In this capstone course, a portfolio studio, students will complete the Interdisciplinary or College Honors Program by creating educational narratives within vibrant, creative, online portfolios. Each student will reflect upon the intersection of formal coursework and experiential learning by exploring, collaborating, articulating, testing out, refining, and showcasing the Honors portfolio to a community of peers and mentors. Using portfolio platforms introduced in Honors 100, students will be asked to creatively reflect on the connections between and across their UW courses and disciplines, as well as to consider in-classroom knowledge and its interface with academia and experiences outside of the classroom.

Students must request an add code via this link: https://forms.gle/fahxhGcTR6r7P4my9

This is your Interdisciplinary Honors Capstone Portfolio Seminar. Welcome!

Honors 496 is designed to give you the space and opportunity to reflect on your time here at UW in order to help you better interrogate and internalize your experiences. You will draw connections across your courses and disciplines, as well as consider the productions of knowledge you engage with, both in and out of the classroom.

This one-credit seminar will meet weekly and be run in a “studio” / seminar style. We will spend our time on individual and group reflections, group workshops, and practice sessions. The class will culminate in your portfolio presentations at the end of the quarter.

Students must request an add code via this link: https://forms.gle/h8pS74CNKxxT1xfp8

 

This class is an interdisciplinary mix, one that blends elements of ethnomusicology and digital humanities. Each week we delve into different eras of Seattle music history: Coast Salish peoples and white settlers, music of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, Jackson Street Jazz with Quincy Jones and Ernestine Anderson, experimentation of John Cage, Louie Louie and the garage rock of The Sonics, Jimi Hendrix, Heart, Nirvana, Shabazz Palaces, and more. As part of this exploration we critically examine the contexts within which these musics were made, performed, and consumed. Students will be asked to contribute to the development of a Seattle music history app, as well as make recommendations for the ongoing growth of the Seattle Sounds Archiving and Preservation Project (SSAPP), a collection of local music recordings held by the UW Ethnomusicology Archives.

Berlin between the two world wars was a locus of chaos and dramatic social upheaval; it was also the site of some of the most dynamic shifts in gender roles and identity, sexual freedoms and gay and lesbian rights. In this course we will examine the New Woman and her relationship to the rise of mass media and consumer culture, the contradictions of the promised sexual liberation in the new metropolis, the emergence of new gender roles in the theater and cabarets, Berlin as the center of gay culture, and the dramatic shifts in the perception of masculinity after the war. With an interdisciplinary focus on the intersection of gender, sexual orientation, race and class, we will explore the way in which gender was constructed at the time, the development of the first gay emancipation movement and the move to a more open, flexible definition of gender identity. Students will not only receive a thorough overview of the most important figures, works and ideas of the time period, but will also reflect on responses to the shifting gender constructions, the threat to LGBTQ rights, ways of resisting persistent patriarchal structures, and the fragility and vulnerability of our hard-won freedoms. Given the urgency and universality of these topics, students can see the relevance of the course content to their own lives, and our discussions on Weimar Berlin will serve as a framework to critically examine current social justice issues. Innovative methods of evaluation will emphasize a creative processing of the material, allowing students to adapt their analyses of the coursework to correspond to their interests and to utilize their unique skill sets.

We often hear the statement beauty is in the eye of the beholder, by what is beautiful? Who creates the standard(s)? How have these standards changed? How does race/ethnicity, gender, class, age, sexuality and (dis)ability intersect with this notion of beauty? In this course students will explore the augmentation/modification/transformation of the ‘abnormal’ body by such medical technologies as cosmetic surgery, to specific grooming practices such as hair depilation. These technologies allow us to examine the body as a site where what is “normal” and what is “beautiful” are formed. Through readings, reflecting writing, films, and discussion students will take a critical look at the structures and institutions that have created and perpetuate the ideal beautiful normal body.

‘COLOR MATTERS’ deals with how cultural ideologies, historical and contemporary theories and social practices involving color permeate our everyday lives. The goal of the course is to broaden the scope of our existing understanding, open up critical dialogue, and ultimately help shape ways in which we consider the role of color discourse in our practices and lives. Coursework can take any visual, audio or written form. Working across media and modalities is encouraged, and the ability to think critically, engage in thoughtful dialogue, and maintain a strong work ethic is essential in this course. Class time will consist of lectures, student presentations and group discussions. Course work will consist of weekly readings, videos and short written assignments and two sustained projects. The first spans the entirety of the class and will be a visual and written journal. The second runs from Weeks 8 – 10 and is an independent project that can be done individually or in pairs and expanding on one of the three themes covered in the course.

