Honors Colloquia - Spring 2022

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

Jewish Soldiers in World War II

Leah Garrett, Jewish & Hebrew Studies

HONS 2012G
Mondays and Thursdays; 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Room: 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

During World War Two, the Germans undertook the Final Solution to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. Jews fought back in a variety of ways against the Nazi evil, and new evidence for this is appearing all the time. Jewish resistors fought to the last in ghettos, on trains, even in the death camps themselves. And Jews also served on the front lines in all the Allied armies: in the United States, more than half a million signed up to fight the Nazi menace. In Britain there was even a secret commando unit of German Jewish refugees who served as the tip of the spear and were crucial to the Allied success. Because the war for them was personal, it meant that they battled the enemy with a focus and determination that often led to acts of unimaginable heroism.

This course will examine the story of Jewish soldiers in World War Two through a variety of means: history books, novels, films, documentaries, and poetry. We will use a global perspective that will historically contextualize the Jewish soldier and the role that they played, be it in the US military where Jews for the first time were welcome into a brotherhood of arms, to the Russian army where many Jews had to hide their background to assimilate into Soviet culture. We will also look at the experiences of African Americans in the war. To round out our study we will also take at least one field trip.

Requirements:
3 short, one-page response papers on the readings; 5 reading quizzes; 1 research paper, 10-12 typed pages, with at least four outside sources; 1 group presentation

Potential Short list of books/films/authors to be studied:

History Books:
GI Jew: How WW2 Changed a Generation by Deborah Dash Moore
Soviet Jews in World War Two, eds. Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh
Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War Two by J. Todd Moye
X Troop by Leah Garrett

Novels and Readings:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Phillip Roth short stories
Isaac Babel short stories

Films:
Catch-22
The Caine Mutiny
G I Jew

  [Back to·top]·

The Gothic in Literature & Visual Culture: Masks--Symbolism, Representation, Meaning

Professor Rebecca Connor (English)

HONS 20147
Tuesdays and Fridays; 9:45-11:00 a.m.
Room: 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

If there is a single, defining object of our time - it is the mask. Yet this item, originally intended to prevent the spread of a highly contagious virus, quickly became much, much more. Now as much a symbol as an object, our experience of masks has never been more powerful-or more fraught -- than it is today.

Because masks are a tool of transformation, they have always figured prominently in the gothic, from dystopias to horror. We will examine masks in Franju's 1960s classic film 'Les Yeux Sans Visage' ('Eyes Without A Face'), to the ever-popular 'Friday the 13th,' to the global smash-hit Korean TV series 'Squid Games.' Along the way, we will consider the use of masks in the 17th-century Venetian casino and the 18th-century masquerade ball; in Ancient Greek drama and Japanese Noh; in Mexican wrestling and the identities of super-heroes. We will also examine the metaphorical masks worn on social media, where the authentic self is filtered and perfected, and where the consequences of that inauthenticity, we now know, can be highly problematic. Why, we will ask, has the mask fascinated us for so long -- and why does it continue to do so?

Your grade will be made up of the following:

• In-class participation
• Weekly written responses, including Bb, tests and examinations
• Two 5-7 page papers

[Back to top]

Introduction to Cognitive Science

Professor Martin Chodorow (Psychology)

HONS 20151
Mondays and Wednesdays; 5:35-6:50 p.m.
Room: 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

About seventy years ago, researchers in several disciplines realized that they were asking similar questions about the human mind but were using quite different approaches in their attempts to find answers. They began to discuss the ways in which their efforts might complement one another.  From these discussions emerged Cognitive Science, the interdisciplinary study of the human mind from the perspectives of psychology, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, and philosophy.

In this course, we will examine five areas of current debate in Cognitive Science:

(1)   Mental Architecture: What is the structure of the mind?  Is it a unitary cognitive system, or does it consist of separate, independent modules?

(2)   Philosophy of Mind: What is a mental state? Must it be identical to a physiological state?  Could a machine ever have a mind?

