FHC Sections 13-24

Freshman Honors Colloquium Sections 13-24 (Descriptions Below)

HONR    10197    13    Richards, Dale E    02:15 pm - 03:30 pm      T R  

Our identities, our sense of who we are, is formed entirely from memories, stories we tell ourselves and others. In the first semester of this colloquium, we use neuroscientist David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Life of the Brain to examine how memory works and why our most vivid and enduring memories are often unreliable reflections of our actual experiences. We will use this perspective to examine the formation of personal and group identities through the careful reading of two fictional texts.

In the second semester, we employ the concept of emergence to investigate more deeply how personal identity is formed. Emergent phenomena, such as human consciousness, cannot be understood or explained in terms of simple, linear cause-and-effect relationships. From the perspective of emergence, however, we can examine thoughtfully the processes that enable and constrain the formation of each individual’s mind, personality, and sense of self. Students select one of four texts that provide deeper insight into the complexity of human thought and behavior. The concepts and themes that emerge from discussion and individual research will inform our reading of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

Fall Texts:

• Ranganath, Charan. Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters
• Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club
• Morrison, Toni. Beloved

Spring Texts:

• Murakami, Haruki. Dance Dance Dance
• Student choice:    Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
• Dehaene, Stanislaus. How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine. . . for Now
• Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
• Sapolsky, Robert. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

HONR    10197    14    Wagoner, Elizabeth A    09:15 am - 10:30 am      T R  

Come for the glow in the dark cats and neurotic AIs, stay for the discussions of ethics, philosophy, and pop cultural representations of science! This section explores major issues in science fiction, as well as issues raised by popular discussions of science today, through themed units focusing on larger philosophical, ethical, and theoretical ideas. Each unit will contain works from literature, comics/graphic novels, film, and nonfiction science writing. Science-fiction issues covered in this course include:  

• Science Fiction as a Genre – Contested, Lowbrow, Beloved, and now Quite Difficult Due to the Speed of Innovation  
• Progressivism – Is humankind advancing toward a more evolved or better state of being through technological innovation?  
• Space Travel – The Science Required to take us to Mars and Beyond.  
• The Apocalypse in Science Fiction – AI, Viral, Nuclear, and Climate Disasters  
• Science vs. Superstition – Pseudoscience, Logic, and the Battle for the Human Mind  Examining the ways scientific ideas are framed through these texts, we will gain a richer awareness of major issues in science fiction and science today. In addition to weekly writings and discussion, there will be several researched essays, and film analysis.  

Fall Texts:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke   and   2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick.  
• Binti: The Complete Trilogy, Nnedi Okorafor, and Interstellar, Christopher Nolan.

Spring Texts:

• The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Silent Spring – excerpts, Rachel Carson.  
• Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, and Dune: Part One by Denis Villeneuve.

HONR    10197    15    Whiteleather, Hagan Faye F    03:45 pm - 05:00 pm      T R  

Digging Death: Dying, Death, Grief, Spiritualism, & the Afterlife 

Over the course of this colloquium, we will explore the realities and cultural constructs that surround death and the rationale behind these socially crafted ceremonies. We will examine how these practices influence our own experience with/understanding of death. A primary focus will be placed on the ways location and environment shape the rituals of death, and how loss has become mediated by the funeral industry. Fear not, this class is not all gloom and doom, much of the year will be devoted to examining death as a motivator and significance creator—in the words of Kafka, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” While the reading list is set, I promote flexibility in discussion topics and welcome any conversations you find especially stimulating or intriguing. I’m excited to see how our preconceived notions of death and grieving shapes classroom discussions and potentially alters our currently held beliefs and perceptions of an experience to which we will all one day succumb.  

Fall Texts:  

• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty (2014) 
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande (2014) 
• Homie by Danez Smith (2020) 
• The Body by Stephen King (1982) 
• “2B0R2B” by Kurt Vonnegut (1962)  
• Films & Podcast for Fall: Stand by Me (1986) / The Farewell (2019) / S-Town (2017) 

Spring Texts:

• Our Town by Thornton Wilder (1939) 
• Deciduous Qween by Matty Lane Glasgow (2019) 
• A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (1961) 
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963) 
• Lost Connections by Johann Hari (2018) 
• "The Three Questions” by Leo Tolstoy (1885)  
• “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace (2005) 
• Films: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)/After Life (1998)/Harold & Maude (1971)/Soul (2020)  
• TV/Musical: Black Mirror: “San Junipero” (2016) / The Good Place (2016-2020) / Hadestown (2019)  

HONR    10197    16    Takayoshi, Pamela D    09:15 am - 10:30 am      T R  

Writing, Meaning, Memory

How does writing help us make sense of our lives? How do you tell your story and write about the people in that story? How do you know you can trust your memory? How do you find your authentic voice (is there such a thing)? In this course, we will read and write memoirs in order to explore these questions about being human, about writing, and about the search for meaning in our lives.

