Curriculum Updates

ENGL courses, Fall 2023

[UConn Storrs]

Please view the Fall 2023 English Course Descriptions for more details about any of these courses. All require first-year writing (ENGL 1007/1010/1011) as a prerequisite.

Honors courses

ENGL 1101W: Classical and Medieval Western Literature
CA 1, W

ENGL 2408W: Modern Drama
CA 1

ENGL 2701: Creative Writing

Other courses of interest

The following ENGL courses are not Honors courses. However, advisors feel that they may be particularly interesting to Honors students.

ENGL 2001: Introduction to Grant Proposal Writing

ENGL 3267W: Race and the Scientific Imagination
CA 1, CA 4

ENGL 3621: Literature and Other Disciplines
Law and Literature

 

PHIL 2410: Know Thyself

[UConn Storrs]

As thinking beings, we have rich inner lives. And we have unfettered access to these inner lives. Whatever we might imagine at any given moment, we know (without fail) that this is what we are currently imagining. It would be absurd for someone else to correct us. To respond to a sincere claim like “I am imagining a house on a meadow” with “No you are not” would be facetious. We have this kind of unfettered access to many of our internal and bodily states. When someone thinks they are in pain, are hungry, tired, or wanting something, it would be absurd to correct them (except in very particular circumstances). One has similarly unfettered access to some parts of one’s identity, like one’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or religious beliefs.

There are, hence, a great many things about ourselves that we know about us better than anyone else. But, by contrast, there are a great many things about ourselves that are very difficult for us to know and that other people might know better. These include our habits, implicit assumptions or prejudices, and character traits. It might take someone else to point out one of our habits for us to realize we have it, or a supervised exercise to uncover our biases. Indeed, we might think of ourselves as good, virtuous people until someone else points out our failings. In such cases, it is far from absurd for someone to correct our beliefs about ourselves.

We will examine the tension between the kind of self-knowledge for which our self-perception is our best guide and the kind of self-knowledge for which we might be best served by perceiving ourselves through others. What is the ‘inner sense’ that gives us unfettered access to imagination, sensation, desire, and identity? And what it is about habit, prejudice and character that hides them from this sense?

Trouble registering? This class has a catalog-level pre-requisite of one 1000-level PHIL course. We can override this pre-requisite. If you are an Honors student, you may register by emailing honors@uconn.edu and including (1) your name; (2) your 7-digit Student Admin number; (3) your registration “pick time”; (4) the course number and section (PHIL 2410-001); (5) the class number from Student Admin; and (6) confirmation that there are seats available in the course.

AFRA/SOCI 2510: Ethnicity and Race

[UConn Storrs]

Are “Emily” and “Greg” more employable than “Lakisha” and “Jamal”? Did the election of Obama mean the end of racism? Do White Supremacists have inter-racial friendships? How do we count multiracial people on the US Census? How can one provide empirically-based solutions to the problems of racial inequality, racial discrimination, and systemic racism? What kind of sociological concepts can help us interpret what data we collect and analyze? How does field of sociology intersect with, in ways that both align with and depart from, other fields, such as biology, economics, history, genomics, or political science? This honors course will answer these questions and more by providing a rigorous and interdisciplinary introduction, rather than individual disciplines in isolation, to the scholarship on race and ethnicity. This interdisciplinary focus will be bounded within the context of North America, with a focus on the attainment, application, and production of knowledge related to ethnicity and race.

The course will be a hybrid of lecture and discussion, with regular writing exercises, and culminating in each student’s independent research project.

SOCI 2995-001: The Science & Practice of Finding Life Purpose


[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Bradley Wright

Research finds that people who have a clear sense of life purpose are happier, more satisfied, are healthier, have deeper relationships, and do better at work. They even live longer! This one-credit Honors exploration of finding purpose throughout life will consist of seven weeks in class and seven weeks of guided experiential learning.

For more about the UConn Life Purpose Lab, visit https://lifepurpose.lab.uconn.edu/. If you have questions about the course, email Prof. Wright at bradley.wright@uconn.edu.

