AH 101 Section 4, Introduction to Western Art
This course is designed to introduce students with no prior experience in the study of art to various styles of Western art. Two-dimensional media, such as painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography will be explored. Three-dimensional media, such as sculpture and architecture, will also be studied. Finally, the history of art will be surveyed from prehistoric art through contemporary art. Students successfully completing this course will be able to: Analyze the basic vocabulary of visual elements (line, shape, light, value, color, texture, mass, space) and principles of design (proportion and scale, unity and variety, balance and rhythm, and emphasis and focal point); recognize and discuss materials (media) used to make art; place works of art in their historical context based on a general timeline and identify different styles and movements in art. Students will explore the University museum’s collection and compare and contrast artworks using the skills of formal analysis. The Honors section of Art History 101 will aim to develop oral presentation skills throughout the semester, as well as writing essays related to artworks belonging to different time periods.
AH 202 Section 2, History of Art II
The objective of this course is to familiarize students with the major stylistic, thematic, and historical trends in art history from the Renaissance through today. This course is designed to encourage a critical understanding of the meaning and function of art objects, architecture, and design artifacts within their original historical contexts. Class sessions consist of lecture and group discussion. Students will explore the University museum’s collection and compare and contrast artworks of the same or different cultures using the skills of formal analysis. Students will read and discuss scholarly articles tied to the examined time period. The Honors section of Art History 202 will aim to develop oral presentation skills throughout the semester, as well as writing essays related to artworks belonging to different time periods.
Anth 101 Section 4, Introduction to Anthropology
This Honors section of Anthropology 101 introduces students to the foundational concepts and methods in anthropology, guided by the questions what makes us human? How do we exist and make meaning in the world? From biological anthropology to archeology and cultural anthropology, students will learn about human diversity and how anthropological knowledge helps us understand contemporary social issues. This course is primarily discussion based and experiential. Methodological training is integrated into the course, and students will have an opportunity to work with biological specimens, archeological artifacts, and digital ethnography over the term. Unlike a traditional course, there are no exams in this class. Instead, students are evaluated on an overall portfolio of work that we develop collaboratively throughout the term. This portfolio will include everything from short in-class assignments to traditional papers to photographs, with specific assignments graded during the term and the final portfolio serving as the final examination. Finally, there will be 4 books assigned: one textbook and three readable shorter books that each deal with one of the major fields of anthropology: biological, cultural and linguistic, and archeology.
Arab 412 Section 1, Upper-level Arabic Conversation
Students engage in conversations on a wide-range of topics touching upon: the Arab family, Arab women, Arab food, education in the Arab World, illiteracy in the Arab World, religion and society, the Hijab in Islam, the Arabic language and its dialects, customs and traditions, Bedouins, Arab cultural identity, the question of Palestine, Arab media, Globalization, and others. Students are asked to write on each topic, engage in disucssions in the classroom and choose a topic covered in class to expand on for presentations and mid-term and final papers.
Arab 512 Section 1, Introduction to the Qu’ran
Designed to push the student to reach the advanced-high to superior level of proficiency in Arabic, this course focuses on familiarizing the student with the major themes of the Qur’an, the chronology of events that led to the revelations, understanding words associated with the Qur’an the way the first hearers of the message may have understood them, and acquiring knowledge about the tenants of Islam. The student is asked to discuss major themes of the Qur’an as they may be applied to current events through knowledge gained about fiqh ‘Islamic jurisprudence’ and the aḥādīt.
Bisc 104 Section 8, Inquiry into Life: The Environment
This is a biology survey course, intended for non-biology majors. BISC 102 is the prerequisite. Associated with BISC 104 is the lab BISC 105, although a student does not have to take the lab in order to take the course. The goal is for students to better understand the basic principles of evolution and ecology and to have a growing familiarity with the diversity of life on earth. Students will demonstrate mastery of content, conceptual understanding and application of content during class participation and on tests. As an honors course, there is more student-instructor interaction, more class discussion, and more opportunity to explore current issues in science. After completing this class, students should be able to explain the evidence for evolution, some of the mechanisms of evolution and some of the history of evolutionary thought. In addition, students should demonstrate knowledge of the basis for classification, and an understanding of the major categories of life on earth.
CHIN 418 Sections 1 and 2, Introduction to Classical Chinese
This course is designed to provide students an introduction to basic classical Chinese syntax and vocabulary that are still commonly used in Modern Chinese. The students will be exposed to authentic classical Chinese texts, such as Confucius’s Analects, Mencius, and Tang poetry. The culture contained in the classical texts will also be discussed throughout the course in order to provide students historical backgrounds of traditional Chinese values.
