Accy 420 Section 3, Independent Study
Accountancy Practicum
ACCY 420 is a two-course sequence which serves as an alternative to the traditional honors thesis for accountancy majors. The class will be an evening class meeting one day per week (3 credit hours for each semester) that will meet throughout the fall and spring semesters of the junior year. Case Studies: Every other week, the students will work through a research case that utilizes the professional literature. The topics will begin with what students are concurrently learning in the Intermediate Accounting series, but will expand beyond the mechanics and disclosure requirements to cover the gray areas that require professional judgment. They will alternatively play the roles of management and the auditor/tax professional to utilize either the Codification or the IRS Code to solve and prepare a written brief on each week’s case. The cases studies will take place throughout the year. Professional Speakers: In the alternative weeks throughout the year, representatives from the accounting profession will speak to the class. The topics will be regarding current topics in the profession. We encourage the professionals to engage the students in active discussion. Case Competitions: This part of the course will be focused on developing presentation and communication skills through preparation and participation in case competitions. Each fall, Patterson School of Accountancy hosts two professional case competitions, in which the student will participate: 1) PwC Challenge and 2) KPMG International Case Competition. Final Thesis Document: The final thesis work will include the many case briefs worked on over the course of the year in addition to the case competition materials.
AH 201 Section 2, History of Art I
In this course students will interpret representative examples of prehistoric, ancient, and medieval art of Western and selected world cultures using the specific vocabulary of art. They will investigate various art styles in their historical, political, and religious contexts. In addition, they will examine the roles of artists, patrons, and audiences, and will identify the processes by which artists produce their work. This Honors College section differs from large lecture-focused sections of the course by requiring students to understand readings of primary documents as they interpret art works within chronological and geographical contexts. Classes will consist of a blend of illustrated lectures, discussion, and group and individual presentations. Assessment in the large, regular section of AH 201 is by multiple-choice tests. However, in this low-enrollment Honors section, students will demonstrate critical thinking while evaluating various perspectives on art in several brief oral and written assignments. Rote memorization of works of art is not the goal of this course, yet potential art or art history majors must be prepared for departmental assessment tests on fundamentals of art history, so students are required to identify primary monuments of the history of art.
BISC 164 Section 4, Honors Recitation
This is a reading and discussion course, focused on the book, The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human, by Noah Strycker, Riverhead Books, 2014 (ISBN 978-1-59463-341-6). This course is designed to provide inspiration about how fascinating biology can be, to provide a broader perspective on biological science not provided by the lecture and lab portions of the course, to help students develop communication and critical thinking skills related to biological science, and to opportunistically (but not comprehensively) amplify and review concepts from BISC 160 as they arise in the reading. The participatory nature of this course is intended to provide for a deeper level of intellectual engagement and growth beyond what is possible with lecture and lab. Upon completion of this course, students will have a deeper understanding of the ecology, evolution, and behavior of birds; the similarities and differences between bird behavior and human behavior; and how to discuss and critically think about biological science.
CSD 302 Section 1, Research Methods for CSD
This course is designed to provide future speech language pathologists, audiologists, and scientists with a strong background in the methods used to conduct, describe and evaluate research in the speech and hearing sciences. Students will learn to craft research questions and select appropriate methodologies in order to become productive contributors to research in the field. Students will also learn to be informed consumers of research information in journals and the media. Students who are seeking honors credit are additionally required to submit a paper of the prospectus of their honors thesis project. In-class activities will guide students to develop research questions, design methods, and write a paper.
Econ 203 Section 1, Principles of Macroeconomics
The main objective of this course is to introduce the world of macroeconomics, the study of the economy at the national and the international levels. We will being with learning basic concepts such as gross domestic product, inflation, and unemployment rates to measure the economy. We will explore how those macroeconomic variables are related and how they are affected by the external shocks such as technological innovation and globalization by using simple mathematical tools. We also study the roles of fiscal and monetary policies to stabilize the effect of the external shocks in the short-run and long-run. The Honors section of this course will offer an opportunity of policy-evaluating project in which groups of students can write a short country-specific report and present it in the class. This project can help the students know how to collect the economic data and to provide useful information by analyzing it with simple tools. Also, students are strongly encouraged to ask questions and participate constructively in class discussions which will lead us to study our topics in depth.