During the course we will explore the role of color along three key themes: The first part deals with Phenomena – theory and practice. We will begin by moving away from the generic and superficial approaches to how we understand the vocabulary and meaning, and especially we associate with color in Western society. Rather, it delves into more esoteric, expansive approaches that include contradictory systems that deal with phenomena, symbolism, science and pseudoscience, and how frequently these involve both oppositional and complementary approaches of logic and feeling.

The second part is Pharmakon – colonialism, commerce, control. It explores color as both poison and intoxicant; as something that shifts economies and trade locally and globally; its implicit and explicit marketing strategies and their function, and the plundering and selling of resources as a continuation of colonialist economic strategies that are ultimately about acquiring and retaining power.

The third part is Code – ethics and visibility Color as code, across cultures around the globe and their signaling of nationalism and social codes; of their practical use to resist and name social, political inequities and insist on action; of its function as internal ciphers within groups; its weaponization against indigenous and cultural minorities, particularly dealing with religion, gender and sexuality.

This course takes the dual phenomena of Indigenous American territorial dispossession and African enslavement in the Americas as its point of departure, and is guided by a growing body of scholarship that understands dispossession and enslavement as closely entwined tools of European colonizing across the hemispheric Americas beginning in the late 15th century. What otherwise obscured dimensions of Indigenous American and African American experience can this approach bring more clearly into view? What shared strategies of resistance and opportunities for coalition and a politics of mutual care are opened up by an understanding of shared Indigenous and African American experiences of settler colonialism? What do present-day (and in some instances local Seattle/PNW) examples of Afro-Indigenous coalition and solidarity teach us about the liberatory possibilities of anticolonial, antiracist, and anticapitalist movement building? To explore these questions, we will engage materials from a wide-ranging interdisciplinary archive, including historical and literary scholarship, fiction, audiovisual content, and music.

Photography and Visual Arts in Latin America introduces students to the rich and diverse visual traditions of Latin America through the study of photography, film, and the work of iconic artists. Together we will examine a few key moments in the history of contemporary Latin America in the 20th century (the Mexican Revolution, political violence by the Shining Path in Peru, Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, among others) and how photography and other visual arts were employed to document such events, while offering other angles and perspectives about gender, indigeneity, migration, and political struggle beyond just the official narratives told by governments and national institutions.
In addition to still photography, students will examine film as a complementary visual medium, including Frida (2002), a biographical film about Frida Kahlo, to consider how her art and life have been represented for global audiences, as well as “The Motorcycle Diaries” (2004), a movie about a young “Che” Guevara and his travels across South America.
Finally, students will practice close visual analysis, develop interpretive frameworks for understanding art in its cultural context, and apply these skills in a curatorial project. The course culminates in the design of a mini-exhibit centered on a Latinx photographer, allowing students to connect research and creativity while reflecting on the power of visual storytelling.

The key questions that are addressed in the Ways of Feeling class are: 

• Are there “emotional universals”, that is, feelings that all people share independent of language, culture, gender, and race?
• Are there “culture-specific” emotions?
• Are there “gender-specific” emotions? 

The class is suitable for all students who are interested in Language, languages, and meaning. Ways of Feeling is a comparative course, with enough Slavic content for it to be relevant for Slavic majors and graduate students, yet accessible to those interested in other languages. Students will be introduced to research methods in semantics, pragmatics and discourse, and will be required to produce a thorough examination of underlying conceptualizations and a semantic analysis of a linguistic expression of emotion in a language of their choice. They will gain an appreciation of the social and cultural underpinnings of their own language and other languages.

The requirements consist of 3 short papers, an image collection, and a final term paper.

Within an indigenous pedagogical format, this interactive class is a space to do lovework.  We ponder and attempt to perceive how love is incorporated into our daily lives as students, scholars, workers, families, and active members of both human people communities and more-than-human communities.  We critically engage with notions of love, where our understandings of love came from, and how we can proceed with a love consciousness and a love ethic.

We vision possible logic trajectories and frames of understandings in which love, or lack thereof, are included – both individually and societally. We consider musical, biological, philosophical, psychological, religious, political, cultural, artistic, linguistic, and social perspectives on love.  We search for love knowledges and we seek stories about love in our own lives. We look at how love has been portrayed in history and how love can be put into action for creating our futures that include values of equity and positivity.

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

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.