(3)   Mental Representation: To what degree are mental representations symbolic and rule-based?  To what extent are they non-symbolic, probabilistic, and associative?

(4)   Language Acquisition: How much of human language is innate, and how much is acquired through experience?

(5)   Reasoning and Decision Making: How rational are human beings?

Course requirements:
The format of the course will be lecture and discussion. Grades will be based on three short written assignments (4-6 pages each) and a term paper (15 pages) with an oral presentation.  Readings will be drawn from primary and secondary sources.

[Back to Top]

The Islamic City in Architecture, History & Literature

Professor Naby Avcioglu  (Art and Art History)
Guest Speakers

HONS 3011H
Mondays and Thursdays; 2:45-4:00 p,m.
412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

This colloquium proposes a critical thematic and historical overview of architectural, social, political and cultural aspects of cities in the Middle East from the seventh century to the present. Often described as "Islamic" since the 19^th century by Orientalists seeking religious authenticity, these cities were either inherited or founded at various times and under different circumstances by Muslims and became powerful cosmopolitan centers. Pointing to the rhetoric surrounding the "Islamic city" in the West, which describes it as a physically haphazard, socially segregated and culturally exotic space (or stagnant, traditional and despotic), we will engage with the challenges of understanding the city in its own terms. We will probe essentialist tendencies as well as the very notion of an "Islamic city" and study social processes and cultural forces that shape them through the history of architecture, urbanism, literature and legal documents. The course will discuss early urban developments under Muslim rule, whether in pre-existing cities or newly established settlements, exploring which cultural, political, social and religious elements shaped them (e.g. architectural models existing before the Arab-Muslim conquests, building regulations in medieval Islamic law). In particular, we will discuss the relationship between architecture, urban structures and social and political realities such as the location of power in the city or segregation based on gender, ethnicity, sectarian or religious identity. Likewise, we will explore the significance of cities and their unique constellations of material wealth, cosmopolitanism and critical intellectual mass for political, social, material and cultural dynamics in Islamic history. We will also consider representations of cities in visual images, such as maps and panoramas, and in literature produced in the West and the Islamic world and explore the reputations of different cities, cultural life in cities more generally speaking, and functions of writing about the city (e.g. in travelogues, salvation history or the imaginary geography which underlies imperial ambitions). While we will focus on some of the traditional centers in the Islamic world (such as Istanbul, Cairo, Isfahan, Damascus and Baghdad), we will also discuss the remaking of Beirut, Abu Dhabi and Mecca as well as engaging in comparative exercises with European and North American cities to problematize in many ways the essentializing notion of the "Islamic city".

 List of assignments:
 Students will be divided into groups at the beginning of the colloquium and assigned a city for the duration of the semester. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with the history, architecture and topography of the city. Working sessions and exercises throughout the semester will help you apply the theoretical and general discussions to a specific example. Assignments will include 2 short essays, 1 map presentation with a group presentation and a final paper of about 10 pages.

Back to top

Medieval Plague

Professor Marlene Hennessy (English)
Guest Speakers

HONS 3011T
Mondays and Thursdays; 1:10-2:25 p.m.
Room: 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

This colloquium will focus on the Black Death in Europe, the Great Mortality of 1348-1350 that left between one-half and one-third of the population dead. This global pandemic is widely considered the most devastating epidemic in human history and profoundly changed every sphere of medieval society, including the economy, religion, medicine, literature, and the arts. We will become acquainted with the new paradigms for understanding the Black Death that have emerged out of recent research in the fields of history, genetics, and bioarchaeology. Indeed, our historical and scientific understanding of the Black Death has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, with many groundbreaking studies published in the past few years that we will study in this course. To that end, we will explore what the new plague science has to tell us about Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of the plague that spread across the globe for many centuries, possibly beginning even a hundred years earlier than previously thought. We will then look at a broad range of historical sources such as chronicle writings, plague tracts, and other medical texts to help us reconstruct this medieval pandemic as a social, cultural, and political event. Special attention will be paid to the death-oriented piety of medieval culture and to the literary and visual evidence of the Danse Macabre and the Ars Moriendi, as well as other new developments in art, literature, and religious life that came in the aftermath of the plague, such as devotions to “Plague Saints.” For the medieval English context, texts to be read include Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale; John Lydgate’s The Dance of Death; The Disputation between the Body and the Worms; and the morality play, Everyman. Continental texts to be read in translation include Boccaccio’s Decameron. Three films will also be viewed: Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011); Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Decameron (1971); and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). We will take a field trip to the NY Academy of Medicine Rare Book Room to look at medieval and early modern medical manuscripts and early printed books, including early plague tracts. Guest speakers (TBD) will visit the class from diverse academic fields (medieval history, literature, art history, public health, archaeology, and medicine) in order to enhance our understanding of the material.

