This 4-credit course will be taken in the student’s first year. It is capped at 18 students. It functions as both an introduction to their general education experience at a Catholic, Benedictine college, and as a writing-intensive course. Students will demonstrate reflection on their learning through the use of an Integrated Portfolio. The topics of these courses are diverse and intended to be taught by faculty from across all divisions. Offered for A-F grading only.

In this course, students will learn why gender, race or ethnicity, in isolation, is insufficient to conceptualize either individual or social identity. Students will learn to think critically about their own gender, racial and ethnic identities as well as identify the social and cultural factors that shape and contribute to each. The ways in which gender, race and ethnicity intersect will be given prominent attention in this class, as will the ways these features relate with issues of power and justice in the contemporary United States. The course will introduce students to process and value-based, collaborative theory of leadership directed at improving local communities. This course is equivalent to CSD: I. Required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students take this course in the spring of their first year. Offered for A-F grading only.

Approximately 2.3 million people are incarcerated  in state and federal prisons, county and local jails, juvenile correctional facilities, and immigrant detention facilities. There are more Americans on parole, on probation, or incarcerated – about 6.9 million people – than were enslaved in the decade before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)  – about 4 million people. Just as slavery was one of the defining issues of the early United States, mass incarceration is one of the defining issues of today’s United States. How did the “land of the free” become the land of the incarcerated? To answer this question, we will study incarceration in the United States from the nation’s first prisons built during the late eighteenth century to the spaces of confinement that arose during the “Global War on Terror” at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We will investigate connections that link incarceration with American freedom and the penitentiary with American culture and society. We will also explore the alleged purposes of incarceration and the experiences of incarcerated individuals.

The United States is growing more diverse year by year and seemingly more divided as well. What does solidarity look like in a profoundly diverse and deeply divided society? How can people work together for social justice together with members of different identity groups? In this course, students will examine gender, race, ethnicity and class in the United States as forces that shape individual and group identities in ways that both unite and divide us. Students will learn to think critically about their own gendered, racial, ethnic and class identities; understand the social and cultural factors that shape and contribute to each of these identities; examine case studies of inter-group efforts to create justice; and gain experience with resources to foster meaningful solidarity practices that can help to bring about social change.

What challenges arise when new arrivals make a community more diverse? What strategies can help a historically homogenous community welcome racial and religious diversity? In this course, we will not just study the challenges to integrating newcomers, we will take a collaborative leadership approach that directly serves needs identified by our Somali-American neighbors. Midnimo is Somali for unity. We will ask if our region can have Midnimo, a unity that transcends racial, cultural, and religious differences. Students will read texts on the experiences of Somali-Americans in our region as well as scholarship on the relationship between community membership and identity. Through these texts, students will explore the processes that shape gender and racial constructions and identify how those processes shape the ways Somali refugees navigate resettlement in Minnesota.

This course explores philosophical questions surrounding race and ethnicity and gender and how the boundaries around these identities are enforced and resisted. We examine the historical evolution of racial and gender concepts up to the present day. This deeper philosophical understanding will be used to discuss contemporary topics like disparities in health, immigration policies, and barriers to political participation.

Women, men, and aliens. This sounds more like a reality tv show than a college class, but in fact, it is a popular culture course that offers students a way to explore their personal identities. Through the critical examination of novels, short stories, and movies, students will be asked to think about their own gendered, racial, and ethnic identities. This discussion-based class will also push students to examine the influence of society and culture on identity.

In this course, we will examine psychological research and practice through the lens of gender. We will explore gender as a psychological and social construct that influences our experiences in a number of contexts. The course will address how gender, as a social identity, relates to privilege, oppression, and emotional well-being. Sample topics include: gender roles, stereotypes, gender socialization, and gender inequality. Moreover, we will take an intersectional perspective, attending to the complex ways that gender combines with race and other social identities. As we engage with a broad survey of scholarship on the psychology of gender, we will grapple with controversial issues confronting the field of psychology and consider both personal and professional applications. The course will introduce students to a process and value-based, collaborative theory of leadership directed at improving local communities, a feature of all HONR 120 courses.