CHIN 450 Section 1, Domain Mentorship
Chinese 450 is a content-based and domain-specific course. It is designed for students who have achieved advanced levels based on the ACTFL scale. The purpose of this course is to prepare Flagship students for their Capstone year abroad, and the content of this course is tailored to meet student’s need. All course materials are authentic materials. Students are expected to attend each meeting with thorough preparation before the class, to participate in discussion with a domain mentor actively, and to complete all required assignments fully.
CHIN 512 Section 1, 21st Century China
Chinese 512 is designed for students who have achieved advanced mid/high levels based on the ACTFL scale. This is a content-based course, designed to increase students’ Chinese proficiency levels and most importantly, their Chinese cultural awareness. Course materials are all authentic materials from news clips, lectures, and talk shows. The topics include economics, societal issues, technology, and sciences of the twenty-first century China. The tasks to be covered include supporting opinions, discussing abstract topics, hypothesizing, and producing appropriate formal and informal texts based on the settings.
Econ 202 Section 6, Principles of Microeconomics
Microeconomics is the study of how individuals and firms make choices, and how these choices affect society. Economics shares with other behavioral sciences the general goal of explaining and predicting human behavior. The distinguishing feature of the economic approach is the emphasis on rational decision making under conditions of scarcity. This course is an introduction to the basic concepts and tools of microeconomics. The emphasis of the class is on economic reasoning. Throughout the class, we will concentrate on applying the concepts that we learn to real life situations. In the honors section, students will be given some additional readings, including suitable chapters from The Economic Report of the President. Students are also encouraged to read the economics sections of newspapers and magazines, and to suggest articles or ideas which they would like to discuss. The smaller size of the honors section makes it more suitable than regular sections of Econ 202 for such discussions. In addition, students in the honors section are expected to answer essay test questions rather than multiple-choice. By the end of this class students should 1) develop a deep understanding of a small number of core concepts of microeconomics that are essential to informed analysis of any economic issue; 2) develop an ability to use key economic ideas in evaluating public policies; and 3) develop an ability to critically analyze economic arguments put forth in public policy debates. For instance, they should be able to read and evaluate general material in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Economist.
Econ 202 Section 10, Principles of Microeconomics
This is a course in introductory microeconomics – the study of how individuals make decisions and the consequences of those decisions. Because it helps us understand how individuals (such as consumers, firms, and governments) behave, microeconomic theory is extremely useful for analyzing questions of interest to a broad variety of fields, including public policy, business administration, and the social sciences. By the end of this course, you should: understand the core concepts of microeconomic analysis; be able to apply these principles in order to analyze questions of substantive interest to the fields listed above; and be able to use the logic and language of microeconomics in order to effectively communicate the conclusions of your analyses to technical and non-technical audiences alike. Three characteristics differentiate this section of the course from its non-honors counterparts. First, we will treat the material at a more abstract level, highlighting the widespread applicability of economic to many questions. Second, we will approach the material with a greater degree of mathematical rigor. Third, an accelerated pace will allow us to discuss interesting topics and applications that are usually not covered in introductory courses.
Econ 203 Section 3, 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 223 Section 24, Survey of American Literature to the Civil War
The history of English-speaking people in the New World has been a history of storytellers. Living in a newly colonized hemisphere produced new literary forms, templates which still define American culture to this day. English adventurers, Puritan settlers on the Massachusetts frontier, New England preachers, French expatriates, and eighteenth-century printer’s apprentices all created new kinds of texts examining new notions of American identity and society. We will read, examine, discuss, and write about the colonial accounts, Native American captivity narratives, Jeremiads, devotional poetry, sermons, autobiographies, and short stories that they produced, re-evaluating the expressive texts of our shared American pasts and presents. This course aims to be a more discussion-based, writing-intensive, creative, and rigorous alternative to the super-sized American literature lectures.
Eng 226 Section 13, Survey of British Literature since Romantic Period
This course offers an introduction to the literature of Britain (and its colonies) from the Romantic period to the late twentieth century. We will examine the differences and connections between Romanticism, Victorian-ism, Modernism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism; beyond such “isms,” we will encounter the words of brilliant minds coming to terms with the world around them, from Percy Shelley’s poems of protest to Virginia Woolf’s daring prose and Salman Rushdie’s hilarious and surprising tales of a new Britain. Best of all, the smaller class size of this Honors section allows us to focus on the works, issues, and ideas that matter to us as a class. We will build knowledge collectively, in seminar-style discussions rather than the usual lectures of 120 students, which allows for deeper and more wide-ranging investigations of an exciting period in literary history.
