Current Courses

“Language, of course, is constantly being redefined, not just by demagogues, but by people who employ it. Language is we realized. Each word has passed mouth by mouth over the centuries, changed by intonation and accent, changed by wit and utility.” 

—  Solmaz Sharif, “A Poetry of Proximity” (Kenyon Review 2022).

This Honors Seminar will explore post-1988 literary and cultural works about the imperial geographies and spatial imaginaries of the United States. The year 1968 marked a turning point in struggles to transform existing world orders, with the U.S. as one central site of contestation over radical redistributions of space, wealth and power. Fast-forward to 1988: the closing of the Cold War once again promised global transformations in distributions of space, wealth and power.  What was the role of the U.S. in this post-1988 period?  How did longer-standing practices of U.S. settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism relate to the emerging realities of the approaching millenium?  And why might we turn to literary and cultural works to explore the complex and still-unfinished answers to these questions?

This course proposes that literary and cultural works offer a rich archive for exploring some of the key questions of this period. These works draw attention to the changing ways space, wealth and power are imagined, symbolized, narrated, and materialized, often allowing their audiences to perceive and conceive reality in new ways.  Together we will read a series of critical, literary and cultural works that focus in particular on the “poesis of place,” or how place is seemingly brought into being, in relation to the post-1988 U.S.  Through our readings and discussions, we will explore how language conjures and contests the proximities through which “we” enacts place.

Our reading is not decided yet, will likely select from works by Rabih Alameddine, Zaina Alsous, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Lawrence Chua, Louise Erdrich, Renee Gladman, Kazuo Ishiguro, N.K. Jemisin, Jamaica Kincaid, Solmaz Sharif, Colson Whitehead, Karen Tei Yamashita.

Assignments for the class will focus on engaging these works in class discussion and in weekly short written reflections.  A final project will offer critical and creative options.

Office hours: by appointment after class or other times by zoom

For millennia, Aristotle’s definition of Tragedy as preserved in his treatise Poetics influenced theoreticians and literary artists. In Honors 210 B, we will reexamine this definition as part of his broader theory of mimetic art and his scientific approach to literature. Thereafter we will read plays, Classical and post-Classical, applying this definition as a way of critiquing it and perhaps coming to our own understanding of what “The Tragic” is not only on the stage but in life. The final project will involve the creation of a real or hypothetical dramatic project in which students incorporate their own reactions to Aristotle’s definition; that is, students will describe the “tragedy” that they would write in the wake of our readings and discussions. It is not necessary to write a play, but rather a description of the one that they might imagine producing.

I am still working out details of the course, but for now we will proceed as follows: After two sessions unpacking Poetics, we’ll read four ancient Greek plays (see schedule below) after which we’ll dedicate a class to reflecting on “The Tragic” seen in these plays. Then we will look at four post-Classical plays followed by a class dedicated to reflecting on “The Tragic” in these plays. In the first of two workshops, students will come to class with preliminary ideas about the tragedy they would write and discuss with each other in small groups in order to get productive feedback in preparation for a second workshop in the final week of class. In weeks 8 and 9 we will look at four new plays (not as yet determined) and Fellini’s film The Nights of Cabiria. This will be followed by our third reflection on “The Tragic” in these plays and the film. The hope is that these reflections will provide greater insight into a student’s personal take on the concept of “The Tragic.” In the final week, there will be the second workshop with students again meeting in class in small groups to move the final project forward for submission no later than Friday of Exam Week. During the last day of class there will be a general discussion about what was learned in the course.