Eng 224 Section 1, Survey of American Literature Since the Civil War
This course is a survey of American Literature from 1865 to the present. We will read poetry, fiction, and nonfiction written by Americans of diverse backgrounds, and examine the ways in which those writers respond to literary, social, and political circumstances in the shifting cultural landscape of the United States over the past 150+ years. The Honors section of this course will emphasize class discussion and written responses to the texts.
Eng 224 Section 2, Survey of American Literature Since the Civil War
English 224 surveys American literature from the late nineteenth-century until the early years of the twenty-first century, paying particular attention to historical and cultural influences and to evolving notions of “American literature” itself. Among the authors we will read and discuss are Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Willa Cather, Edgar Lee Masters, Natasha Trethewey, and additional contemporary writing selected by students in the course. Course requirements include regular participation in class discussion, regular in-class reading responses, an individual project making use of resources in the digital humanities, a group project concentrated on the background of one of the authors, involvement in a reading group that meets outside of class, and a final examination.
Hon 391 Section 3, Honors Conversations
On Death & Dying
This course will encourage students’ reflection of an issue of universal human concern: death and dying. In this course, students will learn to see death and dying as an important lens for understanding morality, ethics, social practices and institutions in terms of both individual dilemmas and choices. Our vantage point will be from inside the practice of medicine as each class will be framed with a “case,” an example from physicians’ careers in caring for the dying. Students will interrogate, articulate, and critically analyze their fundamental assumptions about the nature of death and the various human postures toward it. They will consider their own beliefs about a “good life,” a “good death” and what it might mean to “die well.” This is a conversation with a cacophony of voices from different eras and perspectives. We will explore specific questions such as: Is death really all that bad? What difference does the knowledge of death have for the living—for how we approach life, build culture, and organize community and institutions? How has the experience of dying changed in the modern age, and how do people really die nowadays? How does this new reality affect our understanding of the goals of medicine and the ethics of killing and letting-die? What ought we do when medicine cannot save us? And, importantly, how does all of this relate to our everyday lives? How might we deal with loss (when the time comes)? What will we teach our kids about death (if, and when, the time comes)? Our answers to these questions reflect our deep-seated and often inarticulate beliefs about human nature, moral agency, and one’s vision of the good life.
Hon 391 Section 4, Honors Conversations
Honors Conversations is designed to give upper-level students the opportunity to meet and discuss important topics in a classroom setting. The classes meet for 50 minutes, one time per week. The general focus in my section of this course will be on the 2020 U.S. presidential and congressional elections. The course will take into consideration major unfolding events over the course of the election. The main goal is to engage each other in thoughtful, interesting discussion. As such, each student’s main responsibility each week will be to participate constructively in our discussion. We will have some weekly readings, mainly coming from news sources covering the election at the national and state level.
Hon 391 Section 5, Honors Conversations
Topics in Medicine and Health Care
Topics in medicine and health care will be presented as documentaries which students view outside of class. Weekly classroom sessions will discuss and analyze the issues. Topics will include human genomics and personalized medicine, obesity and chronic diseases, antibiotic and vaccine controversies, aging and death, and U.S. and global health care policies.
