Honors Colloquia - Fall 2021

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

Faust

Tom Ribitzky, Ph.D. (Baruch College, Comparative Literature)

HONS 2011X
Tuesdays and Fridays; 11:10-12:25 p.m.
Room: TBA
3 hours, 3 credits

The legend of a man who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and power is the defining allegory of modernity. This course invites you to explore the various iterations of this figure, from an evil exploiter to a tortured artist, across different genres (literature, theater, philosophy, film, music, visual art, and even political and economic theory). Faust gives us the opportunity to ask what role art plays in a world that seems to move on without it. What are the dangers of both trivializing art and of obsessively pursuing it? What is the relation between ethics and aesthetics? Between art and critique? And what are the politics that have shaped this legend from its origins in the Renaissance and the Romantic period to its resurgence as a critique of Fascism, both in Germany and in the United States? By asking these questions, we will examine the Faust legend as a template for understanding who we are in history as we make decisions that will lock us into our future.          

Required Readings: 

• Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. (Norton Critical Edition). 1^st edition. Ed. David Scott Kastan. New York: Norton, 2005.   

• Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. (Norton Critical Edition). 2^nd edition. Trans. Walter W. Arndt. Ed. Cyrus Hamilton. New York: Norton, 1998.  

• Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Norton Critical Edition). 3^rd edition. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. New York: Norton, 2019.  

• Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus. Trans. John E. Woods. New York: Vintage, 1999.  

• All other works will be provided through Blackboard and/or in class. 

Grade Breakdown: 

Participation: 10%
Quizzes / In-Class Writing Assignments: 5%
Oral Presentation: 5%
5 short essay responses: 10% each = 50%
Final Project: 15%
Final Exam: 15%

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Thinking About Animals

Professor Richard Kaye (English)

HONS 2011Z
Tuesdays and Thursdays; 5:35-6:50 p.m.
Room: TBA
3 hours, 3 credits

The question of what it means to be human lies at the core of Western philosophical and scientific inquiry. As conceptualized in the Western tradition, preeminently in the writing of thinkers such as Aristotle and Descartes, "humanity" typically has been defined in opposition to the animal, which is said to lack the rationality, consciousness, and language that we adduce as the clearest evidence of our difference from beasts. However, recent scientific research has raised fundamental questions regarding the relationship between humans and animals.  Drawing on ethical, legal, aesthetic, psychological, religious, and scientific perspectives, the class will consider the relations between animals and humans with special attention to British and American literary representation from the nineteenth century to the present. Students will take up current theoretical debates on animal rights, ecological ethics, and "post-humanist" philosophy.  We will begin with Aristotle's treatise "History of Animals" (a foundational work of the biological and zoological sciences) as well Descartes controversial conception of animals as unthinking machines. The class will then examine Jeremy Bentham's section of his 1789 "The Principles of Morals and Legislation" on the "rights of non-human animals" and then explore sections from Darwin's 1859 "The Origin of Species" and 1871 "The Descent of Man." The class will compare the different attitudes towards animals within the frameworks of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam as well as in the secular tradition. We will consider Rudyard Kipling's richly allegorical "The Jungle Book" (1894) and H.G. Wells' fantastical dystopian and anti-vivisectionist "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1896).  Throughout Britain, anti-vivisectionist critiques-many of them articulated by proto-feminist activists and anti-colonial writers--forged a connection between Englishness, egalitarian ideals, kindness to animals, and anti-colonialist politics. Recent contemporary debates dealing with animal consciousness, the ethical treatment of animals, the justifiability of zoos, and the rights of non-human creatures will be considered through readings in behavioral science, psychology, religion, philosophy and the law through the writings of Peter Singer, Vickie Hearne, Barbara Hernstein Smith, Sandra Harding, Josephine Donovan, Temple Grandin, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Darnton, Richard Posner, Daniel Dennett, Steven Wise, and Donna Harraway. We will explore four films that meditate on the subject of the animal-human divide: Robert Bresson's 1966 "Au Hazard, Balthazar," Alfred Hitchcock's 1963, "The Birds," Werner Herzog's 2005 "Grizzly Man," and Louie Psihoyos's 2009 documentary "The Cove."

