Course Details

Course offered Winter 2014

Honors 391 A: "I am Charlotte Simmons": An Interactive Health Seminar Based on the Novel by Tom Wolfe (A&H / SSc / NSc)

Honors 391 A: "I am Charlotte Simmons": An Interactive Health Seminar Based on the Novel by Tom Wolfe (A&H / SSc / NSc)

SLN 14917 (View UW registration info »)

Clarence Spigner (Health Services)
Office: H-692 Health Sciences Building, Box 357660
Phone: 206 616-2948
Email: cspigner@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 30 students

Honors Credit Type

This course is a technology-free zone. Leave laptops, iPads, and smart phones at home!
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.