Honors Course Archive

The city stands as one of the defining symbols of humanity- its built forms reflecting the highest aspirations and advances in society. But its most celebrated artifacts have typically been the towering monuments that serve as emblems of power and control. This seminar seeks to explore the invisible cities, the hidden spaces and edifices that serve as the domain of anonymous urban dwellers, marginalized due to their race, class, ethnicity, gender or culture. Studying written, visual and spoken texts, we seek to recover the lost stories of the silenced voices – the urban nomads and exiles overlooked in built narratives that privilege the authority of collective power.

The class will follow a roughly chronological structure in studying the history of the architecture of the city but will highlight themes of nature, technology and society that weave across time and place. Topics will range from creation myths and native American landscapes to places of work and living, like sweatshops and tenements, and institutional interiors from the cell to the closet. Requirements include discussing, writing and mapping those urban stories that have been concealed and buried, while building an awareness and understanding of the built environment. On the edges and in the interstices, behind and beneath its polished surfaces and public spaces, the invisible city will be mapped as a mosaic of lost spaces of transgression, resistance and non-conformity.

This course will focus on music as a community-building practice. Through site visits, readings, listening, discussion, and music-making we will consider questions about the social functions of music-making, explore the corresponding aesthetics and skills, and make case studies of activist uses of music historically and in the present. We will have presentations by people from local community music groups, and students will visit community sites to observe and participate.

As part of course requirements, students will participate in active learning assignments each week. Students will be required to turn in current news (from the popular press) related to each course lecture topic to earn participation points. The current event must be related to the relevant course lecture. Students must explain how each current event is related to and its impact on the lecture topic. Additional assignments relevant to weekly course lectures (i.e. movie reviews) will be announced in class, and will be posted on the Course Canvas website. Written current news event assignments will be due twice weekly. Discussions relevant to weekly current events or other assignments may be continued in class and on the Canvas website. Students must be present in class and active in discussions to earn participation points. Full participation points will be given for attendance, current events, and participation in 90% or more of course lectures.

Students will write a 15-page research paper focused on the Sustainable Development Goals, set in 2015 (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/). Students will choose a lower or middle-income country and describe their country’s SDG Health Goal and specify each in-country AIDS epidemic goal. As part of SDGs, countries committed to a 90-90-90 target for their AIDS epidemics. Students will summarize the current in-country AIDS epidemic in terms of its epidemiology (disease transmission and spread) and compare it to the epidemic in that country in 2000. Students will describe in-country HIV/AIDS evidence-based prevention and treatment (medical/clinical and behavioral), and social or economic programs designed to reduce the in-country AIDS epidemic. Students will document how their country is progressing in its 90-90-90 goals. Lastly, students will explain whether and why they think their chosen country will or will not achieve its 90-90-90 goal by 2030. Students will document evidence from research, WHO/UNAIDS/CDC/USAID reports, and in-country Ministry of Health reports to back up their explanations. PAPERS ARE DUE ON JUNE 1, 2018, by MIDNIGHT.

Pain presents a challenge as a problem in science, as a problem in health policy and patient treatment, and as a problem in understanding deeper human experiences. Pain is a universal experience. While all of us have experienced acute pain following surgery or an injury, not all of us have experienced chronic pain, which is pain that persists after tissue healing has occurred, usually > 3 months after injury. In this seminar course, we will explore pain from multiple perspectives. Some of these include the physiology, pathophysiology and psychology of pain, the epidemiology of and risk factors for pain, the subjective experience of pain. Readings, short lectures, and student discussions will address the “sciences” of pain, the expression of pain in literature, philosophic analyses of pain, and social science/anthropologic aspects of pain and its roles in different cultures.

Students will be evaluated on the basis of a term paper on a topic of interest to the student (after discussion with one of the instructors), weekly “thought” pieces based upon the week’s reading, and class participation. We will use a “flipped classroom” model and expect the students do do most of the talking during our sessions.

We encourage students from any discipline to enroll in the course. It is specifically designed to incorporate multidisciplinary perspectives, and presupposes only a general education and inquisitiveness.

Throughout this course, students will investigate how human rights impact international affairs. Participants will critically examine cases when states prioritize human rights in diplomacy, and when they do not. Specifically, students will look at the recent foreign policy change of LGBTI rights in U.S. and Swedish diplomatic relations towards Uganda and other nations. Through a survey of the major concepts, theories, and controversies in the contemporary human rights discourse, class participants will learn the theoretical and practical approaches to crafting modern foreign policy. Dr. Carlson-Rainer will utilize her applied knowledge from over a decade of serving as a U.S. diplomat in places such as Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, and Morocco. The course will blend real world challenges addressed by modern diplomats, with theoretical analysis of human rights literature.

