Honors Course Archive

Attila the Hun, Hua Mulan, Genghis Khan… Such names conjure powerful images even today, but through whose eyes do we see them? The Central Eurasian pastoral nomads who produced such figures prized mobility, and thus dispensed with bureaucracies, libraries, and usually even writing. Their oral traditions are now largely lost. They live in our imaginations largely through their contacts with areas such as China, India, the Middle East, Russia, and Europe, where large agrarian states with written documents were the norm. Such contacts were not merely of ethnographic interest: agrarian states not only competed and cooperated directly with bordering nomads, but communicated indirectly with each other through the peoples of Inner Asia’s Silk Road.

This course explores how sedentary hinterland cultures have historically interacted with the itinerant peoples of Eurasia’s interior. One focus is how literate sedentary cultures imagined nomadic “others,” in the process defining their own “civilized” identities. Where possible, we switch perspectives to examine how nomads viewed themselves and sedentary neighbors, how recently sedentarized peoples portrayed their nomadic past, and collaborative representations. A second focus is communication vectors, or the ways in which itinerant peoples mediated contacts between sedentary ones. Both themes offer insights into broader problems of literacy and orality, cosmopolitanism, cultural mediation, world systems, the formation of states and ethnicities, environment, and conceptions of space. Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey, the course will select case studies from different time periods (ancient to modern), regions, and contexts, e.g. the Mongol empire.

Structure, readings, and requirements
The course will combine lecture and discussion, with an emphasis on students analyzing primary sources, including textual (historical, literary, and religious), visual (images and film), and material. In addition to working through the case studies, each student will design and complete an independent research project, and help design and stage a collaborative activity relating to one course unit.

What makes a city sacred? How and why have Jews, Christians, and Muslims come to regard Jerusalem as a holy place? In this Honors course, we will explore the evolution of Jerusalem over a period of more than two millennia: from King David to Saladin. Using a variety of textual, documentary, and archaeological sources, we will investigate not only Jerusalem’s pivotal position in the Western religious tradition, but also the cultural and political history of the surrounding Holy Land under Israelite, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Islamic control. While our readings concentrate on the ancient and medieval eras, we will periodically extend our inquiry to the present, and participants will have the opportunity to explore aspects of Jerusalem’s modern history through papers and presentations.

The key questions that are addressed in the Ways of Feeling class are:
· Are there “emotional universals”, that is, feelings that all people share independent of language, culture, gender, and race? and
· Are there “culture-specific” emotions?
· Are there “gender-specific” emotions?

The class is suitable for all students who are interested in Language, languages, and meaning. Ways of Feeling is a comparative course, with enough Slavic content for it to be relevant for Slavic majors and graduate students, yet accessible to those interested in other languages. Students will be introduced to research methods in semantics, pragmatics and discourse. They will gain an appreciation of the social and cultural underpinnings of their own language and other languages. The requirements consist of 4 short papers, an image collection, and a final term paper.

For more, view this video introduction to the course:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlDk3tOWJIE

Evolution and genetics are the cornerstones of modern biology. DNA & Evolution will explore these fields in the context of contemporary issues that are important to individuals and societies. Although examples will be drawn from a variety of organisms, the primary emphasis will be on humans. Among the questions we will consider are these: Where did modern humans come from? Why are women and men different? Why do children resemble their parents? Do genes influence variation in personality, intelligence, and sexual orientation? What can genetic analyses reveal about evolutionary history and the relationships among species? Can genetic analyses allow us to predict the evolutionary future? Given what our society knows about evolution and genetics, should we take responsibility for guiding the evolutionary future of human populations?

Throughout the course the goal will be to help students develop sufficient biological sophistication to understand new discoveries in genetics and evolution, talk to their doctors, and make rational personal and political choices about biological issues. Students will read secondary and primary literature, ask questions, design experiments, analyze and interpret data, and draw their own conclusions.

Assignments will include essays, problem sets, and computer labs.