Evolution and genetics are the cornerstones of modern biology. DNA & Evolution will explore these fields in the context of contemporary issues that are important to individuals and societies. Although examples will be drawn from a variety of organisms, the primary emphasis will be on humans. Among the questions we will consider are these: Where did modern humans come from? Why are women and men different? Why do children resemble their parents? Do genes influence variation in personality, intelligence, and sexual orientation? What can genetic analyses reveal about evolutionary history and the relationships among species? Can genetic analyses allow us to predict the evolutionary future? Given what our society knows about evolution and genetics, should we take responsibility for guiding the evolutionary future of human populations? Throughout the course the goal will be to help students develop sufficient biological sophistication to understand new discoveries in genetics and evolution, talk to their doctors, and make rational personal and political choices about biological issues. Students will read secondary and primary literature, ask questions, design experiments, analyze and interpret data, and draw their own conclusions. Assignments will include essays, problem sets, and computer labs. Students who have previously taken “DNA and Evolution” are not eligible to enroll in this course again. Additionally, students who have taken or are planning to take BIOL 103 with Professor Herron should not register for this course as there is significant overlap in material.

Contemporary scientists have at their disposal a handful of instruments, or tools, that they use to investigate the natural world. Understanding these instruments—their abilities, limitations and the fundamental quantities that they measure—is key to developing hypotheses and carrying out experiments. In this class we will explore modern scientific technologies including mass spectrometry, next-generation DNA sequencing, and artificial intelligence, along with one bonus technology chosen by students, and ask how these technologies can be used to investigate the natural world. The course will emphasize scientific thinking: how to develop and test a hypothesis, how to design experiments using various scientific technologies, and how we can use the tools in our toolbox to investigate virtually any scientific question. Case studies will include investigating harmful algal blooms in the Puget sound and identifying Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers from patient-derived cerebrospinal fluid samples.

How are you going to change the world? Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs provides tools to better understand the big problems the world faces and to identify, design and implement effective solutions. In class you’ll learn about topics ranging from poverty, climate change, global health, to inequality and polarization. Using the lens of entrepreneurship you will also learn frameworks and tools including design thinking, business models and execution strategies to better understand these problems and potential solutions.

In recent years, social innovation and social entrepreneurship have emerged as important mechanisms by which interventions with a socially beneficial impact can reach communities. The concept of social innovation focuses on how to generate solutions that create social value, as well as the processes by which these solutions are generated. Social enterprises apply commercial strategies to improve human or environmental well-being, and values social impact alongside financial returns for external investors. “Improving Population Health Through Social Entrepreneurship” will offer students a fundamental understanding of social innovation and the role that social enterprises can play in addressing population health challenges. Through a combination of lectures, guest speakers, case studies and a team project, students will learn how organizations can advance work that has a positive societal impact while also remaining financially sustainable. Topics covered in the course will include the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and population health challenges, new philanthropic models, impact investment funds and investor expectations in a changing landscape for social investment, scalability of social enterprises and the importance of policy. A substantial portion of the class will be a team project, where students will learn to use entrepreneurial tools to develop innovative solutions to population health issues, such as climate change, affordable housing, food security and mental health.

In this course, we will explore definitions, ideologies, values, processes, and geopolitics associated with “Western Civilization.” We will look at how feminism, Afrocentrism, and other critical frameworks have challenged assumptions about “Western Civilization.” We consider the impact of “Western Civilization” on the United States and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The OECD is an international organization that works with governments, policy makers, and citizens to establish evidence-based international standards and find solutions to a range of social, economic, and environmental challenges. In this course, we will investigate the ways in which the OECD and its 38 member countries represent diverse experiences of “Western Civilization.” As I center the relationship between “Western Civilization” and the United States, students will choose an OECD country to investigate similarly. Course assignments will assess students’ independent and group work around this and other tasks. We will also examine how the United States compares to other OECD countries; specifically, regarding (1) social and welfare issues (social policy that protects individuals and their families), (2) education; (3) employment; (4) economy; (5) health; and (6) green growth and sustainable development. The OECD has a database that provides up-to-date statistics for making comparisons between countries and identifying trends over time. Finally, we will investigate gaps by race and ethnicity (including migrants), gender, and age across well–being outcomes, as well as the laws and public policies aimed to improve people’s well-being and reduce inequalities.

This course takes the dual phenomena of Indigenous American territorial dispossession and African enslavement in the Americas as its point of departure, and is guided by a growing body of scholarship that understands dispossession and enslavement as closely entwined tools of European colonizing across the hemispheric Americas beginning in the late 15th century. What otherwise obscured dimensions of Indigenous American and African American experience can this approach bring more clearly into view? What shared strategies of resistance and opportunities for coalition and a politics of mutual care are opened up by an understanding of shared Indigenous and African American experiences of settler colonialism? What do present-day (and in some instances local Seattle/PNW) examples of Afro-Indigenous coalition and solidarity teach us about the liberatory possibilities of anticolonial, antiracist, and anticapitalist movement building? To explore these questions, we will engage materials from a wide-ranging interdisciplinary archive, including historical and literary scholarship, fiction, audiovisual content, and music.

