Spring 2014 Honors Seminars, University of Cincinnati

University Honors Program

Spring 2014 Honors Seminars

We are developing the listing of honors seminars. This page will be updated as information becomes available. Please contact your honors academic advisor with questions.

Honors seminars with domestic or international study tours are listed first with underlined course numbers and titles.

Course Number	Title	Call #	Day/Time	Instructor	BoK
EVST/BIOL - TBA	On the River - Experiencing the Brazilian Amazon	TBA	TBA; with required spring break study tour.	J. Shann	TBA
The Amazon River basin is one of the largest, intact, tropical ecosystems in the world. This course offers students the opportunity to personally experience it and develop a passion for its sustainability. Students begin the semester preparing across disciplines for an immersion trip to the upper Amazon River. During the actual trip, students, instructors, and crew live on a boat that travels over 600 nautical miles along the river-‐stopping to explore the flooded forests by canoe, and the upland, villages, and cities, on foot. On return, students will report on individual projects and use their journals for reflection. Application required. Learn more.
FAA3030	The Sky's the Limit: Dubai as a Laboratory for Creativity	TBA	TBA; with required spring break study tour.	J. Girandola V. Sansalone	DC, FA
This course will discover the creative roots of the Arab Spring and the ongoing struggle for voices to be heard in the Middle East. Contemporary artist are at the forefront of the movements and th rough readings by noted art historians/curators. The course will explore the influential creative minds and works of the region including. Through conversations, interviews, presentations and Skype discussion groups with the artists, musicians, poets, curators and critics the course will open a line of communication to the future of the freedom to create in the region and the responsibility of artists with dynamic ties to the region. A study tour to Dubai for the Dubai Art Fair with visits with contemporary artists will occur over spring break. Over the last five years, Art Dubai, the leading contemporary art fair in MENASA (Middle East/North Africa/South Asia), has become a cornerstone of the region's booming contemporary art community. Application required and will be posted here soon.
BIOL3080 GEOG3080 GEOL3080	Landscape Evolution and Environmental Change on the Edge of the Caribbean, Trinidad	TBA	TBA; with required study tour.	D. Buchholz N. Dunning L. Owen	NS
This course examines how landscapes in Trinidad have developed from their geologic origins to occupation by humans some 7,000 years ago, to post-Columbian settlement and into the present. Aspects of how humans have influenced and will continue to influence Trinidad’s landscapes are considered from geologic, geographic, ecological and anthropologic perspectives. Application required. Learn more.
HIST TBA	Immigration Across the Disciplines	TBA	TBA; with required study tour.	S. Porter	TBA
Course explores major themes of immigration from the 18th century through the recent past with an emphasis on the United States. It asks what differences various approaches to a given topic (i.e. immigration) make to what and how we learn. Includes a week-long experiential learning trip to New York City. Application required. Learn more.
HNRS3065	Art, Architecture and Engineering: the Roman Experience	TBA	TBA; with required study tour to Italy.	K. Nelson G. Rassati	DC, FA
In a weekly classroom meeting, this course introduces the students to fundamental concepts of art, architecture, and engineering focusing on an era in which they were three facets of the same product of human intellect. The students will also be introduced to cultural aspects of Italian history, lifestyle, and customs, to prepare them for the final activity of the class, a 10-day trip to Rome, where students will study and learn at significant sites and monuments in Roman history. Application required. Learn more.
HNRS3074	The Culture of Books and Reading	TBA	TBA; with required study tour to Istanbul, Turkey.	K. Grace	DC, HU
This course provides a cross-cultural study of books and reading in world societies and how ethnic, religious, and national cultures have regarded the printed work now and in the past, as well as the electronic book. Readings, presentations, experiential research, and hands-on familiarity with rare book forms and contemporary formats will acquaint the student with ethnographic differences and the varieties of reading heritage. Application required. Learn more.