Hon 391 Section 7, Honors Conversations
Seeing the World: Conversations about Photography and Capturing Some Images of Your Own
This conversation is about photography, about the meaning of the photograph. Students can choose to write about photography or capture images themselves. Students have the choice of writing three short reflection papers about the images we explore, or students may capture their own images and create two photo essays, along with a short reflection paper. We’ll talk about three categories of photographic artists. First, the legendary photographers: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Annie Leibovitz, Dorothea Lange, Robert Frank, among others. A second group are the unconscious photographers – the poets and novelists, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, those who saw as a photographer, but did not hold a camera. And a third category, writers like Eudora Welty, who captured images with words as well as with her camera. We’ll talk about the history, from photography’s present to its past, from Instagram to the 1840s daguerreotype. Students will consider the photograph as an ongoing moment, as fluid time. What emerges from this mediation is something useful for all students, regardless of major or whether the student has ever held a camera with intentionality. To understand the power of the image, as a statement with cultural and political implications, and as something both meaningful, and disposable, is our goal. This power of the photographic image is important to many careers – to the trial lawyer, community planner, restaurant owner, or product researcher. Photography is equally vital on the personal level, for anyone wishing to document family history or capture oral histories. The image is of great import to anyone whose success requires that others see. In sum, we converse about the image as a record of our events, and the camera as a subjective tool for the creation of art, and our interpretation of everything from a summer vacation in Greece to rural poverty in the South. All cameras are welcome for those wishing to take photos; iPhone cameras are especially welcome.
Hon 391 Section 8, Honors Conversations
Who Leads the Leaders? Observing Leadership in Film and Television
What do we really mean when we talk about “leadership?” Is it a skill, practice, talent…maybe all of the above? In this conversations class led by William Teer, SMBHC Coordinator of Recruitment and Admissions, we’ll explore the depths of leadership through discussions of our favorite “leaders” from film and television. Students should be prepared for lively discussions, friendly debate, and a yearning to get to the heart of how leadership can truly be defined. Class will utilize passages from “The Student Leadership Challenge” by James Kouze and Barry Posner and “Strengths Based Leadership” by Tom Roth and and Barry Conchie.
Hon 399 Section 1, Honors Special Topics
Global Citizenship in the 21st Century
Can we solve global problems in a world in which sovereignty and citizenship reside in the nation-state? Rather than drawing the lines around citizenship at national borders, what if people saw themselves as citizens of the world? If there are truly global problems that require truly global solutions, can we understand and build constructively toward those solutions from the concept of global citizenship? This course will examine the concepts of nation, citizenship, and cooperation and apply them to real-world challenges we face in the 21st century. We will do so by looking at the most visible multilateral effort to improve the lives of people around the globe: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs represent seventeen different sets of goals the UN has set for all members that, if met, will produce greater global economic and environmental health by 2030. Included in this set of goals are reducing poverty, empowering women, access to water and education, as well as good health and protecting our resources. Can we generate solutions and turn those solutions into action and behavior in a global context? Finally, we will think about substantive connections between the SDGs and the issues we face here at home in Mississippi.
Hon 399 Section 2, Honors Special Topics
Following the Presidential Election
The course will follow – in real time – this fall’s presidential campaign and its immediate aftermath with heavy emphasis on reading and watching press coverage and tracking the shifts in strategy and public opinion. Prominent political figures and journalists will speak with the class (usually by Skype). We’ll deal with such questions as: Where will the candidates put their emphasis in trying to gain an advantage in the electoral college (an archaic device worthy of consideration itself)? How difficult and accurate is the press coverage? How effective are the commercials? In the final, post-election weeks, we’ll conduct a post-mortem. (The course is a continuation of this spring’s Honors 399 in which the students have watched, with fascination, the surprising shifts and turns of the race for the Democratic nomination. The instructor covered eight presidential campaigns 1972-2000.)
Hon 399 Section 3, Honors Special Topics
Genocide, Memory, and Recovery
Many scholars regard the 20th century as the “century of genocide” because of the catastrophic losses inflicted on humanity. The first twenty years of 2000s have regrettably started where the previous century left off. This course will examine these efforts, all animated by an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” (Genocide Convention). We will explore the underlying conditions and causes in each case of genocide since 1900. We will discuss the role that memory plays in keeping our awareness alive and charting plans of recovery. We will rely on case studies, articles, films, documentaries, and TED Talks as our sources of information and insight.
