Here are the course descriptions for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Jump to Fall 2026, Winter 2027

HNR 350-01 Medical Controversies

Coeli Fitzpatrick

Asynchronously Online, Second Six Weeks

When we think about medical controversies such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, where African-Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama were denied medical treatment of syphilis in the name of science, we might assume that the days of such scandals are past. Yet new scandals and unthinkable controversies in the name of medicine, science, and progress are exposed with alarming regularity. These controversies are very often intertwined with issues of race, culture, social class, and politics. This interdisciplinary seminar uses fiction, memoir, film, podcasts, and essays to explore the sites where medicine, the elevation of science, and real bodies meet. The course will look at topics such as research/experimentation, the “war on drugs” and the opioid epidemic, “the obesity epidemic”, medicalization, risk and stigma, gun-control as a medical issue, and healthcare access. Students will also have the opportunity to use course assignments to explore their own areas of specific interest.   

HNR 350-02 Textual Tease

Jeremiah Cataldo

Asynchronously Online, First Six Weeks

We often assume that the Bible speaks clairvoyantly about social-political issues that concern us in our present moments, mostly as "Thou shalt not..." But what if the Bible is more scandalous? What if it betrays similar struggles with issues related to gender, politics, and even religion that we moderns face? This course dives into the depths of those issues and exposes the darker side of reading a text that continues to influence modern social and political ideals and policies.

HNR 351-01 Debating Social Issues

Leifa Mayers

Asynchronously Online, First Six Weeks

This course uses a quantitative lens to understand media coverage, public opinion, and public policy related to a controversial social issues such as immigration, public assistance or abortion. We will examine how media impacts public opinion and whether polling results accurately reflect public opinion. We will also look at how public policy, including federal and state laws, accounts for public opinion and other data. Finally, students will have the opportunity to use statistical data and additional evidence to support civil discourse on a divisive social issue of their choosing. Throughout the course, we will learn how to understand, interpret, and apply statistical data and how data is used to support particular ethical or political positions on a social issue. Rather than starting from an already-formed opinion on an issue, we will focus on thinking through the issue from multiple perspectives and using a variety of approaches. 

HNR 201 Live. Learn. Lead.

Section 01: Peter Wampler TR 2:30-3:45p.m. HON 148

Section 02: Ellen Adams TR 4:00-5:15p.m. HON 148

Section 03: Susan Stauffacher MW 1:30-2:45p.m. HON 220

This course is structured around a series of campus and community lectures, performances, exhibits, or other events. Readings and classroom activities prepare students to experience each event as fully as possible. Group attendance, follow-up discussion, and written reflections help students derive meaning from each experience and place it in larger contexts. The ultimate aim of the course is to equip students to engage in intelligent participation in public dialogues.

HNR 250-01 Poetry in Place: Explore the History of Local Poetry

Christine Stephens-Krieger

TR 1:00-2:15p.m. HON 214

Join the Grand Rapids Poet Laureate on a deep dive into the history of poetry in Grand Rapids and at GVSU. Students will engage in primary research such as diving into physical archives as well as conducting personal interviews with poets. With nearly 200 years to explore, we’ll expand our understanding of poetry-related local events, including the ground-breaking practices of the Ladies Literary Club, the circumstances surrounding America’s worst poet and her successful public reading, the Poetry Festivals that occurred at Grand Valley State Colleges in the 1970s, and the activist poetry troupe called the Twilight Tribe, to name a few. Completed essays will be considered for publication in an anthology as a part of the Poet Laureate’s many projects. This course is perfect for students interested in collaborative essay research and writing as well as anyone interested in making connections in the Grand Rapids poetry scene.

