Honors Course Archive
Course Archive for Winter 2019
Except where noted*, current Interdisciplinary Honors students may self-register using the SLN/MyPlan. If you have any questions regarding what category a course will fulfill, please check your degree audit on MyPlan and/or contact us here.
* Add codes are placed on all courses one week after the first day of the quarter. If you need an add code, please email the course instructor for permission, and once approved, forward the confirmation from your instructor to uwhonors@uw.edu. We will be in touch with registration details as soon as possible.
- Honors Arts & Humanities (6)
- Honors Science (3)
- Honors Social Sciences (2)
- Honors Interdisciplinary (5)
- HONORS 100/496 (2)
- Honors Electives (12)
- Special Topics (3)
Honors Arts & Humanities (6)
HONORS-prefix courses
HONORS 211 A: Okinawa in the Japanese Literary Imagination (A&H)
HONORS 211 A: Okinawa in the Japanese Literary Imagination (A&H)
SLN 15339 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
In addition to introducing students to the variety of literature and film from and about Okinawa, the course will train students to read carefully and critically; to develop the ability to construct sound readings of literary works, and to argue these readings persuasively in English. All course material will be considered historically as well as analytically.
No knowledge of Japanese is required; all works are in English translation and films are subtitled.
HONORS 211 B: Karma and Free Will in Indian Philosophy (A&H)
HONORS 211 B: Karma and Free Will in Indian Philosophy (A&H)
SLN 15340 (View UW registration info »)
Office: Gowen 231, Box 353521
Phone: 206-543-4096
Email: prem@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students
HONORS 211 C: Ways of Meaning (A&H, DIV)
HONORS 211 C: Ways of Meaning (A&H, DIV)
SLN 15343 (View UW registration info »)
Office: Padelford A217, Box 354335
Phone: 206-543-7691
Email: dziwirek@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students
HONORS 211 D: Analyzing Invented Languages: from Elvish to Dothraki (A&H)
HONORS 211 D: Analyzing Invented Languages: from Elvish to Dothraki (A&H)
SLN 15344 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
We will read Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages, with its account of auxiliary languages like Esperanto, and we will consider speculative fictional depictions of conlangs by J.R.R. Tolkien, Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Burgess, Ted Chiang, Suzette Haden Elgin, Richard Adams, and Cathy Park Hong, as well as the screen depictions of Klingon, Na’vi, and Dothraki. We will also look at the role of the internet in the recent explosion of interest in and circulation of invented language; this is, according the Guardian newspaper, a “golden age of fictional languages.”
This course satisfies the university “W” requirement for intensive writing. No background in linguistics or literature is necessary, only enthusiasm.
HONORS 241 A: Big Books: War & Peace (A&H)
HONORS 241 A: Big Books: War & Peace (A&H)
SLN 15351 (View UW registration info »)
Office: A219 Padelford Hall, Box 354335
Phone: 206-543-6848
Email: galya@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 15 students
HONORS 241 C: Russian Crime Fiction (A&H)
HONORS 241 C: Russian Crime Fiction (A&H)
SLN 15353 (View UW registration info »)
Office: M256 Smith Hall, Box 353580
Phone: 543-7580
Email: jos23@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 15 students
Honors students required to complete a longer mid-term, and either a longer final exam or a 10-12 page paper.
Honors Science (3)
HONORS-prefix courses
HONORS 221 A: Evolution and Human Behavior (NSc)
HONORS 221 A: Evolution and Human Behavior (NSc)
SLN 15345 (View UW registration info »)
Office: 205D Burke Museum, Box 351800
Phone: (206) 547-6330
Email: herronjc@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students
-Why are women and men different?
-Which is more egalitarian: monogamy or polygamy?
-Why do step-parents and step-children often have more conflicted relationships than biological parents and biological children?
-When do people cooperate, when are they selfish, and why?
-What can we do to reduce the rate of spousal abuse and homicide?