Evolution and genetics are the cornerstones of modern biology. DNA & Evolution will explore these fields in the context of contemporary issues that are important to individuals and societies. Although examples will be drawn from a variety of organisms, the primary emphasis will be on humans. Among the questions we will consider are these: Where did modern humans come from? Why are women and men different? Why do children resemble their parents? Do genes influence variation in personality, intelligence, and sexual orientation? What can genetic analyses reveal about evolutionary history and the relationships among species? Can genetic analyses allow us to predict the evolutionary future? Given what our society knows about evolution and genetics, should we take responsibility for guiding the evolutionary future of human populations?

Throughout the course the goal will be to help students develop sufficient biological sophistication to understand new discoveries in genetics and evolution, talk to their doctors, and make rational personal and political choices about biological issues. Students will read secondary and primary literature, ask questions, design experiments, analyze and interpret data, and draw their own conclusions.

Assignments will include essays, problem sets, and computer labs.

This course examines the earth’s past for evidence of extreme climate conditions in order to better understand possible future climate changes. Conditions that occurred during the Neo-
Proterozoic (Snowball Earth: 750 to 550 million years ago), the Cretaceous Hothouse (100 million years ago, and Pleistocene Icehouse (1 million years ago) will be compared to the Present Greenhouse climate.

Dramatic changes in the earth’s climate has resulted from natural variations in solar insolation, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, rates of ocean circulation, plate tectonics and volcanic activity, the evolution of vascular plants and, in recent times, the burning of fossil fuels. The impact of these factors on climate, through interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and land, will be discussed. Importantly, the processes that produced past climate changes will be discussed in the context of modern impending climate change.

One class period per week will be spent in class discussion of an important published scientific paper on Climate. Problem sets, stressing quantitative solutions, will be given as take home
assignments during the quarter. Honors students will work in multi-student teams on a project to quantify the CO2 emissions from the City of Seattle. These emissions are responsible for the CO2 ‘dome’ that overlies most large urban areas.

This Honors course is an introduction to one of the more uncomfortable and contentious topics in the popular culture of Americana – death and dying. Over the quarter, we follow the ground breaking grid of death and dying concepts articulated by emeritus U.W. anthropology professor – James W. Green.

Using Green’s Beyond the Good Death (2008) as foundation, we find that the dialectics of death (for example – dead or not – and via what diagnostic) actually escalate other unresolved and
irreconcilable issues into crises. Conundrums on dying becomes an ethical struggle seeking resolution. The terrain of dying reveals a huge and fluid continuum of values and moral precepts for what is right and good about the body – its use in work and play, gender ascription, the meaning of family and children, ownership and property, and wealth, among other things. With our own utopian ideals of State, Law, and Citizen in our critical mirror, we dig still deeper into the underneath of what is finally known at the moment of the-good-death. What is revealed at the end of our mortal time is pure paradox. Simply, dying is rarely good; it is a messy, traumatic, and painful process for most individuals and families in a range of communities. The situational ethics of dying reveals the best and worst of bodily well-being and
health care in Americana – especially, its assumptions. This class has something for everyone regardless of point of departure and religious perspective. As a Socratic shaking out, there are no right answers
and only well-argued positions. As a portfolio class, there are two short concept papers, two rewrites, diagrams, word work etymologies, student presentations, and a final accumulation paper.

Texts include Green’s Beyond The Good Death (2008), Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1987), and Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (1996).

This course has 3 aims: 1) To introduce students to contemporary human trafficking as one of the darkest sides of globalization, and also in relation to historical forms of slavery, issues of human rights, international migration and trade/labor flows, and socioeconomic conditions that give rise to the commodification of some people by other people; 2) To build students’ understanding of the scope, scale, and complex dynamics of human trafficking; 3) To equip students to assess the current state of anti-human trafficking efforts with appreciation for the difficulty of such efforts, and to strategize better ways to combat human trafficking.

These aims will be accomplished through a) reading, written analyses, and in-class discussions of relevant texts produced by concerned government bodies and nongovernmental organizations as well as scholars; b) visits by local experts representing local and/or national law enforcement, providers of services to trafficking victims, and community organizers; c) written analyses of case studies and a research paper on a particular aspect of the problem of human trafficking and/or efforts to combat it; d) completion of an experiential learning/service learning assignment which will require a total of about 20 hours of volunteer work with Seattle Against Slavery during the last five weeks of the course. Most of this experiential/service learning will take place in the U District; no travel will be necessary. There will be a few quizzes on key terms and concepts, but no midterm nor final exam.

