Seminars and Forums
HON 270 – Honors Forum: Material Culture and Sustainability
It is easy to take for granted the stuff that surrounds us: tables and chairs, a bed, a couch, and various objects serving as ornaments to your living spaces. We are surrounded by stuff! Some of us keep more (hoarders) than others (minimalists), but all of us have stuff and most of it is used. But do we need it? Do we endow every object with the same value? Does the cost of an object impact its sentimental value? Do I define what objects mean, or do objects define us? Understanding material culture as “the study through artifacts of the beliefs-values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions- of a particular community or society at a given time,” we will endeavor to answer these questions to arm us with the tools necessary to access our campus’ use of material objects.
HON 100 – Honors Seminar: The Science of Chocolate Chip Cookies
Why do some recipes call for salted butter? Do we really have to refrigerate the dough overnight before baking scrumptious cookies? What would happen if we didn’t? What makes an ooey, gooey cookie so structurally different from a crisp cookie with a snap? In this course, we will explore the science of baking with at-home experiments and class readings, and investigate through the lens of the complex biological polymers found in the foods we create and enjoy.
HON 100 – Honors Seminar: Become a Scholar
This course will introduce you to new approaches to what knowledge is, how it is constructed, and how to engage critically and creatively in its production. You will thereby be introduced to the many ways in which honors education allows you to think outside of the box and to the supportive environment that empowers you to forge your unique path forward.
HON 100 – Honors Seminar: What is Pop?
From American pop’s origins in the racist tradition of blackface minstrelsy to the mass culture trend to label “pop” as that which appeals to a feminine audience, we will interrogate the dialogue (historically driven by a white male press) around American popular music, its origins, and its current and future tendencies.
HON 100 – Honors Seminar: Gender and Leadership
This course examines and discusses leadership from a gender-based perspective. Topics covered include leadership styles, communication, ethics, diversity and inclusion, stereotypes, power, conflict management, and teamwork.
HON 100 – Honors Seminar: Erasures, Absences, and Silences
The interconnected concepts of erasure, absence, and silence offer more than the eye can meet. Indeed, from veal parchments to contemporary efforts to reuse materials, the fabric of our very culture is made of build-overs, cover-ups, remixes, and another repurposing of what was to make what will be. Incidentally, this is also how knowledge is constructed: from the pieces of thoughts past without which our present and future could not be. This course aims at scratching the surface to see more of what our complex and layered culture is made of; it will also introduce students to new approaches to what knowledge is, how it is constructed, and how to engage critically and creatively in its production.