What Students Say...

"The professors here are amazing. They will do everything that they can to help students learn the material. There is a friendly, relaxed relationship between students and professors that I really appreciate. I like being recognized individually instead of just being another student in the class. Our Honors classes are for enrichment, and so they focus on subjects that are not always covered in the required classes. Because of this, I have actually played with slime and watched clips from the Austin Powers movies during honors classes."
- McKenzie Clemons,
Sophomore

HONR 167 Tightwaddery, or the Good Life on a Dollar a Day :
The basic idea underlying much of contemporary life and culture is: spend money and you’ll be happy. This is a lie perpetrated by capitalists in order to sell their products.  The current recession, while undoubtedly causing hardship for many, also offers an opportunity for us to critically examine the assumptions and values of our consumer society.  This seminar will do this both in theory and in practice. At bottom, though, the course is less concerned with cutting coupons than with the question Socrates asked long ago: What is the good life for a human being?

HONR 217 Dreams, Dreams, Dreams:
What are dreams all about?  Are they really meaningful, interpretable stories that are relevant to our lives or simply irrelevant neuron-firings that amount to unintelligible gibberish?  What is the value of examining one’s dreams closely?  What is the function of dreams for the human organism?  Are all of the prominent ‘dream theorists’, like Freud and Jung, just blowing smoke (cigar or pipe smoke, perhaps)?  We will explore these questions and plunge into the world of dreams in this seminar. Artistic, scientific, social-scientific, and even business perspectives will be considered.   

HONR 130 The Art of Meditation:
To practice meditation is to open what is closed, reveal what is hidden, and balance what is reactive in the body, heart, and mind. Amidst the pressures and distractions of daily life, meditation affords a return to the ground of being and a path to authentic presence.  Employing a variety of methods, including seated meditation, walking meditation, and exercises in contemplative movement, we will focus on awareness of posture, breath, and movement; mindfulness of feelings, thoughts, and speech; and the transformation of negative states of mind.

HONR 219 Hannibal Lecter's Book Club:
We will examine the good, the bad, and the ugly in crime fiction. As theories about the causes of crime and what to do about crime emerged in academic scholarship, popular fiction seized the idea and made away like a bandit. Crime fiction developed not just its own genre, but a multitude of subgenres ranging from the British cozies to gritty police procedurals to the ultra-niche series linking mysteries to gardening, home repair, and cooking. Along the way, some authors managed to depict crime theories before they were ever coherently expressed by criminologists while other works of crime fiction played up our greatest social fears and perpetuated common crime myths. We'll explore, criminologically speaking, whodunit well and whodunit not-so-well.

HONR 218-Bob Dylan and America:
With Bob Dylan as our guide, we will journey into that strange place called modern America. We will focus primarily on what Dylan himself has admitted was his greatest work: the songs on the albums from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) to John Wesley Harding (1967) with a look at some songs from later in his career. Looking closely at these songs-as performed poetry of the highest order-we will ask how Dylan the artist responded to such calamitous times. This course will allow students to come to terms with what Dylan has to offer them today and, by extension, students may ask which poetic voices, perhaps including Dylan’s, figure in their vision of the cultural landscape of early 21st century America.

Curious about what’s been offered in the past, and might be again?
See full descriptions of previous courses >>>