Requirements: Weekly written responses to prompts on the readings, mid-term paper, and a final paper

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Black Visual Culture

Professor Janet Neary (English)

HONS 2012E
Mondays and Thursdays; 1:10-2:25 p.m.
Room: TBA
3 hours, 3 credits

As recently as 2011, Stephen Best argued that the visual archive of slavery is characterized by absence and lack. Lamenting the dearth of visual material produced by enslaved people, Best claimed that "[t]here are no visual equivalents of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," a claim which overlooks Incidents' own significance within mid-19^th-century visual culture. While the recent explosion of critical work on African Americans and 19^th-century visual culture has made Best's assertion increasingly difficult to support, it speaks to a series of critical binaries that have limited our understanding of the ways African Americans generated, adapted, and transformed the technologies and terms of a visual culture that has continued to disproportionately affect their lives. By contending that images and iconography are contained exclusively within a visual archive, or treating African Americans as either the object or subject of that archive, critics misapprehend the scope and operation of visual culture and perpetuate stark divisions between object and subject, as well as image and word, which formerly enslaved people and their descendants have been contesting since the late 18^th century.

In this course we will study a broad range of texts-literary, visual, and performance-at the intersection of race and visual culture, focusing particularly (though not exclusively) on African American cultural producers' responses to their experience of visual objectification. Readings are loosely organized around the following critical flashpoints that have come to organize scholarship on the long arc of African American visual culture: the claim that there is an absence of early visual art or photography produced by African Americans; African American responses to institutional and political constraints on their cultural production; the ambivalent effects of abolitionist iconography; the commodification of blackness; issues of cultural appropriation; and the problem of depicting black suffering. To capture the history and legacy of African American visual culture, we will toggle between present-day cultural producer's interventions into existing forms and genres and early foundational texts that articulate African American visual theory, looking at Toyin Ojih Odutola's interventions into portraiture, for example, alongside Frederick Douglass's lecture "The Age of Pictures." We will examine key works of African American visual theory, analyzing their formal properties-attending to issues of framing, perspective, the relationship of word and image, tone, and the interplay of absence and excess-as well as their historical contexts, conditions of production, legacies, audiences, and reception. Requirements include lively participation in class discussion, regular posts to the BlackBoard discussion forum, a review essay on exhibition or performance in the city relevant to course themes, a take-home mid-term exam, and a final research paper. To enrich our discussions, it will be a requirement to have your camera on.

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Latin American Literature & Philosophy

Professor Rolando Pérez  (Romance Languages, Spanish)

HONS 2012F
Mondays and Thursdays; 2:45-4:00
ONLINE
3 hours, 3 credits

Latin America's rich tradition of essay writing, philosophical debate, and cultural criticism spanning several hundred years has received too little attention in North America. Collectively, this tradition is sometimes referred to as pensamiento, or 'thought,' to mark it as a broader domain of public discourse than that which occurs only within academic institutions. The Cuban José Martí, for example, one of the greatest thinkers of Latin America, wrote much of his writings for journals and newspapers. The Argentinian Faustino Sarmiento wrote his most influential work in a form that is part memoir, part travel writing. The founding conceptualization of human rights that emerged from the discussion between Spanish priests Las Casas and Sepúlveda was developed in the form of theological debate in church courts. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's critical commentary on the Conquest takes the form of a historical account. The world-renowned Chilean Pablo Neruda used the poetic form to convey the values of the Conquest, and the historical uniqueness of the peoples and cultures it helped to produce. And Peruvian theorist José Carlos Mariátegui developed his ideas through a sociological analysis of how to make radical social change in Peru.  Each one of these thinkers, whether through literature or philosophical analysis, has contributed to a body of knowledge that constitutes a philosophical outlook on the history and culture of the region that is crucial for an understanding of present day Latin America. The object of this course, then, is to explore the way in which questions of colonialism, politics, economics, human rights, etc., have been dealt with across disciplines and genres. And as such, many of the texts we will read operate simultaneously as philosophy, as essays, and as literature. This approach will help students learn to read the texts through multiple frames of analysis.  

This course will give students an appreciation of the complexity and history of Latino/Latin American intellectual culture; provide examples of good interdisciplinary work; teach students how to understand and assess primary texts, by a number of diverse criteria; and most importantly, engage students in exploration and active debate over the topics of the readings, from human rights to cultural autonomy to identity to the nature of modernity.

Course Requirements:

There will be one short ungraded paper (2-3 pages), two short papers (3-5 pages), one in-class mid-term, and one final paper (12-15 pages). A draft of the final paper will be due in late November, and returned with comments for a final revision.