There are no exams. Grades will be determined on the basis of participation in class (40%) and the final project (60%)

Remixes have emerged as one of today’s most popular modes of expression. From DJ Spooky’s “Rebirth of a Nation” to the ceaseless onslaught of TikTok mashups, remixes have the power to convey a multiplicity of meanings. This class will use the practice of remix as a foil to explore, interpret, and critique the world of archives and library special collections. Students will learn how to practically navigate the world of in-person archives, both on and off UW’s campus. As part of this process we will learn about archives’ history of colonial extraction, biased and racist description, and such issues as “archival silence.” Students will situate these explorations through literature in remix studies and present these critiques by way of remixing and reframing archival materials they discover. In addition to hands training in digital media editing and copyright law, we will trace the roots of remix to core concepts (e.g., imitatio and mimesis) and practices (e.g., film collage, plunderphonics, fan-vidding, dub, and hip hop).

The Russia’s Big Books courses study one big/epic novel by the titans of Russian literature per quarter. Includes such novels as Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Goncharov’s Oblomov, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, and Nabokov’s Ada. All readings are in English. 

Honors students will complete an extended midterm and complete additional final write-ups/papers. Reflective reports will also be an optional component for Honors students.

Storytelling is ancient, effective, and satisfying, but using stories to communicate the nuances and ambiguities of science can be a challenge. In this course students will craft presentations that reflect their personal interests in nature and science, and in doing so they will learn how to effectively explain their own work, helping them develop into experts in their field. The class is centered around two presentations of a scientific nature, as well as a mythic storytelling assignment intended to develop storytelling skills. You will work closely in small groups to develop your presentation, delivered on days set aside for this purpose.

Data visualization is a method for communicating complex information in a form that makes the underlying data accessible and understandable. Used in every industry from nonprofits to business and from government entities to healthcare, the ability to analyze and create visualizations of complex data is an essential skill for success in today’s world.  Some of the most powerful examples of data visualization were made by a team of black sociologists led by W.E.B. Du Bois, only 37 years after the end of slavery in the United States.  In this course, we will analyze and recreate the visualizations of the Du Bois team as well as create corresponding visualizations with modern data with the potential to make new insights, to raise new questions, and to take positive action.

This course examines how scientific expertise and biotechnical interventions reproduce structures of inequality. Drawing primarily from antiracist and feminist approaches to science and technology studies, students will chart how race and gender are constructed through our scientific understanding of the body and how scientific categories have historically been used to justify and reproduce inequality. In this course, we will also discuss how marginalized groups have reimagined collective identities and resisted bodily violence and premature death.

We will consider the following five propositions for the conduct of good (i.e., ethical and effective) leadership:

1. Leadership involves at its base the creation of a persuaded audience; but beyond that, leadership involves creating and sustaining a more thoughtful public, a public capable of rising above itself.

2. A more thoughtful public must not only be created and sustained, but, given that things inevitably fall apart, must be recovered and reconstituted.

3. Leadership always has a political context; leadership in a democracy is necessarily different than leadership in other kinds of political regimes.

4. Leadership always involves assumptions (tacit and acknowledged) about human nature.

5. In a free political regime, assuming free and fair elections, we get the kinds of leaders we deserve and we must consider how to behave in ways to deserve the kinds of leaders we say we want.

Sources of texts will include Tocqueville, Orwell, Machiavelli, Bacon, Dostoevsky, and Sophocles, as well as contemporary authors. Method of instruction: close reading of texts, coupled with fifteen 1-2 page single-spaced papers on texts, plus a longer (approximately 6,500 words) synthesis paper; small and large group discussions with each other, two lectures, and a visiting scholars/practitioner. 

Professor Soder is glad to talk with you further about any aspect of the course, please reach him via email: rsoder@uw.edu

The course will cover the basics of the international human rights system including various monitoring and enforcement strategies advocates use in different fora, and engage in applied learning. Students will have the opportunity to meet (virtually) with human rights advocates around the world who are working in the areas of gender equality, protection of refugees and displaced persons, and prevention of disability discrimination. Many of the speakers will be engaged in intersectional work to advance rights for persons who hold multiple and complex identities, such as indigenous women with disabilities. One of the objectives of the course will be to encourage students to consider the many ways in which advocates engage human rights discourses to improve the lives of people in their communities and to gain new appreciation for the mechanisms through which human rights law is monitored and implemented at the international and national level. Students will have the opportunity to put what they learn into practice and engage in research projects to support the work of the human rights advocates with whom we meet.