Hon 399 Section 4, Honors Special Topics
The Presidency, Presidential Elections and the Press
Drawing on history as well as current events, the course will concentrate on past administrations and presidential campaigns and their sometimes rocky relations with the press; at the same time it will consider developments in this year’s election. The first part of each class is devoted to earlier campaigns and presidencies – with emphasis on modern ones – before class discussion moves to the present. Guest speakers (in person or by Skype) will make appearances each week, and the class will be assigned to read and critique several relevant books. (Both Overby and Wilkie worked many years as journalists in Washington and covered presidential campaigns.)
Hon 420 Section 1, Honors Experiential Learning
The Media’s Role in Conflict Resolution
The course deals with the role of media in promoting peace. From empirical evidence, we know that media can play both constructive and destructive roles. The French revolution, the holocaust, recent ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda and the peaceful political transition in South Africa have demonstrated that media have had a mixed track record. While media played constructive roles in some situations, they played destructive roles in others. While the role of media in ethnic violence in the Rwandan genocide has been used as a textbook example, the role of media in conflict resolution rarely has been mentioned. While this course discusses the former, the latter is the primary focus. What explains why media functioned positively in some cases and negatively in others? By addressing this and similar questions, the course seeks to contribute to an understanding of conflict, the role of media in perpetuating violent conflict, strategies for resolving conflict and the role of actors in the process.
Hon 445 Section 1, Art and the Republic
The objective of this class is to examine various forms of art, i.e. dance, film, literature (including novels and poetry), music (all genres), sculpture, animation, comedy and theater, and to explore and analyze how these forms of human expression are affected and influenced by our society and culture; we then analyze how, in turn, these artistic genres influence and affect society and its citizens. This course also engages students on current issues relating to various forms of art. Please be prepared to read and explore a wide variety of newspapers and news sources involving complex social, societal and political issues. The course requires maturity and respect for multiple points of view.
Hon 550 Section 2, Honors Advanced Study in Law I
Intellectual Property
In our shrinking world full of new technologies, intellectual property (“IP”) has become an important field of law for all businesses, big and small—and most individuals as well—to understand. This is a survey course that will provide an overview of the four topics that comprise the heart of IP law: trade secret, trademark, patent, and copyright. This course will provide you with the foundation to recognize situations where IP is involved and to properly analyze the implications of such situations. This course will focus both on established legal precedent as well as the practical impact of this precedent on economy, society, and culture, both at home and abroad. Course assignments will be composed of a mixture of cases, law review articles, and readings drawn from current events. In addition, written exercises will occasionally be given to illustrate how the knowledge learned from the readings, lectures, and class discussions might be applied in legal practice.
Hst 130 Section 14, Intro to US History to 1877
This course will present an overview of American history from initial European exploration through the Civil War. By examining the interactions between diverse groups of peoples, including Native Americans, Europeans, European Americans, and African Americans, we will explore the changing meanings of freedom, equality, citizenship, democracy and American identity. Along the way we will cover such topics as the rise of slavery, the American Revolution, the development of a political party system, the emergence of market capitalism and the reasons behind the Civil War; approaching these topics through such categories of analysis as race, gender, and class. Special emphasis will be given to the multi-layered complexities and myriad perspectives of the many pasts and historical actors that give American history its richness. In addition, students will learn how to read primary sources as historical documents and, in turn, discover how historians interpret history. The intensive discussion of primary sources, the debating of key events and themes in American history through Reconstruction, and the assigning of essays asking students to craft their own interpretations of the American past will allow students in this honors course to become historians for a semester. Along the way, students will burnish their critical reading, analytical writing, and oratorical abilities—pushing them to become more persuasive and eloquent, and allowing them to master a basic but essential set of skills demanded of several different potential professional tracks that they may go on to pursue.
