Honors Course Archive

Modernity’s unprecedented assertion of human rights has been an equally unprecedented disaster for our fellow creatures. Never before have humans so systematically slaughtered and tortured the other animals on the planet in service of their own needs. To boot, human-caused global warming threatens the survival of as much as 65 percent of the known species on the planet. How is it that we have come to be at war with our animal nature? Has it always been that way or is it something about how humans have come to view themselves in the wake of the Enlightenment and its civilizing processes that now threatens the very survival of our fellow creatures. These are the questions that will frame discussions in this course. We will pursue a loose historical trajectory, beginning with antiquity, to consider how previous ages have understood their relations with the animal kingdom. We will be also interested in how privileging the human has led to the dehumanization and slaughter of so-called lesser humans. Finally, we will consider the role of the human, if any, at the end of days when, according. to the Book of Isaiah, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat.

Course Readings include Aristotle: Physics (excerpts), Ovid: The Metamorphosis (excerpts), Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog,” Virginia Woolf: Flush; H. G.Wells: The Island of Dr. Moreau; Edward Albee: The Goat; excerpts from a medieval bestiary, and a screening of King Kong.

Course format: Lecture and discussion

Course requirements: Two short essays and a final essay.

What You Can Expect to Learn in This Class:

– How the current environmental crisis can be traced to our changed relations with the animal kingdom;
– How to historicize texts and refuse naturalizing the present;
– How to read closely and compose a coherent and cogent essay based on those readings.

In this course, we will investigate the Western narratives of the ‘discovery’ of unknown countries by reading a selection of travel narrative ranging from medieval times to the end of the 19th century. Our main goal is to examine travel writing as a literary genre and to analyze travel texts for their social, political, religious and cross cultural implications. In examining narrative choices, writing styles and points of view and reflecting upon the social, religious and political pressures on them, we will gain a greater awareness of the ways in which individual travelers passed on knowledge of the world that they were discovering. Each text will be read in its uniqueness, but also in relation to the other texts as well as with respect to the historical context. We will also reflect upon and analyze a range of issues generated from their retelling of stories, their gathering of information and narrating experiences in order to detect problems of truth, and recognize real facts from fiction in a context where interest and curiosity about distant lands and people brought the idealization– or the denigration– of other cultures.

This is a student-centered class in which everyone will play a part in exploring the issues and questions arising from these texts. I will offer informal lectures in order to provide the historical and cultural backgrounds in which these texts are placed. You, however, will engage in conversations and discussions (in small groups or otherwise) wherein you will discuss your understanding of the literary texts, their form, cultural content and historical context before approaching your own writing. The main goal of this class is to help you become a proficient readers and writers while also giving you the opportunity to grow your ability to assess critically primary and secondary sources.

Course Objectives
• Approaching texts and issues from multiple perspectives, with special concern for how cultural assumptions inform literatures of travel;
• Constructing persuasive arguments about social and cultural dimensions of travel texts and contexts;
• Incorporating critical reading and writing skills that include analysis, thesis-driven writing, rhetorical organization of travel texts and your own responses, provision of appropriate evidence, and effective use of language;
• Comparing texts from different genres and literary periods.

Course description: We will interpret a variety of documents and objects-novels (e.g., Masters of the Dew), cinema (e.g., Even the Rain), landscape architecture (the fountains of Versailles, etc.)-that address the cultural significance of water with the aim of understanding how water’s meaning is changing as we become more conscious of risks in supply (posed by pollution and natural/man-made scarcity) and as access to it is increasingly mediated (as a result of its privatization, commodification, etc.). While no ten-week course could pretend to give a comprehensive and global view of problem as complex as our relation to water, we will study novels, essays, films and other cultural documents from Western Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and North America with a view to understanding the differential distribution of the water crisis and the variety of aesthetic responses to it.

Course objectives: To explain, as the epigraph above suggests is necessary, the relevance of studying creative expression in a time of environmental crisis; to probe the symbolic dimension of the water crisis and how it relates to our response to material problems; to introduce the objects and methods of the environmental humanities; to provide the tools to articulate persuasive arguments regarding both the works and the wider issues under consideration.

Computer science and computing technology are transforming all aspects of science, engineering, the economy and, most importantly, our society. In this course, we will explore the intellectual underpinnings, societal implications, and grand challenges in this and related fields.

