Honors Curriculum 2021-22

Fall 2021

Honors Seminars (first- and second-year honors students)

Is medicine dying as a profession? How is the professional power of physicians developed in different kinds of societies? Are the forms taken to strengthen or limit professional power different in societies with different contrasting political economies? Is state power central in the analysis of professional power? What is the relationship between the state and the medical profession and where are doctors better off? In this tutorial we will examine the changing status of the medical profession in six countries - the United States, Britain, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands and Canada. We will explore the extent to which nation states have singled out the profession guilds for control. Readings will include McKinley’s and Hafferty’s The Changing Medical Profession, Kruase’s Death of the Guilds, and OECD’s Internal Markets in the Making.

Time. Everyone knows what it is, but nobody can define it. We won’t succeed in defining time in this tutorial either, but we will investigate many attributes and associations of time: how time has been measured throughout history, time as a fourth dimension, time dilation, the arrow of time, the history of time, the reversibility of time, time travel, time perception.

Honors Courses (open to all honors students)

In this Honors section of Freshman Writing, students will learn a range of techniques to create more strategically structured paragraphs and more forceful, stylish sentences. Students will read the essays of other writers regularly and will read and comment on other students’ work. Through both experiences, students will develop their awareness of different writing strategies and writerly voices. The course will also provide an introduction to the specialized resources of a university library, increasing students’ confidence in their ability to find the best scholarly sources for future research papers.

This course explores the structure and dynamics of public opinion, providing an in-depth introduction to the factors that shape citizens’ social and political attitudes in the United States. We will focus our analysis in three major areas: definitions of public opinion and theories of opinion formation, how public opinion is influenced and how public opinion is collected and analyzed in the contemporary American political scene. We will create our own public opinion survey and collect data on the political attitudes at OWU. Our analysis will draw heavily both on readings in public opinion and current research in political behavior, allowing us to examine important political phenomena from a variety of perspectives. Ultimately, the goal of this course is for students to understand how the forces that shape American beliefs, attitudes, and opinions are gathered and how these attitudes and opinions translate into legislative outcomes.

Honors in Course Options (honors students can enroll in H option)

Design, construction, glazing, and firing of ceramics; the chemistry of glazes and simple geology of clay. The class alternates throwing and handbuilding techniques from one semester to the next. Prerequisite: ART 113 or consent of instructor. Fall, Spring (Group IV) ($75 studio fee.)

The second-semester student studies the alternate technique. The more advanced student defines and carries out his/her individual exploration of particular directions and is more involved with the daily classroom operation. Fall, Spring (Group IV) ($75 studio fee.)

American literature imagines America. It seeks to understand the country’s greatest possibilities and most pressing challenges. In this class we will read novels, short stories, poems, and nonfictional works by authors as different as Anne Bradstreet, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel West, and Claudia Rankine that take up this urgent task in order to understand better the country where we live and the stories we tell about it. H option. Diversity and R requirement.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to” – Bilbo Baggins

In this class, we’ll study a range of ‘quest’ narratives, stories in which heroes and heroines set forth on challenging journeys of self discovery. We’ll explore the ways in which “leaving home” provides the questing hero/ine opportunities to (re)define the self, experience passionate love, reconfigure relationships to friends and family, and prove oneself in challenges both martial and mental. While many of these tales express an optimistic belief that trials can be overcome regardless of what troubles us – the loss of a loved one, the betrayal of a friend, or tragic errors of judgment – the “return home” of several quest narratives is complicated by darker notes of tragedy.

We’ll explore these and related themes as we study the finest and most famous quest narratives of the Middle Ages including Marie de France’s Celtic tales of love, chivalry and magic, Sir Thomas Malory’s Quest for the Holy Grail, and two tales of orphaned children on a quest to discover their identities, Sir Degare, and Freine. The medieval quest narrative has exercised a profound impact on subsequent literature and film, and to enrich our understanding of our continued fascination with this genre, we’ll view a few modern films. We’re likely to screen Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Stardust and Mad Max: Fury Road.

Threats to democracy are both real and urgent. In this course, we will take up the question of how to understand democracy’s complex history and potential future. The course is divided into three units. In the first, we will look at the historical evolution of democracy and its core concepts, including the ideas of popular sovereignty and representation. Is democracy merely a method of choosing our rulers by means of competitive elections, or is it something more? In the second unit, we will turn to the works of some of the most famous critics of democratic rule. In particular, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America will offer a site through which to investigate some of the major critiques of democracy. For instance, how can democratic societies reconcile the competing demands of freedom and equality? Do we really want the people to rule? The final unit takes up contemporary challenges to democracy—from those posed by the rise of social media to the declining trust in elections. To what extent, we will ask, is democracy is still a meaningful political concept—one that we can use to describe, evaluate and criticize our current political institutions and practices?

This intermediate-advanced level course will introduce students to a variety of artistic texts (including literature, painting, and cinema) as well as other cultural materials from the Spanish-speaking world. This will allow students to gain a greater appreciation for the artistic expressions of the Hispanic world and the historical context to which they belong, while building their linguistic, communicative, critical and analytical skills.

