal: U
Class: 63089Instructor(s): Stroup,Kala MaysTime: By Appointment
Description: Designed to be a follow-up to Honors 492: Citizen Philanthropy for research or more in depth development of competencies and leadership in public service.
JOUR302Infomania: Information ManagementSAME AS HNRS 492 CLASS #63118
Hours: 3Goal: GE11
Class: 62514Instructor(s): Ward,Douglas BTime: TR 1:00 -2:15 PM
Description: Information forms the heart of modern society, and individual success depends on developing solid strategies for finding, scrutinizing, interpreting, and presenting information. That’s the focus of Infomania. The class emphasizes the use of research, creative thinking and digital tools to solve problems and answer questions, challenging students to develop individual and group projects to meet learning goals they set for themselves. The class helps students become better researchers, better consumers of information, and better users of digital tools to help them make sense of their disciplines and the world. Prerequisite: JOUR 101. Students must be admitted to the School of Journalism or Journalism minor or in an approved concentration in order to enroll in JOUR 302. Not open to seniors.
LAT 109Elementary Latin II
Hours: 3Goal: U
Class: 61282Instructor(s): Scioli, EmmaTime: TR 10:00 -10:50AM
Description: Course Goals are to learn the basics of Latin grammar, to develop an appreciation for the beauty, influence, and value of Latin, to develop oral comprehension of Latin and to learn its pronunciation, to understand the cultural context of the Latin language, and to develop and exercise certain mental disciplines, such as attention to detail, logic, and critical thinking.
MGMT499Business Policy & Strategy
Hours: 3Goal: AE61 / GE11
Class: 64580Instructor(s): Curless,Cathleen STime: MW 9:30 -10:45 AM
Description: Business Policy & Strategy is a “capstone” class. It draws from the knowledge acquired through other required business classes including marketing, finance and quantitative methods and exposes students to the role of general management in business organizations. General Managers must view a business entity as a whole while participating in the analysis, decision-making and implementation of strategic choices that allow the business to create and sustain competitive advantages.
Reading List: Strategic Management (text and cases) by Dess, Lumpkin, Eisner & McNamara
REL 125Understanding The Bible
Hours: 3Goal: AE42 / GE3H / H / HR
Class: 66001Instructor(s): Zahn, MollyTime: TR 9:30-10:45 AM
Description: This course is designed to introduce you to the academic study of the literature of the Hebrew Bible (Jewish Tanakh/Christian Old Testament) and the New Testament. The Bible is not a single book in our modern sense of the word. Rather, it is a collection of books that vary widely in age, form, purpose, and point of view. We will concentrate on recovering and analyzing the perspectives and goals of various texts within their original historical context: Why were they composed? What situations did they address? What issues were their authors particularly concerned about? How do they relate to other texts both inside and outside the
Bible? We will also consider what it means to “understand” the Bible and how ways of understanding vary across historical and cultural contexts.
SPAN213Intermediate Spanish I
Hours: 3Goal: AE42 / U
Class: 62017Instructor(s): Postma-Carttar,RosaleaTime: MWF 11:00 -11:50 AM
Description: Spanish 213 is a web-based intermediate language course designed to expand upon elementary Spanish communicative proficiency with an emphasis on using and enhancing your Spanish language skills to achieve a more global understanding of the issues faced by the many unique groups that share Spanish as a common language. Overall, Spanish 212/213 aims to weave together content language learning and interactive information-exchange tasks to enhance your communicative proficiency.
Assignments: There are online practice activities assigned as homework, and in-class task-based activities based on content from Acceso. (See Reading List.)
Reading List: SPAN 213 uses our open access online curriculum Acceso --
Take a look!
THR 305Science & Theatre Arts
Hours: 3Goal: H
Class: 64812Instructor(s): Staniunas, JohnTime: MW 1:00 -2:15 PM
Description: Are plays about science firmly grounded in historical accuracy? What is “discovery in science” and why is it so important for a scientist to be first? The last ten years have seen an explosion of plays about science written for the theatre. This course will explore plays related to science and scientific theory. Of special interest is the playwright’s intent in writing about the subject matter and how science is presented through dramatic events, real or fabricated.