This course covers the past and present of medicine in the United States, paying special attention to ways in which ideas of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity intersect to shape medical practice and the experiences of patients and doctors alike. Topics include gender and racial dynamics in the shift from midwifery to obstetrics; barriers to medical education for women and Black students; eugenics and medical experiments like the Tuskegee study; and debates surrounding LGBTQ+ health care.

This course is an introduction to the field of anthropology. Anthropology is a holistic and comparative study of human diversity. Students will examine cross-cultural examples to shed light on all aspects of human life and culture from race, gender, identity and ethnicity, to language and religion, to technology and medicine, to the study human evolution and variation. Ethnographic examples stemming from both the United States as well as around the world allow students to reflect on their own identities and cultural contexts. It is often in comparison that we can see how our own cultural lens and experiences have shaped our perspectives of the world.

This is the second course in the Honors sequence. These courses are team-taught by one Human Experience instructor and one instructor from a different Way of Thinking. The two instructors will develop discipline-specific learning goals for use in the course. These courses are equivalent to a Thematic Encounter in that they are taught through two Ways of Thinking and investigate the theme of truth in the context of scholarly communities. One section of HONR 200-204 is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students take this course during their sophomore year.

This is the third course in the Honors sequence. The course is team-taught by one Human Experience instructor and one instructor from a different Way of Thinking. The two instructors will develop discipline-specific learning goals for use in the course. This course is equivalent to a Thematic Encounter in that it is taught through two Ways of Thinking and investigates the theme of truth in the context of scholarly communities. One section of HONR 200-204 is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students take this course during their sophomore year. Prerequisite HONR 120.

An examination of the complex reasons that people discard, modify, or retain their beliefs in the face of new evidence. We will use controversies about heliocentrism, evolution, and climate change as our main case studies. With hands on research-based activities, students develop their understanding of astronomy, evolution, and climate science. Through investigation of the historical contexts in which the science was contested, students analyze how complex social and cultural factors have influenced the application and acceptance of scientific knowledge. Students will compare controversies within the scientific community with controversies between scientists and non-scientists, and will discuss the critical need for scientific literacy among those making decisions.

This is the second course in the Honors sequence. The course is team-taught by one Human Experience instructor and one Artistic Expression instructor. The two instructors will develop discipline-specific learning goals for use in the course. This course is equivalent to a Thematic Encounter in that it is taught through two Ways of Thinking and investigates the theme of truth in the context of scholarly communities. One section of HONR 200-204 is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students take this course during their sophomore year.

The philosopher Gaile Pohlhaus describes propaganda as “rhetoric that is intended to move its audience directly to action, bypassing the capacity to deliberate.” This course explores how propaganda functions in the contemporary United States, with a focus on its connections to power, language, and community. In this course, we will ask: What is propaganda and how is it related to truth? What is the relationship between propaganda and art? Is propaganda always bad? How is it used by those already in power to maintain support for the status quo? How has the internet and social media contributed to the manipulation of public opinion? How can we recognize when we are being manipulated or lied to? How does propaganda differ from the free exchange of ideas that is essential to democracy? How does propaganda work to divide and create communities? We will examine rhetorical and formal choices to understand the power of language to persuade and coerce. We will explore, through the study and writing of poetry and creative nonfiction, how creative works can function both as propaganda and invite attention and deliberation.

This team-taught course combines history, art, and activism. Students will examine the texts and images of social movements past and present through the lens of the women who shaped them. They will learn not only about social movements and their impact, but also learn to understand the role of art in shaping social and political change. This course responds to current events and student interest, thus the content may shift from year to year. What will not shift is the learning and application of formal analysis and contextual analysis. There will be required field trips on and off campus.

Musicals are a true American art form like jazz and the blues. From the very first musical Oklahoma!, they incorporated aspects of American culture and social issues. This course will examine how history and theater when combined weave a tale of the American experience, based in truth, but presented through an artistic lens. The course will begin with a comparison of the musicals 1776 and Hamilton, move to Oklahoma! and South Pacific and end with Hairspray.

This is the third course in the Honors sequence. The course is team-taught by one Human Experience instructor and one Abstract Structures instructor. The two instructors will develop discipline-specific learning goals for use in the course. This course is equivalent to a Thematic Encounter in that it is taught through two Ways of Thinking and investigates the theme of truth in the context of scholarly communities. One section of HONR 200-204 is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students take this course during their sophomore year.