This course has 3 aims: 1) To introduce students to contemporary human trafficking as one of the darkest sides of globalization, but also in relation to historical forms of slavery and 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 begin strategizing more and better ways to combat human trafficking.

These aims will be accomplished through a) the reading, written analysis, and in-class discussion of relevant texts produced by concerned government bodies and nongovernmental organizations as well as scholars; b) class visits by local experts representing local and/or national law enforcement, providers of services to trafficking victims, and community organizers; and 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. There will be a few small quizzes on key terms/concepts, but no midterm or final exam.

Students will have the option of satisfying one of the 2 experiential learning projects required by the Honors Program through volunteering with Seattle Against Slavery to: 1) promote and attend a SAS-sponsored event at Elliott Bay Bookstore (3pm on 4/22/17); 2) recruit UW participants for a SAS-sponsored survey on sex-buying and prostitution and assist in the one-to-one administration of that survey on campus; and 3) collaboratively create and/or host a counter-trafficking campaign or event for the UW community during the latter half of the quarter, in cooperation with fellow classmates and members of the UW chapter of SAS. In addition to on-time completion of the Honors experiential learning application and reflection requirements detailed on http://depts.washington.edu/uwhonors/reqs/exp/, students who seek experiential learning credit will be required to document their participation in all three of these activities and submit that documentation along with a brief reflection paper to the instructor by noon on 6/1/18.

How are we to understand peoples and cultures different than our own? How are we to deal with issues of bias and power while attempting to write about cultural difference? What do we mean by ‘culture,’ anyway, and what are the implications of thinking reflexively about our own cultural location(s)? What ‘counts’ as valid knowledge about others, and who gets to decide?

This course approaches such questions by exploring ethnographic research as a mode of knowing and seeing. We interrogate the history of ethnographic practice as colonial knowledge production and consider new theoretical possibilities and anxieties that have emerged in light of the postmodern ‘turn.’ Then we read examples of ethnographic work organized around several key themes in everyday life — family, work, school, and space — while also grappling with the ethical, epistemological, and existential questions latent in the act of writing about ourselves and others.

Throughout the course, students will engage in their own ethnographic practice, directing attention towards selected aspects of ‘everyday life’ and how people experience it and invest it with meaning. This ongoing inquiry will offer opportunities to experiment with making fieldnotes, conducting interviews, writing ethnographic vignettes, and using visual methods such as photo or video.

This class will explore shadow histories of Seattle area shores and waterways, examining historic maps, oral histories, and on-the-ground legacies of drainage projects. We will visit tribal lands, reflecting on ecocultural politics of fishing, shellfishing, and fisheries management. We will practice close observation of tidal rhythms, and compose odes to the sea, sound, and tides. We will trace buried waterways, gutters, and storm drains of Seattle, and develop an apparatus for investigating hidden flows. We will contemplate post-sea level rise futures in which the city becomes an archipelago. Via shoreline exploration, students will be immersed in their own poetics of relation to area waters. Students will place their own observations into dialog with texts ranging from indigenous and mestiza poetics and queer feminist theory to European explorers’ logs and floodplain engineering documents. We will work on poetic and scientific writing, blueprints, and visual art.

“Healing the wounds of war is central to the call for peace – whether those wounds be in the countries where bombs were dropped or in the homes and hearts of veterans in our own society.” (www.veteransforpeace.org).

The effects of war are catastrophic for those in war zones and for soldiers, but their ripple effects touch everyone. How does war impact our communities and how can we address the global effects of war – seen and un-seen? The wounds of war are physical, but also deeply emotional, psychological and spiritual. PTSD is a common condition in soldiers and survivors of war, and recently we have learned that PTSD may be rooted in a complex wound described as “moral injury.” In this course, we will explore issues surrounding moral injury, and some radical visionary initiatives that have been emerging within the Veteran Administration system to address these issues from a new perspective of “whole health.”
The transformation of the culture of care at the VA is leading Veterans into new ways to reflect about war and giving them a voice to speak about what war means for them and for our planet. We will explore multi-cultural healing traditions such as acupuncture, yoga, tai chi, and meditation that are integrated into the care of Veterans, we will learn how animals can turn around the lives of Veterans, and see how a relationship education program (“Warrior to Soulmate”) can bring peace into a Veteran’s marriage. Requirements for this class include participation in talking and readings, small group discussions, watching videos in class and on your own, researching resources and producing multimedia presentation from your reflection about the class.