Hst 131 Section 16, Intro to US History since 1877
This is an introductory survey course covering the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction to the present. We will take a chronological approach to chart important political, economic, and cultural developments during this time frame, including industrialization, western conquest, the Progressive era, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the civil rights movement and other movements for inclusion, and recent events that historians are only beginning to examine. Throughout the course, we will use primary sources—materials created by historical subjects during the time we’re studying —to help us interpret and understand the past. This course will also introduce students to core principles of historical thinking. Historians do more than memorize facts, dates and names. They consider how societies change over time and debate why those changes happened. In this course, we will explore the American past with an understanding that our knowledge of the past is always incomplete, and that all works of history are works of interpretation that make arguments based on the historical evidence available.
Hst 160 Section 2, Intro to Latin American History
This course surveys the history of Latin America from 1492 to the present. We will not attempt to examine in depth the history of all nineteen nations in the region. Instead, our course will focus on countries whose developments are representative of larger political, economic, social, and cultural trends in a given time period. Over the term, we will examine the fascinating pre-contact origins and subsequent interactions of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans. Simultaneously we will witness the changes taking place in the Iberian Empires they came to inhabit as these lands evolved from the proving grounds of explorers and adventurers into a mature colonial society and eventually into a multitude of autonomous and culturally-distinct polities. After studying how these countries gained their independence, we will trace how nation building and social organization occurred through phenomena such as export-driven economies, dictatorships, revolutions, industrialization, foreign intervention, and globalization. The Honors College section of this course will consist of general class discussion and lectures to provide historical context. Discussion will be generated from a mix of primary and secondary source readings that expose students to diverse and often contradictory perspectives on historical events and actors. Despite being an introductory course, HST 160 will encourage students to think of Latin American history as contested ground where all topics are open to interpretation.
Hst 492 Section 1, Problems in History
Food: A Global History
We will explore the interconnected histories of exploration, imperialism, capitalism, environment, technological innovation, slavery, migration, and family life through something that unites us all—good food. Through readings and research, we will learn how tea became the quintessential British beverage, what chocolate tasted like five hundred years ago, and how potatoes shaped empires. Possible assignments include interviewing local chefs; traveling to Memphis to visit international markets to uncover histories of migration and globalization; researching and annotating a family recipe to include in an online historical recipe book. Cooking skills not required, eating mandatory.
Phil 102 Section 1, Introduction to Professional Ethics
We use many case studies and films in this class to analyze the moral dilemmas that professionals face. We consider a variety of professions throughout the course, such as law, nursing, business, social science research, medical research, advertising, psychiatry, journalism, and the military. We first examine traditional moral theories. Next, we consider whether there are special ethical obligations created by professionalization and whether professionals have moral obligations to the organization or to the individuals that they serve. We explore complex issues such as the use of deception in professional practice, the limits of confidentiality, the role of loyalty, the demands of whistleblowing, and how professional fields could increase ethical practices. The Honors section of this course includes additional films for analysis and discussion that extend both the range of fields we consider and deepens our analysis of ethical dilemmas. In addition, the case-analysis assignments are discussion based, rather than written.
PPL 385 Section 1, Food Policy and Agriculture Systems
Why is it that everyday US schools battle with both childhood obesity and childhood hunger? How have government policies shaped the growing, distribution and processing of food in this country and how does that affect our health, wealth and local communities? This course will delve into these and other questions surrounding issues of hunger, the health implications of farming, and community and nonprofit activism. From the global to the national to the local level, food policy will be examined along with the important social problems stemming from our policies and potential solutions developed to deal with these problems.