Eng 409 Section 1, Special Topics in Genre: Hybrid Forms
In today’s increasingly heterogeneous landscape, cross-genre works that blend inheritances from multiple literary parents have a new urgency and popularity. In this advanced level literature class, we will become familiar with the history and possibilities of various hybrid forms, including short-form nonfiction, flash fiction, prose poems, lyric essays, and forms that are hard to label. In addition to reading the individual works, texts about craft, and some theory, this class with have a hybrid element in that we will adapt and adopt some techniques from the creative writing classroom, so in addition to more traditional reading responses and papers, students will also produce a short portfolio of genre-busting hybrid work.
His 106 Section 14, The United States Since 1877
This is an introductory survey course covering the history of the Unites 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 at the time under study —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. All works of history are works of interpretation that make arguments based on the historical evidence available. To demonstrate mastery of historical thinking, students will write a final paper based on archival research through the Digital Collections of the Special Collections at the UM library. This course differs from a conventional History 106 in that there will be a heavy emphasis on learning through discussion rather than lecture. We will also delve deeper into historical evidence than a conventional 106 course, reading book-length primary sources and scholarly accounts. Students will also practice historical interpretation through several in-class “history labs.” In these exercises, we will explore digitized primary source collections to apply what we have learned about American history and to uncover how people of the past experienced historical processes and events.
His 399 Section 3, Problems in History (Disease and Medicine in American History)
This course will introduce honors students to the field of medical history and will use disease as a lens to reinterpret the American past. Through thematic weekly readings, class lectures, and discussions, we will explore how epidemic diseases affected colonial projects in the Americas, how disease environments influenced the growth and practice of slavery, how disease shaped American political development and the progress of the Revolutionary War, how Americans conceptualized ideas about medicine and health in the nineteenth century, how disease affected western expansion, how struggles against disease during the Civil War influenced the development of the medical profession, how segregation created disparities in healthcare during the Jim Crow years, how disease became racialized in United States immigration policy, how the expansion of the federal government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries changed public health campaigns, how the United States responded to the global influenza pandemic in 1918, how Americans have gendered and stigmatized certain diseases, how campaigns to eradicate disease following the Second World War reflected Cold War politics and society, how the United States responded to the AIDS epidemic, and, finally, what recent outbreaks of SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and Zika reveal about the future of disease in a globalized world. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention not only to the physical and environmental effects of disease, but also to how disease has been socially- and culturally-constructed and used for a variety of political purposes. The major objectives of this course are for students to (1) learn about the impact of disease on American history, (2) develop an understanding of the field of medical history, (3) hone critical thinking and analytical skills, (4) learn how to read and analyze primary and secondary sources, and (5) improve writing skills.
His 399 Section 4, Problems in History (Middle East Water Security)
Water is a vital element for human life, and human activities are closely connected to availability and quality of water. The Middle East has approximately 5% of the world’s population, but only 1% of the world’s freshwater. This has led to innovative ways of thinking about water access, its use and consequences of water scarcity in the region.
This thematic class will be divided into three sections, examining water uses and practices; water conflict; innovation and solutions. In the first section, we will look at water access in the region. Case-studies will range from the historic underground Qanat system in Iran, established in the first millennium BC, all the way to modern twentieth century innovations, such as the Aswan Dam Project. Placing these examples in their socio-economic context—such as rapid population growth, unemployment and poverty, as well as unsustainable environmental practices—the class will examine some of the consequences, including desertification. According to Lester R. Brown, an environmental scholar and activist, “future wars in the Middle East are more likely to be fought over water than over oil”.
In the second section of the course, we will examine why water related conflicts over trans-boundary basins have intensified in the region over the twentieth century. The Jordan River, the Nile and Tigres-Euphrates River Basins will be examined as sites of contestation. Conversely, we will assess the importance of concepts such as ‘Virtual Water”—water imbedded in imported food—and how this has, at least in the short term, staved off conflict. The final section of the class will examine some of the innovations and solutions that attempt to address issues of desertification and conflict. Particular attention will be paid to the Blue Peace initiative, a framework that seeks to transform on-going trans-boundary water conflicts by creating socio-economic opportunities and fostering greater co-operation.
