FHC Sections 21-30

Freshman Honors Colloquium Sections 21-30 (Descriptions Below)

HONR 10197 021 Swick-Higgins, Chelsea R

What does it mean to love? Is it what we read about in contemporary romance novels? Is it something else? In this section of Honors Colloquium, we will use bell hooks’ definition of what love is/is not to understand our society and how we relate to one another. This definition extends to our romantic, familial, and societal relationships. Using tropes from contemporary romance (e.g. forced proximity, enemies to lovers, second chance) to organize our units, we will explore how different loves shape our personal, professional, and societal lives.

Students can expect to participate in student-driven class discussion, compose critical essays of varying lengths, reflect on class readings and discussions through response essays, and create multimodal compositions. We will critically engage with theoretical texts to understand articles, novels, shorter literary work (short stories and poetry), and contemporary media (films, television, and multimodal compositions).

Fall texts:

• All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Spring texts:

• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

HONR    10197    022    Vogel, Lauren A

Learning How to Learn. Developing Critical Thinkers, Feelers, and Information Seekers

This course is designed to prepare student to be effective and engage citizens in a democratic society. To do that, students will build their information and critical literacy skills in order to locate, assess, and use information effectively and efficiently necessary for problem-solving and decision-making.  This is necessary to “educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth”. This course will encourage you to read carefully, speak thoughtfully, and write lucidly.

Successful completion of this Colloquium will help you advance in the following areas:

• Critique social norms and biases and question issues of power
• Include multiple perspectives when interrogating and discussing any complex issue
• Analyze and synthesize a broad range of material
• Apply effective search strategies to locate and use high quality information and critically evaluate that information
• Acquire a strong sense of self and compassion for others

Texts:

• Refugee by Alan Gratz (2017)
• Kent State by Deborah Wiles (2020)

HONR    10197    023    Abuzeid, Ayham

What is Culture? Why do cultures matter? Or do they? Why are cultures different from each other? Where do the differences come from? How is language related to culture? Or is it? How has science influenced cultures? This Colloquium will take you on a journey around the world, reaching the peak of Mount Everest and fathoming the Mariana Trench through profound classroom discussions… diving into cultures, identity, traditions, factors that shape(d) cultures. It will be what I like to call it a Globoquium. You will see the world in totally different lenses upon finishing this course successfully.

Main (tentative) Themes of the Course:

Part I – Fall 2026

Part II – Spring 2026

• South American Culture(s)
• Caribbean & Central American Culture(s)
• North American Culture(s)
• Western European Culture(s)
• Scandinavian Culture(s)
• Eastern European, Turkic & Balkan Culture(s)
• Middle Eastern & North African Culture(s)
• Indian sub-Continent Culture(s)
• Central Asian Culture(s)
• South Asian Culture(s)
• Asian Culture(s)

Textbooks & Materials:

The course doesn’t require purchasing any textbooks or materials. Instead, throughout the Fall 2026 and Spring 2027, the course will offer open-source materials – texts, articles, videos, movies, etc

HONR    10197    024    Remley, Dirk D

HONR    10197    026    Roman, Christopher M

HONR    10197    027    Hall, Elizabeth A

The Literary Transformations of Queen Bees and Wannabes: That’s So Fetch! It’s likely you have heard of Mean Girls or even watched one of the movie versions—but have you read Queen Bees and Wannabes? How about William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Mean Girls?  This is your chance to learn about the origins of Mean Girls and how, besides what you might have heard, the phenomenon has evolved. In addition to a broader cultural studies approach, we will contemplate these ideas:

Medium, Genre, and Audience Shifts — Tina Fey took Rosalind Wiseman’s parenting book and turned it into a comedy film. Since 2004, Mean Girls itself has been transformed into other fictional works, including a musical. Despite these shifts in medium and genre, does the original intention of Wiseman’s book remain? How exactly has the “message” changed from one “text” to the next? What kind of “weight” or “authenticity” does each carry—and does it matter how much the “facts” of Wiseman’s “rhetorical situation” are represented? As the subtitle of Wiseman’s work indicates, the work is meant for parents of daughters who want to help them maneuver their social realm. Fey’s choices to “recast” the book and place in front of a larger audience—that is, all moviegoers—calls into question who really should be the recipient of Wiseman’s original message. 
Shakespeare, Popular Culture, and “Pop Shakespeare” — Shakespeare wrote for the masses, but now his work is considered canonical literature and most worthy of academic study. Though adaptation of Shakespeare’s work has happened frequently in popular culture, Doescher’s “Pop Shakespeare” series offers a fascinating approach. Is it worthy of academic study? What other parallels do you see between Shakespeare’s plays and works in modern popular culture?