Requirements:  one research paper (15-20 pages, submitted in two drafts); one 7-10 minute oral report based on one of the secondary readings for the week on the syllabus, which is handed in as a 4-5 page written essay (Paper #1). Take-home Midterm. Short, weekly Discussion Board posts on Blackboard are required (250 words).

Required books for purchase: The Black Death, ed. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester, 1994) paper $18.50 (ISBN-10: 0719034981).  Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron: Norton Critical Edition (transl. Mark Musa) (ISBN-13 : 978-0393091328), $20.45. Other assigned readings will be posted on Blackboard, including all of those from Monica H. Green, ed., Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World. Rethinking the Black Death (Arc Medieval Press, 2015) (no cost, PDF).

Back to top

The Art & Science of Making Predictions

Professor Jason Young (Psychology)
Guest Speakers

HONS 3011U
Wednesdays;  10:10-1:00 a.m.
Room: 412HW
3 hours, 3 credits

Course Objectives:

The presentation of, and reliance upon, prediction is ubiquitous. We anticipate what others around us (including social friends, significant others, family members, politicians, that scary neighbor next door, etc.) are going to say, to feel, to do. Often, such concerns seem incidental; other times, they become obsessions. We rely on predictions to feel safe, to gain friends and favors, to render our world around us more tolerable.  And yet, while we can convince ourselves in the short-term that we are, and that others should be, “pretty good” at making predictions, the further we pull back the lens on our track record, one over-riding conclusion repeatedly presents itself: at some point or another, we all suck at prediction.

The basic premises of this course will focus on 3 key features of peoples’ tendencies to make predictions:

1)   We strongly value predictions and perceive them to be useful. (We will discuss why.)

2)   We all make predictions in the course of our daily lives.  (We will discuss how.)

3)   We too often overestimate or ignore the degree of accuracy of many of our predictions. (We will discuss who, what, and when.)

We will begin the semester focusing on basic foundational processes of human cognition and emotion to understand the mechanisms and filters used to interpret and anticipate the world around us. Most centrally, the concept of “attitude” has been used for decades to help identify our feelings about the world and to predict behavior.  Other psychology-based areas of research in social cognition will be explored to understand several other thinking patterns that people often fall into that serve to make them feel “as if” their worlds are predictable, sometimes more so than they really are.  Additionally, we will explore some of the forms of social influence that may lead us to behave more—or, in some cases, less—predictably than expected (e.g., psychological reactance theory). 

We will then examine how these mechanisms play a role in a variety of different disciplines.  A critical part of this course will include a series of discussions with specialists in other fields, including epidemiology, humor, music, physics, and business, to examine what techniques (often empirically-based) have been used to address making predictions in different disciplines, as well as the consequences of prediction errors.

Students are expected to contribute heavily to class discussions, including an assignment in which each student will help lead the discussion of selected readings at least once during the semester.

Course Evaluation will be based on:Two short papers (3-5 pages each):  40%
One longer research paper (15-20 pages):  30%
Discussion and class participation:  15%
Contribution to the discussion questions: 5%
Oral presentation of research paper topic:  10%

[Back to top]

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.

[Back to top]

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.

[Back to top]