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 is the second 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 105. Offered for A-F grading only.

This is the second 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 105. Offered for A-F grading only.

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. Prerequisite HONR 120.

This is the second 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 105. Offered for A-F grading only.

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 is the second 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 105. Offered for A-F grading only.

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.

A year-long discussion-based seminar for juniors and seniors which concentrates on many of the world's greatest works of literature and intellectual history. Students purchase a hundred books, from ancient to contemporary times, written by such authors as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Goethe, Austen, Marx, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Freud, Woolf, Faulkner, O'Connor, Ishiguro, Murdoch, Byatt, and Pynchon. Students selected for this seminar will read a number of these books during the summer as well as the two semesters and the rest over the course of their lives. Applications will be solicited and invitations made by the instructor.

A year-long discussion-based seminar for juniors which concentrates on many of the world's greatest works of literature, political philosophy and intellectual history. Authors include Plato, Aristotle, Biblical writers, Augustine, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Goethe, Marx, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Freud, Woolf, Faulkner, O'Connor, Nadine Gordimer and Toni Morrison. Students selected for this seminar are asked to read a number of novels and plays to prepare themselves for participation. Interview required in the Spring semester of a student's sophomore year.

An in-depth study of great writers, texts, developments and ideas of our Judeo-Christian culture and its traditions. Fulfills the upper-division Theology Common Curriculum requirement.

This course explores the Jewish tradition, the emergence of Christianity within and from that tradition, the de-Judaization of Christianity, traditional Christian teachings about Judaism, anti-Jewish formulations of Christian faith, contemporary Christian affirmations of Judaism's abiding validity, and the implications of these new affirmations for Christian self-understanding and for Christian-Jewish relations. Prerequisite THEO 111 or HONR 240A or 240B.

This course explores the origins of the Gospels and the meaning of the teachings and deeds of Jesus as presented in the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Prerequisite: THEO 111 or HONR 240A or 240B.

An exploration of the theological and historical encounters between Judaism and Christianity, from the emergence of both Christianity and Judaism out of biblical religion, the disagreements and distancing of one faith from the other over the centuries, but culminating, in the late 20th century, in efforts at rapprochement and mutual acceptance. Prerequisite THEO 111 or HONR 240A or 240B.

This course explores perspectives on the meaning of the existence, nature, attributes, revelation, and presence of God. Emphasis is on Christian and Jewish theological perspectives, but views about God found in other religious traditions — especially Islam and Hinduism — are also examined. Special attention is given to what it means to have faith in God, the sources of and challenges to such faith, the variety of views about God, theological approaches to religious diversity, the relationship between morality and faith in God, the effects of scientific knowledge on beliefs about God, feminist critiques of and alternatives to traditional patriarchal perspectives on God, and the relationship between views about God and approaches to ecological issues. Prerequisite HONR 240A, 240B or THEO 111

Moral theology asks what religious faith means for living a good life for each person and for society as a whole. This course examines various visions of economic life held by religious people in the West, focusing on the Christian understanding of economic life. Prerequisite THEO 111 or HONR 240A or 240B.

Islam shapes much of our current political and social context: 9/11, the Arab spring, ISIS, the war in Syria, our complex relationship with Iran, all have a major impact on the world we live in. Islam is also the fastest growing faith, both globally and here in America. This course will focus on how Muslims have encountered God, how this encounter informs their daily lives, and how the traditions of Islam are influencing and informing (or not) current political and cultural events around the globe. Studying another faith tradition also provides a lens through which to examine one’s own faith and society, and an appreciation for the commonality of the human condition. Our study of Islam while looking at the particulars of that faith, will also raise a variety of broad questions, including the conflict of faith versus reason, the role and position of women, the rights of religious and cultural minorities, freedom of speech vs. religious respect, and multiculturalism vs. assimilation. Prerequisite HONR 240A or 240B or THEO 111 or THEO 100.

Given the inescapable complexities surrounding human sexuality, gender, and embodiment, how might we live and relate to one another in ways that are increasingly fulfilling, and in ways that deepen our relationships with ourselves, others, and God? This course will introduce students to the methodology of Christian ethics, i.e., the process of drawing upon sources of knowledge (scripture, tradition, reason, and contemporary experience) to formulate responses to contemporary issues regarding sexuality and relationships. Specifically, we will be exploring the concept of justice as it relates to sex, contemporary hookup culture, love, and relationships. In the end, students will be equipped to construct and articulate a compelling theological sexual ethic for college students in 2014. Prerequisite THEO 111 or HONR 240A or 240B.