ENGL TBA	Sex and Gender: Insights from Biology, Film and Literature	TBA	TBA	B. Dziech M. Fox	TBA
Designed for both males and females, this course will link science and the humanities to encourage more holistic, objective and educated discussion and debate about gender issues. It will include experiential learning and will relate current research on neurobiological differences between the sexes to analyses of male and female characters in representative film and literature.
FAA3039	Fast Forward: The History and Practice of Video as Art	TBA	TBA	C. Woodman	FA, HP
The class combines hands on training in video production with a overview of the history of video art. The studio portion of the class will engage students directly with the tools of video art making and with the concepts and challenges of using video as means of individual creative expression. The art history portion of the course will examine some of the ways in which video has been used as an art-form. Students will watch a range of masterworks in the field, then discuss, analyze, and write about them. Video Art is a relatively new form, which was born in the late 1960's when the advent of small portable video recording equipment made it possible for artists to explore the creative possibilities of what had until then been the sole province of large television production facilities. By the end of the century video art had become one of the most important forms of contemporary art. Today access to video cameras and editing has become almost commonplace. This class will provide students with the skills and perspectives to use these tools as a means for creative expression, and a basis from which they can examine media forms as objects of critical inquiry.
FREN3023	French Business on the Big Screen: Cinematic Perspectives on Work and the Economy	TBA	TBA	M. Gott	TBA
Using the vantage point of cinema, this course will help students understand how France, the planet’s 5th largest economy, sees the world of business, the economics, and work. We will focus on making critical comparisons between French and American outlooks.
HNRS3041	The Achievement Gap: Structure and Causes of Educational Inequality	TBA	TBA	J. King R. Robles	TBA
Inspired by the continued movement toward alternative models of education, this course will explore the educational inequalities related to the "achievement gap". Visits to local public schools will serve as the backdrop for discussions, resources and projects related to the social structure of and path to educational opportunities.
MG3000	Climate Change – Think Globally, Act Locally	TBA	TBA	E. Gruenstein	SE, NS
This course has three goals: (i) To have students understand the scientific basis of climate change and the technology for dealing with it, (ii) To have them appreciate that mitigation of climate change will be a political and ethical as well as a technological activity, (iii) To have them realize that they can personally make a significant contribution to solving the problem. The first goal will be addressed through classroom discussions of seminal climate change literature facilitated by the course director. The second goal will be addressed by interactive seminars with Cincinnati leaders in politics, community action and philanthropy. The third goal will provide the experiential component of the course. $2000 will be made available to the students for philanthropic distribution to non-profit organizations which promote climate change mitigation in the Cincinnati community. Student teams will select local organizations to champion and each team will promote its organization before a panel of community leaders for a share of the philanthropic funds.
PHIL2054	Emotion in the Arts	TBA	TBA	J. Robinson	TBA
In this class we examine the nature of aesthetic experience, how works of music, literature, visual art etc. express emotions, why people engage emotionally with disgusting or sad artworks, how having our emotions aroused helps us understand artworks, and why people get emotionally involved with characters they know do not exist.
PHIL2085	Conversations About Life	TBA	TBA	J. Martin	SE
In this course students learn what it is to talk intelligently about the topic they are interested in. Built into late adolescence and college life are the late night conversations about love, sex, religion, and politics – life’s important things. These talks take place far from the formal university of professors and classrooms – in dorms, apartments, bars, cars, even camping. They happen naturally, and with enthusiasm, as young people work out as their own ideas and test those of others. Sometimes, especially among good students like those in the Honors Program, these turn in to memorable arguments with real intellectual content. This “seminar” is designed to augment this natural tendency. We will meet one evening a week off campus or in the dorms, someplace where students live—in the past we have meet in Stratford Commons. We will talk about serious topics, which the students will choose. Only rules will those of civility and serious intellectual discussion. In the first half of the semester topics will be entirely open. Students will come prepared to introduce a topic by having written a short introduction based on some article they have encountered in the press or the web, and class members will choose the topic for discussion from those prepared. In the first half of the course a student must come to class with at least six topic preparations. At least one of these will be discussed at some point – there has never been a problem in the past doing so. The student whose topic it is leads the discussion. (The instructor remains in the background as “referee.”) Each student will then choose one of their topics chosen for discussed to write a term paper on. In the second half of the semester we will return to these topics and reconsider it as a group, with the student whose topic it is leading the discussion again but in light of the richer information provided by his or her research. The role of the instructor will be that of “intellectual referee.” He will interject himself only briefly and with the goal of keeping the conversation lively and serious, as much as possible in the context, on a high intellectual plain. Honors students like to talk seriously – if not, they would not sign up for the course in the first place – and this “seminar” will give them a chance to do what they like well. Students no doubt learn from even their untutored late night bull sessions. In the context of these more structured and informed sessions, however, they will learn what it is to raise the intellectual level of informal conversation. They will become better leaders in how to talk intelligently about their natural interests, and how to do research to inform their interests. In doing so, they will also become better informed citizens of the community.
PHYS TBA	Superhero Physics	TBA	TBA	D. Mast	TBA
Students will investigate the laws of physics through the powers portrayed by superheroes in films, cartoons, and comics. Extensive use will be made of superhero movies in order to learn physical concepts. Students will “create” their own superhero and super villain (with costumes), and develop of conflict “episode.”