Examines varying configurations of gender and sexuality in the Middle East that disturb race and class hierarchies, policing and state-building, and modern citizenship. Course materials challenge dominant depictions of gender in the region that cast women and non-normative bodies as victims of Islam, demonstrating the substantial role of these social actors in making and sustaining radical social movements and revolutionary times, such as the Arab Spring. Areas of inquiry include nationalism, colonialism, intimacy, reproduction, migration, militancy, resistance, and the politics of culture.

Playwrights, poets, philosophers, filmmakers, sculptors and novelists all use the cosmos as their inspiration and subject matter; scientists themselves have worked in all of these genres in their efforts to communicate with the general public, and also with each other. The class will explore each of these forms, focusing on ideas from physics, math, evolutionary biology and computer science. Students will write reflections based on readings and viewings for each class; they will produce a final project to be presented to their fellow students: a short story, play, extended essay, visual art project, poem. The scientific content must be accurate and deepen our understanding of the subject matter, providing original insights. Students will be encouraged to work in groups and to lead class discussions.

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.

What is the right thing to do? What does it mean to be a good person? Humans have been asking such ethical and moral questions for millennia, and they have come up with some answers. This course is an opportunity for you to read, understand, and critically evaluate many of those answers, from Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, to Kant’s Deontology, to Nel Noddings’ ethics of care, to Gloria Anzaldua’s queer mestiza, and a whole lot in between. We will seek to understand, together, what these great thinkers have argued, what we think of their argument, and how we can use their arguments as an invaluable resource in our own ethical decision-making today.

ChatGPT could not teach this course…or rather, it should not. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot to learn from and about artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI like ChatGPT. The recent explosion of genAI apps and platforms is of course not the beginning, or the end, of the diffusion of AI into our daily lives. Nor are the public debates surrounding the development and public release of this technology ‘new’ exactly. In fact, AI and machine learning (ML) are 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 academic and policy circles, in news and public arenas, as well as through literary and cinematic explorations.

This course takes our current public discussions as a starting point for confronting the complexities of an AI-‘powered’ world. Beginning from some current debates – for example the impacts of genAI in the spheres of education and digital art – we will place these issues and concerns within the context of evolving fields of AI ethics, responsible AI, and AI policy. At the same time, we’ll consider the importance of key concepts from critical social theory (i.e. feminist, critical race, post-colonial, and queer theory) as tools to think critically about difference, inequality and social control. We will read, watch, and listen to a variety of materials – from news articles and policy papers, to academic research and TedTalks, to podcasts and documentaries. The course also includes a unit exploring AI ethics through fictional representations of AI. Across these sources and our class discussions, we will consider many questions, including: How do we weigh the potential benefits of AI against the potential risks and harms that AI magnifies, accelerates, or introduces? What is new and what’s familiar about the power dynamics surrounding the development and deployment of AI systems? What is the current state of AI awareness/AI literacy? How can regulations around data privacy and AI help to prevent harm and protect individual rights?

The course will be discussion driven and students will be expected to be actively engaged in classroom & online discussion spaces.

Is the University an agent of colonialism, capitalism, and the state? Alternatively, is it a crucible for social change and resistance? Is it all of these things? Can it be something else? This course examines the university as simultaneously a crime scene, a site for healing, and a place for transformation.

Find more information here.

