Fall 2020 Honors Colloquia Courses

All Honors College students are required to complete at least two Honors Colloquia courses. Colloquia courses count towards the 25 HONS credit requirement, and students may take additional Colloquia courses as an Honors elective. Colloquia courses do NOT count towards the College’s General Education requirements (with the exception of HONS 226, which counts towards the General Education History requirement).

***The prerequisite(s) for ALL Honors Colloquia Courses are as follows: Honors College Student, HONS 100, HONS 110, and at least one Honors Foundation course.

HONS 225-01 Designing Women: Perceptions, Reflections, and Self-Representation of the Western Female (Professor Jennifer Cavalli)
Three Credits

What are the role of religion, the state, and the family in shaping ideas about femininity? What accounts for changes and continuities in female gender roles and the regulation of female bodies? How have categories of womanhood and the imagery associated with them shaped experience and self-perception? This course explores political, religious, intellectual, cultural, and medical influences on the organization and regulation of women and gendered experience from the Classical to the Early Modern periods in Western Europe. It closely examines historic representations of women and of those persons represented as social or culturally different, and identifies and analyzes intersections of gender with other identity categories like race, social status, class, ethnicity, and religion. Topics include theories of gender; premodern medical theories; women’s legal, economic, and social statuses; religious experience and spiritual authority; women’s access to education and intellectual life; artistic, literary, and philosophical representations of women; and authorship, self-representation, and female agency during the pre-modern era. 

Teaching Format: Hybrid approach with both in-person class meetings and synchronous online class meetings, at the discretion of the instructor

HONS 225-02 The Religion of Trump (Professor Elijah Siegler)
Three credits
The past few years have seen significant discourse about the role religion has played in Donald Trump’s presidency. Why do some consider Trump chosen by God, whereas others see him as a “cult” leader? Why did 81% of white evangelicals vote for him in 2016, despite many people seeing him as biblically illiterate? What is Trump’s own religious background and how does that connect him to Oprah? How does the religious worldview of Trump’s VP, Attorney-General, and Secretary of State drive U.S. policy? How can studying American religious history and classical theories of religion help us understand Trump? Join this interdisciplinary, discussion-based class to find out. Expect exciting guest speakers and a flexible syllabus that will react to fast breaking news.

Teaching Format: The majority of class meetings will occur in-person, as able

HONS 225-03 Identity, Conflict, and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Professor Jennifer Cavalli)
Three Credits
This course examines the connections, conflicts, and exchanges among peoples, cultures, commodities, ideas, and beliefs among the four continents making up the Atlantic zone from initial encounters to the age of revolutions. Topics include geographical knowledge and navigation, early reactions to the opening of the Atlantic, voluntary and forced migration, trade, governmental structures, social and legal hierarchies, coerced and forced labor, religious beliefs and institutions, and the blending and redefining of cultural forms and identities in the creation of colonial societies in the early modern period.

Teaching Format: Hybrid approach with both in-person class meetings and synchronous online class meetings, at the discretion of the instructor

HONS 226-01/02/03 Foundations of Western Civilization Pre-Modern History (Professors Elisabeth van Meer and Bryan Ganaway)
Three credits
This interdisciplinary colloquium examines the development of Western civilization from its origins in the ancient Near East through the Renaissance and Reformation. It relates the arts, literature and philosophy of the Western world to their political, social and economic contexts.
This course counts towards the College’s General Education History requirement

Teaching Format (HONS 226-01 and 03): Hybrid approach with interactive Zoom lectures on Monday, Zoom break-out discussions on Wednesdays (so that students are able to chat in small groups), and then in-person class meetings on Fridays at which all the material can be concluded, final unclarities solved, deeper insights shared, etc.

