Honors Program

Students will join in researching, writing, and producing the podcast “Crime Waves.” The work is focused on Henry C. Lee faculty, who have led some of the world’s top investigations, as well as prominent external guest speakers. Students will be responsible for researching two one-hour episodes. This work would consist of conducting preliminary interviews with the guests, professionally producing the podcast episode, packaging it, and promoting it. The Crime Waves podcast interviews people at the center of the biggest investigations in the world: prosecutors, criminals, professors, corruptors, journalists, undercover investigators, policemen, Olympic Gold Medalists, and mobsters — all experts with first-hand knowledge of the criminal world.

The first rule about Book Club is that you talk about Book Club. In this course, up to 18 faculty members each choose a book they love; students then select three of these reading groups to join. Each group is limited to three to five students to keep discussion intense, free-flowing, and fun. A final project helps students reflect on what they have learned during the course.

Through diffractive reading of literary, philosophical, and neuroscientific texts, students will examine the concept of self and how this concept is shaped (both materially and metaphorically) through intra-action with external agents. Consideration of the ethical impact of self-formation will further guide exploration. This critical foundation will develop into creative “design” of the future versions of self, with emphasis on the increase of agential power in environments (social and professional) students envision as important.

This course challenges students to critically examine games as interactive worlds to enable the creation of their own creative works. Over the course of the semester, students will study the cultural theories of gameplay, critique several games in depth, and discuss techniques of storytelling and world building in the medium. Students will implement these ideas in building a series of games — including board games, interactive text-based games, and video games. Students will work individually and in groups to create their games. They will take advantage of the resources of the new Schaub Makerspace to fabricate materials for board games and design digital games using tools such as Twine, Bitsy, GB Studio, and Unity3D.

This course offers a unique opportunity for students to unravel the intricate knots that bind music and identity. Through the careful study and analysis of popular music, we will explore the evolving historical, cultural, and social factors that both reflect and shape our understanding of gender and sexuality. From the cabaret and blues of the 1920s to the hyperpop of the 2020s, we will examine representations of queerness and feminism across the dynamic landscape of popular music, including discussions on activism, empowerment, equality, and backlash. Coursework will include creating a collaborative website to collect relevant student examples, critical analyses, and reflections.

Climate change has been defined as one of society’s greatest threats. These threats include extreme weather events, sea level rise, melting sea ice, ocean acidification, the intensification of hurricanes, and loss of biodiversity. An introduction to how the climate system works, oceanographic processes, and how these factors affect our society, economy, and policies will be discussed. Vulnerability research, behavior change theories, and both national and international policies to address these changes will be covered. This course will take a multidisciplinary approach to address these relevant and applicable issues.

Administrative evil has been and remains a central feature of public and private organizations in the modern era. In this course, we will explore notions of masked and unmasked evil and consider how the conditions of technical rationality, with its emphasis on the scientific-analytic mindset and the belief in technological progress, provide the conditions for the emergence of administrative evil. The foundations of our study will consider how ordinary people fulfilling ordinary organizational roles assisted in and supported unprecedented destruction in ways that were packaged as socially normal and appropriate. Topics will include the Holocaust, the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, and the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Finally, we will consider ways in which administrative evil can be unmasked and potentially expatiated.

This course explores the intersection of socioeconomic status and human health. By examining biological and sociological differences throughout the life course, students will explore topics such as the impact of poverty on expecting mothers, the predictive power of being born in a specific zip code on social and health outcomes, what gender is—biologically speaking— and how/why that matters in society, and biological and sociological predictors of illness and end-of-life outcomes. The course will place special emphasis on dispelling myths and understanding the facts and statistics surrounding these important issues, encouraging students to critically analyze the information presented.

We make introductions more exciting. The Honors Program routinely offers Honors sections of introductory core courses, such as General Chemistry, Thinking Historically, Introduction to Criminal Justice, Personal Finance, and Bioethics.