According to historian Herbert Butterfield, the Scientific Revolution in 17th century Europe “outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval Christendom.” In stark contrast, historian Stephen Shapin has argued, “There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution.” In this course, we will investigate why these narratives about 17th century science differ so markedly. To do so, we will study the work of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton to explore in what ways their “mechanical philosophy” differed from Aristotelian philosophy, which had been dominant in Europe and the middle East since antiquity.

How do the imagined worlds of speculative fiction reflect, and reflect upon, the real worlds of their authors and audiences? And on the other hand, how can works of speculative fiction have real-world impacts? Is speculative fiction different, in either of these respects, than other genres of narrative? This course explores a variety of works of speculative fiction from the perspective of an anthropological interest in ideas, imaginations, and narratives in relation to social life. Course materials consist of works of speculative fiction, together with scholarly writings selected for this course from a wide variety of sources.
Goals for students in this course are: 1) To read some great works of speculative fiction and to gain an appreciation for SF as a rich and diverse genre with a long history; 2) to develop an understanding of why stories are important to people and how they affect human life; 3) To explore scholarly perspectives on, and debates about, speculative fiction and stories more generally; 4) To develop skills of critical thinking, reading, writing, and oral self-expression.

In The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness (2012), Kevin Young writes “To be a black artist today is to stand at the crossroads of culture at which the black artist bargains, trades, borrows, makes, steals and stories in a world of his or her own making–and naming.” Drawing on fiction, poetry, prose, drama, films, and polemics, we will explore the idea of a black aesthetic as it connects to black art making in various historical and political contexts across the 20th century. Specifically, we will focus on three moments of burgeoning black cultural production tied to political movements that turn to art as a vehicle for social justice and liberation: the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 30s, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Post-Soul/ Black Lives Matter movement of the present. As we explore this series of debates about the possible grounds, contours and impact of black aesthetic practice, we will consider works of art that push this lively, often heated conversation in new ways. We will analyze how particular notions of a black aesthetic construct politics through an engagement with race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Course Objectives:

1) Improve your ability to read, analyze, and discuss cinematic, literary and cultural texts
2) Further develop your writing skills, especially your ability to state your ideas in a succinct, coherent manner and support them with close textual readings
3) Understand the broader social, historical and cultural contexts in which African American expressive culture has evolved
4) Assess the impact of African American cultural production on political, artistic and intellectual movements of the past and the present
5) Enhance your sense of the multiple ways in which art can work as a tool for social change

Course merges the academic study of Hip Hop with the applied practice of building a regional Hip Hop archive. Students will study the notion of Hip Hop from scholarly points of view, community perspectives, and from personal engagements, while at the same learning skills to contribute to the development of a regional Hip Hop archive in the UW Libraries. Participants will critically investigate Hip Hop in the Puget Sound, looking at its and origins, trajectory, and context within PNW music history. Students will learn about socially constructed issues in relation to Hip Hop such as racism/systems of White supremacy, Misogyny/Patriarchy/Sexism, and other oppressions. These discussions will be grounded in Seattle’s own history of segregation and censorship.

Questions that drive this course include: What is Puget Sound Hip Hop? Is it important and, if so, why and for whom? How does contemporary Puget Sound Hip Hop interface with Seattle’s legacy of racial segregation? How has Puget Sound Hip Hop challenged inequalities and how has it been co-opted to support inequality? What does it mean to archive Hip Hop? What power differentials are at play when building an academic archive of a community’s expressive culture? How is UW perceived among Seattle’s Hip Hop communities?

This course presents a survey of architecture from 1750 to the present. Emphasis is placed on the development of the architecture of this period including significant buildings and projects, important theories and critical writings.

This is not an introductory level course. Familiarity with architectural terminology will be expected. Students seeking an introductory level class should consider taking the Architecture 150-151 series.

This is the third course in the Architecture 350-351-352 series. Knowledge of material covered in Architecture 350 and 351 is expected of those enrolled in Architecture 352.

Introduction to systematic inorganic chemistry: representative elements, metals, and nonmetals. Includes coordination complexes, geochemistry, and metallurgy. Additional material on environmental applications of basic chemistry presented. Includes laboratory. No more than the number of credits indicated can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: CHEM 162, CHEM 165 (5 credits); CHEM 165, CHEM 312 (5 credits).

