Honors Courses for 2007-2008
Fall 2007
HONO 2053: The Scholar; Beauty and Cultures (3 units)
What is beauty? Why is something—a person, a building, an idea—beautiful? How are concepts of beauty rooted in time and place, in culture? This seminar will investigate the scholarship of beauty. In engaging with the body of work of cultural scholars and critics students will examine what different cultures have found to be beautiful. Students will examine a variety of cultures and eras. Informed by the scholarly view of beauty, students will investigate and articulate the origins of their own concepts of beauty.
HONO 2003: The World: Nature’s Fury (3 units)
An interdisciplinary and cross-cultural look at the impact that various natural hazards have on human populations. The course will focus on how societies and individuals around the world attempt to mitigate their risks from natural hazards and how they cope with the aftermath of disaster events. The causes and effects of various disasters and the areas of the world that are most at risk for each disaster are also discussed.
HONO 3500: Self, Community, and Service: Ethical Theory and Practice (3 units)
A rigorous examination of contemporary movement in ethical theory, focusing on the essential need for moral meaning and its modern implications. Themes include questions of identity, responsibility, and perception of and relation to the "other." Critical analysis of texts and key issues will be performed and understanding of key issues will be deepened through a service component that allows for active cultivation and expression of core values in the local community.
HONO 3191: The Varieties of World Religious Experience: Worldviews and practices of the Great Religions (3 units)
A World's Religions course with a twist: all the work required in the regular course but only half the semester's hours in class. The other half will be spent visiting religious sites in order to participate in their practices- a Native American sweat lodge, Hindu ritual and yoga, Buddhist meditation exercises, Jewish Sabbath worship, Christian contemplative prayer, Islamic daily prayer, Sufi invocation (and more). As these adventures will require extra and unusual hours of availability, subscribers must be highly flexible and strongly committed.
CQHO 4050: Survey Of Non -Western Art: India, China, Japan and Beyond (3 units)
This course offers a comprehensive study of the artistic traditions of India, China and Japan from the third millennium B.C. to modern times. It explores their inter-relationships and their influences on and from the western world from a historical, economical, and cultural context.
CQHO 4071: China And India: Impact On Global Community and Issues within (3 units)
This course will focus on China and India where the traditional modes of production, culture, social, and political relations have been undergoing dramatic changes. Both countries are experiencing intense transformation as a result of advancement of transport and communication technology, economic linkages, political alliances, population growth, urbanization, and health issues. The course is designed to study the interrelationships between the economic, political, social and cultural globalization and the impact on migration, environment, poverty, status of women, labor rights, and epidemic such as HIV/AIDS
CQHO 3452: Lifting the Historical Veil (3 units)
This course will explore the revolution in modernity/social justice in the Islamic World with particular attention on the Middle East as it responds to Western impact by analyzing its Islamic roots, the impact of Western imperialism on remapping the Middle East, the politics of oil and the Gulf War, Islamic Fundamentalism and Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden/ Al-Qaeda and the Israeli/Palestinian Crisis.
Spring 2008
HONO 2052: World and Science Interactions (3 units)
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the fascinating relationship between the world and science. It is designed to help stimulate and cultivate student critical thinking on how science affects individuals and communities across the globe, and how those individuals and communities impact science. Considerations will be given to current issues based on their liveliness, substance and their value in a debate framework including the place of science and technology in the global society, the environment, human health and welfare, space, the computer revolution, ethics...
HONO 2003 The Scholar: Learners and Laureates (3 units)
The Scholar: Learners and Laureates is an honors seminar that asks students to think (read, speak, listen, write) about scholars and scholarship. Students reflect on their own reasons for attending a university and then study Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” They reflect on their own ideas about what the purpose of a university is and then study Newman’s The Idea of a University as well as examples of 20th and 21st Century commentary on this work. To further consider scholars and scholarship students participate in Shield Day and the fall Convocation, which initiate them into the academic community of scholars. Next students learn about Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Foundation and Prizes, and Nobel laureates. Focusing on a diverse selection of Nobel laureates/scholars in literature, students study works of women and men laureates from such countries as Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States. Finally, drawing on the discussions, readings, and activities of the seminar and academic semester, students describe themselves and their experience as scholars at Dominican University through their own critical and creative compositions.
HONO 3500: Self, Community, and Service: Ethical Theory and Practice (3 units)
A rigorous examination of contemporary movement in ethical theory, focusing on the essential need for moral meaning and its modern implications. Themes include questions of identity, responsibility, and perception of and relation to the "other." Critical analysis of texts and key issues will be performed and understanding of key issues will be deepened through a service component that allows for active cultivation and expression of core values in the local community.
HONO 3191: The Varieties of World Religious Experience: Worldviews and practices of the Great Religions (3 units)
A World's Religions course with a twist: all the work required in the regular course but only half the semester's hours in class. The other half will be spent visiting religious sites in order to participate in their practices- a Native American sweat lodge, Hindu ritual and yoga, Buddhist meditation exercises, Jewish Sabbath worship, Christian contemplative prayer, Islamic daily prayer, Sufi invocation (and more). As these adventures will require extra and unusual hours of availability, subscribers must be highly flexible and strongly committed.
CQHO 4080: Islamic Women: Past, Present & Future (3 units)
This course will explore the social cultural dynamics of women through film from pre-Islamic to the twenty-first century with emphasis on perception/role of women during the Muhammedan period, the Golden Age (Arabian Knights), Sufi female saints, Ottoman Harem, Colonialism/Orientalism, and how their role today has been challenged by rise of secular states, Islamic revival, Palestinian Nationalism, technology and globalism.
CQHO 4051: Islamic Art: Classical Modern (3 units)
This course studies the visual arts of Islam with an emphasis on contemporary art and its implications for social justice /global community. It will address the questions of what is Islamic art and how it has been shaped by religious and cultural diversity within the Islamic World and by Western impact. The course encompasses all visual structures from architecture and painting to traditional crafts and film.