HONR 204A Gender, Mathematics, and Who Gets to Be a Mathematician (4 Credits) This seminar explores how we choose to do mathematics. Most people think of mathematics as a cut-and-dried field where there’s only one right answer. But it turns out that how we choose to do mathematics impacts what mathematics we do and who does the mathematics. We will explore several different philosophies of teaching mathematics, doing and re-doing some basic number theory through the lens of each teaching philosophy to illustrate how the learning experiences differ. Throughout all of this, we will analyze how gender and culture affect and are affected by the choice of teaching philosophy.

Supervised reading or research at the lower-division level. Permission of the director of honors and undergraduate research required. Not available to first-year students.

This is the third course in the Honors program. In this course, students will demonstrate an understanding of how constructions of race, gender and ethnicity shape cultural rules and biases and how these constructions vary across time, cultures and societies. In addition, students will critically analyze the ways in which these forms of identity raise questions of justice with regard to access and participation in communal life. This class may address gender, race and ethnicity in any context, including the contemporary United States, other nations or cultures, and/or various points in history. This course is equivalent to Cultural and Social Difference: Systems. This course is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students take this course during their sophomore year, either semester.

Are communities responsible for redressing injustices in their past? For almost a century, the United States pursued a policy of forcing Native youth to assimilate to White American culture. The principle method was family separation. The government mandated that Native families send their children to boarding schools designed to force assimilation. The Order of St. Benedict once operated two of these schools on our campuses and two others, based on the White Earth and Red Lake reservations. In this course, students will examine 1) the systematic injustices of Native American boarding schools, 2) the impacts of these schools on the construction and intersection of Native, racial, gender, religions and class identities, and 3) the ways Native communities resisted forced assimilation.

This course centers on queer theory, theory related to LGBTQ+ life and liberation. But in interplay with the concept of “intersectionality,” that lens which reveals the overlapping dynamics produced by the experience of more than one social oppression, this course traces intersecting theories and movements in work for social justice. Accordingly, the course has three units: Queer theory and activism in intersection with 1) critical race theory and anti-racist activism, 2) postcolonial theory and decolonial activism, 3) queer theologies and movements to interrupt Christian privilege. The course relies on a Social Justice Education framework in order to equip students to mobilize theory into practices for dismantling social oppressions.

This literature course deals with the ways authors dramatize and complicate competing views of the common good. Most of these stories are based on real historical events or are autobiographical to some degree, and they invite readers to weigh different moral positions. As a group, the texts deal with race, gender, class, sexuality, and ableism, all from an intersectional point of view. These texts help readers understand the complexities of moral life; they raise questions of justice with regard to access and participation; and they help readers see how different notions of the common good might or might not apply to their own circumstances.

This course focuses on Africa from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the present, focusing on how European pursuits of “guns, gold, and slaves” have affected African communities. Topics include how legal categories of “race” were created in Africa and the Caribbean; links between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism in Africa; how colonial law affected African women in Ghana and Nigeria; and intimate relationships in postcolonial Somalia. As we examine stories from African communities in the past, we will think about the factors that affect communities more broadly in the present. Activities include a mock trial and documentary project.

This is the fourth Honors course. Students will explore the privileges and responsibilities that come with community membership; the specific content and topics will be chosen by the instructor. Common to all sections is project-based learning in which students identify an authentic opportunity or challenge that would enhance the common good, thoroughly research it from all angles, and produce research papers and oral presentations. Equivalent to Thematic Encounter: Truth course in a Human Experience way of thinking. Includes Experiential Engagement. This course is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students ordinarily take this course during their junior year.

In this course, we examine how telling underrepresented histories can confront or ameliorate past wrongs and create more inclusive communities. A central feature of the course is student research into “community histories” of underrepresented or marginalized groups within CSB/SJU or the wider St. Joseph community. Students will conduct archival research in the CSB/SJU libraries and archives. Additionally, students may conduct oral history interviews either on campus or within the wider St. Joseph community more broadly to document additional histories that have been left out of the archive. Examples of possible research topics include the connection between CSB/SJU and the Bahamas; the history of Black student activism on campus; and the history of the Somali community in St. Joseph.

