Summer 2024 Courses

Summer 2024 Course Descriptions:

IDH3924 Honors Pre-Capstone Symposium

Online; Summer A

Instructor: Denise Monti

CRN 50679; 0 credit

CRN 50796; 1 credit

This course is a required introduction to the upper-division Hicks Honors College program and focuses especially on the Capstone. The course also develops the Honors community, acquaints students with the requirements of the upper-division Hicks Honors program, provides a complete overview of the resources provided through the program, guides students in mapping out their specific curricular and co-curricular paths, and introduces them to the expectations of the e-portfolio and Capstone requirements. It may also focus on different academic themes. Participation in Honors-sponsored events outside of class time is expected. The course should be taken the semester in which students begin the upper-division Hicks Honors program.

THE2000 (H) Theater Appreciation

Online; 3 Credits

Instructor: Maureen McCluskey

CRN 50344; Summer A

This course is for students interested in understanding and appreciating one of the oldest art forms in the world. For thousands of years, humans have put on masks and adopted personas and behaved as if they were different from the people they are. Why? Why have they felt the need to pretend to be who they are not, to express feelings that are not really their own, and to direct their bodies to act out stories in front of spectators, stories in which they come into conflict with others? In order to address these and related questions, students will read plays, analyze scripts, and attend and write about local productions. They may also complete a group project in a live theater. No acting experience is required. The course can be applied to Category C for non-applied fine arts General Education credit.

POS3931: (H) Sustainability/Living Cities

Online; 3 credits

Instructor: Joshua Gellers

CRN 50894; Summer A

This course is intended for students who have been accepted to the (H) Sustainability and Living Cities trip to Denmark and the Netherlands.

HSC2100 (H) Personal and Public Health

Online; 3 Credits

Instructor: Erin Largo Wright

CRN 50316; Summer A

This course examines US health priorities with an emphasis on behavioral and social determinants of health. Material presented will raise levels of awareness and provide information needed to make informed health related choices, encourage attitude change, and develop decision making skills which facilitate healthier lifestyle behaviors.

LIT2000 (H) Introduction to Literature

Online; 3 Credits

Instructor: Will Pewitt

CRN 50367; Summer A

Course Description:

Dystopias, aliens, time travelers, and other implausible premises make it unsurprising that Science Fiction is often derided as a genre for people who cannot handle reality; to its critics, Sci-Fi is for people who lack “common sense” because their heads are in the clouds—or, in the stars. Yet such derision has also been leveled against physicists of string theory (whose equations rely on dimensions beyond our perceptions) or philosophers of ontology (whose work challenges conventional conceptions of “reality”). However, in this course we will investigate how Science Fiction interrogates our customary beliefs in order to give us “uncommon sense.”

Sci-Fi invites us into the mysteries of the most mind-blowing disciplines—from aesthetics to metaphysics. Over the semester students will read, watch, and discuss myriad texts that cover issues that perplex society’s most ardent intellectuals: Could machines ever deserve human rights? What cataclysm is most likely to end civilization? How do we know we’re not living in a computer simulation? For this course, students will need to bring a curiosity about the universe and your place within it in order to better understand, analyze, and write about such extraordinary issues. Nonetheless, those issues will come packaged as stories about alien invasions and artificial intelligence. By reading, discussing, and writing about life’s outstanding questions students may come to see that reality is for people who cannot handle Science Fiction.