Honors Colloquia - Spring 2020

Click on a course name to read a description.

All course materials can be purchased at Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers, located at 939 Lexington Avenue.

Course Descriptions

Empire and Print Culture

Professor Tanya Agathocleous (English)

HONS 2011R
Mondays and Thursdays; 1:10-2:25
Room 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

Course Description:

This course looks at the relationship between empire and the transnational circulations of texts in the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the British Empire between 1857 and 1945. The British Empire relied on military power to maintain control of its territories, but also on the power of print. Bibles, textbooks, literature, maps, periodicals, photographs, and political pamphlets were all important to the way imperial power was justified and administered, as well as to the way it was contested by colonial subjects. While Thomas Macaulay argued that "a single shelf of a good European library [is] worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia" in his attempt to influence educational policy in India, Mohandas Gandhi ran a printing press in South Africa from which he published a protest newspaper Indian Opinion and eventually the pamphlet Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule), one of the key texts of Indian nationalism. The course will examine ideas about empire within texts (such as Jane Eyre) as well as the role that various kinds of texts and archives played in the governance of empire. It will draw on the disciplines of literature, history, art history and anthropology. Readings will include novels such as Jane Eyre and Kim; poetry and periodicals by both British and Indian authors; and secondary texts drawn from postcolonial and empire studies, as well as nineteenth-century studies (including writing by Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Isabel Hofmeyr, Antoinette Burton, and Gauri Viswanathan among others). Alongside literary texts, we will look at sociological and political writings, maps, photographs, and paintings that helped both to shape and contest empire.

Requirements:

One short paper in the first part of the semester (5-7 pages) and a long research paper (12-15 pages), submitted in draft and then final form), as well as an annotated bibliography and an abstract of the paper, submitted beforehand, and weekly contributions to the class website.

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Complexity

Professor Timothy Bromage (Biomaterials & Biomimetics, NYU)

HONS 2011U
Wednesdays; 5:35-8:05 p.m.
Room 1022HN
3 hours, 3 credits

What is Complexity?

This course is about complexity science and the tools for scrutinizing complex systems that embody many of the world's greatest challenges.  Underlying the order of natural systems and the simple rules they would appear to follow, is complexity born from the large number of objects under consideration and the functional connections, or links, between these objects at hierarchies of scale.  The science of complexity, and goal of this course, concerns how to evaluate such systems as diverse, interdependent, connected, and adapted networks so that we may better understand how the objects of a disparate array of systems become self-organized, robust to disruption, and connected by links that increase in number/length according to common mathematical power laws.  Most of the world's top challenges are complex system problems, and thus topics for discussion will be drawn from the physical, biological, and social systems.  The class shall capitalize on the collective self-organized behaviors of its participants in the search for natural patterns harboring complexity and, in small-group teams, shall each ask and address a big question of their choice.  

Students who successfully complete this course will:

• Identify a complex system by its topology, or structure, as something different from a system that is simply complicated;
• Discourse on the robustness and vulnerabilities of complex systems, and to identify circumstances that may potentially lead to system, or cascade failure;
• Learn to make a map and evaluate complex systems, becoming acquainted with software programs used in network analysis;
• Gain an appreciation for a variety of disciplines occupied with complex systems, including fields within the physical, biological, and social sciences;
• Work in teams to apply principles and acquired skills to assess the reasons why specific complex systems are "broken" in efforts to fix them;
• Communicate knowledge of complex systems effectively through writing assignments and term projects.

Teams will self-organize (following a "six-degrees of separation" game played in the first week of the course) and work on a final project with the aim to provide solutions suggested to resolve complex system failures.  Presentations by each team will facilitate class discussions and encourage diverse perspectives on the subject matter.   There will be required reading (7-8 books), writing assignments, and a team project (2-3 members) with class presentation of the project.  Two midterm examinations will be held at 1/3 and 2/3 of term.

