Course Schedule

In this discussion and project-based course, students will examine the ways that world views are and have always been created and conveyed using written, visual, and other communicative means. Students will analyze a variety of rhetorical artifacts, including past and current social commentary cartoons, essays, speeches, objects, and images, in order to consider what beliefs these artifacts are consciously and subconsciously encouraging in the viewer.

This course provides an introduction to biological anthropology and archeology while exploring our human origins. Physical anthropology topics include evolutionary theory and genetics, the human fossil record, and the study of non-human primates. Archeology scientifically reconstructs past cultures. We will cover the basics of archeological data and dating methods and then move on to the transformation from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to one based on food production. Finally, we will examine the role of agriculture in the development of complex sociopolitical institutions and state societies.

Study of the oceans including the application of geology, biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering and how they interact in different parts of the ocean environment. Strong interdisciplinary focus of ocean processes and how they are connected to our lives. Topics include how technology has advanced our understanding of the oceans, sampling seawater and sediments and mapping the seafloor, opening and closing of ocean basins, formation and erosion of beaches, life in the oceans, ocean resources, marine pollution, and the role of the oceans in global climate change.

Hands-on introductory studio course in ceramics. Ceramics will be introduced through an exploration of functional and sculptural approaches to clay. We will cover the basic clay forming techniques of hand building and wheel throwing, along with various surface, glazing, and kiln firing techniques.  Emphasis will be on the artistic process dealing with creative expression, design, aesthetics, technical skills, and concept development. 

This course includes a basic framework of political and economic historical developments in U.S. history, but it will focus more on post-1877 social, ethnic, cultural, and religious movements within a nation having ever greater interaction with the rest of the world. We will read a wide range of documents from a wide variety of people in the past, to research, analyze and discuss problems, proposed solutions, and outcomes over the past century and a half.

African history from the Paleolithic period to 1800. Development of agriculture, ancient civilizations of Africa, iron working societies, the trans-Saharan trade, the impact of Islam and Christianity, traditional African political and social arrangements, the slave trade, and the European presence in early modern Africa.

This course fulfills the World & Global GE23 category and the Non-Western Civilization IF14 category.

The Anthropology of Food is a seminar-style course with lectures and in-class activities, some limited research on history and culture of domesticated and wild foods, cultivation, labor, industrialization, heritage, memory, and politics of food and its distribution from a global standpoint.

This course fulfills the World & Global GE23 category and the Non-Western Civilization IF14 category.

Arctic Geography from an Inuit Perspective

You will take a journey through time and space to the lands and peoples of the north (focus on Alaska, Canada, and Greenland), seeing the Arctic as more than just snow and ice! The course explores the physical, cultural, historical, political, economic, and regional geography of the Arctic. Highlights include the origins and traditions of the Arctic indigenous Inuit, Arctic flora and fauna, unique features of a frozen land, Western exploration as viewed from both cultures, the influence of whalers, church and government on the Inuit, the Klondike gold rush, Inuit land claims, life in today’s Arctic, as well as the impacts of a changing climate and changing geopolitics. 

This course fulfills the World & Global GE23 category and the Non-Western Civilization IF14 category.

A growing majority of the world’s population now lives under some form of an authoritarian regime. Democracy is backsliding. This is the case for new democracies as we all as long-established ones, like the United States. This class will explore the historical intellectual roots of US democracy and trace its rise and decline over the course of its history, with particular emphasis on the past decade and the rise of hyper-polarization in US politics.

This course provides an introduction to human geography through examination of the spatial organization of human activity and the relationships between people and their environments. Topics include population, migration, diffusion, ecology, culture, religions, languages, ethnicities, urbanization, development, and globalization. In-class exercises, assignments and a field trip (if appropriate) are included to enhance student’s understanding of various subjects examined throughout the course.