Prerequisite: SPAN 225 or placement above 225. Diversity. Group III.

This course examines Spanish literature and culture from 1800s to the present. The course will focus on short story, poetry, drama, essay, novel, and cinema in relation to the major literary movements and periods in Spain (romanticism, pre-modernism, realism, naturalism, vanguardias, civil war, postwar, democracy, and new millennium). Among the authors included are Emilia P. Bazán, Gustavo A. Bécquer, Benito P. Galdós, Vicente Huidobro, Pedro Almodóvar, Federico G. Lorca, Antonio and Manuel Machado, Carmen M. Gaite, and Luis Buñuel. The goal is to help students develop an extensive knowledge of the selected works within a broader socio-political and cultural national and global context, to enhance their skills in the Spanish language, and to develop a critical and analytical thought. Theoretical exposition will be combined with collective discussion based on active and spontaneous participation, weekly readings and comprehension handouts, and oral presentations. The course follows an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature, with additional emphasis on cinema. A selection of documentaries, paintings, journal articles, artistic adaptations, and other forms of popular culture will be used along with the main texts to familiarize students with the cultural developments of the Spanish literary and visual art scene. Prerequisite: Any three of SPAN 226, 250, 310, or 350 or permission of instructor. Group III Humanities/Literature. Diversity.

Seminars Required In Conjunction With the Honors Research Project (490h) To Meet Requirements to Graduate With Honors.

This course is designed to be taken the semester preceding the senior honors project (490H). In this course, students will first identify an area of inquiry and a faculty member who will serve as their honors research mentor. Students will begin to formulate a research thesis or define a creative project and learn how to conduct relevant background research in different disciplines. The seminar will culminate in an honors project proposal to be submitted to the honors program that is developed in collaboration with a student’s thesis mentor. The process will include peer- review from fellow honors students in the seminar.

This course is taken in the same semester as the senior honors project (490H). Students will meet weekly to share their progress and their scholarly work with fellow honors students. This course allows students to practice their oral and written communication skills about their scholarly or creative works to a diverse audience without close knowledge of their discipline. The course also provides opportunities for students to practice scholarly discourse across disciplinary boundaries.

Spring 2022

Honors Seminars (first- and second-year honors students)

Plant seeds are amazing structures that can protect the embryonic plant for hundreds of years, but as soon as germination begins, the plant is fully committed to living or dying wherever it finds itself. To aid the young seedling in becoming rooted and established, plants perceive cues from their surroundings and adjust their growth direction and rate accordingly. Some of the signals perceived by plants include gravity, light, and moisture levels. In this tutorial, we will investigate how plants sense these cues and convert them into signals that result in growth responses. Students will learn how to isolate plant DNA, perform PCR using that DNA, and confirm PCR products using gel electrophoresis. Students will use computer image analysis to collect data on the growth of plants with mutations in genes important in signal sensing and growth responses. Students will also monitor gene expression in plants using confocal microscopy. Along the way, students will gain valuable experience in laboratory techniques, including the cultivation of plants, tissue culture, media preparation, and basic recombinant DNA techniques. No previous experience is necessary or expected.

Certain great books have played key roles in capturing public attention and motivating citizen action in the modern environmental movement. This course will use these books as inspirations for in-depth study of the scientific ideas that underlie the ongoing environmental issues discussed in each text. For example, students may read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson while studying pesticide effects on the environment and Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez to motivate an examination of how climate change affects the Arctic landscape. Newer works are also sparking interesting conversations among environmental scientists, such as Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which explores the merging of Native American and western science perspectives on nature, and Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes, which documents organized deception on climate change by the fossil fuel industry. Scientific papers on the topics in each environmental book will also be assigned and students will discuss the status of scientific knowledge on each environmental issue at the time each book was written as compared to our current understanding. We will also consider the importance of these books in the environmental movement and discuss the different roles that science and literature play in our human understanding, exploration and reactions to the natural landscape and environmental crisis.

From its inception, film noir has been defined as a culturally diverse genre, style, sensibility and movement. Over the years, noir has adapted to its historical times and cultural contexts, and has experienced re categorisation of its history, development and expansion, as well as investigation of this artistic impulse to represent psycho-social anxieties, political dilemmas and violence, and its challenge to traditional views of gender by means of its pervasive aesthetic.

The primary focus of this course is to introduce students to the origins, developments, distinguishing elements, and ideological uses of classic hollywood and international noir and neo noir cinema in all its variants (gothic noir, detective, and police procedural). The course includes a selection of films from the first half of the twentieth century to the present, as well as critical articles that analyze this genre from different perspectives (history, sociology, psychology, feminism). The main objectives of this interdisciplinary course are two. First, to give students a better understanding of the use of this broad and complex genre as a cultural space to discuss, denounce, and advance social and political issues at a national and global level. Second, to provide students with the basic tools to analyze the selected works critically and logically. Particular attention will be given to gender role representation, noir aesthetics and recurrent leitmotifs.

