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Honors Opportunities at DU

Course Offerings 2009-2010

Honors Courses Spring Quarter 2010

The following Honors courses are offered Spring Quarter 2010 to fulfill University and Honors Program Requirements.

For additional upper level courses offered each quarter for students who have already met university AHUM and SOCS requirements, please see the list of pre-approved courses.

AHUM Foundations: Honors Designated

CRN 4144 — AHUM 1416-4: Oscar Somoza
Foundations in World Cultures: "Latin America in Film," MW 10:00-11:50, Sturm 287
Course Description:

This course is designed, from an analytical perspective, to focus on some of the most important films dealing with various critical aspects of Latin America. It will also provide an historical overview through feature films and documentaries beginning with the Spanish Conquest, exploration and colonization, and will continue with contemporary issues of socio-political and philosophical importance and relevance. The class will address and analyze how filmmakers have portrayed Latin America in its various historical periods and through an in-depth examination of Indigenous issues, religion, race relations, women’s issues, and economic, cultural and socio-political concerns.
CRN 2452 - AHUM 1810-1: Allison Horsley Foundations in Theatre: "Discovering Dramatic Literature: from Page to Stage ," TR 10:00-11:50, Margery Reed Hall 201
Course Description:

This course is designed to achieve two equally important goals: 1) to provide students with the requisite skills to actively and fully engage a piece of dramatic literature; and 2) to develop a shared vocabulary and collective approach to analyzing a dramatic text. By exploring plays which represent a variety of eras, genres, and nations, we will achieve a greater understanding of the diversity of “the canon” and the ever-changing landscape of dramatic literature. It is my ultimate goal that, by the end of this quarter, each student will have a veritable “toolkit” for approaching ANY piece of dramatic literature. The readings we cover in this class only scratch the surface of world dramatic literature. Though we will not cover theatre traditions of Asia, Africa, or South America, please be aware that our library and faculty have substantial collections to share from these continents.

SOCS Foundations: Honors Designated

CRN 4221 — SOCS 1710-2: George Potts
Foundations in Psychology, MW 10:00-11:50, Frontier Hall 45
Course Description:
The course provides aThe course provides a general overview of the many perspectives in the study of mind and behavior and how they relate to the perspectives of other Social Science disciplines. A major goal is help students develop the skills needed to enable them to critically evaluate claims made by various groups and individuals (advertisers, politicians, etc.) and to design experiments that enable them to design their own experiments to answer difficult questions. In the process, I also seek to help students understand some of the flaws in decision making that often lead us to make very foolish and illogical decisions. Major emphasis is given to the fluidity of scientific knowledge and the impact of paradigms on how social scientists approach problems.
CRN 3104 -- SOCS 1910-1: Richard Lamm
Foundations in Public Policy: "Hard Choices in Public Policy," TR 10:00-11:50, Mary Reed 1
Course Description:
This course provides an opportunity to develop comprehensive knowledge of America's most intriguing public policy dilemmas. Policy issues to be discussed include: intergenerational equity, competitiveness, the budget and trade deficits, crime, AIDS, education, health care, the environment, entitlements, immigration, race and affirmative action, public involvement, and social welfare.

NATS Foundations: Honors Designated

This is the only NATS sequence carrying Honors credit. Instead of NATS, Honors students may take one of the sequences intended for majors or minors in biology, chemistry or physics to meet their Honors natural science requirement.

CRN 2819 — NATS 1266-1: James M. Daniels,
"Global Environmental Change and Sustainability III," MW 12:00-1:30

Labs for "Global Environmental Change and Sustainability III " :

CRN 2820 — NATS 1266-2: James M. Daniels, R 12:00-1:50, Boettcher West 124
CRN 2821 — NATS 1266-3: James M. Daniels,R 2:00-3:50,Boettcher West 124
CRN 4340 - NATS 1266-4: JamesM. Daniels, R 10:00-11:50, Olin Hall 142
Course Description:

“Global Environmental Change” is a three-quarter honors course that introduces students to the fundamental processes that govern Earth’s changing physical and biological environments. The first quarter explores the dynamic nature of Earth’s atmosphere including processes that affect weather and climate, the role of energy in the atmosphere and the causes and potential implications of global climate change. The second is devoted to the impacts of global change on the biosphere including topics such as biodiversity, evolution and speciation, and the origins of agriculture. The third quarter of the sequence focuses on terrestrial landscapes and environments, including changes from plate tectonics to human modifications of Earth’s land surface.

