Curriculum Updates

DMD 3998-014: (Variable Topics) Museums and Activism (Conversion Opportunity)

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Instructor: Clarissa Ceglio

Prerequisites: Open to sophomores or higher.

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. Experience with digital media tools welcome but not required.

Museums are sites of activism, protest, and struggle over such critical issues as representation, cultural ownership, public accountability, and national belonging. Through a series of case studies, we will explore the history of activists, museum practitioners, and others who, from the late 1800s to the present, have challenged museums to become more inclusive, equitable, and active in civic life. Equipped with that background, we’ll grapple with one of the most difficult questions facing the field today: Should be museums be a medium for social justice and activism on such urgent civic issues as climate change, voter’s rights, immigration, and anti-Black racism? What are the opportunities, limits, and issues for institutions that step beyond traditional notions of museum neutrality? Students will use this knowledge to help present the past, present, and future of museum activism in digital form, working with a team of scholars and practitioners on a Greenhouse Studios digital publication.

This course will be offered online (asynchronous). You will have access to class materials online using HuskyCT, and you will not be expected to be available at any particular time.

Contact clarissa.ceglio@uconn.edu for questions and permission number

For more information about Greenhouse Studios, for which Professor Ceglio is Associate Director of Research, see:

PSYC 2400: Developmental Psychology (Conversion Opportunity)

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SECTIONS 001, 002 

Instructor: Marie Coppola

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

This course will introduce you to the scientific study of children’s development, with a focus on development from conception through adolescence. In particular, you will become familiar with the major theoretical perspectives on child development and with the techniques and findings from research projects carried out from these different perspectives. We will cover several fundamental aspects of development, including the foundations of brain development; perceptual, cognitive, conceptual, language, and emotional development; cultural and social influences; and the implications of this research for social policy and decision-making.

MATH Courses Spring 2021

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The following MATH courses will be offered as Honors in Spring 2021, all via distance learning:

MATH 1132Q 077D Calculus II David McArdle
MATH 1132Q 078D Calculus II David McArdle
MATH 1132Q Z84 Calculus II [UConn Stamford] Richard Watnick
MATH 2110Q 106D Multivariable Calculus Katherine Hall
MATH 2142Q 001 Advanced Calculus II Myron Minn-Thu-Aye
MATH 2144Q 001 Advanced Calculus IV Iddo Ben Ari
MATH 2210Q 013 Applied Linear Algebra Matthew Badger
MATH 2410Q 003 Elem Differential Equations Michael Biro
MATH 3094 001 Undergraduate Seminar Jeremy Teitelbaum & Kyu-Hwan Lee

The topics for MATH 3094 (Undergraduate Seminar) change every semester. For Spring 2021, the topic is Machine Learning.

ENVE 1000E: Environmental Sustainability (Conversion Opportunity)

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Instructor: Christine Kirchhoff

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

In this course, we examine anthropogenic impacts on the environment, resulting from the need for energy, food, water, and shelter, and discuss various strategies to improve economic, social, and environmental sustainability.  We ground what we learn in readings and from the scientific literature with case studies of UConn activities/programs targeting improvements in campus sustainability as well as case studies of examples of urban and corporate sustainability efforts here in the US and abroad.

CA 2, E.

PNB 5700: Sensory Physiology

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

Instructor: Karen Menuz

Recommended preparation: This graduate course is an advanced version of PNB 3700. As such, it is appropriate for senior Honors students with credit for PNB 2274 or 3251.

This course is designed to provide students with an in-depth understanding of sensory physiology. Special attention is paid to the receptors, receptor cells, and tissue physiology in peripheral sensory organs. The course covers senses that are familiar to humans, such as olfaction, taste, vision, touch, and hearing, and those that we lack such as magnetoreception, electroreception, and infrared detection. A comparative approach will be taken, highlighting the common principles and key differences in select sensory systems in vertebrates, invertebrates, and other organisms.

ENGL Honors classes Spring 2021

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All three of these courses carry the pre-requisite of first-year writing (ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011).

ENGL 1701-003: Creative Writing I

Instructor: Ellen Litman

This introductory class will concentrate on poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students will learn by writing original work, reading and discussing the work of published authors, responding to their classmates’ stories, poems, and essays, and trying to help one another. We’ll begin by doing a series of exercises, eventually working our way toward producing three to four poems, one finished piece of creative nonfiction, and one short story, all of which we will workshop in class. Students should be prepared to read and write a lot and actively participate in class and online discussions.

ENGL 2409-001: The Modern Novel

Instructor: Margaret Breen

This is an exciting reading-intensive course. We will be reading a selection of significant novels of the last 125 years from a range of cultural contexts—novels important for both the stories they tell (stories regarding alienation, resilience, resistance, violence, memory, and forgetting) and the ways in which those stories are told (ways regarding narrative technique, point of view, plot construction, metaphor, and so on). In short, this is a course on the modern novel, where “modern” refers to both the new kinds of stories these texts recount and the innovative formal means that facilitate and create that recounting.