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Faust: Dark Myth of Modernity

Tom Ribitzky (Comparative Literature, CUNY Graduate Center)

HONS 2011X
Mondays and Thursdays; 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Room 412 West
3 hours, 3 credits

The story of Doctor Faust is one of the great myths of the modern age and the "Faustian bargain" is a common metaphor in today's political and moral discussions. Faust is an academic who enters into a pact with the devil to gain knowledge, riches, and power. He leads a wild life, sires a child with Helen of Troy, and ultimately goes to hell. The historical Faust was an early scientist and alchemist about whom fantastic tales were told. The story originally gained popularity as a warning tale for scholars not to stray from their 'God-given' limitations. Christopher Marlowe created an exalted version of this in the Elizabethan age and thereby brought the Faust story into the realm of high culture, but his play eventually was overpowered by the sensationalist aspects of the topic and over time deteriorated into a puppet play that poked fun at 'nerds'. The Faust myth was resurrected in the Age of Enlightenment and was developed by Goethe into what is widely considered the greatest work of German literature.

Goethe's Faust is unique in many respects, since the author worked on the play for about 60 years, creating a stunning masterpiece that shows the authentic voice and thinking of a youth, a middle-aged man, and a man of advanced age all at the same time. This great symbolic story about modern man's existence in the universe was hugely successful, although often little understood, and spawned dozens of follow-ups from other artists, including poets, dramatists, composers, and painters. Goethe's Faust gave the motif new impetus since Goethe re-addressed the nature of Faust's guilt. The intrinsically sinful act of entering a devil's pact was not a sufficient reason for condemnation in a post-enlightenment world. Whether Faust is worthy of condemnation rests not on entering the pact itself, but on Faust's reasons for doing so and his actions afterwards. Goethe intellectualized Faust and largely sexualized his guilt, but at the same time introduced a redeeming female figure. These elements proved irresistible in the 19th and 20th centuries, so that the Faust motif became one of the enduring legacies of the modern and post-modern ages. The Faustian tradition has strongly influenced our views of artists, geniuses, and what is permissible in the quest for knowledge and power.

We will read three major works in this course: Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust, and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. In addition, we will start out with selections of the "Faust" Chapbook and then look at various post-Goethe adaptations of Faust. We may take a look at the operatic treatment of the "Faust" story by Gounod. We will also deal with three "Faust" films: the heroic version by FW Murnau, the Hollywood film Bedazzled and the truly dazzling and disturbing Faust by Jan Svankmajer from 1994.

Depending on the size of the group, students will give one or two in-class presentations on a treatment of the 'Faust' theme in a work of art other than the ones we will discuss together (literature, music, painting, film) and/or on a piece of criticism concerning one of the three major works we will be reading. These presentations should lead to a final comparative paper. I will make suggestions for both in-class presentations and for the topic of the final paper, but students are perfectly free to develop their own topics in consultation with me.

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Sex in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Professor Daniel Hurewitz (History)
Dr. Stephen Lassonde (Political Science)

HONS 3011Q
Mondays and Thursdays; 11:10-12:25 p.m.
Room 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

Our notions about gender and sexuality - about who we are in relation to our bodies, about how we should behave because of our bodies, and about what kinds of intimate behavior we should and should not have with other people - often feel to us deeply natural and innate. And yet, these very notions - these ideas about gender and sexuality - are constructed by our society, and different societies have, in different periods of time, explained them in quite different ways.

In our course, we will be examining two periods in U.S. society to explore the differences between them in terms of how they conceptualized gender, sex, and sexuality. Repeatedly, we will be looking at moments from the 20^th-century U.S. - often from New York City itself - and comparing what we find there with what we see in the 21^st-century U.S. today. To that end, we will be reading histories of the early and mid-20^th century and comparing them with current accounts from journalists and sociologists.