HNR 250-02 Community, Identity and Wonder

Ellen Adams

TR 2:30-3:45p.m. HON 218

The Parthenon in Athens, Michelangelo’s David sculpture in Florence, and Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington: what do these artworks, widely varied in form, scale, and location, have in common? All were created for public spaces, intended to edify, beautify, inspire, and/or challenge their communities. Through readings, research, discussion, field research, and a semester-long project, students in this course will delve into the meaning and varieties of art created in and for public spaces. Students will also consider the problem of defining a public or publics in relation to works of art that inhabit spaces that are deemed public or common. What happens, for example, when a work of art that might be seen to properly provoke an elite museum-going audience is seen as offensive when inserted into everyday public spaces? How is this complicated when that work of art if paid for by public funds? And what kinds of communities are beautified by public art and which communities are left out? After an introduction to the history of public art, the class will cover public space and the modern works, art and site specificity, contested/controversial public art, race and ethnicity, memory, and public/private partnerships. 

HNR 250-03 Cities for People

Steven Wilson

MW 4:30-5:45p.m. HON 218

Cities are more than streets and buildings — cities are living, evolving expressions of human connection. This course explores the city as both a complex adaptive system and a work of the collective human imagination across time. Through readings from urban studies, economics, literature, philosophy, art and architecture, we’ll examine how cities think, learn, and adapt — and how people shape and are shaped by urban life. Working in small groups and using project-based learning, students will trace the patterns of community, creativity, and resilience that give cities their pulse, discovering how meaning and movement intertwine in the fabric of everyday city life.

By 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities.  Twenty-first century city design is becoming more human-centered as city planners around the globe recognize that, just like humans, cities are intelligent, complex and highly adaptable.  Accordingly, this course will explore how cities evolve—from ancient times to today and beyond—and embody and on-going dialogue with the people that live there.  Reflecting on the human experience of city life, students will collaborate in small groups to design and carry out a project-based inquiry into community resilience in a city of the group’s choice, with attention to historical, social, geo-political, economic, and environmental dynamics.

HNR 250-04 Social Problems in Religion

Jeremiah Cataldo

MW 12:00-1:15p.m. HON 218

This is a problem-based learning course. Students will be presented with an area in which religious ideology and belief run into tension with social, political, and/or economic developments. Rather than presenting material that students must use to solve a problem, this course presents the problem and aids students in collecting material and data to apply toward a solution. Students will examine and define the problem, explore what they already know about it, identify and pursue areas for further research, and evaluate different potential solutions.

HNR 251-01 The Healing Power of Plants

Karen Amisi

T 6:00-8:50p.m. HON 220

From early time, man has recognized that plants have the power to heal and sustain life. Plants remain the first-choice treatment for 80% of the global populations. Consumer interest in the health benefits of medicinal and aromatic plants has increased worldwide. This course uses a research project-based approach to explore the history and diverse uses of medicinal, aromatic, and poisonous plants in various cultures. Students will gain an awareness of how natural chemical compounds derived from plants play a dominant role in the development of drugs to treat human diseases. The future of medicinal plants rests on our ability to invest in researching and documenting the plants and their active ingredients. 

HNR 251-02 What If?

Joshua Veazey

MW 12:00-1:15p.m. HON 214

The practice of asking questions is essential to science. Scientific questions do not always need to be tied to practical applications. Powers of scientific reasoning can even help us answer questions that are downright absurd. What would happen if a baseball were pitched at 90% the speed of light? Cartoonist Randall Munroe’s book, What If?, demonstrates the use of serious scientific reasoning to answer absurd scientific questions. In this project-based course, students will develop tools in physics and mathematics to construct scientifically plausible answers to the absurd scientific questions they come up with on their own. In the process, we will see how humor can open channels of creativity and communication around challenging topics.

HNR 251-03 Megafloods, Meteors, & Mishaps

Peter Wampler

MW 1:30-2:45p.m. HON 214

Embark on an intellectual and virtual journey to uncover how cataclysmic events—from exploding volcanoes and nuclear meltdowns to megafloods and meteor strikes—shape our landscapes and cultures. In this course, you will dive into first-hand narratives and scientific data to answer critical questions: How do we evaluate the risks of where we live, and what is the true cost of being "safe"? Through hands-on tools like Google Earth and an investigation into the Pacific Northwest’s "Big One" with the text Full-Rip 9.0, you will learn to predict and mitigate future hazards. The semester culminates in a collaborative "Disaster Dissection" project where you and your team will present life-saving recommendations at a mock town hall meeting, transforming you into a savvy communicator and a resilient, data-driven problem solver.

