Honors Courses Fall 2016
First Year Honors Foundation Course
DISC 2305 Honors Humanities Seminar I
This course confronts profound ethical questions through
considerations of history, literature, psychology,
philosophy, and sociology. Beginning with a story by
Flannery O’Connor that poses questions about ethical
conduct, students explore texts and events that challenge
the foundations of philosophical and religious ethical
systems.
The course also addresses contemporary
ethical questions regarding individual freedom and responsibility and the meanings of
“community.”
MWF
Section #
003
004
005
012
Prof
Hopper
Hopper
Hopper
Arbery
Time
10:00 AM – 10:50 AM
11:00 AM – 11:50 AM
12:00 PM – 12:50 PM
9:00 AM – 9:50 AM
Location
Virginia-Snider 203
Virginia-Snider 203
Virginia-Snider 203
Dallas Hall 343
TuTh
Section #
001
002
006
007
008
009
010
011
Prof
Goyne
Goyne
Foster
Forrester
Hinton
Amsel
Rosendale
Carr
Time
9:30 AM – 10:50 AM
11:00 AM – 12:20 PM
9:30 AM – 10:50 AM
12:30 PM – 1:50 PM
12:30 PM – 1:50 PM
11:00 AM – 12:20 PM
2:00 PM – 3:20 PM
12:30 PM – 1:50 PM
Location
Kathy Crow Commons 150
Kathy Crow Commons 150
McElvaney Commons 135
Loyd Commons 104
McElvaney Commons 135
Crum Commons 132
McElvaney Commons 135
Dallas Hall 156
ALL FIRST-YEAR HONORS STUDENTS MUST ENROLL IN DISC 2305 DURING THE
FALL SEMESTER
UHP 2100.001H Honors Sophomore Seminar
David Doyle, Sally Spaniolo, Susan Harris
Tuesday 4:00 – 5:20 PM, Virginia-Snider Commons 203, 303
The purpose of this course is to help Honors students realize their full
academic potential. The semester will be focused on ways to foster a
broader awareness of the liberal arts and science traditions, goals, and
challenges including hands-on experience in putting together an individual
research project, preparation for future upper level courses, research funding proposals, or
an Honors project in the major. The course will also include a review of some of the significant
resources available to the SMU student.
UC2012 and UC2016: Information Literacy
1
SPECIAL HONORS OPPORTUNITY CLASSES: ECONOMICS & SCIENCE
ECO 1311.001H Principles of Microeconomics
Rajat Deb
TuTh 9:30 – 10:50 AM, Dallas Hall 102
This course studies the production of the entire economy, dealing with such issues as the
general price level, the national employment rate, government spending, and the nation’s money
supply. Important to these issues is the definition and measurement of macroeconomic
aggregates such as gross domestic product, consumer price index, the unemployment rate, and
the government surplus and deficit. The course looks at the determinants of inflation and the
relationship between inflation and other factors, including interest rates, the money supply, and
unemployment.
Students must have background in calculus to enroll in this course.
This course counts towards Honors requirement and major prerequisites, but does not
satisfy a UC Pillar requirement.
UC2012 and UC2016: Quantitative Reasoning
PHYS 1010.001H Honors Physics Section
(must be taken in conjunction with PHYS 1303, 1304, 1307, 1308)
Eric Godat & Richard Guarino
Wed 6:00 – 7:30 PM, Fondren Science Building 127
Students will engage in a semester long “Grand Challenge” problem solving exercise. This will
define the arc of the semester, setting the tone for planning our classroom activities and
eventually defining the deliverable at the end of the course. In between class periods relevant
to the development of solutions to the Grand Challenge Problem, the students will be engaged
in demonstrations of physics principles and exercises to explore these demonstrations. These
class periods will follow a pattern consistent with the scientific method: observation of a physical
phenomenon, hypothesis building to explain the phenomenon, and calculation and testing to
assess the hypothesis.
Recommended course for first year UHP students
BIOCH 5310.003H Honors Biochemistry Section
(must be taken in conjunction with BIOL or CHEM 5310.001C or 002C)
Pia Vogel, John Wise
Occasional Fridays at 2:00 PM & an Evening to be determined
Scholars’ Den Conference Room, Clements Hall
The Biol/Chem 5310 Honors section requires students to attend four lectures in the Department
of Biological Sciences lecture series. All lectures are at 2 pm on Friday afternoons (10/09; 10/16;
11/6; 11/20) unless otherwise advertised. Students meet with the instructors (Bauer for the
10/09 lecture; Vogel for the other three lectures) one evening (time/day tbd) in the honors lounge
for about one hour to discuss the lecture and research presented the Friday before or to discuss
other relevant material. At the end of the course, the students write a 2000 word paper about
the research/seminar that interested them the most.
