FHC Sections 1-12

Freshman Honors Colloquium Sections 1-12 (Descriptions Below)

HONR    10197    1    Adam    Brodsky

How Media Works

Everyone’s influenced by media, so it is important to know how media works to deliver meaning. This colloquium will focus on media of the twentieth century with an emphasis on film, music, and art. We will view, listen to, read about, discuss, analyze, and critique popular media’s design, mechanics, aesthetics, and effects.
Expect several types of essays, projects, and presentations as well as student-guided discussions and group activities.
The core texts are listed below. This colloquium will also invest time directly experiencing creative works of cinema, art, and music. 

Texts for Fall:

• Understanding Media
• The Anatomy of Film 

Texts for Spring:

• How Music Works
• What Are You Looking At?

HONR    10197    2    Jeanne    Smith

Help Yourself! Scholarly Perspectives on Thriving in College and Beyond

For as long as people have been writing, they have given each other advice on how to improve the experience of living, to develop healthy habits, and to succeed. Today, self-help is a profitable genre and one of the most popular among younger adults. Our Colloquium will investigate ideas about self-care and self-improvement as they relate to the lives of college students.

In Colloquium I, you will choose one book-length piece of popular nonfiction covering an area within them self-help, self-care, self-improvement, and productivity/success genre. In a series of oral presentations, you will present the knowledge claims and facilitate class discussion on how these ideas apply to college students. We will work as a class to analyze the rhetorical strategies used in these texts, and to question the knowledge claims, tracing them back to the scholarly research which may support them. We will develop class reading lists of scholarly academic literature covering research questions generated by our discussions. At the end of the first semester, you will develop a question potentially suitable for original research.

In Colloquium II, you will design an original research project examining an idea from the research literature we studied in Colloquium 1. You will conduct that research and present your findings in the format of a research presentation or poster, and a research paper. You will have opportunities to continue your research and find publication opportunities for your ideas during your undergraduate career at the university.

Texts:

• The Happy High Achiever: 8 Essentials to Overcome Anxiety, Manage Stress, and Energize Yourself for Success – Without Losing Your Edge. Mary E. Anderson, 2024.
• The Mindful College Student: How to Succeed, Boost Well-Being, and Build the Life You Want at University and Beyond. Eric B. Loucks, 2022.
• Mindset Matters: Developing Mental Agility and Resilience to Thrive in Uncertainty. Gemma Leigh Roberts. 2022.
• Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do about It. Jennifer Breheney Wallace, 2023. 

HONR    10197    3    Derek    Van Ittersum

Many students enrolling at KSU this year have spent more than 10 years in schools of some kind, while others may be learning in an official school context for the first time. How does schooling shape one's approach to learning? What does learning look like in a school vs. outside a school? Critics of schooling talk about the "hidden curriculum," a program of study that happens in the background of every course and trains students to stifle their curiosity, prioritize obedience over creativity, and focus on evaluation rather than enjoyment or meaning, among other things. This hidden curriculum shapes students' learning in profound ways, they argue, and differs tremendously from learning outside of schools. However, there are many different contexts for learning outside of school--not all of them are idealistic self-directed explorations. People learn through apprenticeships, through coaching, and on the job. How do these contexts shape learning and learners? What about remote schooling, homeschooling, or unschooling?
 
In the Fall semester, we'll investigate schooling, its effects, and then expand our focus to examine frameworks that shape the ways we learn, such as cognitive biases and mental models. Students will connect their own experiences with learning and schooling with larger conversations about these topics through writing, research, and class discussion. In the Spring semester, students will choose an ambitious learning challenge to document and complete over the course of the semester. This challenge will ask students to learn something new (maybe a skill like playing guitar, or improve a skill like writing short stories, or become expert in an area of content like nuclear physics) through methods and processes that they haven't used before. We'll be reading accounts from people who have similarly challenged themselves and writing our own accounts. By the end of the year, students should have a clearer picture of themselves as learners, an actionable understanding of how different approaches to learning suit them and their goals, and a familiarity with a variety of arguments and ideas about schooling and learning.

Texts: 

• I Love Learning and I Hate School – Blum
• Range – Epstein
• Ultralearning – Young

HONR    10197    4    Dirk    Remley

Leadership Characteristics and Characters

What makes someone a good leader? How can we critically reflect on others’ leadership skills toward understanding their effectiveness or weaknesses? How can we use these observations to assess and improve upon our own leadership skills? These are questions that will be addressed through this Colloquium section’s theme. Students will engage with principles of leadership found in characters and plot from various works of literature and film. Through critical reading, thinking, discussions, research, analytical writing activities, and other projects, students will come to understand several attributes that affect leadership effectiveness in various contexts; these attributes include cultural and social phenomena as well as personal traits and situational factors. Students, also, will consider their own leadership abilities and how they may be able to improve those skills.

