Honors Courses for 2008-2009
Fall 2008
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 2054 Consumer Society and Globalization
The content of this course will revolve around contemporary issues regarding “consumerism” in modern society. We will take into consideration the historical backdrop of how materialist values came to dominate Western societies along with its imposing threat on non-Western societies (specifically looking at this logic in comparison to Turkey, India and the Middle East). In his book entitled “Jihad vs. McWorld,” (2003) for example, Benjamin Barber discusses the implications of these materialist values as they spread to other regions of the world and how many communities react to the threat of an individualistic consumer ethos. Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” (2002) is a more popular example of current criticism of globalization including a discussion of the WTO protests and alternative lifestyles (i.e. Juliet Schor’s concept of voluntary simplicity from her book entitled “The Overspent American,” 1999). The class will help students critically evaluate their media surroundings, material definitions of success, the influence that advertising has on culture, as well as call into question a global culture of brands and how this threatens pluralism world-wide. The logic of capitalism may be economic (and it will be studied as such), but its implications are cultural. Globalization is a phenomenon whose study benefits immensely from a cross-disciplinary focus. At the crossroads of politics, social theories, cultural studies and economics (amongst others), a primary emphasis of the course will be to understand the issues involved through the various disciplines.
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 4070 Community Leadership: A Global Perspective (3 units)
Transformational change is advanced by individuals who join together in community to make a positive difference in the world. This interdisciplinary course will examine the evolution of leadership through examples of historical and contemporary leaders whose commitment to social justice improved the standard of living for millions. More than 50% of the world’s population lives on less than US $2 per day. Social transformation in pursuit of social justice must, therefore, address this critical issue of global poverty. How can we, as individuals, partner with business, government and community organizations to effect significant improvements to contemporary social problems in our own communities and around the world? The relationships among poverty, natural disasters and health will be examined. Models of community leadership businesses will be explored and practiced, and examples of socially responsible businesses will be studied.
CQHO 4003: Natural Disasters: Societal and Individual Reactions to Risk (3 units)
This course is an in-depth, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to the study of natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, floods and hurricanes and the impact that such events have on human populations around the world. Topics include the geological and climate-related forces that cause various disasters and the areas of the world that are most at risk from certain hazards. We will also consider how humankind has attempted to prevent or mitigate the effects of natural disasters, both at the individual and the societal level, and how these efforts are affected by psychological, social, cultural, and economic factors.
CQHO 4720: Global Health Issues (3 units)
Global health issues include a wide array of topics from different disciplines – environmental toxins from farming and industry, epidemics of infectious diseases like influenza and avian bird flu, population and food production, and the effects of natural disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and droughts. This course will explore a variety of health issues affecting populations around the world. We will focus on examining the after-effects of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, conditions associated with poverty, the potential threat of widespread epidemics and correlations between health and environmental pollutants
Spring 2009
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.
HONO 3008: City as Text: Berlin & Prague (3 units)
Courses will be posted following approval by Honors Board and GE committee
Colloquium: Radical Response: Addressing Injustice and Instigating Change
Courses will be posted following approval by Honors Board and GE committee