HNR 350-01 Public Religion in America

Jeremiah Cataldo

MW 10:30-11:45a.m. HON 219

This course explores the cultural and religious landscapes of the United States. Some of its topics will be public displays of cultural and religious identities, public debates about social and political issues, and how nationalism and religion are integrated. In exploring those it seeks to answer, how has public religion changed the face of American identity?

HNR 350-02 Democracy in Distress

Maria Cimitile

MW 11:30-12:45p.m. HON 218

Thirty-three percent of Americans have indicated that they favor an authoritarian government. Our democracy is in distress. After 250 years, does democracy no longer serve the people of the United States? This course will explore the founding principles of classical liberalism that has served to undergird democracy in the United States, and weigh how well these ideas have served to create the ideal society that the founders envisioned. Students will debate the issues that cause disillusionment with our governing structure and political representatives, explore the history of authoritarianism, and examine the authoritarian practices with a view to the future. Students lead their classmates in discussion in this seminar style format.

HNR 350-03 Adaptive Leadership in a Changing World

Daniel Williams, Meijer Endowed Chair

M 6:00-8:50p.m. HON 220

How will you show up in this fast-paced, ever-changing world, so rife with challenges and so in need of care? What role will you play in imagining and creating other possibilities and futures for yourself, for each other, and for our planet? Courageous adaptive leadership is vital as we move forward into an uncertain future, and, in this class, we will nurture this capacity in ourselves and each other. During the first half of the semester, we will engage in text-based dialogue, reflection, and provocations that require us to wrestle with complexity, tension, and how our lived experiences shape the ways we see the world. We will analyze and define “problems,” consider their contexts, and resist the urge to immediately jump in and find “the solution,” even and especially when we feel an urgency to “do something” and not “just talk about it.” We will practice curiosity, deep listening, empathy, and responsiveness, attending closely to our own and others’ positionalities. Then, we will apply and practice what we have learned as we spend the rest of the semester working through a design challenge that requires us to engage in praxis–iterative, concurrent, and constant reflection + action in pursuit of transformation–all while building our criticality and centering care. Throughout the semester, we will explore what it might mean for each of us to shape the world as leaders and humans who listen critically, reflect thoughtfully, and act decisively to nurture more just, free, and joyful communities.

HNR 350-04 Discovering New Histories Here

Anna-Lisa Cox

MW 9:00-10:15a.m. HON 219

This class will explore some of the newest and most exciting discoveries in the history of this region, while also teaching you to become your own history detective.

As an award-winning historian, my work has led me to create history exhibits at the Smithsonian, travel across the Midwest to interview African American farmers for the Library of Congress Folklife Center, and produce history videos for the National Park Service featuring the comedian Josh Johnson and the Tik Tok star Kahlil Greene. One of my greatest joys, however, is the craft of history -- finding buried facts from the past and making them known. This class will show you how to become your own history detective, first finding out what gaps exist in textbooks and the historical record, and then uncovering buried histories from the early 1800s in the Grand Rapids area, or in a community of your choosing. Your final project will be doing original research -- work that matters -- work with the potential to have a very real impact on the historical narrative as well as on the community you are studying.

HNR 350-05 The Beautiful Game

Tara Hefferan

TR 11:30-12:45p.m. LSH 233

Soccer and Society: Culture, History, & Power in the Beautiful Game

Soccer unites 3.5 billion fans and 250 million players, making it the most popular sport on the planet.  Transcending geographical and political boundaries, religious systems, and language barriers, soccer is more than just a “beautiful game.”  To some, soccer is life itself. 

