Seminars
The Honors Program seminars change every semester, but most fulfill General Education requirements. Enrollment in Honors seminars is limited to 15 students to ensure direct and regular interaction with professors and engage in active discussion during class sessions.
Spring 2026 Seminars
HON 316 Debates in U.S. History
Instructor: Patricia A. Sullivan (Digital Media & Journalism, Honors)
GE Requirement: US History and Civil Engagement
An exploration of selected and pivotal topics in the history of the United States from the colonial period through today. Politics, economics, society, and culture will be examined focusing on primary source documents and images.
HON 378 Humans at Play
Instructor: Doug Maynard (Psychology)
An exploration of play across the human lifespan in all of its myriad forms, including play's possible functions, subjective experiences, communities, and the influence of culture and technology.
HON 379 Love and Heartbreak
Instructor: Lisa Phillips (Digital Media & Journalism)
Romantic love is one of the most fundamental aspects – perhaps the most fundamental aspect – of being human. We will explore love and heartbreak as media and literary narratives, psychological phenomena, and lived experience.
HON 381 Ethical Fashion: Understanding Consumerism, Globalization, Justice & Sustainability Through Textiles
Instructor: Andrea Varga (Theatre Arts)
Utilizing the Global Goals for Sustainable Development as a framework, students will explore textile, dress and adornment history relating practices from prehistory through the present day to our relationship with textiles, consumer behaviors and sustainability. This course will allow students to understand personal choices and behavior (from understanding fibers to personal economics, and social communication, regulations and industry standards) and connect them to the globalized fashion industry. Students will explore the implications of consumer choices on the environment, people, and other living creatures by utilizing research tools and data available through organizations like Fashion Revolution and Good on You. Students will have the opportunity to empower themselves as consumers to have a voice and be a change agent by making informed choices and communicating sustainability norms to the companies that they engage with.
HON 383 Human Ecology: Humans and Nature in a New Millennium
Instructor: Eric Keeling (Biology)
GE Requirement: Natural Science
In this course, students will combine scientific knowledge and methods, field experiences, philosophical arguments, social theories, and their own disciplinary expertise and creativity to explore contemporary and perennial questions about humans and nature.
HON 393 Places and Pilgrims: Traveling Past and Present
Instructor: Michael Vargas (History)
Travel seems both natural and scary. We want, physically and cognitively, to be on the go. But, beyond the comfort zone, dangers may await. Travel can be challenging, expensive, hard on the feet and on the soul. In our own time and place, many of us put 'travel' in a mental compartment alongside 'vacation'. This is a course about travel, its costs and benefits, how it is variously experienced by travelers and those living in travelers' destinations, and how travel changes people and places. Our course begins with some of the greatest stories of people on the move -- Moses and the Exodus; the Christian pilgrimage to the body of Santiago de Compostela; Ibn Battuta's fourteenth-century travels that began with a pilgrimage to Mecca and ended after a journey of 73,000 miles. These explorations will lay the groundwork for thinking about travel in more recent times. People travel for work and for pleasure, driven by want or fear, or compulsion or desire. Migrants, refugees, international students and study abroad students are travelers. Travel as a subject of study requires some awareness about a range of topics, notions, and problems: urbanization and demographic change; the shaping and shifting of social boundaries in physical space; modes and economies of travel; placemaking as desire and imagination; environmental, economic, and other impacts on the residents of travel destinations. This course will leave ample room for exploration and adventure. Where do you want to go? A goal of this course is to help you get there.
Fall 2025 Seminars
HON 201 The Individual and Society
Instructors: Thomas Festa (English), Madeleine Arseneault (Philosophy), Hamilton Stapell (History), Patricia A. Sullivan (Digital Media & Journalism, Honors), & Vicki Tromanhauser (English)
GE Requirement: Humanities (HUM)
Investigates the relationship between the individual and society through discussion of the philosophic, literary, and historical aspects of major texts.
HON380 Cherokee History, Politics, and Culture
Instructor: Meg Devlin (History)
GE Requirement: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Social Justice (DEI&SJ)
This course examines the history of the Cherokee nations before colonization through the present moment. It will focus on cultural, social, and political history to understand the contemporary issues that confront citizen Cherokees. Particular attention will be given sovereignty, citizenship, gender, and race.
HON 382 Introduction to Sustainability
Instructor: Andrea Varga (Theatre Arts)
Introduction to Sustainability Seminar: An exploration of regenerative, just, and sustainable strategies for the environment and society: Utilizing the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development students will examine the three pillars of sustainability - environment, society, economics - to promote and practice regenerative, just and transformative solutions for contemporary challenges as global citizens. Students will explore how today’s human societies can endure and build healthier systems in the face of global change, ecosystem degradation and resource limitations. Cross-disciplinary study and perspectives will be utilized to promote systems-thinking and understanding.
HON393 Textiles, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Italy
Instructor: Keely Heuer (Art History)
Climatic and soil conditions rarely permit the preservation of ancient Greek, Italic, and Roman textiles, but we can still learn vast amounts about how clothing was produced, used, and perceived from the abundant evidence in the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological records, ranging from Bronze Age texts discussing the sheep husbandry to terracotta loom weights. Making clothing -- including jewelry, armor, and footwear -- was enormously labor-intensive in the ancient Mediterranean, which explains why it was imbued with such high monetary and symbolic value and was deeply imbedded in myth and religious practices. Just as today, the way one dressed was a public statement about a person's identity and role(s) in society, including gender, social status, and profession. This course explores 1) how textiles were made and used in ancient Greek and Roman society, 2) how many concepts of modern fashion and self-expression through dress and grooming are in fact thousands of years old, and 3) how garments that were invented millennia ago still influence and inspire what we wear today.
HON393 The Story is the Message
Instructor: Michael Frank
Across all forms of media, from journalism to "influencers," to fiction, film, TV, music, and the arts, there are just a few astoundingly powerful formats to the storytelling you're constantly consuming. Why? In this course you'll learn about these classic story structures, why they're so powerful across fiction and non-fiction—and also how they're deeply flawed, forcing the mass media as well as the entertainment industry into defining "a truth," rather than allowing room for ambiguity. You'll become fluent in these structural flaws and also come to appreciate that restrained storytelling can still be beautiful and artful. This literacy will arm you against an overly reductionist worldview and teach you to better understand how oversimplification has fueled this hyper partisan moment. We'll also explore the making of the self in a digital age. At no time in history have so many human beings felt compelled to have a public and private self—to be "on" in the digital space and, in turn, to be influenced by that culture as they're making it. Layering how that mythmaking overlaps the mass media's own structural limitations is exceptionally important. We're all subconsciously swayed, cajoled, and possibly harmed by social media. But a mindful consumption of the tropes behind the frame, rather than passively imbibing, can empower all of us to spy what's simply propaganda in a shinier, prettier wrapper. From there we can hunt for more profound, more interesting, and more creative departures. Students will be asked to produce creative projects that illustrate their understanding of media literacy, storytelling structure, and to demonstrate a break from the rote while still conveying powerful, clear meaning.