Many American concepts of leadership focus on a sole great individual rather than the larger context. This course explores the ways that culture shapes leadership, and leadership shapes culture. We will explore culture at many levels – civilizational, national, organizational, professional, even family – and what it means to make and remake the cultures that define our collective experiences. There will be a particular emphasis on the question of public and civic leadership, and the ways that in the United States and Japan leaders for the common good are cultivated.

This 10 week seminar/discussion is an intense discourse about college student life which encompasses key aspects of health and well-being. The framework is the controversial 2004 novel which chronicles the world-view of an 18 year old low-income undergraduate female, Charlotte Simmons, during her first semester at Dupont College located somewhere in the northeast. Tom Wolfe, writer of Bonfire of the Vanities is not for the immature or faint-hearted. His I am Charlotte Simmons addresses college life in sometime graphic but never titillating detail, and involves health concepts such as self-esteem, sexual risk-taking, drinking, acquaintance rape, narcissism, depression, disclosure, student-athletes, elitism, cultures in sororities and fraternities, social support and family ties. These behavioral concepts are analyzed in the stylistic format of Charlotte’s Alice in Wonderland initiation into undergraduate college life. A chronology of events builds in a 34 chapter-by-chapter analysis with deep and informative discussions. Behaviors are understood within recognized frameworks such as Social Learning Theory, Theory of Reasoned Action, and Stages of Change or Trans-theoretical Model, and the Health Belief Model. The Socratic approach gives voice to the student. Grading as based upon informed participation and a scholastically rigorous 5-7 page type-written double-spaced final paper based in part or completely on any one of the more than 100 questions stated in the seminar’s Discussion Guide. Students must bring their maturity in order to critically examine the realities of college life. Enrollment is limited.

An exploration of the philosophies which have shaped the Black Liberation Movement, the Feminist Movement and the Gay Rights Movement in the United States. We will begin by looking at the ideological roots of these movements in earlier centuries then trace their development through their 20th century manifestations. Similarities and differences in these social theories will be analyzed along with the historical contexts in which they were and are invoked. We will also consider the political ramifications of utilizing particular paradigms to argue for social change.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:
To provide an overview of the sociopolitical philosophies which underlie the Feminist, African/American, and Gay movements in the United States.
To situate these paradigms in their historical context.
To assess which theories, concepts and arguments transcend the particular features of the individual movements and apply across their differences and which do not.
To develop the students’ ability to analyze, formulate and defend theory.
To assist students in examining their own sociopolitical beliefs and goals.

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Black Power Ideologies, John McCartney
Readings Packets (available at Prof. Copy, 42nd & U. Way)

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
– Class participation (30%): Be present and prepared for discussion. This means having each day’s readings completed by class time and coming with some ideas about them and about any assigned questions. Participation includes both thoughtful comments and active, respectful listening and an appropriate balance between them. One absence is permitted without affecting your participation grade.
– Weekly response papers (30%): Each week questions or topics related to the readings will be given on which you will write approximately 2 typewritten pages. Graded credit/no-credit.
– Group project (15%): Guidelines to be announced.
– Final exam (take-home essay) (25%)

This course debates and discusses the events of the Arab Revolts that started in late 2010, and ended up with changing much of the political culture of the Arab world, leading to a new understandings of Arab politics specifically, and the Middle East region generally. We will examine various socio-economic and political transformations that engulfed the Arab Middle East that have contributed (to varying degree) to the current social and political forces. These forces have historical roots and can be traced back to the late 19th focus on the politics of the region from World War I onwards. We will explore the role of Islam, tribalism, and colonialism in the Middle East. The course explores questions related to Women, gender, Arab Nationalism, and the emergence (and re-emergence) of Political Islam throughout the Arab world as an alternative to the governance practices of Arab nationalist authoritarian regimes.

Various theoretical concepts from different social science disciplines will be explore to address the role of protest in politics, state building, the rentier state theory (i.e, role of oil), state-capabilities theory, and others, while keeping an eye on the unfolding events in different Arab revolts that are still ongoing, in an attempt to understand the processes that led to the revolts.

The class is primarily based on readings, but is supplemented with feature films, documentaries, and different clips.

