Honors Seminars

Each year faculty design new courses for the Honors Program. These seminars are intended to give students the opportunity to be actively responsible through discussion, independent work, and formal presentations, in developing new areas of knowledge, making intensive studies of topics only lightly covered elsewhere, or examining an issue from a wide range of perspectives. Honors seminars emphasize the development of critical thinking abilities.  The seminars are offered most often at the 200-level and are designed to allow all Honors students, regardless of class year, to participate.  Seminars carry three hours of credit and often satisfy one of the College’s general education requirements.  Seminars may also fulfill requirements for a departmental major or minor at the discretion of individual departments.

Scheduled Seminars 2007 - 2008
FALL
HNRS 189.01: Women, Sport and Film: Issues and Images
Instructor: Prof. Jennifer Crispen
TR 1:15 - 2:30
The mythical Amazons removed a breast to make shooting a bow easier. Is this a heroic gesture, or a reinforcement of societal values dictating that powerful women are less feminine? We’will examine films featuring women and sport and relate images to social boundaries facing women. What values do we place on female athleticism? Why are athletic norms defined in masculine terms?  Among concerns about athletics and women is the social connotation of being an athlete. Examining the perceptions of women as athletes presented in film and media is the beginning of an intellectual process leading to critique of social norms. Why do they exist, and how will they change? Should they change?

HNRS 307.01: Literary Art Criticism
Instructor: Prof. Marie-Therese Killiam
M 1:30 - 4:20
This course will be a study of commentaries on works of art by various writers such as literary writers Diderot, Baudelaire, Eluard, and Goethe, on one hand, and literary critics such as Freud, Baudrillard, Derrida, Kristeva, and Serres on the other. Some artists’ commentaries will also be included. Students will learn how to analyze art by comparing and applying certain perspectives to their commentaries. The objective is to arrive at the understanding that the work of art is an interactive text that is affected by the critic. We will see how “salon” essays by writers promoted or demoted artists and we will look at some critical essays by postmodern critics such as Baudrillard and Bourdieu regarding the “fetishization” of the work of art in our contemporary culture. 

HNRS 299.01: Special Topics
Instructor: Prof. Alice McLean
W 1:30 - 4:20
Topics will vary by semester and will concentrate on interdisciplinary studies in the humanities. Course to be taught by the Honors Fellow and may be repeated when the topic is different. Offered alternate years.

SPRING
HNRS 243.01: Speculative Fiction: From Dragons to Cyborgs
Instructor: Prof. Marcia Robertson, robertson@sbc.edu
TR 2:45-4:00PM
Both science fiction and fantasy create worlds that diverge or extrapolate from the realities of the world in which we live.  This course examines the critical and consoling functions of such speculative landscapes.  What are the functions of magic and dragons?  How do alternative worlds embody and revise conventional gender and race relations?  What are the consequences of capitalism, of technologies of creation or destruction; what are the responses to postmodern notions of language and selfhood?  This course is primarily a literature course, but we will be viewing some film versions of literary texts.  Gen Ed Reqs: V2 V5

HNRS 244.01: Hunger Artists
Instructor: Alice McLean
MW 2:30 - 3:45
This course will examine the figure of the hunger artist to illuminate the relationship among hunger, creativity, embodiment, and identity. The hunger artists under consideration will include the self-consuming figure who starves to produce art, the vampire who ingests the blood of others to produce the eternal self, and the suffragettes who practiced hunger strikes to voice political dissent. Gen Ed Reqs:    V1 V2 

HNRS 306.01: Neuroscience of Learning and Memory
Instructor: Prof. Dan Gottlieb, dgottlieb@sbc.edu
R 2:45 - 5:30
This course covers the biological bases of learning and memory. Topics include the cellular changes thought to underlie the species-general psychological phenomena of acquisition, extinction, and spatial learning, as well as the brain areas and systems relevant to human memory processes. An emphasis will be placed on the sometimes contentious interplay between the psychologists and neurobiologists who research these topics.  In this course, we will critically analyze major points of contention to address the question: If our understanding of the link between brain and behavior is incorrect or incomplete, what might take its place?  In search of an answer, we will look at how the problem of memory storage and retrieval has been solved in another domain, computer science. Gen Ed Reqs: V8A