My goal is to help students learn selection thinking; that is, to help them learn to reason like evolutionary biologists. I hope to help students pose questions, formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and critically evaluate the quality of evidence. After taking this course, students will be able to:
-Apply evolutionary theory to human interactions, especially those involving social conflict, and make predictions about how the divergent interests of the parties involved will affect their behavior.
-Design observational studies and experiments to test these predictions.
-Interpret and critically evaluate graphs and tables showing data on behavioral patterns in humans and animals.
-Provide evolutionary interpretations of various human social institutions, such as laws, wills, and social policies.
HONORS 221 B: Evolution and Human Behavior (NSc)
HONORS 221 B: Evolution and Human Behavior (NSc)
SLN 15346 (View UW registration info »)
Office: 205D Burke Museum, Box 351800
Phone: (206) 547-6330
Email: herronjc@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students
-Why are women and men different?
-Which is more egalitarian: monogamy or polygamy?
-Why do step-parents and step-children often have more conflicted relationships than biological parents and biological children?
-When do people cooperate, when are they selfish, and why?
-What can we do to reduce the rate of spousal abuse and homicide?
My goal is to help students learn selection thinking; that is, to help them learn to reason like evolutionary biologists. I hope to help students pose questions, formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and critically evaluate the quality of evidence. After taking this course, students will be able to:
-Apply evolutionary theory to human interactions, especially those involving social conflict, and make predictions about how the divergent interests of the parties involved will affect their behavior.
-Design observational studies and experiments to test these predictions.
-Interpret and critically evaluate graphs and tables showing data on behavioral patterns in humans and animals.
-Provide evolutionary interpretations of various human social institutions, such as laws, wills, and social policies.
HONORS 221 C: Game Theory and Its Applications (NSc)
HONORS 221 C: Game Theory and Its Applications (NSc)
SLN 15347 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
Game theory is a math toolkit used to analyze games. It’s a way to formalize games, to think about their strategies, their dynamics, and the expected actions of others. Game theory is the study of how we do — and do not — get along.
While many game theory courses focus on the mathematical formalism of games, this course will focus on its applications. Because “games” are found in biology, economics, politics, and philosophy, and because game theory itself is mathematical, this course is interdisciplinary.
In this course, students will:
– learn game theoretic concepts like “actors”, “decisions”, “strategies”, “information”, “payoffs”, “equilibria”, and “rationality”
– learn how to formalize games in extensive and strategic form
– practice formalizing biological, economical, and political games
– learn to solve games (according to the criteria they have decided is most important)
– practice thinking probabilistically, both in games (eg, Bayesian games) and in strategies (eg, mixed equilibria)
– practice the full process of (1) translating real-world problems into math, (2) solving the math, and (3) translating the solution back into real-world strategies
– discuss the assumptions and limitations of the above process
– identify “games” in their own lives, and apply game theory to those games
Honors Social Sciences (2)
HONORS-prefix courses
HONORS 231 A: Bull of Heaven and Earth: Animal-Human Relations from Paleolithic Cave Art to the Chicago Stockyards (SSc)
HONORS 231 A: Bull of Heaven and Earth: Animal-Human Relations from Paleolithic Cave Art to the Chicago Stockyards (SSc)
SLN 15349 (View UW registration info »)
Office: Smith Hall, Room 206B, Box 353560
Phone: 206-890-0241
Email: jwalker@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 28 students
HONORS 231 B: The History of the Social Sciences (SSc)
HONORS 231 B: The History of the Social Sciences (SSc)
SLN 15350 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
Honors Interdisciplinary (5)
HONORS-prefix courses
HONORS 345 A: Prison Logics and Abolition Futures (C, DIV)
HONORS 345 A: Prison Logics and Abolition Futures (C, DIV)
SLN 15354 (View UW registration info »)
Email: wmck@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
In the United States today, more than 2.3 million people are living in prison. More than 324 million are living in a prison society. In this course, we will study both – the prison and the US prison society – to ask how did we get here? what does this mean for everyday life? and how might we create alternatives beyond the prison? This course focuses on mass incarceration in the US, but also interrogates the complex and transnational forces that underpin and undermine this reality – social control, power relations, cultural politics, resistance, and hope. Together we will engage this study through a mixture of classroom dialogue, multi-genre writing and peer review, and in-class and out-of-class activities that will ask you to consider your own place in relation to the prison. Drawing on a wide range of materials – evidence-based research, prisoner memoir, government policy, architectural design, social theory, activism, and science fiction – this course will ask you to consider what you think about prisons and how prisons became thinkable.