Do you ever find yourself in situations where you would like to teach something to someone else? Do Powerpoint and Prezi only go so far? How might you imagine new scenarios to help other people learn? This class will be a series of teaching practice sessions, interspersed with great literature from education and reflective writing.

Many theorists believe that social change begins inside classrooms, or in transforming classrooms into spaces where students take charge of their learning. How can we re-imagine notions of “school” and “expert” to open new ways of exchanging information and power? Together, we’ll envision some utopian scenarios of ideal learning communities. Then, we’ll work with realistic “case studies” or “portraits” that ask us to teach in difficult situations. This class will be a lively, hands on, on-your-feet atmosphere in which you will begin the journey of becoming a teacher- whether that teaching happens in classrooms, workplaces or in your community.

Music can be heard all over our planet. It finds its place in the chants of a shaman healing their patient, accompanies television commercials to help sell a product, helps create an atmosphere at social events, and accompanies societal rites of passage. Its inspiration can also be found in nature, for example, as a bird singing in our back yard or in the Amazon rainforest. Academically, music weaves its magic into many fields, making it an interdisciplinary powerhouse. It is present from the hard sciences through the most esoteric arts. Examples include recording technology in engineering; the use of music for healing in medicine and psychology; the study of sound production and building of musical instruments in physics; copyright and performance rights in law; and its use as a teaching aid in education.

In this experiential course we will examine some of the universal themes emerging from the use of music and its influence on humanity and our world. Our ten week journey will utilize various lenses through which we will explore the topic, including scientific and academic research, observation of collective human experience, and your own personal experience both in and outside of class. Our time together will be partially modeled on the goals and objectives of collaborative teaching/learning communities. Activities will include class visits from guest experts and group and individual research opportunities along with weekly musical explorations facilitated by the instructor. During this process we will also examine how it affects and empowers our own lives.

The Declaration of Independence puts liberty immediately after life; the French Revolutionary slogan puts it before equality and fraternity. Liberty meant, above all, independence of social constraint. In the Romantic era a subject-centered world-view replaced a value-centered world-view. In this seminar we will examine some of the key philosophical and literary texts that helped define, imagine, and delimit the reach of subjectivity. With Locke and Hume on personal identity as the background, we will begin by working through sections of two of the most difficult and most influential books of the modern era, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Then we will turn to the paranoid selfhood of Rousseau’s Confessions and the countering ideal of self-formation in the greatest and most bizarre novel of the era, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. We will continue with close readings of a selection of Romantic poems and conclude with Heinrich von Kleist’s shattering comedy of stolen identities, Amphitryon. We will also read some representative critical and theoretical essays.

This seminar is intended for advanced honors undergraduates and graduate students. There will be several short writing exercises and a critical essay.

Some guiding maxims:

Alexander Pope: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Eduard von Mörike: Was aber schön ist, selig scheint es in ihm selbst [But what is lovely, blissful seems it in itself.]

Rousseau: Je voudrais que cet instant durât toujours [I wish that this instant might last forever.]

Goethe: Wenn Norberg zurückkehrt, bin ich wieder sein, bin ich dein, mache mit mir, was du willst; aber bis dahin will ich mein sein. [When Norberg returns, I will be his again, I will be yours, what you will; but until then I will be mine.]

Wordsworth: often do I seem / Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself / And of some other Being.

Keats: Forlorn! the very word is like a bell / To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Kleist: “Halt dort! Wer geht dort?” “Ich” “Was für ein Ich?” [“Stop there! Who goes there?” “I.” “What sort of I?”]

This course presents a survey of architecture from about 750 to about 1789. Examples are drawn from the traditions of Western and Islamic architecture during the periods usually termed the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque, with particular interest in the formation of and interaction between these traditions.

Recommended preparation:
This is an undergraduate upper division and graduate level class, and as such we assume you are responsible students who attend class regularly and plan ahead for assignments and exams. We recommend that you read and review the assigned material before the lectures in which it will be covered. Because the lectures do not directly follow the order of the text, it may be useful first to read an entire chapter or set of chapters in anticipation of the lectures dealing with the material covered. Although Arch 350 is not a prerequisite for the class, the material covered in it is helpful for understanding the course content of Arch 351. Required text: Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, Architecture, from Prehistory to Postmodernity, Second Edition (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2002).