This is the fourth Honors course. Students will explore the privileges and responsibilities that come with community membership; the specific content and topics will be chosen by the instructor. Common to all sections is project-based learning in which students identify an authentic opportunity or challenge that would enhance the common good, thoroughly research it from all angles, and produce research papers and oral presentations. Equivalent to Thematic Encounter: Truth course in a Natural World way of thinking. Includes Experiential Engagement. This course is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students ordinarily take this course during their junior year. Prerequisites HONR 105, HONR 201-204, HONR 300. Offered for A-F grading only.

This is the fourth Honors course. Students will explore the privileges and responsibilities that come with community membership; the specific content and topics will be chosen by the instructor. Common to all sections is project-based learning in which students identify an authentic opportunity or challenge that would enhance the common good, thoroughly research it from all angles, and produce research papers and oral presentations. Equivalent to Thematic Encounter: Truth course in an Artistic Expression way of thinking. Includes Experiential Engagement. This course is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students ordinarily take this course during their junior year. Prerequisites HONR 105, HONR 201-204, HONR 300. Offered for A-F grading only.

This is the fourth Honors course. Students will explore the privileges and responsibilities that come with community membership; the specific content and topics will be chosen by the instructor. Common to all sections is project-based learning in which students identify an authentic opportunity or challenge that would enhance the common good, thoroughly research it from all angles, and produce research papers and oral presentations. Equivalent to Thematic Encounter: Truth course in a Social World way of thinking. Includes Experiential Engagement. This course is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students ordinarily take this course during their junior year.

This course focuses on understanding the ideas of wellbeing and happiness and the importance of those ideas for the social common good. In the process it seeks to develop an understanding the parameters that comprise individual and social wellbeing and happiness and how systemic and structural inequalities in social structures and institutions such as race, class and gender plague our societal wellbeing and threaten to challenge our success as a society. This course, based on the Social World Way of Thinking, is focused on developing an understanding of economic wellbeing and happiness, evaluating the role of public policy for enhancing socio-economic wellbeing and motivating students to become leaders advocating social justice and change in their communities. Students will research a challenge to the well-being of their community, analyze it using their knowledge from the course. identify appropriate steps through which action could be mobilized. Examples of problems could be a) the racial education gap in Saint Cloud; b) the gender gap in majors at CSB/SJU or c) unequal access to Covid-19 vaccination in the local community.

In this course, students will examine how a number of deep divisions in the American political community – divisions over race, religion, immigration, gender identity, political party, geography (urban versus rural), environmental policy, the distribution of wealth and power, and the fate of American democracy itself – manifest themselves not only nationally but also locally in our own community: within school boards, county commissions, city councils, meat packing plants, churches, community action groups, and more. Students will study the historical roots of these divisions and their current political manifestations, then research and formulate policy recommendations designed to the common good with respect to some specific issue affecting the local community. Students will then, individually and in teams, communicate their policy recommendations to local leaders and decision-makers such as state legislators, school board members, school superintendents, mayors, police chiefs, religious leaders, community activists, and employers. In doing so, students should expect to encounter significant disagreement from some of the community members whose support they hope to enlist for their proposed course of action. Students will thus learn how to speak with, listen to, and seek common ground wherever possible with people whose interests, life experiences, and understandings of the common good differ from their own.

This is the fourth Honors course. Students will explore the privileges and responsibilities that come with community membership; the specific content and topics will be chosen by the instructor. Common to all sections is project-based learning in which students identify an authentic opportunity or challenge that would enhance the common good, thoroughly research it from all angles, and produce research papers and oral presentations. Equivalent to Thematic Encounter: Truth course in an Abstract Structures way of thinking. Includes Experiential Engagement. This course is required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Students ordinarily take this course during their junior year.

Offered for S/U grading only.

Supervised reading or research at the upper-division level. Permission of the coordinator of honors and undergraduate research and completion (or concurrent registration) of 12 credits within the program required. Not available to first-year students.

This is the fifth Honors course and the capstone for the Honors program. In this course, students will integrate their previous course work and leadership development through project-based learning and their integrative essay. Students will select a single opportunity/challenge for the common good of the community based on one of the research papers produced in the various sections of HONR 360-364, design an approach, execute it and evaluate it. Equivalent to INTG 300- Learning Integrations and required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later.