The course will include theoretical exposition, collective discussion of primary works and secondary readings, weekly written assignments, individual presentations, and a final short film noir project. Group III. Writing Credit.

Time. Everyone knows what it is, but nobody can define it. We won’t succeed in defining time in this tutorial either, but we will investigate many attributes and associations of time: how time has been measured throughout history, time as a fourth dimension, time dilation, the arrow of time, the history of time, the reversibility of time, time travel, time perception.

This course is an introduction to philosophy via the undead. With their help, we will take up a number of philosophical questions, including the following. Is death bad? Is undeath worse? Does human life have meaning? Would the life of a zombie be any more or less meaningful? What, if anything, makes a person one-and-the-same through time? Could a person become a zombie or would that simply be the end of them? Is the mind or consciousness a necessarily non-physical aspect of us? Could a perfect physical replica of us be unconscious? Would immortality be good (for us)? Might an immortal have good reason for becoming mortal? Along the way we will watch a number of movies having in one way or another to do with the undead and with the philosophical themes we wish to take up. We will dedicate some weeks to the discussion of these movies, not confining ourselves to the philosophical questions they may raise.

In this seminar, students will select a topic of interest form the Science section of the New York Times. They will then develop and deliver teaching materials and guide our discussion to help the class understand the science “behind” these fascinating stories in the popular press.

Honors Courses (open to all honors students)

Historical fiction is a popular window into the American past. But does it illuminate or distort our understanding of modern history? Does the quality of a novel reflect how closely the author conforms to the historical record or how greatly he or she transcends it? Do certain genres of historical fiction, such as war novels, capture the essence of events in ways that nonfiction accounts cannot? Are some periods of historical fiction richer than others? Is all history fiction to a degree? These are among the issues this seminar will consider.

Honors in Course Options (honors students can enroll in H option)

Design, construction, glazing, and firing of ceramics; the chemistry of glazes and simple geology of clay. The class alternates throwing and handbuilding techniques from one semester to the next. Prerequisite: ART 113 or consent of instructor. Fall, Spring (Group IV) ($75 studio fee.)

The second-semester student studies the alternate technique. The more advanced student defines and carries out his/her individual exploration of particular directions and is more involved with the daily classroom operation. Fall, Spring (Group IV) ($75 studio fee.)

From the European origins of classical ballet to the influence of the Africanist aesthetic to boundary-breaking experimentations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the course investigates the aesthetic and cultural themes embedded in the history of Western concert dance, with emphasis on major stylistic trends, multi-cultural influences, as well as significant artists and their works. Topics span important traditions and innovations from the Renaissance to the present, with discussions of artistic concerns, as well as implicit social and political issues such as race, class, and gender. Prerequisite: English 105 or equivalent. (Alternate years) (Group IV) (Writing Option)

Before Wikipedia, there was Diderot’s massive Encyclopédie. Long before social media, there were social networks of letter writers. And before Salon.com, the salons of Madame Necker and Madame Geoffrin.This is a course devoted to the long 18th-century where students can inhabit the drama of Enlightenment thought through digital projects. Our approach to studying the cultural age emphasizes participation. In addition to studying major genres, we consider the cross-cultural friendships and artistic collaborations among thinkers, writers, and artists -- both the privileged and the powerless. In seminar-format class discussions, students explore the relevance of 18th-century studies for understanding 21st-century problems, questions, and issues. Students read Catherine the Great, Diderot, Voltaire, Sterne, Goethe, and Pushkin, as they actively seek out under-represented participants and forms of participation, such as female virtuosity in the genre of letter writing.

Coursework requires students to apply digital tools in the humanities to eighteenth-century studies. Final project in the course is a public-facing, collaborative project mapping female participation and virtuosity in the genre of letter writing.

This course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of food, nutrients and how nutrients are digested, absorbed and used in the body. This course builds on previous content covered in Introduction to Nutrition, but will take a more physiological and biochemical approach to nutrition processes. We will outline complex metabolic pathways as well as functions of various micronutrients. In addition, we will find and utilize current scientific literature to write a review of a specific topic related to a nutrient.

Seminars Associated With the Honors Research Project (490h), Usually Taken During Junior and Senior Years.

This course is designed to be taken the semester preceding the senior honors project (490H). In this course, students will first identify an area of inquiry and a faculty member who will serve as their honors research mentor. Students will begin to formulate a research thesis or define a creative project and learn how to conduct relevant background research in different disciplines. The seminar will culminate in an honors project proposal to be submitted to the honors program that is developed in collaboration with a student’s thesis mentor. The process will include peer- review from fellow honors students in the seminar.

This course is taken in the same semester as the senior honors project (490H). Students will meet weekly to share their progress and their scholarly work with fellow honors students. This course allows students to practice their oral and written communication skills about their scholarly or creative works to a diverse audience without close knowledge of their discipline. The course also provides opportunities for students to practice scholarly discourse across disciplinary boundaries.