HON - Honors

Taught on a variety of topics, these interdisciplinary seminars focus on cultivating student skills in reading, writing, critical thinking, oral presentations and information literacy in a small-group setting.

Prerequisite: FYS 101H. A colloquium on a selected topic each year in which students explore one or more specific issues arising from the general theme introduced in the first semester colloquium. Emphasis is on collaborative, as well as independent, learning and examination of works from the humanities, sciences and social sciences.

Prerequisite: HON 102, or admission to the Honors Program as a sophomore. This course takes a global perspective on the world and asks students to consider topics such as how and why different societies construct institutions, art, literature and regional and cultural identities.

Prerequisite: HON 201. In this course, students design and participate in a service learning project that addresses a social or intellectual problem of the student’s choice, includes an experiential and a research component and makes a positive contribution to the local community. Each student makes a culminating presentation of her/his experience and research.

Prerequisite: Open to sophomores, juniors or seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructors. An interdisciplinary study of issues of gender in art, religion and society, with emphasis on the major cultural traditions of West and East. The course examines images of women from prehistoric times until about 1500 and considers the way in which these images change from period to period and from culture to culture.

Prerequisite: Open to sophomores, juniors or seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. An interdisciplinary study of the Third World that uses aspects of literature, culture, politics, biology, demography, history and economics to understand how the world works for most of humankind. The course features field trips, guest speakers and a team approach to investigating problems of the developing world.

Prerequisite: Open to sophomores, juniors or seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. This course examines the historical and contemporary aspects of censorship in America, paying particular attention to government and societal attempts to repress speech, press and the arts.

Prerequisite: Concurrent enrollment in ENSP 210 and ENSP 212 or permission of instructor. Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Honors Program. The natural history of the Chesapeake Bay region will be examined in the context of society’s exploitation of a natural system. Scientific topics will be combined with historical, sociological, and economic perspectives to form a coherent portrait of the interplay between society and the environment.

Prerequisite: Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. An interdisciplinary study of the institution of motherhood and its representations in modern cultural productions of the Western world. Students will examine the myth and reality of mothering by analyzing readings in social, political and psychoanalytical theory as well literary and filmic texts. This course may be used for credit in the women’s studies minor.

Prerequisites: Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. This course analyzes great political trials that have reflected the political controversies of their time. Western tradition of law and legal analysis through trials held in the United States, France and England will be examined and contrasted and compared with trials held under socialist, Islamic and indigenous political systems.

Prerequisite: Prerequisites: Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. Through analysis and discussion of works of great literature, students will examine questions concerning human nature and ethical responsibility. Authors may include Tolstoy, Greene, Hurston, Marx, Golding, Camus, Sophocles and C.S. Lewis.

Prerequisites: Completion of the Scientific Thought and Philosophical Inquiry areas of the Core. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the Honors Program or with permission of the instructor. This course examines basic advances in genetics, reproductive medicine and in combating infectious diseases and explores their ethical implications, particularly for non-Western cultures. Students use a case study approach to consider topics like genetics, epidemics, euthanasia and reproductive technology from a global, non-Western perspective.

Prerequisites: Completion of the Literary Analysis and the Visual and Performing Arts areas of the core. Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Honors Program or with permission of the instructor. In this class we will survey the writings of philosophers, artists and other figures who attempted to explain why music appeals to us and what the musical experience says about human nature. Readings will be taken from antiquity, the distant past, and the present day. Our goal will be: (1) to study how philosophers have attempted to explain what the musical experience says about human nature; (2) to study what these explanations say about the time periods and cultures from which they came.

Prerequisites: Open to juniors or seniors in the Honors Program or by permission of the instructor. This class will examine the rediscovery and re-presentation of Egypt and related lands in the Middle East during the 19th and 20th century by artists, travelers and related figures. We will consider visual and literary sources of many kinds, from the lands of the Middle East and the Western cultures of discoverers.

Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. Exploration of the legal and technology issues that arise with the emergence and use of digital technologies throughout society. Topics include: relevancy, investigation, prosecution and enforcement and jurisdiction of existing laws in cyberspace, online vices, internet bullying, identity theft cyberterrorism, hacking and digital forensics.