Some of the key issues and questions we will be comparing are:

• Notions of masculinity & femininity - what are appropriate male and female behavior, fashion, and expression - and how have they changed over 100 years? How did society view individuals who resisted the categories, or wanted to move between them and be, in today's vocabulary, transgender?
• Ideas about acceptable heterosexual behavior - what is appropriate or necessary to be considered normal, what factors contributed to those ideas, and how have they evolved? This will also include discussions about monogamy and polyamory.
• Ideas about same-sex sexual activity - what is acceptable, what is celebrated, and what is going too far, and why have those ideas shifted so dramatically in the last 100 years.
• Why was birth control such a "hot button" issue over the course of the 20^th century, and how did Margaret Sanger and others choose to navigate the opposition to making birth control easily available?
• Why did abortion become such a potent political issue late in the 20^th-century, and what makes it feel that way today, as well? We will also be thinking about the relationship between arguments about birth control and abortion.
• What meaning can we give to the popularity of drag performers like Gene Malin early in the 20^th-century, and the runaway success of RuPaul's Drag Race early in the 21^st century? What is similar or different between the two periods that drag seems to express?

Course Requirements: Grading will be based on participation in discussion, 3-short papers (4 pages), and a longer final essay.

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Suffrage 2020: The 19th  Amendment — Voting, Violence, and Voices of Resistance

Professor D'Weston Haywood (History)
Professor Rupal Oz (Women and Gender Studies)

HONS 3011R
Tuesdays and Fridays; 2:10-3:25 p.m.
Room 412 West 
3 hours, 3 credits

A century ago, the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting women the right to vote. The culmination of decades of pointed struggle waged by the suffrage movement, which led to the Amendment, helped expand democracy. But on closer examination, the struggle for the right to vote shows that these historic developments happened against a broader backdrop of hotly contested issues, concerning questions of race, identity, rights, citizenship, democracy, and violence—issues that remain just as hotly contested 100 years later. The course explores this historical trajectory and also asks why some of its issues remain resilient even today. Taking suffrage as a flashpoint, and moving thematically and comparatively across time, students will draw on an array of interdisciplinary sources (scholarly articles, films, music) to interrogate the historical and contemporary gender and racial tensions that have long shaped the American body politic even down to the vote. Using “Intersectionality” and other theoretical frameworks to wrestle with structural inequality, the negative effects of mass media, mass incarceration, lynching, racialized femininities and masculinities, fights over raced and gendered bodies, and whiteness and white nationalism, the course invites students to reckon with the promises and limits of American democracy, and ultimately, why and how these challenges are still with us a century later.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Understand the history of the 19th amendment
• Learn the debates among various key figures of the suffrage movement
• Analyze the tensions between the abolitionists and suffragists in the 19th century
• Examine issues of voting and race that continue to impact the contemporary moment

Required Texts

TBA

Assignments

1. Weekly feedback via postings on Blackboard (15% of final grade).
2. Leading class discussion once during the semester (10% of final grade).
3. One critical response paper (3-5 double spaced pages) (25% of final grade).
4. Group presentation (Please note everyone gets the same grade) (15% of final grade).
5. One final research paper of 15 - 18 pages (35% of final grade).

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Interdisciplinary Independent Study

HONS 30199
3 hours, 3 credits
Hours to be arranged

Students wishing to take this course will need two readers, from different disciplines, one of whom generally should be a member of the Council on Honors.  In principle, the Council must approve the subject matter of such a paper before the student can register for the course.  This course may be taken only once.

HONS 30199 cannot replace any of the three required Honors Colloquia.

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Advanced Interdisciplinary Study

HONS 49151
6 hours, 6 credits
Hours to be arranged

Upon completion of 90 credits, certified Honors Program students may be admitted by the Council on Honors to Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, with the opportunity of engaging in advanced independent study under the Council's supervision. A project for a thesis or other appropriate report of the results of the student's research is presented to the Council, which must approve it the semester previous to registration. Three sponsors, from at least two departments, one of whom must be a member of the Council on Honors, will supervise the work. The final product must be approved by all three sponsors and the Council.

HONS 49151 cannot replace any of the three required Honors Colloquia.

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