Spring 2023 Core Courses

POLS 3434W: Honors Core: Excavating the International in Everyday Practices

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[UConn Storrs]

Requires ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011.

What is “international”?  The term translates literally into “between nations” (as opposed to intra/within nations) and typically refers to interactions that occur with other states beyond our borders.  It suggests that the international is distinct from the national, that it happens between world leaders somewhere else, and that it has limited relevance to our daily lives.  And yet, the international could not exist without our individual, daily participation in it.  The international is in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the furniture we sit on and the music we listen to.  It’s embedded in places we think of as strictly national — our school systems, the national holidays we celebrate, the water we drink, the objects we buy and the television shows we watch.  Through seminar discussions and research modules on specific everyday objects, we explore international relations as an everyday practice.  In so doing, we consider our personal relationship to global power dynamics and inequalities and what this implies for activism, ethical change and social justice.

PHIL 2410: Know Thyself

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[UConn Storrs]

We normally take ourselves to be in a privileged position to tell what state of mind we are at any given moment – whether we feel tired, have a headache, want a cup of tea, are nervous about tonight’s date, or are thinking about tomorrow’s exam; and so on. This kind of basic self-knowledge seems effortless by comparison to the knowledge we have of others’ mental states. It also seems much easier by comparison to the ‘lofty’ self-knowledge we may aspire to achieve through deep self-examination, or therapy. In our own case, we don’t appear to have any need to consult evidence, observe our own behavior, or engage in interpretation or analysis. At the same time, basic self-knowledge seems more secure than knowledge of others’ minds. When you say how you feel or what you’re thinking, you seem to be both more certain and much less open to challenge or correction than when you pronounce on the mental states of others. But why is that?

The effortless yet secure character of basic self-knowledge seems especially puzzling if we embrace the contemporary scientific perspective on ourselves. According to that perspective, human minds are an integral part of the natural world, nothing more than brains and central nervous systems, which appears to imply that the commonsense idea that we have privileged knowledge of our own states of mind is due to some kind of an illusion. After all, we are not presumed to be in a special position to know things about chemical processes in our stomachs; why should we be in such a position with respect to neural processes in our brains? Our aim in this course will be to understand the character of basic self-knowledge and the source of its privileged status from both a philosophical and a scientific point of view. We will first consider philosophical problems associated with self-knowledge, and then examine some answers proposed by both philosophers and scientists, assessing their merits and weaknesses.

Note This class has a catalog-level pre-requisite of PHIL 1101/1102/1103/1104/1105/1106/1107. We can override this pre-requisite. If you are an Honors student, you may request enrollment 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; and (6) confirmation that there are seats available in the course.

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

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[UConn Stamford – Distance Learning]

Introduction to game theory examines applications in the natural and social sciences and technology, which may include electric power auctions, evolutionary biology, and elections. The course is an opportunity for students to begin to think strategically about many types of problems found in science, social settings, and even university life.

In this course, students will learn: To recognize strategic behavior—and the potential for strategic behavior—in a variety of situations, for example, in social and political situations and even in the natural sciences. To solve games, use solutions to predict and explain behavior, and recognize and learn from the successes and failures of their analyses. How to work through a sequence of short directed projects to learn that choosing a topic for the Honors thesis is not quite as daunting as they may believe.

Note This course will be offered online, and registration is open to Honors students across all UConn campuses. If you are a non-Honors student interested in this course and the Honors Program, please email the instructor (vicki.knoblauch@uconn.edu) and Kaitlin Heenehan (kaitlin.heenehan@uconn.edu) to request a permission number.

ARTH/AFRA 2222: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Power of Looking

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[UConn Storrs]

We are often told that we live in a singularly visual age, where most information is communicated to us via some platform, frame, or program. Yet as we are increasingly dominated by the visual, we seem to be learning less and less about how to read, interpret, engage, or resist the visual culture that swirls around us. This class looks to intervene in that trend and will be a beginning investigation into the issues of what is visual culture and how we might define visual literacy. Thematically then, this class will focus on how we see, or do not see, race, gender, and sexuality.

With those parameters, the major questions the class seeks to engage with are: How do people “know” race visually? Who has been invested in seeing race and racial difference? How have artists and others attempted to intervene or disrupt these sight lines? What does gender look like? Can we remake how we see race and gender? What about how intimacy is viewed and the definitions of sexuality created; how have these categories been visually  constructed and how can they be re-imagined? How do different mediums (sculpture, print, film, or digital) affect how we see bodies?