HONORS 391 A: Alter/Native Ethnography (A&H / SSc / NSc, DIV)
HONORS 391 A: Alter/Native Ethnography (A&H / SSc / NSc, DIV)
SLN 15355 (View UW registration info »)
Email: rrc4@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students
Today we suspect that the dichotomy between native and anthropologist is fundamentally flawed. As “hybridization of cultures, languages and media becomes the rule, any notion of purity has disappeared” (Halleck and Magnan 1993:161), and the boundaries between observer and observed, oppressed and oppressor are known to be blurred, overlapping, mutually constituting, shifting and variable over time and space. Yet there is still a critical need to examine the theoretical, epistemological and practical contributions of the “counter-discourses”, the “narratives from the borderlands” of alternative historical voices.
HONORS 391 B: Climate Change: An Interdisciplinary Perspective: Science, Art, and Activism (A&H / SSc / NSc)
HONORS 391 B: Climate Change: An Interdisciplinary Perspective: Science, Art, and Activism (A&H / SSc / NSc)
SLN 15356 (View UW registration info »)
Office: 3707 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Box 359485
Phone: 425-502-5243
Email: bobpavia@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 20 students
HONORS 394 A: Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (A&H / SSc)
HONORS 394 A: Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (A&H / SSc)
SLN 15357 (View UW registration info »)
Office: Denny 262 B, Box 353110
Phone: 206- 543-2266
Email: cconnors@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
historical awareness –knowledge of basic historical realities of women and of family life, limitations and biases of surviving evidence, how different Greece and Rome are from each other, and from now; a sense of how political institutions can intervene in family relations
critical awareness — an understanding of the history of changing interpretations of the ancient world — how what people see in ancient Greece or Rome can also articulate what they value in their own cultures
self-awareness — a sensitivity to the forces (laws, customs, stereotypes, images and more) shaping our own social relations.
HONORS 394 B: Exploring the Power of Music (A&H / SSc)
HONORS 394 B: Exploring the Power of Music (A&H / SSc)
SLN 22015 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 15 students
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.
HONORS 100/496 (2)
Honors Electives (12)
Other Honors courses (without HONORS-prefix)
ARCH 351 B: Romanesque, Gothic, And Renaissance Architecture (A&H)
ARCH 351 B: Romanesque, Gothic, And Renaissance Architecture (A&H)
SLN 10340 (View UW registration info »)
Office: 208N Gould Hall, Box 355720
Phone: 206 685-8455
Email: ahuppert@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 15 students
You must register for both lecture (ARCH 351B) and section (BA). The Honors section will explore the "Networks and Flows of People and Materials and Ideas"
Honors students: please email uwhonors@uw.edu for an add code. If you have questions about the course, feel free to email instructor at: ahuppert@uw.edu Additional $17 course fee. Arch 351 is a 5-credit honors section that provides an opportunity for deeper exploration of the course content of Arch 351. Through readings, discussions and individual research, the section focuses on the networks and flows of people, materials, and ideas surrounding architecture and the built environment around the world in the period from about 700 to 1750. Course Requirements The requirements are regular attendance and active participation at Friday section meetings and weekly lectures, completion of required readings, a mid-term and final exam (taken with Arch 351A), and a research project. Students will develop individual research papers and a digitally-based presentation centered on images and maps. Learning Objectives • Understand how networks and exchange influenced world architectural developments in the medieval and early modern periods • Develop research and writing skills centered on architectural history • Expand knowledge of digital tools, including • Explore the place of imagery in understanding architecture
BIOCHEM 451 H: Honors Biochem (NSc)
BIOCHEM 451 H: Honors Biochem (NSc)
SLN 11328 (View UW registration info »)
Office: J-367 Health Sciences, Box 357350
Phone: 206 543-1694
Email: dmorris@uw.edu
Email: amweiner@uw.edu
Credits: 4
Limit: 15 students
CHEM 155: Honors General Chemistry (NSc)
CHEM 155: Honors General Chemistry (NSc)
SLN 12164 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 72 students
Prerequisite: 2.2 in Honors CHEM 145.
