HONORS 100 brings first quarter Interdisciplinary Honors students together for a common experience 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 a balance of larger lecture meetings and smaller quiz sections throughout the quarter. 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 Peer Facilitator, and a chance to get to know the many opportunities and resources available at UW and in the Honors Program. Additionally, throughout the quarter you will have opportunities to: hear from other Honors students, staff, and faculty; create your Honors Portfolio which process emphasizes critical reflection of your learning experiences; learn how to engage in experiential learning activities; and begin your understanding of what an interdisciplinary education looks like for you.

HONORS 100 brings first quarter Interdisciplinary Honors students together for a common experience 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 a balance of larger lecture meetings and smaller quiz sections throughout the quarter. 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 Peer Facilitator, and a chance to get to know the many opportunities and resources available at UW and in the Honors Program. Additionally, throughout the quarter you will have opportunities to: hear from other Honors students, staff, and faculty; create your Honors Portfolio which process emphasizes critical reflection of your learning experiences; learn how to engage in experiential learning activities; and begin your understanding of what an interdisciplinary education looks like for you.

This course explores current practices of socio-cultural, political-economic, environmental, gender and ethnic activism that engage aesthetic forms to expand participation, redefine the style of mobilization, and reconfigure the realm of the political. We will focus on how individual and collective aesthetic strategies, including graffiti, street art, theater, film, performance and media, work to strengthen awareness of unevenly distributed life chances (often gendered and geographic); the hollowing out of structures of job security; right-wing populism, war, occupation, and military rule. We will pay particular attention to how artistic practices and the ideas that inform them circulate and accumulate across national-cultural terrains, adding to what Susan Buck-Morss has called the “mimetic” qualities of political movements that make “the experience visible to others for whom the horizon of the possible expands.” Beyond the U.S. our examples will be drawn from East Asia, Eastern Europe (Hungary in particular), Latin America and the Middle East

Unlike printed books filled with text, artists’ books are made of unconventional materials: cloth, old maps, pressed soda cans, glass, folded carboard, wood cubes, wax, and many more surprising materials. Their designs, even more than their minimalistic texts, tell stories, create meanings, and impact the lives of those who handle them. Reading with both our minds and bodies while handling some of them, students will unfold or unpack them, bend or move around them in order to follow the journeys their creators have conceived for us. During our visits to the UW Special Collections, students will handle the most extraordinary objects: Julie Chen’s Accretion of Identity, a box containing 4 levels of paper folded boxes that share her coming-of-age as a Chinese American; Maureen Cummins’ Crazy Quilt, which challenges us to unfold the quilt-shaped “book” and feel the suffering of Black enslaved women; and, among other artifacts, Beth Thielen’s The Tower, a small replica of a prison tower, inside which there are powerful testimonials written by San Quentin Prison inmates. Students will thus approach their powerful political, social, ecological, and personal statements through direct experience, guided by fundamental texts on artists books written by Stefan Klima, Elaine Speight & Charles Quick, and Johanna Drucker. The class will also have the opportunity to design their own artists’ books in two workshops run by the local artist Becky Johnston, who will teach us how to make a flag book and a triangle book, for which we will write a short text.

Self-publishing and online social communities (like BookTok) are rapidly changing the landscape of the literary world. However, these are not new phenomena. This class will situate contemporary publishing conversations within the larger historical backdrop of fringe and communal content production–from nineteenth-century penny dreadfuls and origins of the “novel,” to serialized comics and fanfiction, to the twentieth-century popularization of book clubs. In all of these cases, emerging media has functioned as a space for marginalized groups to engage with media in a way that “traditional” or “highbrow” publishing spaces did not. As we read across centuries, we will consider how literary value is always contingent, relational, and connected to various systems of power.

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, working in groups to showcase and share the multiple ways that physics, math, chemistry and life sciences have found their way into the arts (or, frequently, vice versa). Students will write reflections based on readings and viewings for each class; they will produce both a group project and a final project to be presented to their classmates: These can take the from of fiction, theater, film, extended essay, research paper (with an arts component), visual arts project. The scientific content must be accurate and deepen our understanding of the subject matter, providing original insights.