The Fall semester’s experience will focus on defining and critically assessing attributes and traits leaders demonstrate. 

The Spring semester’s experience will focus more on contextual factors that affect—positively or negatively—one’s ability to act on attributes/traits.  

The works listed below provide a sampling of those that we will use.

Sampling of Texts:

• Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers, by Elizabeth Samet
• The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
• Antigone, Sophocles
• Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw
• The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (Film, adapted from novel by Sloan Wilson)
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly 

HONR    10197    5    Danielle    French

Mainstream culture’s obsessionality with true crime dominates contemporary entertainment, social, and news media with thousands of podcasts, films, music, and endless literature dedicated to the topic, but this interest has been a mainstay in popular culture for centuries. Though used as a horror trope and easy plot device in both speculative and fantastical fiction, “madness” is often linked with criminality in unsettling ways. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), “In 2022, there were an estimated 59.3 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with AMI. This number represented 23.1% of all U.S. adults” (para. 5).  Ranging from mild to severe in their impact, “young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (36.2%)” (para. 5). The AMI for the 18-25 age group has increased 6.8% since 2019, indicating instances of AMI are steadily rising.  This troubling connection of mental illness with intrinsic criminal or deviant behavior demands  our consideration and critical inquiry.

In this course, students will delve into historical and contemporary iterations of madness and murder across mediums and genres. As even fiction is often based in reality, students will examine mental illness depicted in creative nonfiction, fiction, podcasts, music, and film and consider the many ways disorders of the mind are often misdiagnosed, untreated, stigmatized, and criminalized. How does media romanticize, fetishize, or essentialize madness and link mental illness to deviance or criminality? Students will reflect on historical and contemporary understandings of psychopathology, analyze course texts, and produce meaningful discussion and writing on madness, murder, and true crime.

Texts for Fall:

• Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
• Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925), Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942)
• Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)
• Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire (2012)

Spring texts will be elected entirely by past and present student votes from a curation of true crime books and media.  Students will work with archival materials from the Borowitz Collection, housed in the Special Collections and Archives on campus, contribute to season four of our class podcast, Madness and Murder, and consider the ethical implications of true crime media production & consumption.  Listen to our podcast here:  https://open.spotify.com/show/32HtpKZWcJHVicHDzRGzUt?si=52c0ce173db44a8a. 

HONR    10197    6    Wesley    Raabe

Women’s Rights, Suffrage, Consciousness

The first Women’s Rights effort to achieve significant public recognition occurs during what is known historically as the Age of Revolution, the decades immediately following political revolutions in the United States, France, and Haiti, which led to altered government forms and altered relationships between common people and the aristocratic classes, and between enslavers and enslaved. However, the varied social transformations have strands that continued to unfold over a century and into the present, with concerns including property rights, suffrage, employment opportunity, and reproductive rights. I have selected readings, primarily originally written in English and from the genres of political philosophy, fiction, and historical accounts.  During the Fall 2025 semester, the emphasis will be on the late 18th-C. origins through the turn of the 20th Century. Texts will include three treatise-like statements: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), either Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838) or her and Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). We will close the semester by pairing Frances E. W. Harper’s novel Iola Leroy (1892) with the historian Lisa Tetrault’s challenge to the best-known U.S. Woman’s Rights origin story The Myth of Seneca Falls (2015). A small number of shorter readings will be shared on Canvas or Library Reserve. The Spring 2026 semester will recur to 19th Century fictions that gained new prominence during the 20th C. women’s movement and take up later developments, into the present, with readings for the second semester selected partly in consultation with students who enroll during the Fall 2025 Semester.    

HONR    10197    7    James    Winter

Course Description: Norman Mailer, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer of The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner’s Song, describes “faction” as a hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration, a definition that can extend to any literature that combines historical events, people, and places (including, let’s say, even movie characters) with the narrative exploration and analysis of poetry and fiction. In this course, you will create pieces of faction that focus on a specific historical event, person(s), or place and which will culminate in a final project, again of your choice, written as poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, or an academic research project.  

During our time together, a variety of texts will give you insight as to how other writers create and develop faction in its literary forms. Through our smaller essay and research assignments, you will become familiarized with the academic writing process, namely pre-writing, drafting, editing, and APA citation, as well as various methods of online research. This is because at Kent State and in the Honors College, we’d like to not only prepare you for future courses, but for you to leave the class a thoughtful, critically insightful reader, writer, and communicator. As an instructor, I do not see you as just “students,” but smart people who can succeed as academic and community leaders at the university and beyond.  