Recommended course for advanced UHP students at the Junior or Senior level
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Honors University Curriculum Courses
KNW 2300.L03H Introduction to Engineering Design
Ahmet Sabuncu & Christian Ayala
Wednesday 6:00 – 8:50 PM, Junkins 202
Section L03 is the Honors Section, and only students in this section can receive Honors
credit for Introduction to Engineering Design. Provides an introduction to engineering
design methodologies and basic teaming skills. Students participate on a team in a term-long,
multidisciplinary design experience in which each student provides basic engineering
capabilities in mechanical, software, electronic, civil, and/or environmental systems. Each team
designs a robot that achieves stated design objectives while operating autonomously, with as
little human interaction as possible. Teams submit group design memos documenting the
evolution of the design. Each team makes a preliminary design presentation and report and a
final design presentation and report. A competition is held at the end of the term. Prerequisites
or co-requisites: MATH 1337 and one of CEE 1302, CSE 1341, EE 1322, EMIS 1360, or ME
1202/1102.
Recommended course for first year UHP students in Engineering
Restricted to Honors Engineering Students
UC2012 and UC2016: Ways of Knowing
UC2012 and UC2016: Oral Communication
KNW 2302.002H John F. Kennedy: His Life, His Times, and His
Legend
Dennis Simon and Tom Stone
Tuesday 2:00 – 4:50 PM, Dedman Life Science 110
A study of leadership, American politics, and the Kennedy era drawn
from the discipline of the humanities and social sciences. The course
highlights the politics of constructing and interpreting a political persona, a
historical record, and a legend. Through reading, discussion, and especially
writing, students explore how and why scholars, filmmakers, and fiction and
nonfiction writers draw different conclusions about John F. Kennedy. Students also assess how
these different approaches and conclusions work in tandem for a deeper understanding of
Kennedy, his administration, and his ongoing legend and legacy.
UC2012 and UC2016: Ways of Knowing
UC2012 and UC2016: Writing
3
ASCE 3320.002H Sex, Drugs, & Rocks
Brian Molanphy
TuTh 3:30 – 6:20 PM, Owen Fine Arts Center B640
Beyond their more common uses, pots have traditionally been used ritually and socially in
conjunction with powerful substances and forces, which are often depicted in a pot's form or
surface decoration. Such practices continue today. Traditional and current uses of pots include
Greek wares for gymnasia and bacchanalia, Chinese tea ware, Central American chocolate ware,
North American dinnerware, and South African brewery ware, as well as pots that celebrate bodily
functions such as giving birth and pots that depict parts of the body gendered, sexualized, or
related to reproduction. After studying these pots and their contexts, the ceramics of living artists
particularly concerned with topics such as sex and drugs, and texts about various pots and their
contents, students make their own interpretations by undertaking the ceramic process as an
artificial geological process.
Recommended course for advanced UHP students at the Junior or Senior level
UC2012: Creativity and Aesthetics II
UC2016: Depth – Humanities & Fine Arts
UC2012 and UC2016: Global Engagement & Community Engagement
ENGL 2312.003H Fiction: The Ethnic Novel
Jayson Sae-Saue
MWF 1:00 – 1:50 PM, Dallas Hall 102
This course is an introduction to fiction with an emphasis on U.S. ethnic novels. The primary goals
of the class are that students to learn to recognize a range of narrative elements and to see how
they function in key U.S. fictions. Each text we will read represents a specific set of historical and
social relationships and they imagine particular U.S. identities. Yet how does a text construct a
cultural identity, comment on a determinate historical moment, and organize human
consciousness around social history? How does literature articulate political, social, and cultural
dilemmas? And how does it structure our understandings of social interaction? As these questions
imply, this course will explore how fiction creates and then navigates a gap between art and history
in order to remark on U.S. social matters. We will investigate how literary mechanisms situate a
narrative within a determinate social context and how the narrative apparatuses of the selected
works organize our perceptions of the complex worlds that they imagine. As such, we will conclude
the class having learned how fiction works ideologically, understanding how the form, structure,
and narrative elements of the selected texts negotiate history, politics, human psychology, and
even the limitations of literary representation. Texts: Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior,
John Okada: No-No Boy, Karen Tei Yamashita: Tropic of Orange, Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous
Life of Oscar Wao, Oscar Casares: Brownsville, Luis Alberto Urrea, Devil’s Highway
Recommended course for first year UHP students
(no prerequisite required)
UC2012: Creativity and Aesthetics II
UC2016: Breadth – Language & Literature
UC2012 and UC2016: Writing
UC2012 and UC2016: Oral Communication (note: this proficiency is section-specific & varies by
instructor)
4
HIST 1322.001H Introductory Topics in European History: Queens & Mistresses
Kathleen Wellman
TuTh, 11:00 AM – 12:20 PM, Dallas Hall 115
This course is designed to introduce first year students to the history of early modern France, the
history of women, and the discipline of history by focusing on a series of French queens and royal
mistresses as a way to explore these issues.