Critical-creative geovisualization is situated at the intersection of geography, arts, and the digital humanities, where we can generate more authentic and nuanced representations of people and space by adopting (and adapting) artistic and humanistic perspectives into mapping and visualization. This class provides students with the unique opportunity to participate in methodologies of mapping and utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS), approaching these traditions through critical inquiry and reflexivity as we attune ourselves to the broader social, political, and digital processes that influence the subjects being studied and visualized. We will consider what it means to present and imagine the world around us in an evolving digital/technological landscape; to do so, we’ll explore both the complexities of that landscape’s social, political, and political-economic structures as well as the possibilities it offers us to tell narratives about our communities. The class aims to foster an interdisciplinary attitude towards the ways we can question our experience of the hybridized world we live in through mapping, imagining, and sharing these creations with others.

This course sheds light on the hidden stories of Seattle’s neighborhoods, including the evolution of the physical landscape itself. The course will center the voices of displaced and marginalized cultures, and their interactions with the physical landscape, its resources, and socio-economic forces through time. We will examine structures of power, privilege, and colonialism in the history of America and the American environmental movement, and how these structures continue to play out today amidst changing demographics of Seattle’s neighborhoods. While much of the course is focused on uncovering the past, it is as much about the present and future. I aim to not only expose marginalization and oppression, but to highlight changing paradigms, as well as narratives of hope and empowerment. Discussions will be based around a variety of sources, including history scholarship, historical documents, environmental fiction and non-fiction, analysis of visual art and historical photos, and a number of guest lectures by community representatives. Students will produce writing and other creative work based on readings, interviews, and visits to neighborhoods and other spaces in Seattle. The course includes walking field trips with community members in various neighborhoods throughout the city. Past student projects for this class have explored Indigenous histories and cultures of Seattle, histories of change in Seattle’s International District and Central District, cultural conceptions of nature and urban greenspace, issues surrounding Seattle’s unhoused population, stories of farm workers and urban farming, the development of Seattle’s LGBTQ communities, and personal identity narratives. Tim Billo, the instructor, is a lecturer in Environmental Studies.

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 storytelling assignment intended to develop your verbal acuity. You will work closely in small groups to develop your presentation, delivered on days set aside for this purpose.

As a future leader, what do you need to know about biology to make informed decisions affecting you and your community? How can you convince legislators and community members that your decisions are based on current science? In this interdisciplinary course, you will learn about paradigm shifting moments in biology, the ideas and actions that caused them, the controversies surrounding them, and the cultural and socioeconomic contexts that molded them. Possible topics include: Evolution, Germ Theory, Vaccines, Antibiotic Resistance, The Central Dogma, Genetic Engineering, Climate Change, The Sixth Extinction, and the Opioid Epidemic.

By learning the science behind these moments, you will better understand biological processes and develop the ability to identify biological patterns. You will also explore these moments in their cultural and socioeconomic contexts, forming connections between science and broader societal issues. As you are a future leader who will work with a wide range of people, scientific jargon will be translated into plain language as often as possible. Eventually, you will practice communicating biology in plain language, so that you can apply these newfound skills to leading your community into an uncertain future while making informed decisions.

Initial exploring of paradigm shifting moments in biology will center on popular science and/or textbook readings. These readings will support in-class, group discussion activities designed to strengthen connections. Assigments that could be incorporated into the Honors portfolio include: short oral presentations (slides and video recordings), class debates (written summary) , press releases, and essays.

Concerns about the misuse of mathematics have grown along with 21st century technology. Cathy O’Neil’s book “Weapons of Math Destruction” (note the pun) has the subtitle “How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.” In debates about political and social issues, statistics and equations are often used to buttress arguments that would seem much less convincing if stated in plain English.

When encountering arguments using numbers and equations, even well-educated people are paralyzed — like deer in the headlights — and lose their capacity for critical thinking. Students generally do not learn how to question and criticize quantitative claims. The purpose of this seminar is to develop your capacity not only to analyze mathematical arguments, but also to write clearly and persuasively about the flaws you discover in them. The main work of the course (aside from a few reading assignments) will be to write, discuss in class, correct, and improve one essay per week in which you explain the flaws, omissions, and deceptions in a quantitative argument that appeared in a published or online article or opinion piece.