Class assignments and grading:
There will be two tests, two take-home writing assignments, and approximately 215 pages of required readings.

Test responses will be evaluated for accuracy, thoughtfulness and clarity. Assignments will be evaluated for thoroughness, quality of ideas, and clarity of presentation (this can include writing and graphics). Each test and assignment will be given a percentage score. Final percentage grades will be calculated according to the weighting below and then converted to the University’s 4.0 scale using a curve. This means that your final grade will be assessed relative to the performance of the others in this class.

Assignment 1: 20 % of course grade
Assignment 2: 20 % of course grade
Test 1: 30 % of course grade
Test 2: 30 % of course grade

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.

Continuation of CHEM 145. Includes laboratory. Together CHEM 145 and 155 cover material in CHEM 142, 152, and 162. No more than the number of credits indicated can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: CHEM 152, 155 (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 more than 4 credits can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: CHEM 238, CHEM 336.

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.

Explores the causes and patterns of global poverty, and the urgent need for studies of care in both academic work and public policy. Considers the possibilities and challenges of caring across distance, and ways to respectfully engage with people in different places.

Please note this class links up with GH 101 ‘Introduction to Global Health: Disparities, Determinants, Policies and Outcomes’. Students are encouraged, but not required, to enroll in both.

Explores the causes and patterns of global poverty, and the urgent need for studies of care in both academic work and public policy. Considers the possibilities and challenges of caring across distance, and ways to respectfully engage with people in different places.

Please note this class links up with GH 101 ‘Introduction to Global Health: Disparities, Determinants, Policies and Outcomes’. Students are encouraged, but not required, to enroll in both.

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.

Provides a historical understanding of the twentieth century and major global issues today. Focuses on interdisciplinary social science theories, methods, and information relating to global processes and on developing analytical and writing skills to engage complex questions of causation and effects of global events and forces.

SIS 201 is intended to prepare students to think critically about the world and formulate their own ideas about important international issues. The course covers the major events and trends of the twentieth century, including the world wars and the Cold War, decolonization, democratization, and approaches to economic development; and current issues that stem from twentieth-century processes, such as globalization, failed states, the “war on terror,” and changes in the international distribution of power.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Learn to think critically about complex issues and identify connections between events
Write an analytical paper that formulates a causal argument about political or social phenomena

METHOD OF INSTRUCTION:
Lecture 3 times a week, plus two sections a week.

RECOMMENDED PREPARATION:
Reading a newspaper daily.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS & GRADING:
Reading of 150-200 pages per week, several short papers and a longer research paper.
Several short papers, one research paper, class participation, final exam.

This course examines the law’s contribution to the historical and current inequality of the sexes, as well as the law’s contribution to remedying that inequality. Accordingly, we will consider cases and statutes as instruments of oppression and as instruments of change. And we will consider the various feminist approaches (liberal, cultural, radical) to these problems, including both theoretical frames and strategic implications. Among the substantive topics to be covered are: constitutional equality, female sexuality, violence against women, women and family.

This course is a survey course on Natural Resources as it is generally taught in U.S. law schools. The casebook is Klein, Cheever, & Birdsong, Natural Resources Law: A Place-Based Book of Problems and Cases (2009 Aspen Publishers). Topics covered included Wildlife and Biodiversity, Rangelands, Protected Lands, and Wetlands. In particular, the course compares various approaches to federal resource management, including the cross boundary regulation of endangered species and wetlands, the multiple-use mandates of Bureau of Land Management lands, and the notion that nature can be preserved by setting it aside in wilderness areas and national parks. The course also addresses state responsibilities for natural resources management (focusing on the public trust doctrine) and issues raised by regulation of natural resources on private lands (focusing on constitutional takings doctrine).

Overview of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the contrasts between CRT and liberal and conservative analytical frameworks on race and the law. Examination of the questions and criticisms raised about CRT, as well as the impact of the field on legal and political discourse.

Second quarter in the calculus of functions of a single variable. Emphasizes integral calculus. Emphasizes applications and problem solving using the tools of calculus.