Teaching Format (HONS 226-02): The majority of class meetings will occur in-person, as able

HONS 230-01 Banned Books that Shape(d) the World (Professor Marjory Wentworth)
Three Credits
Why is a text considered incendiary, offensive or dangerous? How does it reflect the culture in which it was produced? What is the political, religious, social context in which these writers/artists worked? This course examines a variety of texts that have been banned across several centuries and continents. Books have been seized or outlawed, classified as taboo, their author’s fined, jailed, tortured, exiled and killed throughout history under many different political, religious or moral regimes. The focus is literature from the past two centuries, spanning diverse cultural and political contexts, as well as some films. In America, many writers of our most beloved books have experienced the sting of censorship and distorted judgement aimed at their work. Recent contempt for the news media will be examined within its unique role in our democracy. We will also incorporate contemporary First Amendment issues – especially in terms of the internet (social media) and hate speech. The course will be organized around literature suppressed on political, religious, social and sexual grounds. We will begin the course by examining the origins of book banning in western culture, and we will end the course discussing contemporary issues around internet regulations.

Teaching Format: Hybrid approach with both in-person class meetings and synchronous online class meetings, at the discretion of the instructor

HONS 230-02 War, Memory, and Identity: Beyond Victims and Voices (Professor Marjory Wentworth)
Three Credits
A writing and research-intensive course which examines the ways in which artists in all genres, educators, students, and community advocates create empathy for all our citizens through “social action writing.” From the outset, we will ask ourselves, what is social action writing? What is the artist’s role in society? What stories do we want to tell, and how would these stories affect a collective consciousness? How do these stories reflect or reveal something that is part of our current socioeconomic reality? In order to answer these questions, students will need to consider their identities (race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language…), and how their experiences, their understanding of self and their connection to the world impact the kinds of stories they want to tell. Students will focus on exploring ways that the arts/writing and social action can affect our communities and society, encouraging civic dialogue and promote social change. The intent of this class is to develop and advance writing and social action skills, and to provide a safe space in which to deconstruct and discuss the current socioeconomic, race, and class issues that affect the daily lives we experience.

Teaching Format: Hybrid approach with both in-person class meetings and synchronous online class meetings, at the discretion of the instructor

HONS 235-01 The Ethics of Holocaust Representation (Professor Ezra Cappell)
Three credits
In this course students will consider the ethical question of how filmmakers, writers, and artists ought to represent the horrors of the Holocaust. Drawing upon the work of survivors, historians, and artists, we will explore the difficult issue of aesthetically representing the Holocaust. In this course, students will analyze historic and aesthetic representations of the Holocaust through a variety of genres, including: documentary evidence, historical texts, philosophical texts, religious texts, survivor testimony, novels, short stories, poems, photographs, films, paintings, and musical compositions. By the conclusion of this course students will be able to make ethically informed evaluations of Holocaust art and they will determine for themselves whether and how artists ought to create art from the ashes of Auschwitz.

Teaching Format: The majority of class meetings will occur in-person, as able

HONS 245-01 Honors Colloquium: Special Topics in the History and Philosophy of Science (Professor Bryan Ganaway)
Three credits
Science is deeply intertwined in both historical and philosophical thinking. Many of the greatest scientific minds throughout the centuries were also philosophers. In this colloquium series, students will explore enduring questions as to how time, place, and context all impact scientific research, and how the role of philosophy has developed over time to delineate the boundary between science and pseudo-science. Colloquium courses are writing and reading intensive, discussion-based, and interdisciplinary in nature.

Teaching Format: The majority of class meetings will occur in-person, as able

HONS 250-01 Future of Humanity in a Technological Tomorrow (Professor Brian Bossak)
Three credits
Humanity, in the 21st century, faces novel and complex existential questions that will require critical thinking from a well-educated populace. The entwinement of technological advances such as AI and biotechnology into the life experience of current and future generations promises change – but will that change lead to positive or negative outcomes? For the first time in history, the coming decades will lead to nothing short of divine power in the hands of human beings. For centuries, people have spent their time and energy focusing on control of the ambient environment and other people. Soon, humans will be able to control and manipulate the world inside of us as well as gain additional control over the world outside. The power to extend life or selectively engineer humans (through biotechnology), create non-biological life (through AI), and perhaps even the ability to banish the traditional concept of death entirely (through the fusion of AI and biotechnology) will emerge, whether the human race is ready for it or not. This class explores the biological, economic, social, and technological questions which humanity must prepare to face in the fast-approaching future.