Photography and Visual Arts in Latin America introduces students to the rich and diverse visual traditions of Latin America through the study of photography, film, and the work of iconic artists. Together we will examine a few key moments in the history of contemporary Latin America in the 20th century (the Mexican Revolution, political violence by the Shining Path in Peru, Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, among others) and how photography and other visual arts were employed to document such events, while offering other angles and perspectives about gender, indigeneity, migration, and political struggle beyond just the official narratives told by governments and national institutions.
In addition to still photography, students will examine film as a complementary visual medium, including Frida (2002), a biographical film about Frida Kahlo, to consider how her art and life have been represented for global audiences, as well as “The Motorcycle Diaries” (2004), a movie about a young “Che” Guevara and his travels across South America.
Finally, students will practice close visual analysis, develop interpretive frameworks for understanding art in its cultural context, and apply these skills in a curatorial project. The course culminates in the design of a mini-exhibit centered on a Latinx photographer, allowing students to connect research and creativity while reflecting on the power of visual storytelling.

The key questions that are addressed in the Ways of Feeling class are: 

• Are there “emotional universals”, that is, feelings that all people share independent of language, culture, gender, and race?
• Are there “culture-specific” emotions?
• Are there “gender-specific” emotions? 

The class is suitable for all students who are interested in Language, languages, and meaning. Ways of Feeling is a comparative course, with enough Slavic content for it to be relevant for Slavic majors and graduate students, yet accessible to those interested in other languages. Students will be introduced to research methods in semantics, pragmatics and discourse, and will be required to produce a thorough examination of underlying conceptualizations and a semantic analysis of a linguistic expression of emotion in a language of their choice. They will gain an appreciation of the social and cultural underpinnings of their own language and other languages.

The requirements consist of 3 short papers, an image collection, and a final term paper.

Within an indigenous pedagogical format, this interactive class is a space to do lovework.  We ponder and attempt to perceive how love is incorporated into our daily lives as students, scholars, workers, families, and active members of both human people communities and more-than-human communities.  We critically engage with notions of love, where our understandings of love came from, and how we can proceed with a love consciousness and a love ethic.

We vision possible logic trajectories and frames of understandings in which love, or lack thereof, are included – both individually and societally. We consider musical, biological, philosophical, psychological, religious, political, cultural, artistic, linguistic, and social perspectives on love.  We search for love knowledges and we seek stories about love in our own lives. We look at how love has been portrayed in history and how love can be put into action for creating our futures that include values of equity and positivity.

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

This class will look at storytelling and ways of knowing through personal essays and memoirs, tracing how nonfiction genres offer unique spaces to consider epistemologies of the self while simultaneously speaking to shared human experiences. We will discuss how various narratives use the self as a starting point to integrate/extrapolate into the social as a way to process, understand, and engage with the world. Amidst reading a diverse range of personal narratives (written, visual, spoken), students will write weekly reflections that unpack their experiences of consuming and engaging these texts, while also developing their abilities to tell their own stories across a range of genres and mediums.

BIOC 451 is the honors version of BIOC 441; it covers the same topics in metabolism and gene expression using the same textbook, but is taught as a group discussion of selected publications from the primary literature, with an emphasis on research strategy, experimental design, creative thinking, and scientific communication.

Continuation of CHEM 145. Includes laboratory. Together CHEM 145 and 155 cover material in CHEM 142, 152, and 162. No more than the number of credits indicated can be counted toward graduation from the following course groups: CHEM 152, 155 (5 credits); 145, 155, 162 (10 credits).

To accompany CHEM 258. No more than the number of credits indicated can be counted toward graduation from the following course group: CHEM 241, 261(3 credits).

This course does not count towards Interdisciplinary Honors requirements as it is 3 credits.

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.

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.

 

Covers the material of MATH 124, 125, 126; 307, 308, 318. First year of a two-year accelerated sequence. May receive advanced placement (AP) credit for 125 after taking 135. 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. Prerequisite: minimum grade of 2.0 in MATH 334. Offered: W.

Addresses same material as PHYS 122 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 115, PHYS 118, PHYS 122, and PHYS 142. Prerequisite: a minimum grade of 2.5 in PHYS 141; and MATH 125 or MATH 134, either of which may be taken concurrently; recommended: high-school-level physics course. Offered: W.