Final grades will be tabulated as follows: average of your two short papers: 20% Mid-term: 30%; Final paper: 40%; class participation: 10%.         

THHP Class Participation Policy

It is expected that all THHP students attend and participate in every meeting of every colloquium in which they enroll.

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Energy and the Environment

Professor Allan Frei (Geography)
Professor Steven Greenbaum (Physics and Astronomy)

HONS 30131
Mondays and Thursdays; 11:10-12:25 p.m.
Room: TBA
3 hours, 3 credits

The energy portion of this course will begin with the fundamental concept of energy as the capacity to do mechanical work, which forms the basis of transportation, electricity for industrial and home use and  residential heating and cooling. Basic concepts beginning with the difference between energy and power and numerical conversion between different energy units (e.g., kWh - kilowatt hours and BTU - British Thermal Units) will be discussed with many examples provided. We will cover energy generation schemes, from fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable (wind and solar) sources as well as infrastructure issues such as electrical transmission, storage, and the opportunities and challenges of widespread adoption of electric cars and buses.

The environmental portion of this course will address energy production in the context of coupled human and natural systems. Such interactions, which have long been a key area of interdisciplinary study for geographers, include processes related to the earth sciences (e.g., atmospheric science, hydrology, geology, ecology) as well as social sciences (e.g. history, economics, political science) and even humanities (e.g. environmental philosophy). We will consider how different modes of production of energy affect the environment, and how the environment affects energy production. We will also consider how social forces affect decisions about energy production, including case studies such as the widespread power outages in Texas during February, 2021; and the 1960s proposal by Con Edison to build a pumped storage hydroelectric plant for New York City at Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Valley.

There will be one or two field trips, depending on COVID and other contingencies, with possible destinations:

1. Big Allis (Rise Light & Power) natural gas-fired electric power plant in Queens
2. Indian Point (Energy) nuclear power plant in Buchanan, NY
3. Storm King Mountain, NY

Profs Greenbaum and Frei will give lectures on alternate weeks of a two class per week schedule (and attend each other's lectures). Course grades will be based on an in-class midterm, in-class final, and team (3-4 students/team) presentations on topics to be determined.

The prerequisite for this class is one year of high school physics or high school chemistry (some review may be required!)

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Sources of Contemporary Thought

Professor Gerald Press (Philosophy)
Guest Lecturers

HONS 30179
Tuesdays and Fridays;  2:10-3"25 p.m.
Room: TBA
3 hours, 3 credits

This colloquium will be an introduction to a number of the most influential ideas, authors, and books of the last 500 years: Darwinism and Evolutionary theory, Marxism and Revolutionary theory, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Reformation theology, Fanon and Black identity, philosophic rationalism, political realism, the earliest European novel as well as a romantic novel that set off a wave of suicides in the 18^th century.

Guest speakers will include Diana Conchado (Spanish, Romance Languages, and COH), Daniel Addison and Laura Keating (Philosophy), K. E. Saavik Ford (Astronomy, BMCC), Philip Alcabes (Public Health), Eckhard Kuhn-Osius (German), Roger Persell (Biology), and Robyn Marasco (Political Science).

As you can imagine, reading will be heavy and there will be high expectations for class participation; on the other hand, writing requirements will be relatively light: (1) either three 1,000-word essays or two 1,000-word essays and an oral presentation on individual books and authors and (2) a 2,500 word term paper bringing together books and ideas from different disciplinary perspectives.

Readings

1. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), The Prince, Discourses on Livy (Selections)
2. Martin Luther (1483-1546, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, The Freedom of a Christian, Prefaces to the New Testament
3. Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote
4. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (selections)
5. René Descartes (1596-1650), Philosophical Writings (selections)
6. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Critique of Pure Reason (selections)
7. Goethe (1749-1832), Faust
8. Charles Darwin (1809-82), selections from The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man
9. Karl Marx (1818-83), selections from "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844," "Theses on Feuerbach," "The German Ideology," "The Communist Manifesto," and "On the Jewish Question"
10. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), selections from works such as The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious, Totem and Taboo
11. Frantz Fanon (1925-61), selections from his writings, which have influenced anti-colonial movements in Africa & the Caribbean, Black Power in the U.S., and liberation movements in many nations of the world.

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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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