There is no math prerequisite, but students should be willing to think critically about statistical fallacies (such as poor sample selection and stats that don’t really support the conclusion that they’re used to support), misuse of probabilities (such as wrongly assuming that two occurrences are independent of one another) and logical gaps (such as unstated implicit assumptions that don’t hold).

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, working in groups to showcase and share the multiple ways that physics, math, chemistry and life sciences have found their way into the arts (or, frequently, vice versa). Students will write reflections based on readings and viewings for each class; they will produce both a group project and a final project to be presented to their classmates: These can take the from of fiction, theater, film, extended essay, research paper (with an arts component), visual arts project. The scientific content must be accurate and deepen our understanding of the subject matter, providing original insights.

According to some popular accounts, scientists obtain objective knowledge of the world by conducting experiments, collecting data, performing calculations, and developing mathematical models. In the twentieth century, however, it has become increasingly obvious that human values, goals, and subjective interests shape the questions that scientists ask and the answers they give. In medical research and climate science, for example, the questions that scientists address are motivated by the desire to cure disease, improve the environment, and more. What role do values play in science? It is widely accepted that value judgments may motivate scientists to pursue certain lines of research rather than others (e.g., to study cancer rather than pine cones), and ethical values might constrain which experiments scientists may conduct. But should ethical and political values influence how scientists interpret data and/or which hypotheses scientists should accept? If so, can science remain objective despite the influence of values? This course will address these questions among others. We will study recent work in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science that challenges the “Value Free Ideal” of science.

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.

This course explores the process of decolonization, especially in the British and French empires from the end of World War II to the present. It focuses on understanding what decolonization meant for the development of national identity and for the lived experiences of ordinary people in both the colonizing countries and in countries that were gaining independence. We will also think about such themes as transnational solidarity, citizenship, migration, the roles of international organizations, and the rights of minorities. This course challenges students to engage with and discuss a variety of primary sources, including historical documents, works of social theory, and recent fiction. Our goal is to understand the enduring legacies of decolonization and to think about how the process of the end of empire is reflected today in historical memory.

The care of patients who are uninsured or underinsured is not evenly distributed across US hospitals – institutions that proportionally provide more of this care are referred to as “safety-net hospitals.” Why has this arisen and what are the implications? This course will use the study of safety-net hospitals to examine broader issues of equity and justice in our healthcare system and society at large. We will trace from historical beginnings to understand how safety-net hospitals have been shaped by key organizational, policy, and funding mechanisms and will analyze how major pieces of legislation such as the Affordable Care Act affect their function. We will also explore the overlapping issues of inequitable access to care, disparities in health outcomes, and systems of oppression such as structural racism as we assess the impact and success of safety-net hospitals. Finally, we will consider several current and upcoming challenges for safety-net hospitals including major funding shifts to value-based payment strategies as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery. Students will come away from this course with deep understanding of safety-net hospitals but also of the context of the overall systems in which they function. No previous knowledge or coursework is necessary for this class.

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, working in groups to showcase and share the multiple ways that physics, math, chemistry and life sciences have found their way into the arts (or, frequently, vice versa). Students will write reflections based on readings and viewings for each class; they will produce both a group project and a final project to be presented to their classmates: These can take the from of fiction, theater, film, extended essay, research paper (with an arts component), visual arts project. The scientific content must be accurate and deepen our understanding of the subject matter, providing original insights.

According to some popular accounts, scientists obtain objective knowledge of the world by conducting experiments, collecting data, performing calculations, and developing mathematical models. In the twentieth century, however, it has become increasingly obvious that human values, goals, and subjective interests shape the questions that scientists ask and the answers they give. In medical research and climate science, for example, the questions that scientists address are motivated by the desire to cure disease, improve the environment, and more. What role do values play in science? It is widely accepted that value judgments may motivate scientists to pursue certain lines of research rather than others (e.g., to study cancer rather than pine cones), and ethical values might constrain which experiments scientists may conduct. But should ethical and political values influence how scientists interpret data and/or which hypotheses scientists should accept? If so, can science remain objective despite the influence of values? This course will address these questions among others. We will study recent work in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science that challenges the “Value Free Ideal” of science.

