Fall 2013 Honors Courses

HON 201, Perennial Questions (3 Hours Credit)

HON 201 H Section A	Perennial Questions TH 9:30–10:45 Dr. Michael Papazian
HON 201 H Section B	Perennial Questions TH 3:30-4:45 Dr. Michael Papazian

Course meets these requirements:

Required course for all Honors students
Counts as the 100-level philosophy course requirement or the fifth free elective course in the Humanities general education core (3 of 15 hours required)

Course description: It is clear that Western civilization is the result of at least two major influences: Judaism and Hellenism (“Greek things”). From the Jews came religion, ethics, law and a lot of other things. From the Greeks came philosophy, science, logic and a lot of other things. But there’s a conflict between the Greek focus on reason and the Jewish focus on faith. How has that conflict worked to produce the civilization that we all live in and which structures our lives? We will attempt to answer this question by reading some of the great books from both Jerusalem and Athens.

HON 201, Perennial Questions (3 Hours Credit)

HON 201 H Section C

Perennial Questions MWF 9:00-9:50 Dean Tom Kennedy

Course meets these requirements:

Required course for all Honors students
Counts as the 100-level philosophy course requirement or the fifth free elective course in the Humanities general education core (3 of 15 hours required)

Course description: Most of us know, at some level, that we will die. Most of us want to be able to say, when that day comes, that we have lived a good life. But what is a good life? What is necessary for the living of a good life? What matters? And how can we know what matters? In this course we will engage the question of what it means to live well in a conversation with great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas, as well as some contemporary thinkers. We will try to think better and more clearly about how much work matters for a good life, and about what matters more—accomplishing a lot or being a certain type of person. We will puzzle, as well, over what kind of education might best prepare you for living well, or whether education even matters all that much.

HON 203 H, Democracy and Its Friendly Critics (3 Hours Credit)

HON 203 HA

Democracy and Its Friendly Critics TH 2:00 – 3:15 Dr. Michael Bailey

Course meets these requirements:

Required course for all Honors students
General Education core requirement in Behavioral & Social Sciences -- 200 level for Government and International Studies.

Course description: America's leading statesmen such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt understood that popular government is extremely difficult to sustain. They understood what we largely have forgotten: Democracy, like all forms of government, comes with its own set of challenges and pathologies. These lessons about democracy are best expressed by Alexis de Tocqueville, a critic, albeit a friendly one, of American democracy who thoughtfully and forcefully articulated the dangers facing the emerging democratic world. This course will use Tocqueville's Democracy in America to illustrate the perpetual issues and problems of democracy—many of which are still very real despite our being blind to them—and we will also draw on works of literature, philosophy, film, and theology to give concrete meaning to these problems as they are manifested in American political and social life.

HON 203 H, Democracy and Its Friendly Critics (3 Hours Credit)

HON 203 HC

Democracy and Its Friendly Critics TH 12:30 - 1:45 Dr. Daryl Charles

Course meets these requirements:

Required course for all honors students
General Education core requirement in Humanities--100 level for Philosophy.
May also count as the fifth humanities elective, if religion or philosophy course requirement has been met by other means (e.g. AP credit).

Course description: America’s founders and leading statesmen understood what we postmoderns have all but forgotten, if not ignored. They knew that democratic popular government is difficult to sustain, that it is does not automatically sustain itself, that it offers no guarantee of its own survival, and that it requires the continual efforts of every generation to renew its foundations. What are those foundations that support democratic government and culture? In this course, three texts will serve as our guide as we reflect on those foundations: Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, perhaps the most important book ever written on democracy; social critic Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions, a penetrating and remarkably accessible examination of the ideological roots of our political differences; and Brendan Sweetman’s Why Politics Needs Religion, which thoughtfully and thoroughly considers the rich texture of American pluralism and the perennial issue of the place of religious arguments in the public square.

HON 250HA, Science Fiction and Politics (3 Hours Credit)

HON 250 H Section A

Science Fiction and Politics T 4:00–6:30 Dr. John Hickman

Course meets these requirements:

An HON 250 course (3 of 9 elective required hours for all Honor students)
An elective requirement for the Government major or minor (GOV 450)

Course description: Writers and filmmakers have long found science fiction an irresistible vehicle for arguing their politics. This course explores the political in science fiction’s stories of dystopian societies and encounters with the extraterrestrial, machine or post-human Other. Implicit or explicit in these stories are questions about individual identity, and thus the legal rights associated with that identity, and about human nature, and thus political ideology. Typical of the assignments would be writing an essay on the possible scope of the legal rights that might be extended to the short lived artificial humans in the 1982 film Blade Runner and David Brin’s 2002 novel Kiln People. This course also explores the effect of popular anxieties in the 20th century that made specific works of science fiction effective as vehicles for political arguments.

