[UConn Hartford]

What does it mean to “see” Muslims in the world today? What happens when we study Islam and Muslims not from a Western-centric lens, but from the perspectives of diaspora, lived experience, and decolonial critique? How do we recognize and challenge anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia? How do gender, sexuality, and youth culture shape Muslim identities? How do colonial histories, global power structures, and contemporary politics shape how Muslims are represented and how they represent themselves? Let’s find out together!

This course introduces Critical Muslim Studies as an interdisciplinary field that explores Muslim lives in local and global contexts – with emphasis on local Connecticut communities. Students will examine orientalism, anti-Muslim racism, Islamophobia, and the politics of identity through lenses of gender, sexuality, and youth culture. Through readings, discussion, and creative assignments—including an op-ed, short presentation, and zine—students will gain tools to analyze power, representation, and resistance in the making of Muslim futures.

[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.

[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.

[UConn Stamford]

Requires ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011 as a prerequisite or co-requisite  

This interdisciplinary course examines the social, economic, and cultural influences on youths’ interactions with, and use of technology for formal and informal learning. Examples include media literacy, digital divide, technology in education, and cyberbullying. Through discussion, lectures, and application of relevant research and social science theories, students will think critically and creatively about issues that have emerged since the rise of the World Wide Web, social media, and more recently, Artificial Intelligence. The impact of these issues on youth and their families will also be explored.

Trouble registering? This class has a catalog-level prerequisite of First-Year Writing. If you are an Honors student who will be using First-Year Writing as a co-requisite (by taking at the same time as DMD/HDFS 2620), 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; and (6) confirmation that there are seats available in the course.

[UConn Storrs]

This course will expose students to a conceptual framework at the intersection of law, economics, and philosophy – what we can call the paradigm of rights and harms.  Working within this framework, you will analyze and debate a large set of controversial social issues.  The goal of the course is to encourage you to think critically and rigorously about such issues and to hone your skills in argument and persuasion.  Students from all majors and backgrounds welcome.

Consider a famous legal case analyzed by the Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase.  A physician sets up an examination room with a wall that is shared by a candy factory.  Noise from the candy machinery makes it impossible for the doctor to examine patients with a stethoscope.  If the candy factory has the right to make noise, the doctor is harmed; if the doctor has a right to quiet, the factory is harmed.  Economists and philosophers have developed ways of thinking about who should get the right – and thus who should bear the harm – in cases like these.  Most if not all controversial social issues take exactly this form: who has the right?  Who is harmed, and in what way?  As we will see, in many of these cases, the harms are immaterial: there is no tangible emission like noise.  I may harm you (make you angry or unhappy) by giving a speech in favor of Marxism or by selling my kidney to the highest bidder – even if you are nowhere in the vicinity and learn of my behavior only through a third party.  Should I have the right to engage in these behaviors?  Or should you have the right to stop me?

Recent syllabus

Note This class has a catalog-level pre- or co-requisite of any 1000-level economics course. We can override this requirement. 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.

[UConn Storrs]

This course uses archaeobotany as a tool to provide instruction on the research process. Each student develops and executes an independent research project using the various microscopes and equipment within the Archaeobotany Laboratory. Archaeobotany, the study of plant use in antiquity, is an inherently interdisciplinary sub-field of archaeology that integrates botany, ecology, archaeology, and social theory to explore a wide range of topics including: 1) the nature, timing, and cause of plant domestication events around the world; 2) the social and environmental dynamics and causes of the transition from hunting-and-gathering to early agriculture; 3) the role that plant-based agriculture, viticulture, or irrigation played in the emergence and collapse of early social complexity, social hierarchies, and the development of the first cities; 4) the ways in which farmers modified plant-based agriculture to suit prevailing environmental conditions and social and economic needs; and 5) the choices that people made in the past to select and procure fuel in order to sustain everyday household activities and emerging craft specializations and industries.

This course integrates lectures on current and emerging trends in archaeobotanical research with hands-on instruction in the use of a range of lab equipment, microscopy, and digital imaging tools commonly found in many labs to address the topics listed above. These tools include: 1) botanical reference material; 2) analytical balances; 3) a muffle furnace; 4) student binocular microscopes; 5) an upright materials microscope with transmitted, incident, and polarized light; and 6) a confocal microscope with NIS Elements imaging software. Hands-on instruction is also provided in the use of a Jeol NeoScope JCM 6000Plus benchtop scanning electron microscope with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy capabilities for elemental mapping. Throughout the course, students actively engage in the research process by using the tools learned in class to design and conduct an individualized research project. Come ready to explore!

[UConn Storrs]

Obesity is considered a national epidemic and possibly a pandemic as it affects many developed countries around the world. This interdisciplinary course explores the biology of obesity, including genetic predispositions and behaviors that increase obesity risk (dietary, physical activity, social, and psychological); the obesigenic environment, including how communities are physically built as well as the economic relationship to obesity risk; and the policy and ethical implications for obesity prevention and promotion of healthy behaviors and environments for all body sizes. Multi-level obesity prevention approaches that involve the individual, family, organization, community, and policy will be considered. The format will consist of common lectures, weekly discussions, hands-on activities, team projects, and synthesis of material presented.

Note This class is defined in the catalog as open to freshmen and sophomores in the Honors Program. If you are an Honors student who will have 54 or more credits when this course is offered, 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.