This course traces soccer’s significance beyond the pitch to explore its impacts on cultures, societies, and everyday lives.  What does soccer reveal about cultural norms, values, and beliefs?  How are international spectacles like the World Cup and Olympics connected to national pride and identity?  What myths, heroes, and rituals get attached to teams and stadiums?  How do race, class, and gender shape and get shaped by the beautiful game?  How is soccer channeled in pursuit of social and political change?  These and other questions will be explored in this interdisciplinary seminar focused on the ways that soccer explains the world.

HNR 350-06 Textual Tease

Jeremiah Cataldo

Asynchronously Online

We often assume that the Bible speaks clairvoyantly about social-political issues that concern us in our present moments, mostly as "Thou shalt not..." But what if the Bible is more scandalous? What if it betrays similar struggles with issues related to gender, politics, and even religion that we moderns face? This course dives into the depths of those issues and exposes the darker side of reading a text that continues to influence modern social and political ideals and policies.

HNR 350-07 Power, Identity, and Politics

Tyler Camarillo

MW 10:30-11:45a.m. HON 214

How does identity shape politics and power in the United States? Why does this influence lead to questions like: why are certain topics more controversial in education, why is there a seemingly insurmountable divide over immigration, who should or shouldn’t perform at the Super Bowl, and what is the government's role in tackling poverty and inequality? Furthermore, why is there no consensus on what it means to be American?

This course examines fundamental questions and debates surrounding race, ethnicity, and politics (REP) in the U.S. Students will analyze scholarship across political science, history, and sociology to explore the history of racial and ethnic groups and how identity influences politics. The focus will be on theoretical perspectives of race and ethnicity, their roles in citizenship, group identity, structural racism, and racial hierarchies. Topics include racial violence, reparations, redistricting, the Voting Rights Act, racism, racial resentment, social movements, media influence on identity, poverty, and inequality. Current events will be used to illustrate and engage with these core ideas.

HNR 351-02 Public Health, Disease, and Culture

Azizur Molla

TR 4:00-5:15p.m. HON 220

Public health teaches us that the practice of what constitutes “health” varies greatly across the globe. Even the meanings of what it means to have health or disease change depending on different social and cultural contexts. Mainstream western medicine has only relatively recently started to pay attention to how different cultures characterize these contexts, and yet attention to different concepts of health and disease is necessary in a diverse and complex world. This class looks at how health and disease is characterized over time and place, highlighting several specific communities. Students will also learn how local public health officials’ practices are used to reduce diseases.”

HNR 351-03 Debating Social Issues

Leifa Mayers

MW 12:00-1:15p.m. HON 214

This course uses a quantitative lens to understand media coverage, public opinion, and public policy related to a controversial social issue such as immigration, public assistance, or abortion. We will examine how media impacts public opinion and whether polling results accurately reflect public opinion. We will also look at how public policy, including federal and state laws, accounts for public opinion and other data. Finally, students will have the opportunity to use statistical data and additional evidence to support civil discourse on a divisive social issue of their choosing. Throughout the course, we will learn how to understand, interpret, and apply statistical data and how data is used to support particular ethical or political positions on a social issue. Rather than starting from an already-formed opinion on an issue, we will focus on thinking through the issue from multiple perspectives and using a variety of approaches.

HNR 351-04 Data Detectives

Peter Wampler

TR 4:00-5:15p.m. HON 214

In HNR351: Data Detectives, you will step behind the curtain of a world awash in numbers to investigate how data is woven into every aspect of our lives, from politics and pizza delivery to cyber warfare and big data. This hands-on, multi-disciplinary course moves beyond the spreadsheet, utilizing movies like The Social Network and The Imitation Game alongside guest presentations from FBI Special Agents and cybersecurity experts to explore the ethics of privacy and personal rights. Whether you are analyzing data in the computer lab or debating the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency in the fireside room, you will develop the critical thinking and rhetorical skills necessary to navigate and tell stories with data in your own specific field.

HNR 201 Live. Learn. Lead.