Topics will be selected from among the following (and others):
– The mathematical foundation of computation;
– Logic from Greeks to philosophers to circuits;
– The World Wide Web and its economic and social ramifications (e.g., google, facebook, twitter, eBay, wikipedia, online dating, electronic commerce, etc.)
– How computers are impacting the arts (music, animation, movies, fine arts);
– How computers and computational thinking can help cure cancer, save the environment, and educate and democratize the world.
– Secrets and lies, knowledge and trust (modern cryptography and the erosion of privacy)
– The mystery of intelligence: What is knowledge? Can computers think? Will computers ever be considered conscious? Where will all this take us?

Coursework and grading will based on reading, writing (contributing to a “blog”), short problem sets, class participation and a tiny bit of very simple programming.

Priority enrollment to freshmen.

Expected background: Absolutely NO background in programming is expected and although there will be a very small amount of programming, programming is a very minor part of the course. In fact, this course is *specifically* designed for students without *any* programming experience, but with the curiosity and enthusiasm to find out a little more about this amazing field and how it is impacting absolutely everything that surrounds us. I should add that the ever-elusive “mathematical maturity” is also a bonus. If you have any questions or concerns about whether the course is a good match for you, please contact me (karlin@cs.washington.edu)

This class examines the processes by which scientific ideas become consensus within the scientific community, and the processes by which scientific consensuses become accepted or become controversial among wider publics. We examine three case studies in detail: 1) The heliocentric universe, first put forth by Copernicus, quickly accepted as scientific consensus, and gradually accepted by the wider public; 2) The evolution of species by means of natural selection, first put forth by Darwin and Wallace, fairly quickly accepted as scientific consensus, and accepted by the wider public in most countries, but still contentious in strongly religious countries such as the United States; 3) The predicted warming of the earth’s climate, general accepted now by scientific consensus, and also by the general public in many countries, but still doubted by many in the United States. In each case, we consider the way that science interacts with politics and religion to produce consensus or contention. Students will be required to participate in go-Post and live discussions on pertinent readings, and to write one essay on each of the three case studies.

Taking a long view of Western civilization, science, and philosophy, one may wonder how we came to our current state of modernity’s starkly materialist flavor in contrast with the mystical richness of pre-Renaissance conceptions of the natural world. In Science, Magic and the Passage to Modernity (SMPM), we trace a circuitous path from antiquity to our current, modern worldview by examining the historical/philosophical roots of the culture of scientific inquiry. That is, how human experience/perception of the physical world has been interpreted in four historical periods: classical antiquity, Hellenism, the late Renaissance, and the early Twentieth Century. In doing so, we discover not only the success and power of our modern way of knowing the world of matter and energy, but also its inherent limitations and self-imposed boundaries that become evident when attempting to extend this vision to accommodate the full range of human experience.

Through these four historical periods we pursue the philosophical response to two natural phenomena that were eventually seen as closely related: 1) the visible aspects of motion in the heavens, and 2) terrestrial gravitation. Studying the history of approaches to solving the puzzle posed by these basic observations of nature provides key insights to how we have come to our current perception of the natural world, and may offer hints to how that perception might be expressed in the future.

The wide-ranging topics covered in this history of ideas will borrow heavily on and directly inform concepts you have already met or will encounter in literature, history, and philosophy classes during your academic adventures at the UW. You may be surprised by the foundational connections between the intellectual structure of modern science and a number of seemingly peripheral issues: Pre-Socratic concerns regarding the distinction between belief and knowledge, the tension between thought and experience that pervade classical natural philosophy, Hellenism’s retreat from reason, late medieval Scholasticism, Renaissance magic, Cartesian dualism, Newton’s towering but schizophrenic intellect, and Einstein’s surprisingly Pythagorean vision. These are but a few elements in an intriguing story of rationally disciplined human creativity that recounts the emergence of modern science and the scientific underpinnings of modernity.

SMPM is intended for liberal arts students, not for science majors. Although this is a course about the history of physical science, familiarity with only the most elementary aspects of high school algebra and geometry is presumed. Reasoning and critical thinking, on the other hand, will be fully exercised. Also, some background in the history and/or philosophy of the Western world is assumed. Class participation will comprise 15% of the grade, written assignments 40%, a research paper 20%, mid-term and final exam scores 10 and 15% respectively.