Main Fall Texts:

• Olga Mecking’s “Why Parenting Books Are Not Really Written for the Parents” (2021)
• Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002)
• Meda Chesney-Lind’s “The Meaning of Mean” (2002)
• Mean Girls [film script and movie] (2004) 

Main Spring Texts

• Elizabeth Abele’s “Introduction: Whither Shakespop? Taking Stock of Shakespeare in Popular Culture” (2004)
• Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Mean Girls (2019)
• Carlin Borsheim-Black’s “Reading Pop Culture and Young Adult Literature through the Youth Lens” (2015)
• Mean Girls [transcript and musical film] (2024)

HONR    10197    028    Hall, Elizabeth A

The Literary Transformations of Queen Bees and Wannabes: That’s So Fetch! It’s likely you have heard of Mean Girls or even watched one of the movie versions—but have you read Queen Bees and Wannabes? How about William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Mean Girls?  This is your chance to learn about the origins of Mean Girls and how, besides what you might have heard, the phenomenon has evolved. In addition to a broader cultural studies approach, we will contemplate these ideas:

Medium, Genre, and Audience Shifts — Tina Fey took Rosalind Wiseman’s parenting book and turned it into a comedy film. Since 2004, Mean Girls itself has been transformed into other fictional works, including a musical. Despite these shifts in medium and genre, does the original intention of Wiseman’s book remain? How exactly has the “message” changed from one “text” to the next? What kind of “weight” or “authenticity” does each carry—and does it matter how much the “facts” of Wiseman’s “rhetorical situation” are represented? As the subtitle of Wiseman’s work indicates, the work is meant for parents of daughters who want to help them maneuver their social realm. Fey’s choices to “recast” the book and place in front of a larger audience—that is, all moviegoers—calls into question who really should be the recipient of Wiseman’s original message. 
Shakespeare, Popular Culture, and “Pop Shakespeare” — Shakespeare wrote for the masses, but now his work is considered canonical literature and most worthy of academic study. Though adaptation of Shakespeare’s work has happened frequently in popular culture, Doescher’s “Pop Shakespeare” series offers a fascinating approach. Is it worthy of academic study? What other parallels do you see between Shakespeare’s plays and works in modern popular culture?

Main Fall Texts:

• Olga Mecking’s “Why Parenting Books Are Not Really Written for the Parents” (2021)
• Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002)
• Meda Chesney-Lind’s “The Meaning of Mean” (2002)
• Mean Girls [film script and movie] (2004)

Main Spring Texts

• Elizabeth Abele’s “Introduction: Whither Shakespop? Taking Stock of Shakespeare in Popular Culture” (2004)
• Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Mean Girls (2019)
• Carlin Borsheim-Black’s “Reading Pop Culture and Young Adult Literature through the Youth Lens” (2015)
• Mean Girls [transcript and musical film] (2024)

HONR    10197    029    Wagoner, Elizabeth A

HONR    10197    030    Trzeciak Huss, Joanna
 

This colloquium will be centered on the delicate moment in childhood in which one confronts the wider world. Through literature and film, we will see the world in all the freshness, rawness, and newness that it possesses when viewed through the eyes of a child. Childhood experiences do not determine who we become, but they are something we always carry with us. Through reading, viewing, discussion, writing and student presentations, we will explore the tension between the formative effects of childhood experiences—how they stay with us throughout life—and the power each of us possesses to probe and examine those experiences to take ownership of our lives and ourselves. Ever mindful of the conventions, constraints and possibilities of genre, we will set our sights on developing a multi-dimensional understanding of the phenomena of childhood and the loss of innocence as depicted in novels, short stories, poetry, and film. 

  Required textbooks (available in the Bookstore):
 

• Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, trans. Judson Rosengrant ISBN:13- 978-0140449921
• James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain 
• Clarice Lispector, select short stories
• Edward Hirsch, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, A Skokie Elegy
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
• Mark Mathabane, Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography