Honors Course Archive

With cultural convening practices centered around participatory music, community radio, and collective media-making, this class connects students to creative practice as social justice. These convening practices offer solace and inspiration in times of crisis and break barriers to create solidarity across cultures. Guest speakers include Quetzal Flores and MacArthur Genius Awardee UW alumnae Martha Gonzalez sharing workshops animating resilience through community arts and music within the fandango music movement as well as other music traditions like the Japanese American Taiko drum and Obon. Other guest speakers and site visits include the Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities Oral History Archive; DE CAJóN (whose focus is cultural and music contributions by people of African descent in Peru); Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle-MÁS (with a focus on global Afrolatino music and culture) and local hip hop organizations. Additionally, discussions will examine how community music traditions from Spain’s Andalusian Gitano communities dialogue with traditions from the Americas as practiced in Seattle. Students will participate in the UW Sound Collabortory’s “Party in the Archive” featuring ethnomusicologist librarian John Vallier in conjunction with Yale Professor Daphne Brooks’s Spring Distinguished Katz lecture on her new book, Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound. Readings include Traditional Arts as Restorative Justice and Traditional Arts as Healing From Trauma: A Workbook for Building Wellness. Other possible events include UW First Nations Pow Wow, Seattle’s Union Cultural Center (as they arise), and The Northwest Folklife Festival.

Examines the works of Vladimir Nabokov, from his early novels written in Europe to his later masterpieces, including Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire, and Ada.

The topic of this class is Seattle music. Much of our time will be spent delving into its history, beginning with early accounts of Coast Salish and settler colonial musics and running up through the 2020s. While we celebrate Seattle’s unique musical heritage, we will also critically examine those policies and practices that disproportionately harmed BIPOC and other traditionally marginalized communities (e.g., exclusion laws, segregation, redlining, police corruption, Teen Dance Ordinance). 

The goals of this class include:

• familiarize students with the history of Seattle music (i.e., not just grunge)
• familiarize students with Seattle’s often turbulent social-cultural history and how this impacted local music production and consumption;
• continue to build out the Seattle Sounds archive with input from students;
• familiarize students with the functions of an institutional music archive;
• continue to construct the Seattle Sounds local music map app with help from students

Learning Outcomes:

• in-depth knowledge of Seattle’s past and present music scenes;
• in-depth understanding of Seattle’s social-cultural histories;
• familiarity with the functions of a large audiovisual archive;
• more nuanced understanding of what we mean by the term “music”;
• greater familiarity with Seattle’s physical geography;
• introduction to digital humanities mapping software and tools.

It’s a given among many scientists that understanding how the natural world works (including mathematics) is an invaluable guide to understanding both the origins and evolution of human values. Yet these ideas rarely make it into humanities courses. Quantum mechanics offers insight into how  deep truths can appear to be mutually exclusive; special and general relativity demonstrate the power of constants that don’t change no matter what (symmetries), and how notions we accept as fundamental (like space and time) sometimes aren’t. The mathematics of game theory makes strong arguments that cooperative strategies are, in the long run, more successful than ruthlessly competitive ones, and that symmetry can inform fairness. Biology illuminates how symbiotic relations have been central to evolution, and how all life is connected. The “environment” is not something “out there,” separate from us. It IS us. Indeed, everything in the universe is connected, including matter and energy; a sense of community is built into nature. Neuroscience and psychology have given us an understanding of why we so easily fall into logical and destructive behaviors, why we fail to see the future consequences of our actions, why we find it nearly impossible to admit mistakes or “see” any “truths” we do not expect.

Students will read widely in physics, philosophy, mathematics, evolutionary biology. They will be responsible for written assignments based on those readings, independent study and presentations. Students will be encouraged to apply what they learn to their own fields of study and also to their personal lives.

This seminar course will utilize a flipped classroom model to investigate all aspects of pain; from the anatomy and physiology and psychology that create this common complaint, to the sociology, history, ethics, legal and medical issues that are associated with pain. This course does not presuppose any educational background and is open to students in any major.

What does it mean to think? How are computers different from people? How are they the same? This is a seminar class about asking deep questions about intelligence and exploring their far-reaching consequences. Through daily readings, discussions, and a course project, students will survey the history of approaches in artificial intelligence as well as related disciplines like neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and psychology. We will cover concepts such as alignment, connectionism, consciousness, causation, decidability, generalizability, information, learning, and symbolism.

The overall objective of this course is to consider how natural history and culture museums – and museum collections – play a vital role in scientific and cultural research, learning, and engagement. This interdisciplinary course will take place at the Burke, where students will explore both the behind-the-scene spaces (collections and research) and the public faces (exhibit and education programs) of a modern natural history and culture museum. Students will examine first-hand the Burke Museum’s paleontology, biology, archaeology, and arts and cultures collections; learn about current museum research; and assess existing museum exhibits. Specific topics will include: the history of museums; decolonization and DEAI (diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion) practices; curation and conservation; collection-based scientific and cultural research; exhibit development, design, and evaluation; museum audiences and learning programs; and community outreach and engagement. Students will learn how to curate museum collections, how to study collection objects, how to create meaningful connections across disciplines, how to share research findings and powerful stories, how to build community, and ultimately – how to make museums matter. The course will be taught through the interdisciplinary lens of natural science, culture, and lived experience; and students will have the opportunity to interact with various museum professionals across the institution. Supplemental readings will offer additional context and help facilitate classroom conversations; individual writing assignments and group presentations will provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of natural history and culture museums in the 21st century.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have become ubiquitous elements of our 21^st century world – both in digital platforms and IRL. At times, it seems that the trajectory of AI development is outpacing the ability of global societies and citizens to both understand the technology and grapple with the ethical challenges it presents. Yet, we have also been actively debating many aspects of AI ethics for decades – in news and public arenas, as well as through literary and cinematic explorations. This course brings such explorations and debates together – taking fiction as a starting point for confronting the complexities of an AI-‘powered’ world.

Close reading of science-fiction novels and short stories, and viewing films & TV series, will be coupled with readings in critical theory (i.e. AI ethics; feminist, critical race, Indigenous, post-colonial and queer theory). These pieces will provide students with the tools to think critically about difference, inequality and social control, in order to analyze these elements within science-fiction & fantasy story-telling. News articles and policy documents will also provide context and fodder for discussion of what it means to ‘govern’ AI. Using these non-fiction texts, we will examine how sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction focused on AI present particular kinds of questions for our contemporary society, including: what exactly makes us human, and who gets to define what is and is not human? What is new and is familiar about the power dynamics surrounding the development and deployment of AI systems?  

In 2022, the Dobbs Decision made abortion access illegal in many U.S. states, ushering a post-Roe reality where the Constitution no longer protects the fundamental right of bodily autonomy. But what if some communities were already living in a post-Roe environment, long before 2022? What if the fundamental promise of Roe v. Wade was actualized for some communities at the exclusion of others, specifically Black, Indigenous and People of Color?

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the history and contemporary politics of reproduction. We will explore how the focus on abortion and care as the most significant determining factors of reproductive rights has silenced the reproductive histories and experiences of communities furthest away from justice. We will examine how reproductive justice as a framework and a movement repositions reproductive rights in a political context of intersecting race, gender, class, and other forms of oppression. Live, in-person dialogues with contemporary community organizers and reproductive justice leaders will enrich our learning.

Course Goals
Students in this course will gain broad exposure to a number of intersecting reproductive health and social justice issues. Our examination of these issues is centered on the interdisciplinary theorizing of feminist, social scientist, and public health scholars among others with the lived experiences of belonging to and working with communities most impacted by reproductive health inequities.

Learning Outcomes
You will learn to:
1) Apply a reproductive justice lens to identify an array of intersecting reproductive health and social justice issues
2) Explain the historical and contemporary root causes of reproductive health inequities
3) Recognize factors that maintain and exacerbate reproductive health inequities among BIPOC and other communities furthest from justice
4) Describe how communities are organizing to uproot inequities at the core of reproductive health disparities
5) The ability to easily and openly discuss issues of reproductive justice, power, and marginality
6) Recognize your role, responsibility, and opportunities to take action in advancing reproductive justice

Through classroom and field experiences, examine the social, design, political, and ecological factors in urban systems that promote healthy urban neighborhoods and the integration of urban communities and ecological realities. Use these interactions to gain a deeper awareness of how these systems function in relationship to each other, to social and economic diversity, and to growth management and climate change. Use a Race and Social Justice (RSJ) screen as a key element in evaluating how communities are shaped.

Learning Objectives:
1. To acquire a basic knowledge of the emerging strategies for designing sustainable urban systems and the story of how growth management strategies and urban design philosophies are shaping the new city environment.
2. To deepen awareness of how this impacts diverse communities and how these communities can interact and work together in the urban environment.
3. To understand how planning urban communities can promote social, cultural, and ecological health.
4. To understand the concept of a Race and Social Justice screen, to practice applying an RSJ screen to community development, and to develop critical thinking skills around the concept of using tools such as the RSJ screen to address issues in urban communities.

This course is an immersive class intended to increase awareness of events that have both shaped and disrupted systems of racism and oppression in the United States. We will examine historical context, engage in opportunities for self-reflection and dialogue, and explore how to take action and make contributions both personally and professionally.

As W. E. B. Dubois famously observed, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” Where, how and by whom that line has been drawn has changed over time and across geography. In Seattle, a relatively large but now mostly invisible set of communities from the lands of the former Ottoman Empire–Sephardic Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Turks, and Arabs–troubled the “color line” a century ago. Under the influence of “race science” thinking of the era, in 1925 the Seattle Times classified these populations as “half-breeds”–partly European and partly “Asiatic,” but not quite “white.”

This course explores the experiences of those from the former Ottoman Empire who settled in Seattle, their encounters with U. S. immigration and naturalization policies, their establishment of new communities, their civic engagement in the city, and the ways in their presence contributed to defining the boundaries between who is “white” and who is not. Despite their precarious position, members of these communities contributed to the establishment of major local icons, such as Pike Place Market, Benaroya Hall, and Applets and Cotlets, Washington’s unofficial state candy.

This course offers opportunities for field trips to important sites pertaining to the past and present of these communities–in the Central District and elsewhere—as well as conversation and dialogue with members of the communities today. Finally, the course enables students to embark in public facing digital projects related to oral history, local history, digital mapping projects, and more. 

This undergraduate seminar examines the forms in which Chicana and Latina feminist practices of the art of solidarity are embodied, including theoretical texts, poetry, music, & other creative works. We consider how feminist theory has transformed and been transformed by intellectual, poetic, and aesthetic traditions as it moves throughout the U.S. borderlands and across Abya Yala (known as North, Central, and South America). Each seminar meeting consists of a brief lecture, discussion break-out groups, a mid-way break, and a viewing/listening to relevant film, media or audio texts, guest speaker, or assignment workshop. This quarter seminar is linked to the Sound Collaboratory Symposium and Yale University Professor Daphne Brooks’s Distinguished Katz Lecture. Brooks is author of Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, Harvard University Press.

Within an indigenous pedagogical format, this interactive class will be used as a space to do lovework and critically engage with notions of love, where our understandings of love have come from, and how we can proceed with a love consciousness. We will ponder and attempt to perceive how love is incorporated into our daily lives.

We will vision possible logic trajectories and frames of understandings in which love, or lack thereof, is included – both individually and societally. Musical, biological, philosophical, psychological, religious, political, cultural, artistic, linguistic, and social perspectives of love will be discussed. We will search for love knowledges and we will seek stories about love in our own lives. We will look at how love has been used in history and then, we will vision how love can be put into action as a force for creating our futures that include values of equity, anti-oppression, and positive changes within social institutions.

This course is intended to be an intervention into contemporary practices so that we can better understand our connections and relationships. It is an encouragement to act in ways that better respect ourselves, others, and our world.

Specific skills we will practice to enhance our perceptions, ponderings and critical thinking are: build community, work together, develop awareness, share ideas, listen, hear, read, write, speak, sing, find joy and humor, make connections, balance, foster wonder, respect, imagine, vision, strategize, tell stories, and practice self-love.

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.

Computer programming for students with some previous programming experience. Emphasizes program design, style, and decomposition. Uses data structures (e.g., lists, dictionaries, sets) to solve computational problems motivated by modern societal and scientific needs. Introduces data abstraction and interface versus implementation. Recommended: CSE 121 or completion of Paul G. Allen School’s Guided Self-Placement.

Computer programming for students with significant previous programming experience. Emphasizes implementation and run-time analysis of data structures and algorithms using techniques including linked references, recursion, and object-oriented inheritance to solve computational problems motivated by modern societal and scientific needs. Recommended: CSE 122 or completion of Paul G. Allen School’s Guided Self-Placement.

What does it mean to think? How are computers different from people? How are they the same? This is a seminar class about asking deep questions about intelligence and exploring their far-reaching consequences. Through daily readings, discussions, and a course project, students will survey the history of approaches in artificial intelligence as well as related disciplines like neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and psychology. We will cover concepts such as alignment, connectionism, consciousness, causation, decidability, generalizability, information, learning, and symbolism.

English 182 focuses on teaching strategies and skills for effective writing and argument that are required of traditional academic genres, such as the research essay, while also expanding the skills for composing in multimodal genres that our increasingly digital and media saturated world demands.

Section H is an Honors discussion driven class with minimal lecturing and grounded in a disability studies analytic.  Students will reflect on their own growth as scholars and their learning process as an evolving product. Honors students will write longer reflective papers with emphasis on metacognitive critical takeaways.

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.

Addresses same material as PHYS 123 in more depth and with additional topics such as current research and cross-disciplinary applications. For students with strong calculus preparation. Maximum 5 credits allowed for any combination of PHYS 116, PHYS 119, PHYS 123, and PHYS 143. 

Honors 100 Peer Educator Spring prep seminar.