On 3/21/2013 Professor Chinua Lumogu ‘Albert’ Achebe passed away after 82 years of world making via writing literatures. His words were always political commentary – be it a radical critique of the colonial and colonialist, or of/for his immense affection for all things Igbo. Nigerian, and African.
Forever an enigma, Achebe was radical and orthodox in the same breath. Every word had contested meanings. Born in rural Ogidi and raised by Christian parents in a Western mission but rural Igbo context – cultural contradiction, ambiguity, paradox, and irony were not simply academic concepts. In fact, such relational things and linkages were simply matter of fact ways-of-life that informed not just his life as artist, but informed the many ways all Igbo sought social and mystical distinction. Taken a step further, Achebe’s world vision and textual spaces always include things-secular as well as things-sacred. We aim to unpack this complexity. And we may fail. But we must try our level best to grasp the master’s mask. Literally, Professor Achebe is the philosopher-king in Plato’s allegory of the cave. Knowing that Igbo deny anyone who would be King, we read sequentially: The Arrow of God, Anthills of the Savanna, Chike and The River, and finally Home and Exile. Here we glimpse!
Achebe’s life long, sacred, diaspora. In birth and life, and after death, Achebe practices and represents the core Igbo concept of Ike Nga (the strength of one’s hand/the tool of the soul). Ike Nga manifests getting-up (self improvement), getting-out (seeking other opportunity), giving-back (reinvestment in lineage and community), and finally coming-home (returning to the palm tree burial of one’s navel). Using textual, ethnographic, analytical, and reflexive tools, we use two brief gender-positioned Igbo ethnographies – one by the first male anthropologist Victor Uchendu, and a second female-centric auto-ethnography by the Igbo woman writer Buchi Emecheta. The class has something for everyone – we write two short concept papers and two brief rewrites to create a foundation for a final Accumulation Paper. Included over eleven weeks are etymological word-word-work, visual diagrams, and student presentations. All are part and parcel of short and long term portfolio making!
. This course is especially for anyone assigned an Achebe nove!
l who realized that their reading and writing of Achebe’s human difference destined one for failure. Too often reading Achebe is ‘through-a-glass-darkly.’ We must allow Achebe to teach us his details and accept that this master story teller gives us other-metaphysics of Igbo worlds seen, and unseen. Only in the abyss between Igbo worlds in its diaspora into the West can we know Achebe’s lived allegory. As writer and historian, as well as diviner and living ancestor of the past, he is a scenario writer of global Igbo modernities. Professor Achebe is surely now in the Ogidi world of his ancestors; as he reads this prompt, I am sure that he is laughing deeply knowing that we will stumble as ‘blind beggars’ over the historical past until we can see and solve the violent ironies of the past in the lived present.

We will consider the following five propositions:

1. Leadership always has a political context; leadership in a democracy is necessarily different than leadership in other political regimes.

2. Leadership involves at its base the creation of a persuaded audience, but, more than persuasion, involves creating and sustaining a more thoughtful public, a public capable of rising above itself.

3. A more thoughtful public must not only be created and sustained, but, given that things inevitably fall apart, must be recovered and reconstituted.

4. Distinctions must be made in the leadership functions of (a) initiating, (b) sustaining, and c) recovering and reconstituting. What it takes for leader to sustain isn’t quite the same as what it takes to initiate, and neither of these approach what it takes to recover and reconstitute when the organization or regime falls apart.

5. Good leadership involves ethical and effective information seeking. A leader must have knowledge of what must be done, knowledge of what it takes to persuade others of what must be done (and, in persuading, creating a more thoughtful public), and knowledge of how an audience/public will respond. Only with a thorough understanding of the principles, strategies, and costs of information seeking will one be able to engage in ethical and effective leadership.

Sources of texts will include Tocqueville, Orwell, Machiavelli, Bacon, Dostoevsky, and Sophocles, as well as contemporary authors.

Method of instruction: close reading of texts, coupled with short papers on texts, plus a longer (8-10) synthesis paper; small and large group discussions with each other and visiting scholars/practitioners.

For freshmen only, this course is an introduction to college-level methods of inquiry. Throughout your academic life at the university, you will be called upon to write, read and converse in order to absorb knowledge and test out ideas. Since academic disciplines are bound by their respective ways of knowing, and because other ways of knowing are empirical and creative, this course will present different ways of coming to knowledge. We’ll engage in reading, lectures, dialogue, persuasive writing, journalistic writing, writing for academic papers as well as in creative writing-poems, short stories and vignettes. Expect a lively forum for testing out ideas and a venue to enhance your writing repertoire.

Expectations for students include: attending all classes with the (substantial) assigned readings completed; contributing to small group presentations; considering one’s own belief systems and the belief systems in a respectful and curious manner; being willing to experiment in writing styles and genres. In the end, students should be active questioning learners and show evidence of this engagement.