Required Course Materials

• Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard  
• The Donner Party by George Keithley 

HONR    10197    8    Babacar    Mbaye

Folklore in American Literature and Culture

The trickster is one of the most pervasive figures in American literature and culture. It permeates American folktales, novels, songs, and films, and serves as a tool of resistance and expression. In this course, students will study the trickster’s influences on American folklore, literature, music, and film.    In Fall 2025, they will examine selected American tales, legends, myths, and brief essays on American folklore and culture. In Spring 2026, they will explore the folklore and themes in key literary texts and anthologies of blues, rock and roll, country, and rap songs. Also, students will watch major films and documentaries showing folkloric influences on American literature and culture.

Fall Texts:

• David Leeming & Jack Page. Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology (2000).
• Frank de Caro. An Anthology of American Folktales & Legends (2009).
• Herman Melville. The Confidence Man (1852).
• Roger D. Abrahams. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia (1964).
• Zora Neale Hurston. Mules and Men (1935)

Spring Texts:

• L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (illustrated first edition) (2019).
• Gregory Maguire. Wicked Collector’s Edition: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture in a Deluxe Edition with Green Sprayed Edges (2024).
• Eric Sackheim. The Blues Line: Blues Lyrics from Leadbelly to Muddy Waters (2003).
• Hal Leonard. The Lyric Library: Classic Rock: Complete Lyrics for 200 Songs (2002).
• D. Spence. Hip-Hop and Rap: Complete Lyrics for 175 Songs (2003).
• Bobby Braddock. Country Music's Greatest Lines: Lyrics, Stories and Sketches from American Classics (2020). 

HONR    10197    9    Chelsea    Swick-Higgins

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    10    Lauren    Vogel

This course explores complex and sensitive topics surrounding identity and social (in)justice through children’s literature, young adult (YA) literature, and crossover picture books. We will look at materials that represent mirrors of ourselves and windows into the perspectives of the often-difficult lived experiences of others.

By the end of the term, students should be able to

1. Critique social norms and biases and question issues of power
2. Include multiple perspectives when interrogating and discussing any complex issue
3. Analyze and synthesize a broad range of material
4. Apply effective search strategies to locate and use high quality information and critically evaluate that information
5. Understand the importance of and properly use academic writing conventions 
6. Develop a strong sense of self and compassion for others
Fall Text:

• Stamped: (For Kids) by Jason Reynolds & Ibrahm X. Kendi (2020). Little, Brown & Company 

Spring Text:

• Kent State by Deborah Wiles (2020). Scholastic Press. 

HONR    10197    11    James    Winter

Course Description: Norman Mailer, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer of The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner’s Song, describes “faction” as a hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration, a definition that can extend to any literature that combines historical events, people, and places (including, let’s say, even movie characters) with the narrative exploration and analysis of poetry and fiction. In this course, you will create pieces of faction that focus on a specific historical event, person(s), or place and which will culminate in a final project, again of your choice, written as poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, or an academic research project.  

During our time together, a variety of texts will give you insight as to how other writers create and develop faction in its literary forms. Through our smaller essay and research assignments, you will become familiarized with the academic writing process, namely pre-writing, drafting, editing, and APA citation, as well as various methods of online research. This is because at Kent State and in the Honors College, we’d like to not only prepare you for future courses, but for you to leave the class a thoughtful, critically insightful reader, writer, and communicator. As an instructor, I do not see you as just “students,” but smart people who can succeed as academic and community leaders at the university and beyond.  

Required Course Materials

• Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard  
• The Donner Party by George Keithley 

HONR    10197    12    William    Morris

Comedy, humor, and laughter are uniquely human ways of being in the world. While everyone has some sense of humor, what is funny is often rooted in the customs and habits shared among those in a given community or culture. Like love, or justice, or virtue, humor is a complex human activity which is difficult to define for lay and academic audiences alike. This course surveys comedies in Western culture from the Old Comedy of ancient Greece to modern novels and short stories of literary merit to film and stand-up among other comedic artifacts.  

Over the course of two terms, we become a small scholarly community sometimes silly, sometimes serious, but always inquisitive and collegial. We develop our understanding through student-lead discussion, brief and extended analyses of course readings, short presentations, and essays directed by individual student inquiry. One goal of this course is that students should emerge with a deeper understanding how comedy and humor shape our intellectual pursuits, inform our shared social values, and enrich our individual capacity to be curious comedy connoisseurs.

Fall Texts:

• Aristophanes - The Clouds or The Birds
• Dante - Selected Excerpts
• Boccacio - Selected Excerpts  
• Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
• Moliere - Le Misanthrope
• Select Scholarship defining comedy  

Spring Texts: