Honors Seminars - Spring 2012
The Honors seminars listed below are open to Seniors (Class of 2012) with a GPA of 3.6 or higher. Seniors below a 3.6 and members of other classes may sign up under the cross-listings if the course is open to members of your class.
HNRS-191-01
The History of Granville: A Narrative of Migrations: Native Americans, Welsh, Yankees, Farmers, and Suburbanites
“The History of Granville: A Narrative of Migrations: Native Americans, Welsh, Yankees, Farmers and Suburbanites. This seminar will consider the facts of various peoples coming to the Granville area and then some of them moving on for different reasons. The seminar will highlight the early migration of the Native Americans, leaving behind some of the most significant mounds in the country. For political reasons, the Welsh come and settle in 1802 in the north-east quadrant of Granville Township, bringing with them a language and culture that remained well into the twentieth century. The New England Yankees followed in 1805, bringing with them evident reminders of their New England customs and life-styles, many of which remain to this day. The area surrounding Granville developed into rich and vibrant farmlands and significant animal raising, complete with a stockyard in the village until the 1980s. With the eastward expansion of Columbus, Granville becomes a bedroom community of Ohio's capitol city along with the development of suburban home-sites. Through all of its history, Granville has witnessed the comings and goings of different peoples yet it has remained essentially a pleasant Ohio village anchored historically with educational institutions, the most famous one being Denison University.
Course is cross-listed with INTD-150-01and open to first-years, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
HNRS-228-01
Modernism, Modernity, Theatre
Modernism, Modernity, Theatre" explores the primary theoretical and dramatic writings of the generations that effected profound change in the theatre of Europe from the 1840s to the 1940s. Reflecting the dissonance between the material circumstances of life in the modernizing, industrial nineteenth-century world and the romantic drama that dominated popular stages, the modernist movements in the theatre encompassed both revolutions of the scientific and verisimilar and reactions to these new realisms in the anti-realisms of the twentieth century. Beginning with Charles Baudelaire's famous essay, "Richard Wagner et Tannhauser a Paris" and concluding with the theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht, this seminar will explore the critical primary texts that mark the tensions, shifts, and transformations that produced the modern European theatre.
Course is cross-listed with THTR-400-01 and is open to sophomores, juniors and seniors only.
HNRS-266-01
American Thought from the Civil War to World War I
The late nineteenth century remains one of the most vibrant and significant periods in American intellectual history. The emergence of Darwinism reshaped American science and challenged religious orthodoxy. The period witnessed the "Golden Age" of American philosophy with thinkers like William James, Josiah Royce, Charles Pierce, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It also nurtured a variety of Gilded Age dissenting movements like socialism and feminism. This course will offer a close explication of the major texts in late-nineteenth century American intellectual history along with an examination of the social and cultural context in which these ideas were formulated and debated.
Course is cross-listed with HIST-330-01and is open to juniors and seniors only.
HNRS-292-01
Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Environmental Rights
In this seminar we will explore the concept of human rights within a comparative focus. In particular we will look at two on-going global debates among academics, activists and policy-makers: • To what extent should human rights be limited to a narrow range of clearly defined individual rights, and to what extent should they be expanded to cover a larger range of individual and collective rights? • Are indigenous communities necessarily better environmental stewards, and so does the extension of rights to these communities lead to better environmental protection?
Course is cross-listed with ENVS-290-03,INTL-200-05,REL-240-01and is open to first-years, sophomores, juniors and seniors.