Goals for the course include: learning how to negotiate and navigate with different ways of knowing; developing empathic and creative imagination; enhancing student writing; creating models for civic dialogue; and articulating individual learning.

The course will connect often-separated worlds of research and practice, university and “real world” expertise, and writing and dialogic education.

This course is the introduction to a year-long sequence-in the winter quarter, the course topic will be “Teaching What We Know” and in the spring, the class will culminate in internships throughout the area. Enrollment in all three terms is not required.

Reading, writing and traveling are all acts of the imagination. This course will allow us to “see” the places we’ve already visited, and imagine the places we plan on visiting. Our workshop will offer the returning traveler a way to synthesize her experiences, transforming them into essays, articles, poems or stories. For the future traveler, our time together will help to set a practice for writing and exploring so that a traveler can have a method of documenting her upcoming journey. Our goals include: helping you to return from future trips with a fantastic notebook/record of the sights, sounds, smells and impressions of the places you’ve visited and transforming a travel notebook into a more formal piece of writing. By reading poems, stories, essays and articles that illuminate the art of travel, we’ll test out a range of styles and stances. These activities will surface our initial assumptions about what it means to travel as a method of inquiry and imagination, and of acceptance, through places we don’t yet know– or places we have already been.

In this course, we examine the history, philosophy, and physics of the concept of “space” all the way from antiquity down to the present day. No prerequisites.

An exploration and critique of the dominant themes and paradigms which have shaped Western European thought, with special focus on concepts of “woman” and “man.” Theories of knowledge and reality will also be covered. Feminist perspectives will be studied along with more traditional viewpoints.

COURSE OBJECTIVES
– To provide an overview of the dominant philosophical paradigms in western thought To assess such paradigms critically, especially from feminist perspectives
– To become familiar with concepts of major thinkers regarding gender, “woman” and “man,”
– To analyze the social and metaphysical contexts for these definitions
– To develop the student’s ability to analyze and formulate theory
– To facilitate the thoughtful verbal and written expression of knowledge gained this term, including material suitable for your portfolios

REQUIRED READINGS
Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade
Plato, The Republic
The Bible (A version of your choice)
Woman in Western Thought (Reading Packet #1)
Reading Packet #2
(Both Reading Packets available at Professional Copy, 42nd & 15th Ave NE)

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
– Class Participation (30%): Students are expected to be at all class sessions and to be prepared for class discussion. This means studying the readings for the unit scheduled and coming to class with ideas to share. *Acceptable participation includes both thoughtful comments and active, respectful listening, as well as an appropriate balance between them.* One absence is permitted without affecting your participation grade.
– Two Take-home essay assignments (20% each)
– Group Project (15%)
– Final Exam (15%): An in-class comprehensive exam
– Class Partner: Someone with whom you exchange contact information.

This course will combine an introduction to meditation exercise with an exploration of how the practice of Buddhism has been liked to calls for social change across US and Southeast Asian contexts. Half the classes will be dedicated to meditative practice, and half the classes will be dedicated to an intellectual exploration of some differences between a Buddhist mode of social engagement and the modes of oppositional engagement and calls for action we are familiar with in the West.

Architectural history in the Western world from beginnings to AD 550.

Introduces a range of theories, ideas, techniques, and processes of still photography in a fine art context. Assignments emphasize photography’ s creative potential.

This course introduces overlapping territories of Art and Social Practice, the practice of Socially Engaged Art. The main focus of the course is on experiential learning and expanding a dialogue about socially engaged art making. The class will focus on the following topics: environmentalism, consumerism, economies, society and culture, activism, and the place for creative practice in our contemporary life. We are going to look at the historic background that nourishes social practice and the aesthetic issues it raises. The main focus is on current social issues and research, as well as exploring various strategies for representing, critiquing, and otherwise addressing these issues.

This is a studio course, consisting of a series of studio assignments, some of which will be done at locations outside of the campus. Expect field trips, readings and one artist research and presentation. Part of the class is a week-long workshop (times to be determined) with a guest artist working in social practice. Please expect to commit a reasonable amount of studio time/week outside of class. Consultation and demos on unfamiliar materials and techniques are always available upon your request. Class discussions, group consultations, critiques and one on-one consultations will provide you with feedback on your work.

Biochemistry and molecular biology (with quiz sections) for undergraduate students in molecular and cellular biology, for biochemistry majors, and graduate students in other science departments.

Prerequisite: 2.5 BIOL 200; 2.5 in either CHEM 224, CHEM 239, or CHEM 337; 2.0 in either MATH 124, MATH 134, or MATH 144.

