Honors Courses for 2009-2010
Fall 2009
HONO 2005: The Scholar: “East Is East and West Is West”
Rudyar Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West,” written in 1889, provides one of the most frequently quoted –and misunderstood–lines on the irreconcilability of the cultures of the West and the East: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”; yet for many centuries East and West have met, be it peacefully, violently, or reverently. This course will examine such close encounters by scholars, authors, poets, and artists, as many create and cultivate images of the other. In doing so, this course will examine the root causes of misunderstandings and strife with an eye to uprooting them through discovering commonalities.
HONO 2052: World and Science Interactions (3 units)
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the fascinating relationship between the world and science. It is designed to help stimulate and cultivate student critical thinking on how science affects individuals and communities across the globe, and how those individuals and communities impact science. Considerations will be given to current issues based on their liveliness, substance and their value in a debate framework including the place of science and technology in the global society, the environment, human health and welfare, space, the computer revolution, ethics...
HONO 3191: The Varieties of World Religious Experience: Worldviews and practices of the Great Religions (3 units)
A World's Religions course with a twist: all the work required in the regular course but only half the semester's hours in class. The other half will be spent visiting religious sites in order to participate in their practices- a Native American sweat lodge, Hindu ritual and yoga, Buddhist meditation exercises, Jewish Sabbath worship, Christian contemplative prayer, Islamic daily prayer, Sufi invocation (and more). As these adventures will require extra and unusual hours of availability, subscribers must be highly flexible and strongly committed.
HONO 3500: Self, Community, and Service: Ethical Theory and Practice (3 units)
A rigorous examination of contemporary movement in ethical theory, focusing on the essential need for moral meaning and its modern implications. Themes include questions of identity, responsibility, and perception of and relation to the "other." Critical analysis of texts and key issues will be performed and understanding of key issues will be deepened through a service component that allows for active cultivation and expression of core values in the local community.
CQHO: 4071 CHINA AND INDIA: IMPACT ON GLOBAL COMMUNITY AND ISSUES WITHIN
This course will focus on China and India where the traditional modes of production, culture, social, and political relations have been undergoing dramatic changes. Both countries are experiencing intense transformation as a result of advancement of transport and communication technology, economic linkages, political alliances, population growth, urbanization, and health issues. The course is designed to study the interrelationships between the economic, political, social and cultural globalization and the impact on migration, environment, poverty, status of women, labor rights, and epidemic such as HIV/AIDS.
HONO 4071 Senior Honors Seminar I (1 unit)
In this seminar students will be introduced to oral and written presentations skills. Students will focus on their writing and defending their Honors thesis, submission of abstracts for conference presentations, and writing an analytical essay which will be included in the Honors portfolio.
Spring 2010
HONO 2053: The Scholar; Beauty and Cultures (3 units)
What is beauty? Why is something—a person, a building, an idea—beautiful? How are concepts of beauty rooted in time and place, in culture? This seminar will investigate the scholarship of beauty. In engaging with the body of work of cultural scholars and critics students will examine what different cultures have found to be beautiful. Students will examine a variety of cultures and eras. Informed by the scholarly view of beauty, students will investigate and articulate the origins of their own concepts of beauty.
HONO 2050: The World: Art and Religion (3 units)
This course explores world cultures through their religious arts. The visual expression of religious beliefs is covered via discussion of architecture, painting, sculpture, and other art forms associated with diverse world regions and religions. Arranged geographically, historically, and thematically, this course covers Prehistoric and Indigenous belief systems (including Native American, Meso-American, African, and Oceanic), the belief systems and related arts of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome; and the arts associated with Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course offers a broad introduction to world regions and history through their signally important visual expressions of faith.
HONO 3191: The Varieties of World Religious Experience: Worldviews and practices of the Great Religions (3 units)
A World's Religions course with a twist: all the work required in the regular course but only half the semester's hours in class. The other half will be spent visiting religious sites in order to participate in their practices- a Native American sweat lodge, Hindu ritual and yoga, Buddhist meditation exercises, Jewish Sabbath worship, Christian contemplative prayer, Islamic daily prayer, Sufi invocation (and more). As these adventures will require extra and unusual hours of availability, subscribers must be highly flexible and strongly committed.
HONO 3501: Moral Philosophy (3 units)
An introduction to moral philosophy in the context of global ethics followed by an investigation of a range of contemporary ethical problems drawn from private life, public policy, law, medicine, and business in the international arena.
CQHO 3191: RISING ELEPHANT, WAKING DRAGON: LITERATURES OF INDIA AND CHINA (3 units)
This course familiarizes students with the literatures of China and India by providing a brief introduction to the ancient and medieval literature of the two nations, followed by an in-depth study of modern works of fiction and non-fiction. As these works reflect the varied influences of religion, colonialism, nationalism, revolution, and globalization within these nations, they also disclose China and India’s forging of new political and cultural identities within an increasingly global world.
CQHO 3192: SURVEY OF NON -WESTERN ART: INDIA, CHINA, JAPAN AND BEYOND (3 units)
This course offers a comprehensive study of the artistic traditions of India, China and Japan from the third millennium B.C. to modern times. It explores their inter-relationships and their influences on and from the western world from a historical, economical, and cultural context.
HONO 3009: Country as Text: Egypt (1/3 units)
Egypt is a country at the crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia. As a result it has an incredibly rich and globally important history. Evidence of that history is a wealth of monuments from the ancient Pharaonic period, temples and churches of the Greco-Roman period, mosques of the Islamic period, and marketplaces and other sites of its modern period. Visits to and discussion of many Egyptian sites from various eras will involve reflections on the societies that produced these sites and buildings, and their function in the lives of ordinary individuals.