Section 01: Ellen Adams TR 2:30-3:45p.m. HON 148

Section 02: Jeremiah Cataldo MW 1:30-2:45p.m. HON 220

This course is structured around a series of campus and community lectures, performances, exhibits, or other events. Readings and classroom activities prepare students to experience each event as fully as possible. Group attendance, follow-up discussion, and written reflections help students derive meaning from each experience and place it in larger contexts. The ultimate aim of the course is to equip students to engage in intelligent participation in public dialogues.

HNR 250-01 Misinformation in Society

Josie Holohan

MW 4:30-5:45p.m. HON 214

Course description coming soon!

HNR 250-02 Cities for People

Steven Wilson

MW 4:30-5:45p.m. HON 218

Cities are more than streets and buildings — cities are living, evolving expressions of human connection. This course explores the city as both a complex adaptive system and a work of the collective human imagination across time. Through readings from urban studies, economics, literature, philosophy, art and architecture, we’ll examine how cities think, learn, and adapt — and how people shape and are shaped by urban life. Working in small groups and using project-based learning, students will trace the patterns of community, creativity, and resilience that give cities their pulse, discovering how meaning and movement intertwine in the fabric of everyday city life.

By 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities.  Twenty-first century city design is becoming more human-centered as city planners around the globe recognize that, just like humans, cities are intelligent, complex and highly adaptable.  Accordingly, this course will explore how cities evolve—from ancient times to today and beyond—and embody and on-going dialogue with the people that live there.  Reflecting on the human experience of city life, students will collaborate in small groups to design and carry out a project-based inquiry into community resilience in a city of the group’s choice, with attention to historical, social, geo-political, economic, and environmental dynamics.

HNR 250-03 Social Problems in Religion

Jeremiah Cataldo

MW 3:00-4:15p.m. HON 218

This is a problem-based learning course. Students will be presented with an area in which religious ideology and belief run into tension with social, political, and/or economic developments. Rather than presenting material that students must use to solve a problem, this course presents the problem and aids students in collecting material and data to apply toward a solution. Students will examine and define the problem, explore what they already know about it, identify and pursue areas for further research, and evaluate different potential solutions.

HNR 250-04 Dream Deferred

Sherry Johnson

MW 1:30-2:45p.m. HON 218

In this course students will examine the promise of the American Dream. Using humanistic frameworks, students will analyze literature by great American authors like James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, and Sandra Cisneros, for example. While principal texts in the course will be literary, students will also analyze alternative texts like music videos, documentaries, films, and relevant Grand Rapids Art Museum exhibits, for example.  Ultimately, the goal is for students to be able to engage past definitions and present manifestations of the dream in order to imagine what it looks like for them in the future.

HNR 250-05 Improving the Game

David Eick

TR 1:00-2:15p.m. HON 218

Reacting to the Past is a series of role-playing games written by scholars who are experts in the content area but not necessarily in gamification. As such, some games are less engaging than they could be. In this HNR 250 students will first experience a game which is both content-rich and exciting, thanks to the contingencies which arise and create uncertainty and tension: Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791.

Next, students will choose one of these games to work on:

• Art in Paris: Modernism versus Traditionalism, 1888-89
• Russian Literary Journals: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in St. Petersburg, 1877
• Stages of Power: Marlowe and Shakespeare, 1592

Through library research and with the aid of the Reacting to the Past Game Designer’s Handbook, students will work with a team of their peers to produce a more engaging game by injecting contingency.

Finally, students will play-test each and deliver enhanced versions of the games for use in future Honors courses.

HNR 251-01 The Healing Power of Plants

Karen Amisi

M 3:00-5:50p.m. HON 148

From early time, man has recognized that plants have the power to heal and sustain life. Plants remain the first-choice treatment for 80% of the global populations. Consumer interest in the health benefits of medicinal and aromatic plants has increased worldwide. This course uses a research project-based approach to explore the history and diverse uses of medicinal, aromatic, and poisonous plants in various cultures. Students will gain an awareness of how natural chemical compounds derived from plants play a dominant role in the development of drugs to treat human diseases. The future of medicinal plants rests on our ability to invest in researching and documenting the plants and their active ingredients. 