Students must also sign up for Section AA, AB, or AC. See Time Schedule for day/time information.
CHEM 336: Honors Organic Chemistry (NSc)
CHEM 336: Honors Organic Chemistry (NSc)
SLN 12301 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 4
Limit: 72 students
Prerequisite: 2.2 in Honors CHEM 335.
CHEM 346: Organic Chemistry Honors Laboratory (NSc)
CHEM 346: Organic Chemistry Honors Laboratory (NSc)
SLN 12302 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 3
Limit: 24 students
Prerequisite: 2.2 in Honors CHEM 335.
CSE 142: Computer Programming I (NSc)
CSE 142: Computer Programming I (NSc)
SLN 12938 (View UW registration info »)
Office: Allen Center, Room 552, Box 352350
Phone: 206-685-9138
Email: reges@uw.edu
Credits: 4+1
Limit: 25 students
To earn Honors credit, students must register for: 1. CSE 142 lecture A or B 2. corresponding CSE 142 section 3. CSE 390 H AND 4. corresponding CSE 390 H section See Time Schedule for course day, time and SLN for both lecture and CSE 390. 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.
CSE 143: Computer Programming II (NSc)
CSE 143: Computer Programming II (NSc)
SLN 12939 (View UW registration info »)
Office: Allen Center, Room 552, Box 352350
Phone: 206-685-9138
Email: reges@uw.edu
Credits: 4+1
Limit: 24 students
To earn Honors credit, students must register for: 1. CSE 142 lecture A or B 2. corresponding CSE 142 section 3. CSE 390 H AND 4. corresponding CSE 390 H section See Time Schedule for course day, time and SLN for both lecture and CSE 390. 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.
L ARCH 353: History Of Modern Landscape Architecture (A&H / SSc)
L ARCH 353: History Of Modern Landscape Architecture (A&H / SSc)
SLN 16130 (View UW registration info »)
Office: 348F Gould Hall, Box 355734
Phone: 206 685-2523
Email: tway@uw.edu
Credits: 5
Limit: 5 students
Second course in the L ARCH History series. CONTACT PROF. THAISA WAY, TWAY@UW.EDU with course questions and L ARCH adviser, Nick Dreher (ndreher@uw.edu), for add code.
What makes a good urban landscape? A great public park? An inspiring work of landscape art? This course will explore the history of designing and creating gardens and landscapes in diverse cultures and
places as the profession and practice of landscape architecture has become a leading field in the design and creation of newly imagined city spaces and places. We will begin in the 19th century with Central Park, in New York City, one of the first public parks designed for the public and work our way up to the postindustrial parks and landscapes of the late 20th century. We will study small gardens that inspire the poet and large nature preserves, as well as city plazas, corporate roof gardens,
and the neighborhood park.
We will explore how modern art and architecture influence landscape design and in turn how environmental thinking influenced the push for sustainable cities. What does it mean to be modern? How does creativity shape the design of natural landscapes? This course provides an historic and critical overview of the evolution of modernism and modernist designs in terms of aesthetic, technological, social, and spiritual concerns in the built landscape. Moving between practice and theory, between design, as a creative art and as a way of thinking, we will consider diverse modernisms across the Americas and Europe.
LAW 310 H: Law, Science, and Technology (SSc)
LAW 310 H: Law, Science, and Technology (SSc)
SLN 16195 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 4
Limit: 5 students
Will only count towards Honors Additional Any credit
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.