In this course we will examine the rise, transformation and ongoing consequences (through to the present) of a modern global market society. We will begin with the European expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and focus on how new international patterns of production and trade in commodities developed and how these patterns transformed the societies and individual consumption habits of the regions involved.  In the middle section of the course we will focus on the industrial revolution and its consequences for the further development of global networks of production and exchange. In the last section of the course, we will examine more recent (twentieth and twenty-first century) changes in patterns of global production and exchange and think about our location with these networks. This course is also intended to familiarize you with some of the most important ideas and works in various social science disciplines, including anthropology, economics, history and sociology. So, we will also pay close attention to the different disciplinary methods we encounter in the books and articles we read. 

This course fulfills the World & Global GE23 category and the Western Civilization IF14 category.

This course critically examines the concept of Western Civilization as embodied by the architectural tradition emerging in prehistoric Crete and classical Greece. It tracks the stylistic and functional influences of this so-called Western Architecture through major historical periods to the advent of the Industrial Revolution discussing its relevance for contemporary architecture.

This course fulfills the World & Global GE23 category and the Western Civilization IF14 category.

The way of life of the original inhabitants of Eastern North America. Reconstructing life during the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries using archaeology, historic documents, and oral tradition (i.e., Ethnohistory). Early seventeenth century Wendat (Huron), Haudenosaunee (Five Nation Iroquois) and Powhatan confederacies; Cherokee in the middle-nineteenth century; Effects of European exploration and colonization; persistence of Indigenous Eastern North American peoples in the modern world.

In this course we will look at the phenomenon of haunting/ghostliness/spectrality that manifests consistently across ethnic and diverse literatures. In some of the texts we will be looking at we have literal ghosts that emerge in the narrative, while in other texts haunting functions are broad motif that marks the work. Some of the questions that we will consider is why the persistence of ghosts and the ghostly in late 20th century and early 21st century literary production? What are the ghosts try to tell us? What are they reminders or remainders of? How do we live with the ghostly? Some of the writers we may consider include Jesmyn Ward, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Daniel Jose Older, Louise Erdrich and Junot Diaz. 

Gender, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity are all over the news lately. Do you want to learn more about what each means and how society has understood and treated women and LGBTQ+ people in the past? Then this is the class for you! We will study gender identity, sex, and sexual orientation, and examine how gender is a social constructed category that interacts with race, ethnicity, culture, social class, religion, and other social groupings. We will also learn about feminist and other gender theories so that you can better understand and analyze the role of gender in sociocultural institutions and systems of privilege and oppression. We will discuss the impact of historical and contemporary understandings of gender on childhood experiences, media, education, employment, family, bodily experiences, violence and media. The course material and assignments are interdisciplinary: we will explore constructions of gender and sexuality through the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Best of all, you will gain valuable awareness and insight into the influence of gender ideologies in your own lives. Honors students will be required to do a research project on a topic of their choice which they'll present to the class.

The course focuses on an understanding of weather phenomena, specifically hazardous and unusual weather types. You will learn why and how extreme weather develops and evolves, and of some unusual weather phenomena. Topics include: formation of cyclones, ice storms, lake-effect snowstorms, cold waves, Great Plain blizzards, mountain snowstorms, thunderstorms, meteotsunamis, tornadoes, hailstorms, lightning, down bursts, tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, and heat waves. Infused within the course are weather-related hazardous preparation and the influence on extreme weather events attributable to climate change. The order of topics will, in part, be dictated by current events.  

THIS COURSE DOES NOT FULFILL GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

Students in this course will work together as a team of attorneys and witnesses in order to participate in a future Mock Trial competition, while acting as mentors to first-year students engaged in the case. Goodies include learning new case law, affidavits, depositions, expert reports, evidence, and more!  This year will feature a civil case (topic to be announced over the summer). 

Instructor Permission Only - Please contact Dr. Ben-Merre if you are interested in taking this class

THIS COURSE DOES NOT FULFILL GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

All Honors students preparing to graduate should enroll in this course. During this course students will complete career-related assignments, read a social justice-focused book and produce a project around a social justice theme, describe their applied learning experience, and provide feedback for the Honors Program and other areas on campus. 

THIS CLASS WILL MEET AT A MUTUALLY AGREED ON TIME FOR STUDENTS WHO ARE ENROLLED. There will be an online or in-class option and the class meets infrequently over the course of the semester. The instructor will contact students the first week of class to determine the first meeting time and place.