HNR 251-02 Calling Bull: Skepticism & Data

Lora Bailey

TR 2:30-3:45p.m. HON 218

Being a good citizen in the information age requires us to be skeptical consumers and proficient communicators of information.  This course will equip students to cultivate a skeptical mindset, become proficient at assessing information in their daily lives, and develop the ability to interpret and communicate quantitative information with clarity.  

HNR 251-03 Human Body in Motion

Bradley Ambrose

MW 1:00-2:50p.m. HON 214

This interdisciplinary science course is a lab-based problem-based learning (PBL) course for Honors students. The structure and function of human movement are examined from a basic physical perspective, with applications in body composition, biomechanics, and other areas of movement science, in order to develop an appreciation for the human body.  The course also focuses on the nature of science as a human endeavor.  

HNR 251-04 Hollywood Science

Eric Ramsson

TR 1:00-2:15p.m. HON 214

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show and thought "That doesn't sound right..." as they describe something "science-y"? Through this course, you will learn how the human body normally functions, and then use that information to determine the validity of TV and/or movies through Project-Based Learning. You will learn more about yourself and gain skills to navigate a world of misinformation.

HNR 251-05 Ethics of Financial Performance

Dori Danko

MW 12:00-1:15p.m. HON 220

Insider trading, triple bottom line, ESG, crypto currency, AI, market corrections—how do these hot topics impact the financial markets?  Whether it’s the Dow, Nasdaq, or the bond market, the financial markets impact us all.  What is the purpose of investing?  Who invests—and why?  Explore how financial markets help us understand the foundation of business and business ethics today as well as our culture as a whole. What are the competing attitudes toward regulation and business ethics as they relate to our financial markets? Is profit more important than societal values? Do companies value stakeholders more than profits? These issues and conflicts are aspects of our financial markets this course explores. Through readings, discussions, and videos, we will navigate through the quagmire of the financial markets of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Every company’s stock performance tells a story, and we will explore those stories and how they reflect our society’s culture, ethics, regulatory practices, and prospects for the future. 

HNR 350-01 I Love the 80s: Visual Culture in the Age of Reagan, Madonna, and AIDS

Ellen Adams

TR 4:00-5:15p.m. HON 218

This interdisciplinary course will trace the visual culture of the 1980s from the election of Ronald Reagan to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today’s culture wars over feminism, globalism, multiculturalism, and identity politics originated in battles waged in the eighties over obscenity and morality. For example, how did the rise of crack cocaine begin a wave of massive incarceration among urban African Americans and feature prominently in video and film? In what ways did Jane Fonda’s workout videos shape both positive and negative female body norms at a time when women were moving into the work force in record numbers?  Federal funding for art, a process that until this time went largely unnoticed by the public, was pushed into the mainstream media by members of Congress who gained notoriety by playing on Americans’ fear of queer and feminist bodies. Thus, works such as Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs and Maya Lin’s now iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial provoked outrage, as did the visual culture surrounding the AIDS pandemic, from ACT UP’s furious activist imagery to the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Music and video combined in novel ways in the 80s, especially through the nascent MTV. Our playlist will include the post-punk vanguard (for example, Joy Division, The Cure); heavy metal (Metallica, AC/DC), pop (Madonna, Prince) and early hip hop (NWA, Public Enemy).

HNR 350-02 Discovering New Histories Here

Anna-Lisa Cox

MW 9:00-10:15a.m. HON 214

This class will explore some of the newest and most exciting discoveries in the history of this region, while also teaching you to become your own history detective.

As an award-winning historian, my work has led me to create history exhibits at the Smithsonian, travel across the Midwest to interview African American farmers for the Library of Congress Folklife Center, and produce history videos for the National Park Service featuring the comedian Josh Johnson and the Tik Tok star Kahlil Greene. One of my greatest joys, however, is the craft of history -- finding buried facts from the past and making them known. This class will show you how to become your own history detective, first finding out what gaps exist in textbooks and the historical record, and then uncovering buried histories from the early 1800s in the Grand Rapids area, or in a community of your choosing. Your final project will be doing original research -- work that matters -- work with the potential to have a very real impact on the historical narrative as well as on the community you are studying.