Psy 201 Section 12, General Psychology
As the course catalog states: Psy 201 is an Introduction to psychology, which covers “individual development, motivation, emotion, motor function, sensory and neural functions, intelligence, learning, perceiving, thinking, social behavior, and personality.” In this Honors section of the course, students will be expected to come to class with a background level of knowledge from the assigned reading, engage in discussion, engage in active learning activities (inside and outside the class), and read primary source articles. All aspects of the course will be designed to help students understand and learn the material in such a manner that they will be able to apply the material to their lives and future careers.
Soc 101 Section 2, Introduction to Sociology
This is an introduction to basic concepts in sociology. We will use several major theories plus a discussion of research methods to study culture, socialization, deviance, and other sociological concepts. Then we will study four major axes of stratification in America: social class, race and ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Along the way, we will discuss whether nature or nurture better explains topics ranging from gender roles and sexual orientation to racial differences in IQ test scores. This class differs from other SOC 101 sections by requiring students to write a term paper exploring the social theoretical implications of a topic of importance to them.
Span 111 Section 11, Intensive Elementary Spanish
Spanish 111 Elementary Spanish is an introduction to the language and culture of the Spanish-speaking world. Spanish 111 is designed for students to learn the skills to communicate effectively in Spanish and to develop a knowledge and appreciation for Hispanic cultures. By the end of this class, students should be able to complete basic communicative tasks in Spanish using newly-acquired communication strategies, grammar and vocabulary, and to be able to understand and speak about the diversity of the Spanish-speaking world. Students in this Spanish 111 Honors section will be exposed to authentic material (news articles, literature, movie clips, etc.), and they will engage reading and writing strategies learnt in other classes for producing meaningful speech and quality writing in the Spanish language. Because the Honors College and Croft also offer a Spanish 211 section, we will prepare all students to excel in that class.
Span 211 Section 5, Intensive Intermediate Spanish
Spanish 211, Intermediate Spanish, is a continuation of Spanish 111, Elementary Spanish, and is therefore, designed to continue the study of the language and culture in the Spanish-speaking world. By the end of this class, students should be able to complete intermediate-level communicative tasks in Spanish using the communication strategies, grammar structures and vocabulary acquired during the semester, and to understand and be able to talk about the diversity of the Spanish-speaking world. Students in the Honors section will have the opportunity to work with authentic material (news articles, literature, etc.) and will engage reading and writing strategies they have learned in regular classes in the production of class work and homework in Spanish. Because this Honors section will also include Croft students, who will necessarily continue to Spanish 303 and 305, we will spend more time in preparing all the students for excellence in those courses.
Span 303 Section 2, Conversation and Composition I
Spanish 303 for Croft and Honors students is a fast-paced conversation and composition course that integrates additional authentic materials that supplement the course content and further enhance students’ analytical skills and linguistic proficiency. These carefully selected reading and audio-visual materials that supplement the textbook are intended to promote global awareness by means of meaningful exposure to important aspects of the history, literature and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. Throughout the semester, students will be challenged to perform at the advanced and superior levels, as established by the ACTFL standards. The course integrates technology, both inside and outside the classroom. This class is conducted exclusively in the target language. Students should be ready to engage and participate proactively during each class period.
S St 101 Section 3, Introduction to Southern Studies
This course will examine the history and culture of the American South through the lens of identity and memory. This course will use a variety of texts, from history, memoir, fiction, and creative nonfiction to look at how the idea of Southern identity has changed over time and continues to change. Our readings will cover from the 1930s to the present, through the perspective of writers and thinkers as varied as Albert Murray, Richard Wright, James Agee, Lillian Smith, Lewis Nordan, Tony Horowitz, and Jesmyn Ward. Southern Studies courses at the 100-level are designed as broad, interdisciplinary introductions to the study of region, with a focus on the U.S. South in relation to both the nation and the world. This one is no different, except this will be a discussion-based class rather than lecture based. The response journal serves as a means of analyzing the reading and developing ideas for in-class discussion or questions. Two critical papers are required for the class, as well as maintaining the response journal to the reading. There will also be an oral history assignment and a final take-home essay.