Honors CORE (Writing Intensive)

CRN 4067 — CORE 2666 -1 (Writing Intensive): Lisa Pasko, "Murder in America,"
MW 4:00-5:50, Sturm 433
Course Description:
Lethal violence in the U.S. is a constant and complex social problem that far exceeds that of other developed nations. As an example, the homicide rate in London is one-tenth of New York City’s, while Sydney’s homicide rate is less than 5% of what Los Angeles experiences. What is going on in America? Are we “built” for murder and what does that mean? How have homicide rates changed over the decades, and why do we have such an on-going fascination with lethal violence? In order to examine these queries as well as other facets about homicide, this course will cover: (1) the definitions, scope, causes, and historical trends of murder in America over the last century; 2) an in-depth case study investigation into why the murder rate dropped dramatically in New York City in the late 1990s; 3) past and current sociological/cultural, biological, and psychological explanations for lethal violence, including a concentrated look at serial, mass, and spree killers, school shootings, and mothers who kill; 4) crime policies and techniques aimed at reducing lethal violence; and 5) media representations of homicide defendants and victims.
CRN 4233- CORE 2581:1 (Writing Intensive): Sidra Wahaltere, "The Harlem Renaissance," TR 8:00-9:50, Sturm 411
Course Description:
The Harlem Renaissance refers to a cultural era in the early twentieth century marked by the prolific literary, artistic, and intellectual production of blacks in the United States. This period is characterized by self-conscious and sustained efforts to assert a black presence in American arts and letters. In this course, we will address the varied, oppositional and sometimes controversial depictions of African Americans (and others of African descent) as presented in fiction by Harlem Renaissance such as Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, and Carl Van Vechten, and in visual media by James Van Der Zee, Archibald Motley and Palmer Hayden as well as the music of Paul Robeson and Bessie Smith. Our treatment of the period will repeatedly return to two interrelated questions which were of paramount importance during the Renaissance: how should African Americans be portrayed in art and by whom?

Honors WRIT

Honors Writing, the culminating quarter of the three-quarter DU writing requirement, is offered winter and spring quarters. Every freshman takes a first-year seminar. Honors students then enroll in WRIT 1622 unless they have tested out with an AP Language score of 4 or 5, an AP Literature score of 5, or an IB score of 5+. Honors WRIT 1733 (formerly called WRIT 1522) is then required either instead of or in addition to 1622.

Honors WRIT (WRIT 1733):
CRN 3152 - WRIT 1733-1, William Herring, MW 10:00-11:50, Penrose 220
CRN 3153 - WRIT 1733-2, Manuel Sanz, TR 12:00-1:50, Penrose 220
CRN 3154 - WRIT 1733-3, Shawn Alfrey, MW 2:00-3:50, Mary Reed 1

Honors Seminars

CRN 2618 — HNRS 2400-2: Shawn Alfrey, R 3:00-5:00, Mary Reed 1 and on site at Carson Elementary School
Course Description:

In this course DU students will work with the students and program of the Denver Public Schools Shakespeare Festival. Originally begun as a way to support DPS efforts in literacy and enrichment, the Festival takes place every May in the Galleria and on the grounds of the Denver Center for Performing Arts. It involves around 4000 DPS students and has been a model for school districts from San Diego to Germany. DU students will work with a group of elementary students as they master a scene and then perform it at the Festival. The course is offered both Winter and Spring quarters to meet the needs of the DPS students, whose semester runs from January through May. Those taking the course in the Winter quarter will choose and edit the scene, help cast students and help students understand the play and block it. They will devise and lead acting and group exercises. In the more academic part of their coursework, students will explore the history and philosophy surrounding public education, analyze the role of Shakespeare as a focus of cultural value, develop strategies for working with primary students and explore the value of engaging them in such sophisticated literary and dramatic traditions.
CRN 2648 — HNRS 2400-3: Candace Upton
"Bioethetics in the 21st Century," M 10:00-11:50, Mary Reed 1
Course Description:

This course provides students an opportunity to study, and develop their own rigorously-argued views on, a broad range of bioethical issues that have arisen only in the last several years. Traditionally, students of bioethics study issues such as abortion, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, informed consent, and human experimentation, all standards in the field that have been researched extensively. Recent years, however, have presented a healthy number of novel and fascinating cases that ethicists are only now beginning to study. For example, some patients suffer from a psychological condition called apotemnophilia, in virtue of which they have an almost obsessive desire to have an otherwise healthy limb removed. Patients’ desires to remove their limb(s) is so intense that some patients have put the limb in question in the path of a moving train in order to try to remove it. The issue of self-demand amputation considers whether it is morally permissible for a physician to remove a patient’s healthy limb for the purpose of putting the patient psychologically at ease and providing the patient with the body he believes he was meant, in some sense, to inhabit.
CRN 4630 — HNRS 2400-4: James Gilroy, "Women and Men in Love in the Italian Renaissance," T 2:00-3:50, Mary Reed 1
Course description:
This course deals with the two great Italian writers of the early Renaissance who come just after Dante, namely, Petrarch and Boccaccio. We will explore their concepts of both spiritual and physical love, as well as their differing definitions of the roles of men and women in human relationships. We will also see how both writers anticipate modern concepts of human nature and of the isolation of the self within the context of their fourteenth-century world views. We will read sonnets, odes, and works in prose by Petrarch, in addition to Boccaccio’s pre-feminist novel Amorous Fiammetta and selected stories from The Decameron.

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