HNR 350-03 Adaptive Leadership in a Changing World

Daniel Williams, Meijer Endowed Chair

M 6:00-8:50p.m. HON 220

How will you show up in this fast-paced, ever-changing world, so rife with challenges and so in need of care? What role will you play in imagining and creating other possibilities and futures for yourself, for each other, and for our planet? Courageous adaptive leadership is vital as we move forward into an uncertain future, and, in this class, we will nurture this capacity in ourselves and each other. During the first half of the semester, we will engage in text-based dialogue, reflection, and provocations that require us to wrestle with complexity, tension, and how our lived experiences shape the ways we see the world. We will analyze and define “problems,” consider their contexts, and resist the urge to immediately jump in and find “the solution,” even and especially when we feel an urgency to “do something” and not “just talk about it.” We will practice curiosity, deep listening, empathy, and responsiveness, attending closely to our own and others’ positionalities. Then, we will apply and practice what we have learned as we spend the rest of the semester working through a design challenge that requires us to engage in praxis–iterative, concurrent, and constant reflection + action in pursuit of transformation–all while building our criticality and centering care. Throughout the semester, we will explore what it might mean for each of us to shape the world as leaders and humans who listen critically, reflect thoughtfully, and act decisively to nurture more just, free, and joyful communities.

HNR 350-04 Democracy in Distress

Maria Cimitile

MW 10:30-11:45a.m. HON 219

Thirty-three percent of Americans have indicated that they favor an authoritarian government. Our democracy is in distress. After 250 years, does democracy no longer serve the people of the United States? This course will explore the founding principles of classical liberalism that has served to undergird democracy in the United States, and weigh how well these ideas have served to create the ideal society that the founders envisioned. Students will debate the issues that cause disillusionment with our governing structure and political representatives, explore the history of authoritarianism, and examine the authoritarian practices with a view to the future. Students lead their classmates in discussion in this seminar style format.

HNR 350-05 Medical Controversies

Coeli Fitzpatrick

MW 3:00-4:15p.m. HON 220

When we think about medical controversies such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, where African-Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama were denied medical treatment of syphilis in the name of science, we might assume that the days of such scandals are past. Yet new scandals and unthinkable controversies in the name of medicine, science, and progress are exposed with alarming regularity. These controversies are very often intertwined with issues of race, culture, social class, and politics. This interdisciplinary seminar uses fiction, memoir, film, podcasts, and essays to explore the sites where medicine, the elevation of science, and real bodies meet. The course will look at topics such as research/experimentation, the “war on drugs” and the opioid epidemic, “the obesity epidemic”, medicalization, risk and stigma, gun-control as a medical issue, and healthcare access. Students will also have the opportunity to use course assignments to explore their own areas of specific interest.   

HNR 350-06 Social Media and Belief

Jeremiah Cataldo

MW 10:00-11:15a.m. HON 218

How have the Internet and social media changed the ways we think and believe? How have they remapped the ways we express our deepest religious, political, emotional, and other beliefs? Are we becoming "transhuman"? This course pursues answers to those questions. By reviewing the formation of belief systems in the past across a range of cultures and by exploring current psychological and sociological research on belief formation, religious and other, it will show why our beliefs will never be the same in the dawning of an increasingly digitized world. Its benefit will be for anyone studying how humans behave and relate, such as those seeking careers in politics, business, religion, advertising, computer science, medicine, and more.