Critical-creative geovisualization is situated at the intersection of geography, arts, and the digital humanities, where we can generate more authentic and nuanced representations of people and space by adopting (and adapting) artistic and humanistic perspectives into mapping and visualization. This class provides students with the unique opportunity to participate in methodologies of mapping and utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS), approaching these traditions through critical inquiry and reflexivity as we attune ourselves to the broader social, political, and digital processes that influence the subjects being studied and visualized. We will consider what it means to present and imagine the world around us in an evolving digital/technological landscape; to do so, we’ll explore both the complexities of that landscape’s social, political, and political-economic structures as well as the possibilities it offers us to tell narratives about our communities. The class aims to foster an interdisciplinary attitude towards the ways we can question our experience of the hybridized world we live in through mapping, imagining, and sharing these creations with others.

This course sheds light on the hidden stories of Seattle’s neighborhoods, including the evolution of the physical landscape itself. The course will center the voices of displaced and marginalized cultures, and their interactions with the physical landscape, its resources, and socio-economic forces through time. We will examine structures of power, privilege, and colonialism in the history of America and the American environmental movement, and how these structures continue to play out today amidst changing demographics of Seattle’s neighborhoods. While much of the course is focused on uncovering the past, it is as much about the present and future. I aim to not only expose marginalization and oppression, but to highlight changing paradigms, as well as narratives of hope and empowerment. Discussions will be based around a variety of sources, including history scholarship, historical documents, environmental fiction and non-fiction, analysis of visual art and historical photos, and a number of guest lectures by community representatives. Students will produce writing and other creative work based on readings, interviews, and visits to neighborhoods and other spaces in Seattle. The course includes walking field trips with community members in various neighborhoods throughout the city. Past student projects for this class have explored Indigenous histories and cultures of Seattle, histories of change in Seattle’s International District and Central District, cultural conceptions of nature and urban greenspace, issues surrounding Seattle’s unhoused population, stories of farm workers and urban farming, the development of Seattle’s LGBTQ communities, and personal identity narratives. Tim Billo, the instructor, is a lecturer in Environmental Studies.

We live in an age of unparalleled technological innovation, political instability, and worldwide change. This interdisciplinary honors course explores the art of transforming personal experience, academic fact, observational reality, and futuristic possibility into creative works of literary fiction. Drawing on analysis of famous works of intellectually significant speculative fiction, detailed investigation of scientific papers on engineering and climate topics, scholarly nonfiction about social and cultural change, and observational experience, students will write, edit, and critique 2-3 short stories over the course of the quarter. Fiction is an engine for considering the day-to-day impacts of longer term dynamics. To ground ourselves in the world of fiction, we’ll explore the underpinnings of the short story; the theory and practice behind speculative fiction; and the practice of observing real detail from life. Expanding our viewpoint to the world of academic research, we’ll examine sociological and scientific texts, learning to glean detailed ideas of possible and theoretical futures from descriptive works.

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 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, 122 or completion of Paul G. Allen School’s Guided Self-Placement.

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.  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.

Instructor: Dr. Kam Wing Chan, kwchan@uw.edu

Addresses several major spatial topics critical to present-day China’s development, including: population and land relationship, the spatial structures of economic activities and governments; rural-urban relations and transition; central-local relations; the hukou system; population mobility at different spatial scales and urban centers.

Instructor: Dr. Kim England, england@uw.edu

Explores major research themes in feminist geographies. Particular attention to the concept that gendered identities and spaces are discursively (re)produced. Emphasizes recent feminist scholarship that emphasizes difference, as well as the intersections between gender, “race,” ethnicity, sexuality, age, nationality, class, and other social identities and divisions. Offered: jointly with GWSS 541

Instructor: Erin McElroy, erinmcel@uw.edu

Imperial and Anti-Imperial Formations

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.