MATH 135: Accelerated Honors Calculus (NSc)
MATH 135: Accelerated Honors Calculus (NSc)
SLN 16993 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 35 students
Students must have completed or be in Honors MATH 134.
MATH 335: Honors Accelerated Advanced Calculus (NSc)
MATH 335: Honors Accelerated Advanced Calculus (NSc)
SLN 17076 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 40 students
Prerequisite: minimum grade of 2.0 in MATH 334.
PHYS 122 B: Honors Electromagnetism (NSc)
PHYS 122 B: Honors Electromagnetism (NSc)
SLN 19032 (View UW registration info »)
Credits: 5
Limit: 66 students
Prerequisite: either MATH 125 or MATH 134, which may be taken concurrently; PHYS 121.
See Physics department for more info.
Special Topics (3)
HONORS-prefix courses
HONORS 397 A: Human/Transhuman/Posthuman (SSc)
HONORS 397 A: Human/Transhuman/Posthuman (SSc)
SLN 15358 (View UW registration info »)
Email: jwhelan@uw.edu
Credits: 2, c/nc
Limit: 15 students
In a weekly, two-hour seminar format, the course will give students the opportunity to engage with the work of a wide variety of thinkers and artists so that they might become acquainted with the dynamic cultural landscape that is profoundly changing what it means to be human.
The themes for each week are listed below. The instructor will provide background information and resources to acquaint students with the different perspectives they will encounter, but the main goal of the course is to provide an opportunity for lively discussion around a topic that is of central concern for all thoughtful human beings: What do you think it means to be human?
Week 1: Overview of Course Goals: Our Postmodern Condition
Week 2. Deconstructing the Self 1: From Nietzsche to the Post-Nietzschean Anti-humanists.
Week 3: Deconstructing the Self 2: Buddhist and other Non-Western Perspectives
Week 4: Personalist Humanism: From the Renaissance to the Romantics
Week 5. The Rationalist Project: From Enlightenment Humanism to Technological
Transhumanism
Week 6. The Disenchantment with Rationality: The Poststructuralist Critique of the Enlightenment
Project.
Week 7: Religious Humanism: From Kierkegaard to Buber and Beyond
Week 8: Eschaton as Upload: The Body, Gnosticism, and the Posthuman
Week 9: The Human Social-Political Future: Markets, Marx, or Something Else?
Week 10: Wrap
HONORS 397 B: Personal Genomics and Personal Identity (SSc, DIV)
HONORS 397 B: Personal Genomics and Personal Identity (SSc, DIV)
SLN 15359 (View UW registration info »)
Office: 205D Burke Museum, Box 351800
Phone: (206) 547-6330
Email: herronjc@uw.edu
Email: mdraper@uw.edu
Credits: 2, c/nc
Limit: 16 students
ancestry, and identity. In this seminar, we will offer the opportunity
to explore issues raised by this conversation in a collegial and
collaborative setting. Readings and conversations will cover topics
ranging from personal identity in a social and political context to
human health and evolution in the context of genetics.
HONORS 398 A: Experiencing Music (A&H)
HONORS 398 A: Experiencing Music (A&H)
SLN 15360 (View UW registration info »)
Phone: 206 604-1831
Email: marini@uw.edu
Credits: 3, c/nc
Limit: 25 students
Join us at the Seattle Symphony for the class “Experiencing Music”! No musical training is necessary – just bring your curiosity and your willingness to engage in the communal experience of live music at the highest level. All students are welcome to sign up for Honors 398. We will be going to five concerts at Benaroya Hall throughout the quarter on the following evenings: tentative dates are Thurs., Jan 16; Thurs. Jan 30; Thurs. Feb. 6; Thurs. Feb 27; Fri. March 6; Thurs. March 12.
We’ll prepare for these concerts through discussions and readings in classes held on campus, we’ll have talks given by Symphony staff, and we’ll go on a backstage tour. Students will purchase the Symphony’s Campus Card ($30); all ticket arrangements will be made by the instructors. Questions? Contact Claudia Jensen (cjensen@uw.edu).