Honors Chem 145 and 155 cover material in 142, 152, and 162. Includes laboratory. No more than the number of credits indicated can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: 142, 145 (5 credits); 145, 155, 162 (10 credits).

For chemistry majors and otherwise qualified students planning three or more quarters of organic chemistry. Structure, nomenclature, reactions, and synthesis of organic compounds. Theory and mechanism of organic reactions. Studies of biomolecules. No organic laboratory accompanies this course. No more than 5 credits can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: 221, 223, 237, 335.

Basic programming-in-the-small abilities and concepts including procedural programming (methods, parameters, return values) , basic control structures (sequence, if/else, for loop, while loop), file processing, arrays and an introduction to defining objects.

Continuation of CSE 142. Concepts of data abstraction and encapsulation including stacks, queues, linked lists, binary trees, recursion, instruction to complexity and use of predefined collection classes. Prerequisite: CSE 142.

Writing papers communicating information and opinion to develop accurate, competent, and effective expression.

Explores today’s most popular social networks, gaming applications, and messaging applications. Examines technologies, social implications, and information structure. Focuses on logic, databases, networked delivery, identity, access privacy, ecommerce, organization, and retrieval.

Origins of the modern world system in the sixteenth century and its history until World War I. Interacting forces of politics and economics around the globe, with particular attention to key periods of expansion and crisis.

First quarter in calculus of functions of a single variable. Emphasizes differential calculus. Emphasizes applications and problem solving using the tools of calculus. Prerequisite: 2.5 in MATH 120, score of 68% on MATHPC placement test, score of 75% on MATHEC placement test, or score of 2 on AP test.

First quarter of a sequence; sequence covers the material of 124, 125, 126; 307, 308, 318. First year of a two-year accelerated sequence. May receive advanced placement (AP) credit for 124 after taking 134. For students with above average preparation, interest, and ability in mathematics.

Introduction to proofs and rigor; uniform convergence, Fourier series and partial differential equations, vector calculus, complex variables. Students who complete this sequence are not required to take MATH 309, 310, 324, 326, 327, 328, and 427. Second year of an accelerated two-year sequence; prepares students for senior-level mathematics courses.

Basic principles of mechanics and experiments in mechanics for physical science and engineering majors. Lecture tutorial and lab components must all be taken to receive credit. Credit is not given for both PHYS 114 and PHYS 121.

From czars to comrades and to new Russians, from Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky to Boris Akunin and Alexandra Marinina, the course will cover more than two centuries of Russian crime writing. Other featured writers include Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Nabokov. It’s all about who is good, who is evil, who is up, who is down, and, of course, who dunnit. All readings, lectures, and discussions will be in English. No prior knowledge of Russian, Russian literature or history is required to take this course. No prerequisites.

This course introduces the basic concepts of Slavic linguistics, addresses the origin of the Slavs and the major stages of their linguistic history, and considers the Slavic languages and their peculiarities in detail. Course taught in English.

The purpose of the US-Japan Leadership seminar, is to shape and hone an understanding of leadership, friendship, and a caring community among the next generation of leaders in each country. The relationship between two of the world’s most powerful democracies and economies has become complex and multilayered, transcends boundaries and demands consideration of global issues, understanding of the self and others. Yet, we to suffer from misunderstandings, neglect or stereotyped images of each other that arise from our very distinct histories and cultures.

The seminar aims to foster dialogue among future leaders across areas of study. The seminar will bring students together to discuss leadership, citizenship, historical and current issues in bilateral relations, as well as issues reaching beyond our two countries. Students will engage in serious conversation along with shared cultural experiences and to nurture lifelong friendships. The overall goal of the seminar is to take steps toward the formation of leadership for a more caring global community– Omoiyari no aru kokusai shakai ni mukete no ridashippu.

More at http://depts.washington.edu/uwhonors/international/waseda/

We will explore the parallels and convergences between an ancient Eastern “wisdom tradition”/religion (Buddhism) and a modern, mostly Western science (biology), by reading a recently written book manuscript, by Dr. Barash, to be published shortly by Oxford University Press. The manuscript will be made available as MS Word attachments (free!), and the seminar will essentially involve reading one chapter per week, and discussing and critiquing it. No prior knowledge of either Buddhism or biology is required, although an interest in one or both would be helpful.

Participants will thus have the unusual opportunity to contribute to a book manuscript that is currently in the final stages of being written; thus, the instructor expects to benefit from your involvement at least as much as anyone else in the seminar!