Readings include: 1) Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience; 2) R. J.Knectht, Renaissance
France ; 3) Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron ; 4) Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs; 5) Merry
Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe.
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Historical Contexts I
UC2016: Breadth – Historical Contexts
UC2012 and UC2016: Writing
HIST 2390.001 The Civilization of India
Rachel Ball-Phillips
MW 6:30 PM – 7:20 PM, Room TBD
This course provides an introduction to the history and cultures of the Indian subcontinent from
the 3rd millennium BCE to the present. Drawing on interdisciplinary methodologies, this course
approaches history through visual and material culture, as well as the history of food and
civilization. First, we will examine India’s place in the ancient world, then the entrance of Islam to
the subcontinent in the 8th century, and finally assess the impact and aftermath of European
expansion and imperialism. Through readings, field trips, and building a class website, students
will learn how questions of history and culture shape identities and animate public life.
Readings will include: Colleen Taylor Sen, Feasts and Facts: A History of Food in India (2015)
and Thomas R. Trautman, India: A Brief History (2011)
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Historical Contexts I
UC2016: Breadth – Historical Contexts
UC2012 and UC2016: Human Diversity
HIST 3316.001H The History of Sex in America
David D. Doyle, Jr.
TuTh 2:00 – 3:20 PM, Boaz Commons 136
Although often conflated, this course will emphasize how gender and sexuality are two separateif occasionally overlapping-categories. This semester the largest focus will be on the categories
of race and gender in America—two constant—although always changing—organizing metrics
throughout the country’s history. Other categories such as social class, region, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, etc., will also be interrogated.
Readings will illustrate how gender and sexuality can be constructed—and how these
constructions differ across time and geography. We will also read a book that studies the history
of America through the lens of gender and sexuality. For the rest of the semester the readings—
History, Literature, primary documents, Biography, and Sociology—will represent case studies—
or works narrowly focused on a particular issue, problem, or time period.
Readings include: 1) John D’Emilio & Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality
5
in America (2nd edition, 1997);2) Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 1994 (selected chapters
only); 3) Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas
Borderlands,2007; 4) Kelly A. Ryan, Regulating Passion: Sexuality and Patriarchal Rule in
Massachusetts, 1700-1830, 2014; 5) Gloria Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land: Families and
Cultures in Colonial New England, 2001: 6) Peter Wallenstein, Tell the Court I Love my Wife:
Race, Marriage, and Law in American History, 2002; 7) Elizabeth Reis, Bodies in Doubt: An
American History of Intersex, 2009; 8) Jonathan Eig, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders
Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, 2014; 9) Jill LePore, The Secret History of Wonder
Woman, 2014; 10) Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth
Century America, 2009; 11) Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness, 2006 (selected chapters only).
Recommended course for advanced UHP students at the Junior or Senior level
UC2012 and UC2016: Ways of Knowing
UC2016: Breadth – Historical Contexts
UC2012 and UC2016: Human Diversity & Writing
HIST 3363.001H The Holocaust
Erin Hochman
MWF 11:00 – 11:50 AM, Dallas Hall 156
Examines the destruction of the European Jews as they emerged from pre-World War I
anti-Semitism and Nazi racism. Considers Jewish responses to genocide, the behavior of
bystanders, and possibilities of rescue.
Recommended course for advanced UHP students at the Junior or Senior level
UC2012: Historical Contexts II
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures II
UC2016: Breadth – Historical Contexts
UC2012 and UC2016: Writing
HIST 3377.002 History of South Africa
Jill Kelly
MW 3:00 – 4:20 PM, Dallas Hall 106
2014 marked the twentieth anniversary of South Africa’s independence and its first year as a nation
without its beloved icon, Nelson Mandela. The country is still a young democracy coming to terms
with the structural legacy of centuries of turmoil sparked by slavery, colonialism, rapid
industrialization, segregation, apartheid, and the struggle for equal rights. This course provides
students with a survey of South African history to the present that includes analysis of these major
themes as well as historical frameworks such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, resistance, human
rights, and the question of South African “exceptionalism.”
