Featured Courses

DMD 3620: Collaborating with Cultural Organizations (Conversion Opportunity)

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[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Clarissa Ceglio

While this is not an Honors course, Prof. Ceglio welcomes Honors students of all majors and would be happy to offer Honors conversions for interested students. Alternatively, Honors students may enroll in the cross-listed graduate section (DMD 5998-011), which will entail additional advanced work. 

In this Service-Learning course, we will apply digital public history tools and methods to a project undertaken in partnership with a cultural organization. This immerses students in issues of contemporary practice while building collaborative competency.

Students taking this class will be able to:

  • Investigate humanities-based design thinking strategies and apply them to idea and project development
  • Explore the roles and tools of digital public history professionals working in the cultural sector
  • Deepen their ability to be an effective contributor to collaborative undertakings
  • Learn how to develop a creative brief, work iteratively, make research-based recommendations, and propose sustainable practices
  • Conclude the semester with portfolio-ready work and resume-worthy experience

Permission number required. Contact: clarissa.ceglio@uconn.edu

DMD 3620: Collaborating with Cultural Organizations (Conversion Opportunity)

Posted on by

Instructor: Clarissa Ceglio

While this is not an Honors course, Prof. Ceglio welcomes Honors students of all majors and would be happy to offer Honors conversions for interested students. Alternatively, Honors students may enroll in the cross-listed graduate section (DMD 5998-005), which will entail additional advanced work. 

Museums, archives, and other cultural organizations are spaces of digital media experimentation as they seek new ways to communicate ideas, make collections accessible, inspire learning, connect people, and build community. In addition to exploring what the terms digital, public, and humanities mean—alone and in combination—we will examine ways in which digital media, from apps to virtual reality (VR) to hashtags, are being used to critically engage us in questions about our human past, present, and future. We will explore, too, the place of digital/public/humanities within contemporary debates about cultural organizations’ histories and responsibilities with regard to social justice, activism, and inclusivity. This Service Learning course also involves collaborating with on and off-campus cultural organizations on a set of microprojects with such partners as the Keney Park Sustainability Project. Through this course students will gain an understanding of the roles that current and emerging digital media play in public engagement and gain hands-on experience with basic tools, such as Omeka, an open-source software for building online collections and exhibits. No prior digital media skills required.

PSYC 3250W: Laboratory in Animal Behavior and Learning

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[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Etan Markus

Prerequisites: (1) ENGL 107, 1010, 1011, or 2011; (2) PSYC 1100; (3) PSYC 2100; (4) PSYC 2200 or 2500 or 3201 or 3552; (5) a good knowledge of statistics

Permission number required. Request a permission number using this form.

Remember how you got to class today? a bad experience? learning to ride a bike? What parts of the brain are involved in these different types of behaviors? How can one examine these questions in the laboratory rat? This hands-on laboratory will provide students with an opportunity to conduct experiments using modern behavioral techniques. The ability of rats to carry out different types of tasks will be related to different brain structures.

This is a serious lab designed for students interested in continuing to graduate or medical school.

  • This is a hands-on lab, most of the time we will only have a brief classroom session. Instead, on about half the weeks students will be training animals for about 1-2 hours/day for 3-4 days a week.
  • On occasion you will have to come in on the weekend to care for your animals.
  • This is also a “W” class, and I’ll be working with you on your writing (& re-writing).

W.

ECON 3473: Microeconomic Issues in Economic Development and Policy Making

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Instructor: Nishith Prakash

Prerequisites: ECON 1200 or 1202; ECON 2201 or 2211Q. The requirement of intermediate microeconomics (2201/2211Q) may be waived for Honors students who have taken ECON 1200 or 1201. Email Prof. Prakash to request a permission number.

A majority of the world’s population lives on less than $2/day. The goal of this course is to better understand the lives of the world’s poor. What are their lives like? Why do they remain poor? In particular, we will explore 3-4 interrelated topics such as poverty, education, political economy and corruption.

Key highlights of this course:

  1. Students will learn impact evaluation.
  2. Students will learn how to evaluate government policies.
  3. Students will learn how to design effective policies aimed at improving the well-being of individuals.
  4. Students will learn a statistical tool – STATA, a powerful tool used in Applied Microeconomics.

POLS 2998W-008: (Political Issues) The Politics of War Memory and Memorialization (Conversion Opportunity)

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Instructor: Christine Sylvester

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010, 1011, or 2011.

While this is not an Honors course, Prof. Sylvester welcomes Honors students of all majors and would be happy to offer Honors conversions for interested students.

This course considers processes whereby major wars are remembered and memorialized in the USA and elsewhere.  The question addressed throughout is whose version of a war is remembered and memorialized and whose is ignored, disputed, or assigned less legitimacy in the politics of national memorialization? Cases revolve around the atom bombing of Hiroshima, the rape of women in Berlin by Russian troops at the end of World War II, the destruction of ancient artifacts in recent Syrian and Iraq wars, the politics of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and of Confederate statues today, and how/whose war is curated in related museum exhibitions, war cemeteries, and war novels. Geared for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, the course entails student presentations, in-class written analyses, and a culminating paper. Previous courses in international relations or issues of public memory helpful.