This class will examine sacred texts from several of the world’s primary religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism). Each sacred text will be paired with a secondary text showing how the religion’s precepts are lived out in one particular historical and cultural context. The focus of the class will be on the texts themselves—what they teach about the human condition and how they function as sacred texts, in other words, what it means to be a "people of the book.” We will discuss how each religion started with an experience of the numinous and used lenses shaped by their particular historical and cultural context to explain that experience and its implications for how to live. Texts will include Job, excerpts from the Talmud and the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, Zen poems and koans, and the Tao Te Ching, as well as works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Luther, Wiesel, Rumi, Patanjali, Hesse, and Endo. The format will be a seminar, modeled after the Honors Great Books class. Prerequisite HONR 240A or 240B or THEO 111.

A study of great philosophers, literary authors and/or historians and their works. Fulfills one course of the Common Curriculum Humanities requirement.

Whether we're reading a book, watching television, going to the movies, attending a concert, visiting a museum or engaging in cultural criticism (!), we're involved in a process of negotiating and producing meaning, shaping and reshaping how we perceive ourselves and others and the core values that hold society together (or pull it apart). There are a lot of differing opinions about what "culture" is, and about why we should bother to study it at all. Mass, popular, and "high" culture are value-laden categories that further complicate the matter. And different critical approaches to culture carry with them distinct ethical and political objectives. It's no wonder that "culture" has been called one of the most complicated words in the English language. We will read and discuss book-length arguments in which the authors articulate a critique (analysis and social values-driven assessment) of one or more dimensions of the contemporary cultural environment, principally with reference to the United States. Readings will treat dimensions of cultural life in the U.S. such as television programming, popular musical forms, film representations of social experience, "high" vs. "low" culture in literary form, audio communication, technology in everyday life, Internet, and so on. Students will read and discuss (and critique) a variety of such culture critiques, representing a broad range of distinct critical perspectives on the lived cultural environment.

The artists of the Harlem Renaissance were quintessential “moderns,” they interrogated tradition, departed from past convention, and established a new vocabulary for expressing their “self-hood” in the United States. This course studies the art of the Harlem Renaissance from a rhetorical perspective. This means that we will analyze a diverse body of texts from the 1920s and 30s- literature and poetry, film, the blues, painting and photography- to gain insight into the social truths they establish and contest. Ultimately, our study of this period will help us discus fundamental questions about the relationship between public expression and public life, art and language, politics and identity.

What do you think you know and how do you think you know it? In this course we’ll explore the idea that acquiring knowledge is not as straightforward as it appears. We’ll be looking at the foundations of the academic experience and the different methods scholars use to support and maintain their research, including, among others, biologists, philosophers, historians, and economists. Two topics will guide our readings and discussions: one, the relationship between power and social inequity and two, the impossibility of conducting research free of social and ethical values. This course should be of interest to all majors and especially to those interested in thinking critically about implicit assumptions underpinning the professional pursuit of knowledge.

This course examines race as a social construction that 1) views human differences as reflections of essential inequality and 2) is used as a means of power. The course begins with a consideration of racial ideas and their development in the modern era, particularly in the context of the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the rise of pseudo-science in the nineteenth century. Race and racial ideology are viewed broadly and include a variety of biological-essentialist views of humanity and human value. Course topics include anthropometric categorization and ranking of human groups, gendered systems of inequality, eugenics, intelligence testing, inequality based upon skin color, and the social and political structures that arose from those ideas. The course addresses consequences and controversies arising from the application of racist ideas in human society, as well as challenges to the very concept of race. Students will engage materials and cases from various countries and cultures, including examples from the United States.

Responding to this question, the noted travel writer Pico Iyer has said, “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” But how might that happen? Since the end of the nineteenth century, our experience of travel has increasingly been shaped by an enormously lucrative tourism industry. We see and experience what profit-driven tour developers want us to see and experience. Then we go back for more. We look for ease and convenience, having long forgotten the etymological connection between “travail” and travel. Iyer’s comment is a timely reminder of the mindfulness that could (should?) be a part of our experience of travel. This course is an attempt to recuperate that mindfulness. How does travel affect us? This is the central question around which this course is organized. Taking a historical view of both the concept and the experience of travel, we will focus on what happens to our sense of ourselves and our world when we travel. The aim is to understand the motives, the enabling conditions (cultural and socio-economic), and the consequences of travel. Conceived in the spirit of T.S. Eliot’s famous comment that travel leads us back to the place we started from and enables us to see it “for the first time,” this course will examine not only the how travel can familiarize the strange, but—perhaps more importantly—how it can de-familiarize the known. The result, I hope, will give us a new sense of what it means to be a worldly person: not simply one who has seen the world, but one who has learned to see one’s own place from the perspective of others. Our readings will include a history of travel (Eric Zuelow, A History of Modern Tourism), some philosophy of travel (selected chapters from George Santayana’s The Philosophy of Travel, and Alain de Botton’s Art of Travel), and ancient and modern travel accounts. We will start with the The Odyssey and end with . . . I haven’t decided yet. Perhaps Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, a book that excoriates seekers of the sun-drenched, fun-filled vacation and lays bare the dissembling, exploitative underbelly of the global tourism industry. In between we will read excerpts from the writings of early travelers like Faxian (4th C), Xuanzang (7th C), and Ibn Battuta (14th C); selected portions of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters, 1716-18 (published in 1763), Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), and Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad (1869). We will read Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries (first published in 1995) and Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (1993) in their entirety. And because not all travel is voluntary, we will also read selected chapters of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) and some more recent accounts of forced migration.

