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Stand Alone Honors Forums are not tied to clusters.
They are great little two credit deals that can fill out a schedule in
an interesting way and help students meet like-minded peers. The Forums
are interdisciplinary.
The stand-alones for Fall 2008 are:
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HON 221/421: Louis Henkin & Human Rights
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Suzanne
Wilhelm
Innovative Thinkers
Louis Henkin, the ‘father of human rights’, has shaped western thought
on human rights and international law since WWII. His sees his approach
to these concepts in terms of a revolution because he argues that
human rights and international law are not just about nations interacting,
but also how they treat individuals, an idea that is still scandalous
in the international law community. He expects examination of these
ideas from many angles: legal, political science, labor ethics, and
economics. The class would begin with basic international law principles
and Henkin’s idea of human rights (first through his text How
Nations Behave)—what they are (should be) and how (if) the international
community protects those rights.
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HON 222/422: Sex, Culture and Conflict
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Andrea Birkby
Intellectual Foundations
Jane Goodall’s theories about human evolution were initially contradictory
to what people wanted to believe about human beings (i.e., we are
unique as a species), but has now come full circle. Her work with
chimpanzees has shown that we are not all that unique and we are in
fact (in surprising ways) pretty similar to chimpanzees (and all primates).
Her work has become rather fundamental to some of what we now know
regarding our own evolution. We will examine these questions in terms
of biology, anthropology, psychology, and theory in general, as well
as other possible disciplines that the students would like to bring
to the discussions. Some of the texts that will be considered are:
Goodall’s Through a Window; then, some relatively new texts
providing new (foundational?) theories: Dale Peterson and Goodall’s
Demonic Males, and Frans de Waal’s work on non-reproductive
uses of sex within bonobo society.
HON 223/423: Disney: Man, Mouse or Machine
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Michele
Malach
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Who or what is "Disney"? For some, it symbolizes an adorable
cartoon mouse, star of film, TV, his own club, and theme parks. For
others it symbolizes a man who created an empire /corporation that
is omnipresent in the American public's mind and world corporations.
So who or what is "Disney"? This course will present an
inquiry into this phenomenon of American business and economics, pop
culture, the media, historiography, gender theory, and even literary
theory. Students also will be expected to bring their own experiences
with this phenomenon in order to ask questions about who or what "Disney"
represents to them, especially within their own field of study.
HON 223/423: The Ontology of Leadership
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Chuck Yoos
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
What does it take to be a leader? Can one be a leader? What is leadership?
Is there such a thing as leadership? Ontology in general looks at
questions of who we are and what is real: the study of the nature
of being. Leadership is one such level of "being" that may
exist in the world today. And the term "leadership" is a
label everybody uses, but no one can define in a valid, intersubjective
way. Students will address, evaluate, and attempt to synthesize possible
meanings of "leadership". In part, students will inquire
into the meaning of leadership by considering several questions, for
example: is leadership best thought of as something real, to be discovered
as true, or something imaginary, to be invented as useful.
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