Covers the material of MATH 124, 125, 126; 307, 308, 318. First year of a two-year accelerated sequence. May receive advanced placement (AP) credit for 125 after taking 135. 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, 324, 326, 327, 328, and 427. Second year of an accelerated two-year sequence; prepares students for senior-level mathematics courses. Prerequisite: 2.0 in MATH 334.

Basic principles of electromagnetism, the mechanics of oscillatory motion, and experiments in these topics 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 115 and PHYS 122.

In this seminar, we will examine the proposition that Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and cybercrime have replaced Radical Islamic terrorists as the primary threats to our national security. Students will also have the opportunity to directly participate in law enforcement activities.

Historically, organized crime has had 4 main businesses: 1) protection racketeering; 2) moving (laundering) money; 3) human trafficking; and 4) moving drugs & cigarettes. Cybercrime is a new emerging business for the large transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). As an exemplar case study, we will examine the effects of changing marijuana laws in Washington State (Initiative 502) on the
“product line” of drug cartels. We will look at US policy toward Latin America. We will study effects of decriminalizing drug use in Holland, Portugal and the Czech Republic. As backround, we will briefly review the neuropharmacology of drug addiction.

Through assigned readings in the primary text, we will discuss the nexus of terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations (“mafias”) and use in-class exercises to understand the problems they pose. We can then look to the future of cybercrime and cyberwarfare.

The seminar is taught in cooperation with the Seattle Police Department. We will have a guest lecturer (Detective Manning) from the Seattle Police Dept. to guide us in our study of law enforcement in our community. Students will also be required to attend a Saturday seminar presented at the Police Dept; exact date to be determined (http://www.seattle.gov/spd/programs/policeacademy/default.htm). Detective Manning will meet with students during our fourth class session to schedule this seminar. Students are also encouraged to spend a shift riding with a police officer, which we can also arrange at that time. To participate, each student must agree to a security background check by the SPD.

Course requirements:

Student groups will analyze issues around implementing Initiative 502 and how TCOs might react to this. Each group will make classroom presentations and prepared a written summary. This project will be 60% of your grade. There will be one quiz on assigned readings about ¾ the way thru the quarter, worth 30% of your grade. Classroom participation also counts for 10%.

Primary text: “McMafia” by Misha Glenny (New York: Knopf, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4000-4411-5).

How do we experience live music? What have writers, philosophers, and artists said about its power? This experiential learning course will introduce students to the Winter 2014 season at the Seattle Symphony and to performances of contemporary music performed at the Icebreaker VII Festival. Students will complete readings and short writing assignments over the quarter, based on their attendance at a series of pre-selected concerts throughout the quarter. We will also engage with musicians and other artistic staff at Benaroya Hall for their insights into programming, performance, and other topics.

The concerts and dates are as follows (and note that students will be required to attend at least six of the seven scheduled concerts). Students will be asked to purchase tickets either through the Symphony’s Campus Club ($12 per concert; sign up at http://www.seattlesymphony.org/symphony/buy/campus.aspx) or through the Teen Tix program ($5 per concert; http://www.teentix.org/). We will collect funds on the first day of class and will purchase all tickets for the quarter. Feel free to contact Claudia Jensen (cjensen@uw.edu) if you have questions or concerns about paying for the tickets.

The list of concerts we plan to attend is as follows (and note that most are on Thursdays, but there one Friday concert and one Sunday concert; all concerts are at Benaroya Hall, except the Feb. 16 concert, which is at On The Boards, so plan accordingly):

Jan. 17 (Friday) Tchaikfest! (3rd Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto)
Jan. 23 (Thursday) Prokofiev, Haydn, Mozart
Jan. 30 (Thursday) J. Adams, Shostakovich
Feb. 13 (Thursday) Schumann, Berlioz
Feb. 16 (Sunday) Icebreaker VII Festival: Open Source (Seattle Chamber Players, at On the Boards)
March 6 (Thursday) Strauss (Richard, not Johann)
March 13 (Thursday) Dvořák, Bartók, Mozart

Please note that this is our planned list; if we need to make changes, we will give you as much notice as possible. There will be no final exam, although students will write a final short essay summarizing their experiences. All writing will be appropriate for the Honors portfolio.