HONORS 100 brings first quarter Interdisciplinary Honors students together for a common experience in order to introduce the value of interdisciplinary education and the importance of the integration of knowledge, as well as to help you form connections with your peers and other members of the Honors community. This course is an introduction to the Honors core curriculum and requirements, with the goal of helping students imagine moving your work beyond the classroom into areas such as research, leadership, community and, ultimately, both local and global engagement. HONORS 100 will have three larger lecture meetings throughout the quarter; during the rest of the quarter you will meet in small sections led by a Peer Educator, with a small group of other first quarter Honors students. The lectures will serve as an opportunity to meet others in the Honors community and to acquire a common grounding in the goals and values of the Honors Program; the sections will provide students with a smaller peer cohort, a current student mentor in the form of their HONORS 100 PE, and a chance to get to know the many opportunities of the Honors Program on a personal level. Additionally, throughout the quarter you will also get to: – Meet a few of the many Honors faculty, who will discuss how they came to study what they do, how they gather evidence and resources in their respective disciplines, and why they teach what they do; – Meet a few alums and hear about their experiences in UW Honors and beyond; and – Create your Honors Portfolio and learn how to engage in at least two experiential learning projects during your time at the UW. The portfolio process emphasizes critical reflection of your learning experiences, both inside and outside of the traditional classroom.

HONORS 100 brings first quarter Interdisciplinary Honors students together for a common experience in order to introduce the value of interdisciplinary education and the importance of the integration of knowledge, as well as to help you form connections with your peers and other members of the Honors community. This course is an introduction to the Honors core curriculum and requirements, with the goal of helping students imagine moving your work beyond the classroom into areas such as research, leadership, community and, ultimately, both local and global engagement. HONORS 100 will have three larger lecture meetings throughout the quarter; during the rest of the quarter you will meet in small sections led by a Peer Educator, with a small group of other first quarter Honors students. The lectures will serve as an opportunity to meet others in the Honors community and to acquire a common grounding in the goals and values of the Honors Program; the sections will provide students with a smaller peer cohort, a current student mentor in the form of their HONORS 100 PE, and a chance to get to know the many opportunities of the Honors Program on a personal level. Additionally, throughout the quarter you will also get to: – Meet a few of the many Honors faculty, who will discuss how they came to study what they do, how they gather evidence and resources in their respective disciplines, and why they teach what they do; – Meet a few alums and hear about their experiences in UW Honors and beyond; and – Create your Honors Portfolio and learn how to engage in at least two experiential learning projects during your time at the UW. The portfolio process emphasizes critical reflection of your learning experiences, both inside and outside of the traditional classroom.

For Biochemistry majors and molecular and cell biology majors. Core concepts in biochemistry, including protein structure, compartmentalization of reactions, thermodynamics and kinetics in a biological context, energy production, and regulation of metabolic pathways. HONORS BIOC covers the same topics as BIOC 440, but emphasizes group exercises and analysis of primary literature.

CHEM 145 and CHEM 155 cover material in CHEM 142, CHEM 152, and CHEM 162. Includes laboratory. No more than the number of credits indicated can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: CHEM 142, CHEM145 (5 credits); CHEM 145, CHEM 155, CHEM 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 organic laboratory accompanies this course. No more than 5 credits can be counted toward graduation from the following course group: CHEM 221, CHEM 223, CHEM 237, CHEM 335.

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.

Instructor:  MiSun Bishop, English

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 K 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.

English 182K (Honors) syllabus

Intermediate Multimodal Composition:Strategies for composing effective multimodal texts for print, digital physical delivery, with focus on affordances of various modes–words, images, sound, design, and gesture–and genres to address specific rhetorical situations both within and beyond the academy. Although the course has no prerequisites, instructors assume knowledge of academic writing.

Examines the structure of the American legal system and how laws are made. Surveys key doctrinal areas of the law learning fundamental legal concepts, and explore how the law functions and evolves over time, including legal issues and decision-making related to statutory or common law.

Covers the material of MATH 124, MATH 125, MATH 126; MATH 307, MATH 308. First year of a two-year accelerated sequence. May receive advanced placement (AP) credit for MATH 124 after taking MATH 134. 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 300, MATH 309, MATH 324, MATH 327, MATH 328, and MATH 427. Second year of an accelerated two-year sequence; prepares students for senior-level mathematics courses.

Addresses same material as PHYS 121 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 114, PHYS 117, PHYS 121, and PHYS 141.