Memoir writing raises complex intellectual problems involving truth, representation, self-understanding, and the bounds between private experience and public lives. Most importantly, the theme of memoir allows us to explore how we make sense of our lives and what role writing can play in the sense-making. In this way, it is a rich and broad shared-focus for our Honors Colloquium section -- there will be some assigned texts so we have a common focus, but memoir allows for students to tailor this class to their own individual interests. We’ll start with The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr, a best-selling memoirist, to give us a shared understanding of this enormously popular and enduring genre of literature. We’ll vote to determine common texts and then students will choose memoirs in areas of their interest (and believe me when I say that there are memoirs about almost every aspect of being human -- family, health and death, race, LGBTQ identity, gender, class, addiction, science, almost every profession you can name, historical events, and politics). We’ll write critical analyses of and responses to memoirs, and we’ll also do our own memoir writing. We’ll listen to memoirs in the form of podcasts (again, so many choices!), and we'll watch a film adaptation of a memoir to think about how the medium makes a difference.
Possible Texts:

• Art of Memory - Karr, Mary
• The Worlds I See - Li, Fei-Fei
• The Best Minds - Rosen, Jonathan
• Raised by a Serial Killer - Balascio, April
• Spellbound - Hanley, Phil
• Whiskey Tender - Jackson Taffa, Deborah
• Educated - Westover, Tara

HONR    10197    17    Whiteleather, Hagan Faye F    05:30 pm - 06:45 pm      T R  

Digging Death: Dying, Death, Grief, Spiritualism, & the Afterlife

Over the course of this colloquium, we will explore the realities and cultural constructs that surround death and the rationale behind these socially crafted ceremonies. We will examine how these practices influence our own experience with/understanding of death. A primary focus will be placed on the ways location and environment shape the rituals of death, and how loss has become mediated by the funeral industry. Fear not, this class is not all gloom and doom, much of the year will be devoted to examining death as a motivator and significance creator—in the words of Kafka, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” While the reading list is set, I promote flexibility in discussion topics and welcome any conversations you find especially stimulating or intriguing. I’m excited to see how our preconceived notions of death and grieving shapes classroom discussions and potentially alters our currently held beliefs and perceptions of an experience to which we will all one day succumb.  

Fall Texts:  

• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty (2014)
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande (2014)
• Homie by Danez Smith (2020)
• The Body by Stephen King (1982)
• “2B0R2B” by Kurt Vonnegut (1962)  
• Films & Podcast for Fall: Stand by Me (1986) / The Farewell (2019) / S-Town (2017)

Spring Texts:

• Our Town by Thornton Wilder (1939)
• Deciduous Qween by Matty Lane Glasgow (2019)
• A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (1961)
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
• Lost Connections by Johann Hari (2018)
• "The Three Questions” by Leo Tolstoy (1885)  
• “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace (2005)
• Films: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)/After Life (1998)/Harold & Maude (1971)/Soul (2020)  
• TV/Musical: Black Mirror: “San Junipero” (2016) / The Good Place (2016-2020) / Hadestown (2019)  

HONR    10197    18    Clark, Patrick J    07:00 pm - 08:15 pm      T R  

LITERATURE, FILM, AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TEXT-TO-SCREEN ADAPTATION

This course will look at the interplay between text and film, the qualities and conditions that go into adapting literature for the big screen audience, the constraints of turning narrative into film, what happens to literature when it is adapted into a screenplay, and the psychology of difference in how we read and view these texts.

Our exploration of literary adaptions will focus on what makes a novel ripe for adaptation; limitations and possibilities that confront screenwriters when adapting a text for a target audience; and how directorial ambition and vision (and production budgets and meddling) can affect the final product. Additionally, the class will discuss fandoms' influences in popularizing, producing, and critiquing text-to-film adaptations. The course will also confront how a "canonized" film can affect longtime fans of a text and inspire newcomers to the genre.

All the novels we will read are familiar and popular and represent different literary styles, including psychological thrillers, coming-of-age narratives, modern Westerns, high fantasy, horror, sci-fi, counterculture, and graphic novels, examining the challenges in adapting the different genres.

Fall Texts:

• Stephen King, The Body
• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
• Chuck Pahlaniuk, Fight Club
• Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
• Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle
• Alan Moore, Watchmen

The texts necessitate a study of directors Rob Reiner, Sophia Coppola, David Fincher, The Coen Brothers, Hayao Miyazaki, and Zack Snyder.

Spring Texts:

• Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
• Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
• Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• Patrick Süskind, Perfume: the Story of a Murderer
• Richard Adams, Watership Down
• Alan Moore, V: for Vendetta

Directors include Gus Van Sant, Jon Avnet, Stacie Passon, Tom Tykwer, Martin Rosen, and James McTeigue.

HONR    10197    19    Shank, Matthew A    11:00 am - 11:50 am     M W F