Prerequisites: Open sophomores, juniors or seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. An analysis of the fiction and nonfiction of the twentieth-century British writer C. S. Lewis. This course will also examine selected writings by other members of the group known as the Oxford Christians: e.g., Charles Williams, Austin Farrer, and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Prerequisites: Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Honors Program. An examination of the physical processes and human consequences of natural disasters: hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornados, heat waves, volcanoes, wildfires, and other catastrophic events linked to the forces of nature. We will use case studies of major disasters—supplemented by additional readings, films, and speakers--to investigate geologic and meteorological processes responsible for natural hazards as well as topics such as the impact of gender, class, ethnicity and age on vulnerability; the role of media; community disruption and recovery; and political and economic factors shaping disaster response.

Prerequisites: Completion of the Social and Behavioral Analysis area of the Core. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. Frederick City will be studied from the perspectives of art, demography, economics, history, literature, race, politics and sociology. The evolution of Frederick City from a frontier colony to a suburb of Washington, DC will be examined in the light of regional, national and global forces.

Prerequisite: Open to juniors or seniors in the Honors Program, with permission of the instructor and the Honors Director. An opportunity for juniors or seniors in the Honors Program to assist instructors in FYS 101H, HON 102 or HON 201 by attending classes, helping to lead discussions and assisting with class-related projects and peer review. May not be repeated or substituted for required courses in the Honors Program. Grading is on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.

Prerequisite: HIST 246, AFPS 353, or completion of the Philosophical Inquiry section of the Core. Open to sophomores, juniors, or seniors in the honors program or permission of the instructor. This course explores the connections between autobiography, political philosophy and politics in African autobiographies. Selections from the 17th to the 21st centuries will be analyzed by authors from East, North, Central and Southern Africa to determine how they criticized their societies, suggested social and political alternatives and promoted social change

Prerequisites: Completion of the Social and Behavioral Analysis category of the Core. Open to sophomores, juniors or seniors in the Honors Program or with permission of the instructor. This course will explore the ways in which national historical events are commemorated with specific reference to the 2007 Jamestown celebrations. The issues of race, politics, and gender will be examined as well as the ways in which the founding of Jamestown is represented in film and literature.

Prerequisite: Open to sophomores, juniors or seniors in the Honors Program, or with permission of the instructor. A study of utopian thought from Plato's Republic through contemporary science fiction. Texts may include St. Augustine's City of God, The Rule of St. Benedict, Campanella's City of the Sun, More's Utopia, Bellamy's Looking Backward, Gilman's Herland, Huxley's Brave New World, as well as films such as Gattaca and Minority Report. The course will also include a study of experimental utopian communities.

Prerequisite: Sophomore, junior or senior standing in the Honors Program, or permission of the instructor. How does the American landscape function in our imagination, our policies, our lives? This reading-intensive course covers a wide range of environmental works: political, scientific, philosophical, autobiographical. Authors include Thoreau, Emerson, Aldo Leopold, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Dillard, Gary Snyder, Jack London, and William Faulkner. (H2, CT)

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Independent work in a topic selected by the student and faculty adviser. Conferences.

An upper-level special topics course offered at the discretion of the department. The content and methods vary with the interest of students and faculty members

Prerequisite: Open to juniors or seniors in the Honors Program or with permission of the instructor. Considers recent global fiction that transcends boundaries of nation and language. Raises questions about race, gender, religion, political allegiance, violence, memory, history, and East/West relations. Authors may include Achebe, Gordimer, Salih, Endo, Nabokov, Ishiguro, Ondaatje, Roy, Lahiri, Rushdie, and Coetzee. (H2, CT)

Prerequisite: Open to juniors and seniors in the Honors Program. May be repeated once under a different topic. Advanced interdisciplinary study of a topic of interest to senior Honors students and faculty. Class discussion will be supplemented by independent research, collaborative projects, student presentations and guest speakers.

As an alternative to a departmental honors thesis, students in Hood’s Honors Program may elect to complete a 3-credit interdisciplinary paper or project (HON 499) during the fall or spring semester of the senior year.