DMD 3998-012 (Variable Topics): Visual Representations of Armenian Memory

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Instructor: Catherine Masud

Fridays 10:10 AM – 3:20 PM (with lunch break). Email catherine.masud@uconn.edu or stacy.webb@uconn.edu for permission number.

Seeking talented students who are: Film Editors, Motion Graphics Animators, Graphic Designers, Historians, Writers.

In this course, students will develop a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the ways in which audio-visual media can be used to recreate memory of lost communities. Students will produce a collaborative documentary film project that integrates primary archival materials with their own student-generated graphics, animations, and sound treatments. The film and supporting presentation materials will premiere at a conference near the end of the term. In addition, students will develop individual creative projects that enable them to reflect on the intersection of history and personal memory.

The collaborative film project will tell the multi-dimensional story of Armenian history and culture that was lost due to ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Armenian Holocaust (1915-19) resulted in the systematic extermination of the majority of the Armenian Christian population within the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent expulsion of survivors from Turkey. The historical circumstances surrounding this period are still controversial today. For more information, visit houshamadyan.org.

This course will be taught by award-winning filmmaker, Catherine Masud, who has a passion for national memory and oral history narratives. This unique course offers students the chance to develop their professional skills under the guidance of a master filmmaker and expert historians. This course is also an opportunity for students with an interest in history and human rights to engage in a compelling, historical narrative which is still relevant and deserving of understanding today.

ENGL/AFRA 3213W-001: 18th & 19th Century African American Literature

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Instructor: Shawn Salvant

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011; open to juniors or higher. Sophomore Honors students should email Prof. Salvant for a permission number.

This course provides a survey of eighteenth and nineteenth-century African American literature. We will examine early African American literature, reading work by authors such as James Gronniosaw and Phillis Wheatley with emphasis on their transatlantic production, religious themes, and contributions to the development of the African American vernacular tradition. We will study the African American oral and rhetorical traditions as exemplified in anti-slavery speeches and essays by Sojourner Truth, David Walker, Frederick Douglass and others. In a unit on the slave narrative, we’ll discuss the literary and political dimensions of this genre so influential to the development of 20th and 21st Century African American literature. We’ll conclude by examining early African American novels and novels of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction era by such figures as Charles Chesnutt. Students will become familiar with the development of African American literary history and the recurring themes of the period as well as the literary and cultural significance of each text and author. We will also track the forces shaping this period of African American literature—historical and political movements (slavery, emancipation, reconstruction), modes of expression and production (literacy and orality, authentication), and literary forms (imagery, symbolism, narrative, genre, style). Primary texts will be supplemented by scholarly secondary readings. Final grade will be based on quizzes, discussion question assignments, midterm exam, participation, 1-2 short essays, final paper and/or a final exam.

(CA 4)

ENGL 2413-001: The Graphic Novel

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Instructor: Katharine Capshaw

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011 

This course explores the history and theory of the graphic novel.  We will explore a variety of approaches to the genre, from superhero narratives to graphic memoir, from manga to contemporary experimental texts.  While no single course can offer a comprehensive summation of such a vast and various body of work, our class will address the field’s major generic threads. We will also develop an understanding of the ‘grammar’ involved in reading a panel, page, and entire comics sequence. Alongside the narratives we will read secondary sources that explore aesthetic and theoretical debates within the field.  One of our objectives is to support each other as we engage the critical discourse around comics and graphic novels: we will share sources and insights and offer constructive feedback as we work together to produce informed and incisive term papers.

(CA 1)

ENGL 1701-002: Creative Writing I

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Instructor: Sean Forbes

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011

The Speaker: The Eye of the Poem and the Short Story

According to Frances Mayes, “the poet ‘finds’ the right speaker and the right listener, usually by trying out several approaches.” In this introduction to creative writing class we will examine the different approaches that a writer can take when trying to establish a speaker in a poem or short story. We will look at exemplary works of poetry and fiction from writers like Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Marilyn Nelson, and Justin Torres. Students will produce a final portfolio of their original work. Class participation is an essential component to this largely workshop-based course along with weekly writing prompts such as writing in iambic pentameter and challenging prose sketches.

ENGL 1701-003: Creative Writing I

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Instructor: Sean Forbes

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011

The Speaker: The Eye of the Poem and the Short Story

According to Frances Mayes, “the poet ‘finds’ the right speaker and the right listener, usually by trying out several approaches.” In this introduction to creative writing class we will examine the different approaches that a writer can take when trying to establish a speaker in a poem or short story. We will look at exemplary works of poetry and fiction from writers like Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Marilyn Nelson, and Justin Torres. Students will produce a final portfolio of their original work. Class participation is an essential component to this largely workshop-based course along with weekly writing prompts such as writing in iambic pentameter and challenging prose sketches.