Teaching Format: The majority of class meetings will occur in-person, as able

HONS 255-01 Disunion: How America has Stayed Together…Most of the Time (Professor Michael Lee)
Three credits
E pluribus unum was first suggested for inclusion on the national seal by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere in 1776. National unity has been haunted by its twin, E pluribus pluria, ever since. Secession and related ghosts of disunion, nullification and interposition, appear in places some contemporary observers might not expect, in all geographic sections of the country and by very dissimilar political groups who for very different reasons have decided to opt out of the American project. To show that they never felt what James Madison called “the chords of affection,” Americans have warred to leave the nation; they have also just left, they have moved off the grid; they have adopted new flags, named new nations, and written new constitutions. This course, in short, examines American disunion. Although we will be specifically interested in acts of disunion in America, we will encounter bigger questions about peoples and nations along the way: What makes a nation a nation? Why do nations disintegrate? What are the limits of national power? What are the limits of local power? We will pay particular attention to the period 1776, the inauguration of the American project, to 1861, when rival sections went to war over the meaning of that project. To immerse ourselves in the language of disunion, we will read the essential primary texts of American disunion (from anti-federalists, Southern fire eaters, Northern abolitionists, and others) in this period as well as engage the quintessential works of American union by Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, Angelina Grimke, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln. Finally, as a matter of focus, we will pay particular attention to Charleston’s outsized role in the history of American disunion.

Teaching Format: Hybrid approach with both in-person class meetings and synchronous online class meetings, at the discretion of the instructor

HONS 250-02 Education Law (Professor Kendall Deas)
Three Credits
This course examines legal principles applicable to educational institutions, including federal and state constitutional provisions, legislation, administrative regulations, and case law. Students in this course will also examine the concept of service-learning and engage in service learning experiences with a local area public school and a regional legal rights organization. Students will examine the concept, history, and rationale for service-learning and analyze service-learning research, methodologies, and potential outcomes. While the basic foundations of this course are grounded in education law, it is interdisciplinary in nature as it draws upon the theoretical underpinnings of other areas such as the politics, history, and finance of education.

Teaching Format: Hybrid approach with both in-person class meetings and synchronous online class meetings, at the discretion of the instructor

HONS 260-01 Exploring the Planets (Professor John Chadwick)
Three credits
What are the other planets in the solar system like (their geology, climate, volcanism, hydrology), how are they similar to and different from Earth, and what is their 4.6 billion-year history? The course will examine the solar system and the Earth’s planetary siblings using NASA data acquired over the past 50 years of exploration. We will review fundamental publications about planets that follow major periods of exploration of each (e.g. the review articles that were published after the New Horizons encounter with Pluto). The course will cover such diverse topics as the formation of our moon, the evolution of Saturn’s rings, spacecraft orbits, impact cratering processes, remote sensing, planetary volcanism, extrasolar planets, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Teaching Format: Live/Online hybrid approach, with rotating sub-groups meeting in-person while the remainder of the class participates through synchronous online activity

HONS 260-03 Understanding How Cognitive Measures of Attention, Working Memory and Emotional Well Being relate to Academic Achievement (Professor Mindy Hong)
Three credits
Why do some students succeed and others struggle when the conditions for learning seem equitable? What role does environment, temperament, and leadership play the complex learning system? In this course, students will study how cognitive science can help us to understand and to maximize our learning potential. We will explore how factors of emotional well-being influence the way we learn.

Teaching Format: The majority of class meetings will occur in-person, as able

*course offerings and teaching formats subject to change; students should refer to the course syllabus for more details about each course’s teaching format