Honors Program Course Descriptions FYS1101*79: The Politics of Food Recent debates surrounding obesity in the United States have focused on eating healthy, public health concerns, and personal responsibility. Absent from this discussion are the political issues surrounding food production, consumption, and health. Eating a healthy diet is truly a social justice issue. This course will explore the social, cultural, and political concerns of food production and consumption in the United States, and its extension to Canada to the North and Latin America to the South. We will adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the topic by assessing immigration, trade policy, the agricultural business community, labor and poverty issues, public health concerns, and governmental initiatives to promote a healthy America. In addition to a comprehensive paper, the course will involve an experiential education component that will take us out of the classroom and into the community to explore how all the aspects of food policy affects people’s everyday lives. Fall semester. 4 credits
HONOR2201 Affective Reading: Sympathy and the Institution of the English Novel (AI-L) This course provides students with an interdisciplinary analysis of one of the most recognizable literary genres in the world. Tracing the developments of different philosophical approaches to sympathy in the 18th century, this course will consider how novels respond to the emotional needs of their readers by presenting the possibilities and limitations of human interaction. Emerging at a time when the slave trade provided the basis of the English economy, these theories and the novels that embody their significance struggle to represent the irony of what it means to be human. Readings will include, but are not limited to, selections from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Spring semester. 4 credits
HONOR2202 Reading Shakespeare: An Interdisciplinary Approach (AI-L) This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore “Shakespeare” as a powerful cultural force through which ideas about history, the literary canon, the theater, art, politics, religion, gender, sexuality, class, and society itself are produced. We focus on two plays written at the turn of the 17th century, Twelfth Night and Hamlet. In addition to doing in-depth readings of the plays in their historical contexts, we study film adaptations (Almereyda’s Hamlet, Fickman’s She’s the Man, and Pool’s Lost and Delirious), famous readings of the plays (Freud, Coleridge, and T.S. Eliot), and significant theoretical approaches (feminist, psychoanalytic, new historicist, queer theory). Spring semester. 4 credits
HONOR2401 Social Justice and Catholic Social Teaching (SA) In this course, students will examine issues of social justice through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching and community service. The course covers social issues concerning the global south as well as the global north. It explores over 100 years of Catholic Social Teaching, using papal encyclicals and pastoral letters primarily from the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops as well as the Conferences of African and Latin American Catholic Bishops. Students will analyze these documents and provide critiques of the teachings. With the help of a service-learning component, the course allows students to obtain in-depth knowledge about and apply the mission of national and international Catholic social justice organizations. The preparations of the service-learning component of the course will begin during the January intersession. Students who take this course cannot also take SOC2131 or THRS2130. Spring semester. 4 credits
HONOR2402 Justice: Theories, Evidence, and Practice (M) This course provides students with a foundational knowledge of theories of justice by engaging them in a survey of analyses that approach issues of justice and injustice from an interdisciplinary perspective. The course challenges students to reflect on how justice can be achieved within a capitalist global society that is profoundly unequal. Students will critically assess “evidence” of justice and injustice from different theoretical and artistic standpoints. As justice is not merely a theoretical issue but also a practical one (and an urgent one at that), students will apply the knowledge of justice acquired in the first part of the course to the actual pursuit of justice in the last part of the course. Readings may include John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice, Martha Nussbaum’s Creating Capabilities, and selections of Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation. Fall semester. 4 credits
HONOR2405 Interreligious Ethics (R) This course, which will address the intensified importance of interreligious ethics in contemporary global society, will first consider world religions in their internal diversity, as grounds for both progressive and fundamentalist movements. Then, students will focus on the interactions of certain world religions historically, ethically, and theologically. As we consider what constitutes a just society, we will study inclusive types of interreligious ethics, which enfranchise “the religious other” and also discuss exclusive interreligious ethics. In order to understand that current social interactions are not inherent to the religions, we will examine different kinds of interreligious ethics in their historical contexts. We will also study interreligious ethics in their contemporary geopolitical contexts to understand and apply the relevance of religion to current events. Students will apply all learning with the help of a variety of service-learning projects in the Boston area that are associated with religious institutions and interfaith ministries. This service-learning component will turn students’ theoretical knowledge into actual skills that are practical and relevant in a multi-religious world. Spring semester. 4 credits
HONOR2501 Science in the Larger World (SI) The world of science is often perceived as existing in a vacuum; the dispassionate search for truth independent of influence and bias. In reality, the practice of science sits right in the middle of the “spaghetti bowl” of knowledge, impacting fields such as law, politics, literature, art, religion, and business, and being equally subject to influence from these fields and others. What would the science be in going to the moon without Jules Verne? What impact will knowing your genetic sequence have on your future job options? Does prayer play any role in surgical outcomes? We will address these questions (and many others) as we investigate the role of science in the larger world around us. Fall semester. 4 credits
HONOR3901 Creating and Producing Music-Theater (AI-A) The conception and production of Music-Theater works with a significant musical component and is a complex, creative undertaking, involving efforts by many individuals in a wide variety of roles working separately, as a team, and as leaders of that team. These productions, and the intense artistic and interpersonal interactions that occur as a result of creating them, have been part of Western society since the Middle Ages. From 1600–1920, Music-Theater was the dominant form of largegroup artistic achievement and entertainment; it continues to be a vital part of Western cultural expression to this day. This course will explore the history of this genre, the various musical, literary, visual, and architectural techniques required, and the group dynamics that arise from its creation and realization. It will culminate in an original scene with words, music, and sets, based on a historical event, and created by the class as a whole. Fall semester. 4 credits