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Historical Contexts II
UC2016: Breadth – Historical Contexts
UC2012 and UC2016: Global Engagement & Writing
6
PHIL 1306.001H Introduction to Philosophy
Brad Thompson
TuTh 3:30 – 4:50 PM, Hyer Hall 201
A general introduction to the central questions of philosophy. We will discuss topics from such
areas as the theory of knowledge, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, philosophy of mind,
ethics, and political philosophy. Typical questions might include: Can we know the world outside
our minds? Is it rational to believe in a God who allows evil to exist? Do the laws of physics
allow for human freedom? Is morality more than a matter of opinion? Can there be unequal wealth
in a just society? Readings will include classical authors such as Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume,
and Mill, as well as contemporary philosophers. The focus of the course will be on arguments
for and against proposed solutions to key problems in philosophy.
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Philosophical, Religious, & Ethical Inquiry I
UC2016: Breadth – Philosophical, Religious, & Ethical Inquiry
PLSC 1320.003H Introduction to American Government
Joseph Kobylka
TuTh 2:00 – 2:30 PM, Dallas Hall 156
The organization, functions, and processes of the national government, with particular attention
to parties, pressure groups, and other forces that influence its course. Attention is also given to
the Texas Constitution.
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures I
UC2016: Breadth – Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures
PLSC 1340.002H Intro to Comparative Politics
Michael Lusztig
MWF 8:00 – 8:50 AM, Florence Hall 304
Analyzes and contrasts different patterns of national political development in Western, MarxistLeninist, and Third World countries. Political dilemmas confronting each type of system will be
examined.
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures I
UC2016: Breadth – Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures
PLSC 4337.002H Civil Rights
Joseph Kobylka
TuTh 11:00 AM – 12:20 PM, Dallas Hall 142
Examines changes wrought in the American system of governance by addition of the 14th
Amendment, particularly its Equal Protection Clause, and the ways the Supreme Court has
interpreted and applied it over time. Topics of attention include racial discrimination, sex
discrimination, and equality in the political process.
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures II
UC2016: Depth – History, Social, & Behavioral Sciences
UC2012 and UC2016: Oral Communication & Writing
7
RELI 1304.001H Introduction to Western Religions
Mark Chancey
MWF 9:00 – 9:50 AM, Dallas Hall, 357
A historical introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Topics include Moses and ancient
Israelite religion; Jesus and early Christianity; rabbinic Judaism; Muhammad and classical Islam;
the birth of Protestantism; and Jewish, Christian, and Islamic modernism.
Recommended course for first year UHP students
UC2012: Philosophical, Religious, & Ethical Inquiry I
UC2016: Breadth – Philosophical, Religious, & Ethical Inquiry
SOCI 3330.001 Social Construction of Identities
Debra Branch
MWF 2:00 – 2:50 PM, Hyer Hall 111
Examines classical and contemporary theoretical explanations for the development, persistence,
and destruction of constructed social identities based on gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity,
social class, disability status, etc.
Honors designation will be given after class is completed.
UC2012 and UC2016: Ways of Knowing (to be determined)
UC2012: Creativity & Aesthetics II
UC2016: Depth – Humanities & Fine Arts
UC2012 and UC2016: Human Diversity
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures I (will be removed if KNW approved)
UC2016: Breadth – Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures (will be removed if KNW approved)
SOCI 3340.001 Global Society
Nancy Campbell-Jeffrey
MWF 12:00 – 12:50 PM, Hyer Hall 201
Provides students with a sociological orientation to the evolving interconnectedness among
societies, nation-states, cultures, economies, and individuals around the globe.
Honors designation will be given after class is completed.
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures II
UC2016: Depth – History, Social, & Behavioral Sciences
UC2012 and UC2016: Global Engagement & Information Literacy
WGST 2322.701H Gender Images and Perspectives
Josephine Caldwell-Ryan
Tu 6:30 – 9:20 PM, Dallas Hall 115
An interdisciplinary examination of the ways femininity and masculinity have been represented
in the past and present, with attention to what is constant and what changes.
UC2012 and UC2016: Ways of Knowing
UC2012: Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures I
UC2016: Breadth – Individuals, Institutions, and Cultures
UC2012 and UC2016: Human Diversity
8