An introduction to the Chinese philosophical tradition through selected foundational texts like the Tao Te Ching, the Chuang Tzu, the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch and selections from the writings of Chu Hsi. Students will also study early Chinese philosophical teachings concerning the nature of male and female and their appropriate social roles, contemporary analyses of the role Confucian teachings played in constructing these gender categories and institutions, and philosophical discussions of the compatibility of Confucian teachings with contemporary (Western) egalitarian gender sensibilities.

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. Prerequisites HONR 105, HONR 201-204, HONR 300. Offered for A-F grading only.

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. Prerequisites HONR 105, HONR 201-204, HONR 300. Offered for A-F grading only.

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. Prerequisites HONR 105, HONR 201-204, HONR 300. Offered for A-F grading only.

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.

Analysis of societal and personal ethical issues. Topics are interdisciplinary and are chosen because they defy easy answers and widen the field of moral vision. This honors course fulfills the Common Curriculum Ethics Common Seminar requirement.

The word “professional” today connotes an individual with well-developed skills, specialized knowledge, and expertise, who conforms to the standards of a profession. The original meaning of “professional” as one who “makes a profession of faith” in the face of demanding circumstances has been all but lost in the medical profession. This class will use the burgeoning literature of medicine, written by, for, and about medical professionals, in order to explore the full range of “professional” challenges facing today’s medical professionals. The practice of medicine is rife with ethical dilemmas. By exploring the efforts of medical professionals to counter the institutional forces that constrain them and to find their own solid ground to stand upon, this course aims to cultivate the habit of moral reflection in future medical professionals. Although this course will primarily focus on the experiences of medical doctors, it should also be of interest to those aspiring to other medical and non-medical careers.

Few issues are as fundamental to human life as justice: everyone is in favor of it. Yet few issues are as controversial: justice has widely divergent meanings for different people. This course will examine in detail five rival understandings of justice prevalent in debates today. Students will read two novels, and five philosophical or theological treatments of the notion of justice in our joint efforts to come to grips with what justice means in our lives: personally and on a national and global scale. Like all Senior Seminars, the goal of this course is to improve each student’s ability to make good moral judgments.

Everyone loves a good story. Great stories can provide us with far more than mere recreation. Stories can provide us with rich character portraits that can reveal the subtleties and nuances of what it means to live well and responsibly. In this course we'll use novels and films to address Socrates' most basic ethical questions, "How should one live?" and "What sort of person should I be?" We'll do so by attending to all the concrete, particular details of real life and fictional characters thoroughly embroiled in the "business of living." Reading well offers the possibility of vicarious experience and ultimately, ethical insight. 
Our readings will include: The Crucible (Arthur Miller),
Ransom (David Malouf),
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro),
Beloved (Toni Morrison),
Hecuba (Euripides),
How To Be Good (Nick Hornby),
Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet), and
Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier).

Our course examines the ethical issues of the conduct and representation of war from the Great War (WWI) to today's "war on terrorism." Our theme follows that shift of strategy from targeting military casualties to the predominant emphasis on civilian casualties as evident in the case studies of the Vietnam War, WWI, the Holocaust, the Troubles in Ireland, and the wars of genocide in our time - Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the post-Cold War conflicts of Russia, and the "war on terrorism."

In the United States today, most citizens tend to take for granted that liberty and equal treatment are fundamental parts of a just society. But if asked what, exactly, these core values amount to, many citizens would have difficulty providing clear and informed answers. The purpose of this class is to provide young citizens with an introduction to important conceptions of freedom and equality embedded in the Western tradition of political philosophy as well as to some challenges that modern societies face trying to meet the requirements of both.

Who can deny that human lives and character are fragile? A glance at victims of rape, genocide, war, oppression, betrayal, and tragic loss suggests we are vulnerable. Yet various lines of thought have suggested that this needn't be so. Some Eastern religions have promised relief from suffering through enlightenment, and the Judeo-Christian tradition has pointed to faith and divine grace as a balm for suffering and a shield against the same. Roman and Greek schools of thought have aimed at forms of detachment and serenity that might render people invulnerable. Using psychology, memoir, philosophy, fiction and film sources, we'll consider ways in which human lives and character can be compromised and disintegrated. We'll also consider strategies designed to render us less vulnerable or invulnerable.

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 Learning Integrations and required for students entering the Honors Program in Fall 2020 and later. Prerequisite JN or SR standing and HONR 105, HONR 201-204, HONR 300, HONR 375-379. Offered for A-F grading only.