Likely texts: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011), Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone (2017 [2015]), Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox (2018), and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

Likely assignments: a short, 75-minute essay exam; a 5-6 essay or creative project; a final 6-8 page essay or creative project.

CA 1. 

ENGL 3122-001:Irish Literature in English since 1939

Instructor: Mary Burke

Open to juniors or higher.

This Honors course will situate contemporary Irish drama, prose, and poetry in its evolving historical, social, linguistic, and political contexts. No previous knowledge of Irish writing or culture is assumed. Authors to be discussed include Elizabeth Bowen, Seamus Heaney, Martin McDonagh, Glenn Patterson, and Claire Kilroy. Some contemporary Irish films or films on a contemporary Irish theme (e.g. McDonagh’s 2005 Oscar-winning short) will be considered alongside the literary texts. Group discussion will be at the center of class. Writing: a practice essay, a midterm paper, a presentation, film reports, and a final exam.

CA 4-Int.

ECON 1108: Game Theory with Applications to the Natural and Social Sciences

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[UConn Storrs]

This course offers an introduction to game theory. Game theory develops analytical tools to study strategic interactions between individuals, to better understand and predict behavior, conflicts and cooperation. Game theory is widely used in many disciplines (e.g., economics, political science, law, computer science, biology). The course introduces basic concepts and tools for solving games (e.g., simultaneous games and a Nash equilibrium, sequential games, repeated games, asymmetric information models) as well as a variety of applications (e.g., auctions, evolutionary biology and voting).  Through simple examples, students can develop their ability to think strategically.

POLS 3023W: Politics and Literature

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Requires ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011.

There has long been a close relationship between politics in the United States and popular literature. Some books, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Jungle, have shaped public policy; others, like All the King’s Men and The Last Hurrah, have used fiction to describe the political game; still others, like Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and Henry Adams’ Democracy, have examined the relationship between the individual and the political community.

This course explores American politics through the lens of political fiction. Generally reading one novel per week, we will discuss the historical, economic and social context within which the work was written, define its audience, examine its impact, and discuss parallels between the time the work appeared and our own era. Students will write several short papers dealing with these themes, but the primary emphasis in class will be on discussion and dialogue on the topics at hand.

Note POLS 3023W is coded at the catalog level as “open to juniors or higher,” but first- and second-year Honors students without junior standing are invited to take this course. If you will have fewer than 54 earned credits when this course is offered, 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; (5) the class number from Student Admin; (6) confirmation that there are seats available in the course; and (7) confirmation that you do have credit for ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011.

GSCI 1000E: The Human Epoch: Living in the Anthropocene

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[UConn Storrs]

Climate change. Ecosystem collapse. Urbanization. Acidic, anoxic oceans. Altered landscapes. Novel chemicals. Resource shortfalls. What’s the “thing” that holds all these? In physical space, it’s the whole of planet Earth, an oblate spheroid of interacting solid, liquid, and gaseous components. In chronologic time, it’s the Anthropocene Epoch, the newest page on the geological calendar, named for our seemingly limitless power. Comprehending this epoch is causing a paradigm shift in our environmental consciousness, forcing us to re-think our implicit biases about nature and wildness, and offering an optimistic prospect for the human world as part of a very rugged planet.

Limited to 19 students, this discussion-based, seminar-style course will be facilitated by student leaders under the guidance of the instructor.  As a result of this course, students will:

  • Become more effective planetary citizens by putting so-called environmental issues in their proper planetary context. Earth is not fragile. That’s reserved for species, including ours.
  • Discover how intelligence, leading to science, leading to technology, gave humans the power to transform the surface of of a polychrome Earth for good and bad. Green is not the main color of the environment.
  • Understand that the likely launching pad for human intelligence was environmental stress and rapid climate change in Africa’s rift valley. This intelligence will allow us to adapt to an uncertain future.
  • Realize that the future of humanity is being driven by geothermal, climatic, cosmic, and evolutionary processes.

ERTH 1000E: The Human Epoch: Living in the Anthropocene

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[UConn Storrs]

The planetary potency of humankind requires the naming of a new epoch on Earth’s calendar, the Anthropocene. This tipping point is forcing a paradigm shift in our environmental consciousness, one that embraces the Earth system more holistically and which refutes the false binary separating humans from nature. Ironically, this brave new world is one without wilderness, yet with more wildness than ever before.

Learning how the earth works and what its history has been will reframe the way you think about critical environmental issues: climate change, ecosystem collapse, pollution, natural resources, urban infrastructure, and much more. Earth is not fragile. That designation is reserved for species and communities like ours. The fate of humanity has always been in the hands of geothermal, meteorological, cosmic, and evolutionary processes.

Limited to 19 students, this experiential, interdisciplinary, investigative, and collaborative course provides an opportunity for you to engage with the Honors core goals of exploration, creativity, and leadership.

ERTH 1000E also meets the general education requirement for a CA 3 (science) non-lab course.