Honors 250HB/PSY 385IA, Psychology of Women (3 Hours Credit)

HON 250H Section B

Psychology of Women MWF 11:00 - 11:50 Dr. Susan Conradsen

Course meets these requirements:

An HON 250 course (3 of 9 elective required hours for all Honors students)
Counts as the psychology course requirement in the Behavioral and Social Sciences general education core (3 of 9 hours required)
May count toward the major with departmental approval

Course description: This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of the psychological, social, emotional, and cognitive aspects of gender in our society. In particular, the unique issues and challenges to women’s psychological well-being created by the impact of society (both direct and indirect) and culture will be addressed. Some of the specific topics we will cover include how gender identity is formed, the preponderance of sexist stereotypes, how the media influences our ideas of masculinity and femininity, the occupational and domestic challenges women face, the culture of violence against women across their lives, the experience of birth and mothering, love relationships, and other developmental events unique to women’s development such as menstruation and menopause. Throughout the course the existence of sexism within American culture and beyond will be covered such as inequity in political representation and salaries, sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, and role expectations. This class is a discussion-oriented class. Students take weekly quizzes, complete a group presentation on a topic of their choice, and complete five writing assignments.

Honors 250HC/COM 416IA, Media Law (3 Hours Credit)

HON 250H Section C

Media Law MWF 8:00 - 8:50 Dr. Kathy Richardson

Course meets these requirements:

An HON 250 course (3 of 9 elective required hours for all Honors students)
May count toward the major with departmental approval

Course description: Constitutional and legislative foundations of freedom of speech and press, with special emphasis on the law of libel, privacy, censorship, access and broadcast regulation. Topics include discussion of the ways in which the interests of the state, society and individuals have been balanced in such arenas as political speech, commercial speech, sexual expression, student speech and technological change. For example, examining the changes in the freedoms or restrictions governing student speech require an examination of the purposes served by public and private K-12 educational systems; the changes in both prompted by social movements from the integration of the 1950s to the social conservative movement of the 1980s, and the changes in technologies available to students inside and outside the school environments. Honors students will be required to complete an annotated bibliography as they prepare for the major research-based essay required of all students. They will also complete a writer’s workshop and will respond to a different writing prompt on the final exam.

Honors 250HD/PHI 357IA, Late Modern Philosophy (3 Hours Credit)

HON 250 H Section D

Late Modern Philosophy TH 9:30 – 10:45 Dr. Joel Schwartz

Course meets these requirements:

An HON 250 course (3 of 9 elective required hours for all Honors students)
General Education core requirement in Humanities -- 100 level for Philosophy (3 hrs credit)
May count as one of the two free electives, outside of major/minor, required for graduation; OR, as the fifth humanities elective

Course description: This course is a study of trends and movements in 19^th and 20^th century philosophy. Since Kant, philosophical thought is often understood as going in three directions, leading to three schools of thought: analytic, continental and pragmatic philosophy. In this class, we will read authors from each school of thought (A.J. Ayer, Soren Kierkegaard, and William James, respectively) as well as looking at a philosopher who was influenced significantly by each of these schools, Ludwig Wittgenstein. We will read both early and late Wittgenstein, considering how he can be read as the intersection of the three schools of thought on issues related to meaning, value, truth, religion, language, and how to understand the human experience of the world.

COM 203, Rhetoric and Public Address, Honors (3 Hours Credit)

COM 203 H section C

Rhetoric and Public Address MWF 1:00 - 1:50 Dr. Bob Frank

Course meets these requirements:

An HON 250 course (3 of 9 elective required hours for all Honors students)
General Education core requirement in Communication (3 of 9 hours required)

Course description: This class surveys pivotal rhetorical documents of American movements for social change including abolitionist, women’s rights, civil rights, and environmentalism. Through written rhetorical analysis and oral presentations on social justice issues, students will understand rhetorical strategies that best promote social justice.

ECO 110, Principles of Economics I, Honors (3 Hours Credit)

ECO 110 H Section G

Principles of Economics I MWF 11:00-11:50 Dr. Lauren Heller

Course meets these requirements:

An HON 250 course (3 of 9 elective required hours for all Honors students)
General Education core requirement in Behavioral and Social Sciences—Economics (3 of 9 hours required)

Course description: Analysis of how markets determine prices and the role of the price system in society. Introduction of the factors that determine macroeconomic activity and growth. Discussion of the American financial system and international trade. Consistent with the placement in the College's general education curriculum, this course emphasizes economic literacy for understanding historical and current events.

Honors Thesis

Register for HON 450H if you are starting your thesis. Register for HON 451H if you have completed HON 450H. To register for a thesis course, you will need an authorization form (available on this webpage (http://www.berry.edu/provost/honors/page.aspx?id=7879) signed by your thesis director. (Be certain to have the other committee members’ names indicated on the form). Also obtain a reasonably detailed description of the work to be completed during the semester provided by your thesis director. Bring both the description and the signed authorization form to Dr. Carroll for his signature. Take the signed authorization form to the Registrar’s window to have the course added. (This process should be done during pre-registration.) After the course is added to Viking Web, your thesis director will need to authorize you to take the course before you can finally register for it on Viking Web.

Honorization of Courses

“HONORIZING” a course or a course within a major.

As you know, an honors student may request to change a “regular” course within a major into an honors course. Follow the procedure below.

BEFORE you begin attending the course, during registration, meet with the instructor. Print and take the form with you (see Forms on the Honors Web page); this form has guidelines for you and your instructor. Discuss with the faculty member your interest in receiving “honors” credit for a particular course. He or she will define the nature of the honors work to be completed.

Honorizing any course is NOT permitted after the first week of classes.

Complete your part of the form and return the form to Dr. Carroll.