PSYC 3770-003: (Special Topics) Racism and Anti-Racism in Psychological Science (Conversion Opportunity)

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Felicia Pratto

PSYC 3770 has a catalog-level pre-requisite of PSYC 2700, which Prof. Pratto is waiving. If you do not have credit for PSYC 2700, email Prof. Pratto for a permission number.

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

In this new course, we will review what kinds of racist and anti-racist ideologies were prevalent in the US across its history and examine ways that scientific psychology relied on or refuted those ideologies. Students will read original research articles and history and present a project considering these topics today. 

University Honors Laureate: This Special Topics course will count toward the Social Sciences category and will also meet the Diversity & Multiculturalism requirement.

HRTS 5390: Economic Rights

[UConn Storrs]

Instructor: Shareen Hertel

Graduate courses act as Honors credit, as long as you earn a grade of B- or higher.

This graduate seminar will explore the conceptual bases, measurement, and policy applications of economic rights, drawing on a range of literature across disciplines and grounded in empirical methods spanning qualitative and quantitative approaches. Organized around a series of classic and contemporary scholarly readings spanning multiple disciplines along with contemporary policy documents, the course engages grad students in developing a semester-long independent research paper which is in turn presented during a final in-class conference.

Contact Prof. Hertel for permission to enroll in this course.

PSYC graduate courses: Perception, Action, & Cognition

Graduate courses act as Honors credit, as long as you earn a grade of B- or higher

The Perception, Action, Cognition (PAC) program within Psychological Sciences is happy to have qualified Honors students join their graduate courses. If you are interested in one of these courses, please contact the instructor(s).

PSYC 5171: Special Topics in Cognitive Science

There will be four sections offered in Spring 2023:

PSYC 5516: Event Cognition

Instructor: Gerry Altmann

PSYC 5570-003: Language and Literacy in Under-Resourced Populations

Instructor: Kenneth Pugh

SOCI 3453: Women and Health (Conversion Opportunity)

[UConn Stamford]

Instructor: Ingrid Semaan

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

This course begins with the premise that health outcomes are embedded in inequalities that are located at the intersections of gender/race/class/sexuality. We will look at research that focuses on three additional themes: a critique of the biomedical model, a critique of the profit motive in health care, and a critique of the emphasis on pharmaceuticals and technology in medical fields. We will focus on several specific areas of health including reproductive health, mental health, eating “disorders,” and body size. We will explore these topics through films, reading assignments, and class discussions.

POLS/WGSS 2807: Women and the Law

[UConn Storrs]

What is the status of women under the law in the United States today? How have women’s rights advocates sought political, legal, and social change over the past 300 years? What strategies have their opponents used to prevent significant change? This course starts by examining the legal and social status of women during the years before the formation of the Republic. We will examine the role of women as society extolled the virtues of Republican Motherhood, took steps toward abolishing slavery, faced wars at home and abroad, and debated citizenship and voting rights. By the end of the semester we will reach the present day, where women have greater recognition under the law but inequalities remain. We will examine significant challenges rights advocates faced (and continue to face) advancing and maintaining those rights. We explore theories of leadership, political agenda setting, judicial decision making, and backlash. Students will explore those theories by engaging with a variety of primary sources, including music, advertisements, documents, and artifacts.

POLS/WGSS 2807: Women and the Law

[UConn Storrs]

What is the status of women under the law in the United States today? How have women’s rights advocates sought political, legal, and social change over the past 300 years? What strategies have their opponents used to prevent significant change? This course starts by examining the legal and social status of women during the years before the formation of the Republic. We will examine the role of women as society extolled the virtues of Republican Motherhood, took steps toward abolishing slavery, faced wars at home and abroad, and debated citizenship and voting rights. By the end of the semester we will reach the present day, where women have greater recognition under the law but inequalities remain. We will examine significant challenges rights advocates faced (and continue to face) advancing and maintaining those rights. We explore theories of leadership, political agenda setting, judicial decision making, and backlash. Students will explore those theories by engaging with a variety of primary sources, including music, advertisements, documents, and artifacts.