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Curriculum

A challenging curriculum...

based on four core commitments/values

1) Multicultural awareness

During their first year, students participate in an eight-credit Honors Learning Community. This includes two individual courses plus a common integrative seminar. These courses ask students to look at issues of social and cultural difference through a multidisciplinary lens. The Learning Community fulfills the all-college multidisciplinary core course (MCC)/writing requirement. Each year, two LC options are offered. Students choose either Learning Community I, or Learning Community II (see below).

Learning Community I: Re-imagining Public and Private

  • HON 101-01: History and the Social Imagination
  • HON 102-01: Film, Literature, and Identity Formation

Learning Community II: Democracy and Difference

  • HON 101-02: The One and the Many
  • HON 102-02: Democracy, Education, and Economics
  • Learning Community Integrative Seminar
  • HON 190: Critical Thinking, Public Speaking (First-year seminar)

2) International perspectives

200-level Honors courses explore cultures and contemporary issues outside of the U.S. and Western Europe. Students will develop a deeper understanding about the peoples of a particular nation or region, and how their histories and cultures have come to define them. Students will debate how these peoples can shape their economic, political, and cultural futures. These courses fulfill the all-college Mode of Inquiry requirements.

  • HON 201: Conflict and Identity in Sudan (Mode 5)
  • HON 202: Political Upheaval and Its Expression in 20th Latin America (Mode 5)
  • HON 203: Islam and the West (Mode 5)
  • HON 204: Dialogues Culturels: France and the Francophone World (Mode 2)
  • HON 205: War and Memory in Latin America (Mode 2)

3) Interdisciplinary approaches

300-level Honors courses are interdisciplinary approaches to current intellectual and social debates. The courses are team-taught and include lectures by scholars in the field. These courses fulfill Mode of Inquiry requirements.

  • HON 301: Explosive Mix: When Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism Collide (Mode 5)
  • HON 302: Sexuality, Nature, and Power (Mode 6)
  • HON 303: HIV/AIDS: The Intersections of Science and Society (Mode 4)
  • HON 304/305: Specimens and Collections: Science in Victorian Literature
    (Mode 2 & Mode 4. Student selects one.)
  • HON 306: Covering War (Mode 6)
  • HON 308: Modeling Global Warming and Climate Change (Mode 3)
  • HON 310: Political Psychology of Influential Women Leaders (Mode 6)

4) Disciplinary depth

Seniors develop an eight-credit independent Honors-level project within their departmental major. This is most often a thesis, internship, or graduate-level coursework in conjunction with a research paper. It is not an additional project, but rather a way of fulfilling the departmental senior requirements at the highest level.