Chemistry majors and other students planning three or more quarters of organic chemistry. Structure, nomenclature, reactions, and synthesis of organic compounds. Theory and mechanism of organic reactions. Biomolecules. Introduction to membranes, enzyme mechanisms, prosthetic groups, macromolecular conformations, and supramolecular architecture. No more than 4 credits can be counted toward graduation from the following courses: CHEM 239, CHEM 337.

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.

This undergraduate course considers how the linkage between science and law has become more pivotal with advancements in technology. Topics covered include science in the context of criminal law, public regulation and individual rights. The power of science to promote justice and expose injustice will be the overriding theme.

Honors students will be expected to complete three 3-page reflections and lead at least one discussion session.

Sequence covers the material of 124, 125, 126; 307, 308, 318. Third quarter of the first year of a two-year accelerated sequence. May not receive credit for both 126 and 136. 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 309, 324, 326, 327, 328, and 427. Third quarter of the second year of an accelerated two-year sequence; prepares students for senior-level mathematics courses.

Explores electromagnetic waves, the mechanics of oscillatory motion, optics, waves in matter, 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 116 and PHYS 123.

This is a 3-credit seminar for students who will participate in the study program in Italy “Water and its uses for environment and society.” The aim of the course is to provide students with the linguistic and cultural tools that can maximize their study experience in Italy.

The content of the course will provide a basic knowledge of the language and major sociopolitical issues. The language component will provide tools to communicate at an elementary level in everyday life. Students will learn how to greet, introduce themselves, order food and drinks, ask for simple information, and express basic needs. Culturally, the students will address some of the issues present in the current political debate, such as immigration, unemployment, and LGBT rights.

A 2-credit preparatory seminar for Sumak Kawsay: Well-Being, “Race”, and Gender in Ecuador, a Summer 2018 study abroad program. At the end of the course, students will be able to: discern the major historical changes within Ecuador; identify the major cultural, political, and economic changes in contemporary Ecuador; compare the development of social and cultural movements in contemporary Ecuador; and, analyze their own positionalities as UW students who will study in Ecuador.

This class will explore shadow histories of Seattle area shores and waterways, examining historic maps, oral histories, and on-the-ground legacies of drainage projects. We will visit tribal lands, reflecting on ecocultural politics of fishing, shellfishing, and fisheries management. We will practice close observation of tidal rhythms, and compose odes to the sea, sound, and tides. We will trace buried waterways, gutters, and storm drains of Seattle, and develop an apparatus for investigating hidden flows. We will contemplate post-sea level rise futures in which the city becomes an archipelago. Via shoreline exploration, students will be immersed in their own poetics of relation to area waters. Students will place their own observations into dialog with texts ranging from indigenous and mestiza poetics and queer feminist theory to European explorers’ logs and floodplain engineering documents. We will work on poetic and scientific writing, blueprints, and visual art.

This project based seminar is the culminating seminar in this year’s GLP Waseda curriculum. It is restricted to current students in the Honors GLP Waseda Japan Exchange.

This course examines the intersection of environmental justice and public health through an interdisciplinary approach that considers social sciences, art, and the critical role of community organizing. Our examination of the intimate relationship between environmental justice and public health centers the scholarship and lived experiences of communities – both local and global – most impacted by environmental injustices and health disparities.

Modern neurology has recently emphasized the importance of Executive Function, the capacity of the human brain to consider and integrate all the relevant factors that apply to a current situation and thereby produce appropriate behavior, or not. The study of executive function was introduced by the prominent Russian neuropsychologist, A. R. Luria and then advanced by his student, Elkhonon Goldberg, especially in his Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a complex World. Shakespeare understood this subject more deeply then his predecessors, and long before the neuropsychologists. Shakespeare is broadly recognized for his insight into character. Students should have an interest in the way character can be studied in literary art as well as in the sciences of psychology and neurology.

The reading for this course is available in the University Book Store, and used copies are available on line. Our class discussions will be facilitated if all students use the Signet Classic editions of the plays.

1) John Fleischman, Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science.
2) Elkhonon Goldberg, The New Executive Brain.
3) Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
4) Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra.

Students will be responsible for writing brief essays on questions relevant to our discussions about specific scenes, and one 1000-word essay on a more general question. Each student will also prepare a presentation to the entire class.
If time permits, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus can be added.