HNR 350-07 AI in the Cultural Imagination

Rachel Anderson

MW 9:00-10:15a.m. HON 219

What happens when a concept born in speculative fiction becomes a defining feature of everyday life? In this interdisciplinary class, we’ll be examining the Artificial Intelligence (AI) phenomenon from a variety of angles, including its history, how the tech actually works, and how it has been represented in popular tech discourse, science fiction, and current popular culture. Currently, while every company is seemingly rolling out their latest gizmo “enhanced” by AI, critics are questioning the usefulness and ethics of this technology.  This debate will be at the heart of this course.

Specifically, we’ll be reading classic stories like those in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Karl Čapek’s R.U.R (which invented the term “robot”) and discussing films like 2001, Blade Runner, and Ex Machina.  We’ll also dive into the history of computing and cybernetics, looking at such figures as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, and Norbert Wiener.  We’ll see how our cultural imagining of artificial intelligence in our fiction intersects with the technology’s development and how we’re currently debating the issues that we’ve seen arise from the technology in our world – including the ethics of AI use in an educational environment, the environmental costs of AI development, and the ways AI may affect all of our futures, leading to potential utopias or dystopias.  

HNR 350-08 Food, Culture, Conscience

John Uglietta

TR 2:30-3:45p.m. HON 214

If we are lucky, most of us eat every day. However, the regularity of our encounters with food may cover up many of the ways that our food practices reflect our personal, religious, scientific, and philosophical beliefs and also our historical and environmental setting.  We will look at a variety of contemporary and historical sources to investigate the ways we eat, prepare, and talk about food.  We will look at recipes, cookbooks, and food reviews to investigate the methods and difficulties of talking about the taste and judgment we exercise in eating and preparing food. We will explore the nature of American cuisine and some of the great variety of food traditions in the US.  Also, we will consider the ethical implications of what we eat – exploring arguments for and against eating animal products and attempts to influence people to eat healthier foods. 

HNR 351-01 Debating Social Issues

Leifa Mayers

TR 4:00-5:15p.m. HON 220

This course uses a quantitative lens to understand media coverage, public opinion, and public policy related to a controversial social issue such as immigration, public assistance, or abortion. We will examine how media impacts public opinion and whether polling results accurately reflect public opinion. We will also look at how public policy, including federal and state laws, accounts for public opinion and other data. Finally, students will have the opportunity to use statistical data and additional evidence to support civil discourse on a divisive social issue of their choosing. Throughout the course, we will learn how to understand, interpret, and apply statistical data and how data is used to support particular ethical or political positions on a social issue. Rather than starting from an already-formed opinion on an issue, we will focus on thinking through the issue from multiple perspectives and using a variety of approaches.

HNR 351-02 Medicine, Health, and Oppression

Rachel Fox

MW 3:00-4:15p.m. HON 214

We live our lives by medical ideas. As an institution, medicine has a powerful influence on how we think, feel, act, thrive, and suffer. But not everyone experiences this influence equally. This course investigates how medicine and health are intertwined with the oppression of marginalized groups in the US. Specifically, we examine medicine as a site of oppression, medicine as a structure of oppression, and health inequalities as consequences of oppression. 

To enhance students’ data literacy, we will spend time interrogating how quantitative data can be used to naturalize or intensify the oppression of marginalized groups as well as how data can function as important evidence of such oppression.

HNR 351-03 The Art of Surveillance

Steven Nathaniel

MW 10:30-11:45a.m. HON 214

From codebreaking to drones, from Cold War spies to digital bots, from wiretapping to tracking cookies—surveillance has reshaped modern life. In this class, we investigate what it means to observe and be observed through the perspectives of technology, ethics, and pop culture. By examining surveillance technology, we uncover the secrets of camera, microphone, and algorithm. By exploring film, literature, and art, we ask how surveillance has formed the human mind and heart. What about all those messy scenarios where human and technology collide? Covert espionage fosters institutional distrust. Efficient policing sustains racial injustice. Public performance destabilizes private identity. Digital anonymity provokes social discord. We address these topics and more. This course’s converging disciplines also lead us to deliberate broader philosophical dilemmas that are both relevant and timeless: How do we know what is true? Who gets to control information? What is worthy of our attention? Why do we hope and fear to be known?