Using water security as the core concept, the aim of this course is to cultivate your capacity for close reading, analysis, synthesis, and communication. We will use a multi-disciplinary approach and the class will culminate in a research project and presentation.
Hon 392 Section 7, Honors Conversations II (Conversations in Environmental Health)
In this course we will have focused, in-depth discussion of timely issues related to environmental health. Students will be informed of the issues through reading scientific literature and will be expected to propose solutions through discussion and writing assignments. Topics will be dictated by current events but could include, for example, environmental lead exposure and toxicity, pharmaceuticals in the environment, consequences of climate change, contamination of the food supply, e-waste etc.
Hon 399 Section 1, Special Topics in Honors (Film and Social Problems)
This is a course that probes that role feature films have played in exploring as well as bringing light to social problems and issues, whether in the stories of individuals or groups caught in the mesh of those issues or through dramatic events those issues helped create. Film will be discussed against the backdrop of how other art forms—painting, music, literature—have addressed these issues. The so-called “Hollywood Social Problem” film has been defined as one that “combines social analysis and dramatic conflict within a coherent narrative structure (distinguished by) its didacticism” (Roffman and Purdy). This course will include such films but also reach beyond to examples from German Expressionist film and Film Noir where no edifying solution may be offered but rather the depiction of an underlying truth or hard-boiled reality.
Hon 420 Section 2, Honors Experiential Learning (Affordable Housing in Oxford, MS; also offered as Soc 451, section 3)
Oxford and Lafayette County are the fastest-growing area in the state and one of the fastest-growing in the country. Despite this boom, or perhaps because of it, middle-income and low-income members of the community struggle to find affordable housing. Through this course you will discover the causes of this problem, study how other areas of the country (especially other college towns) have addressed this problem, and learn how organizations and local government are addressing the issues here. The students in this course will lay the groundwork for future students to propose solutions to the city and county governments.
Hon 420 Section 4, Honors Experiential Learning (Fluid Power: Exploring Water Rights)
This studio art course will creatively explore the topic of international water rights from an arts perspective. Students will work parallel with the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Residency Program on the subject at hand and end the term with an art exhibition. Questions to be explored are: “How do we describe and define the contested space around water? If water use is often parallel to culture, how can cultural activities result in greater models of equity in our water systems? How can diverse practices, from poetic to practical to political, create greater access to these and other parallel resources?” Students must submit a one-page proposal to the instructor stating how his/her work would contribute to the diversity of the students in the class. Please send to vlrougon@olemiss.edu. 3 hour course credit. For questions, please contact Virginia Rougon Chavis at vlrougon@olemiss.edu.
Hon 551 Section 4, Honors Advanced Study in Law II (Honors College version of Law 709, Entertainment Law)
This course seeks to examine the contracts, intellectual property, employment, free speech, and antitrust issues associated with entertainment industries like music, movies, television, theater, books, videogames, and visual art. The course will include discussions not just of the current state of the law but also of the underlying policies at issue to provide opportunity for debate on how new and emerging digital technologies affect the creative industries.
ISS 480 Section 2, National Security Issues of the 21st Century (Environmental Security; also offered as PPL 493 Section 2)
This course focuses on Environmental Security in the 21st Century. The emerging field of Environmental Security is situated at the nexus of Environmental Studies and Security Studies, and this course begins with overviews of principles and approaches that are foundational to both. Then the course considers environmental threats to U.S. national security, to societal security, and to human security. Issues emerging from differences between the Global North and the Global South are considered along with the roles played by choices related to values and lifestyles. The course ends with consideration of scenarios for how environmental security threats may develop in the future. Students are expected to actively participate in seminar-type discussions with contribution of ideas, comments, and questions that are well-informed by critical reading of texts and by their own analytical writing.
Lat 102 Section 4, Introduction to Latin II
Latin 102 Honors: Introduction to Latin II (“Essentials of grammar, training in translation”). As the catalog description succintly puts it, we will continue the process of mastering the essentials of grammar and of building a foundational vocabulary to read ancient Latin, especially the famous authors who lived during the 1st century BC and 1st century AD, from Cicero and Virgil to Ovid and Seneca. For the honors section of this course we will supplement the standard diet with a broad array of additional (short) readings of ancient texts and lofty gnomic utterances (and even some modern mottos, e.g., Cogito ergo sum).
Phil 103 Section 2, Logic: Critical Thinking (cross-listed as Ling 103 Section 2)
Students will develop the ability to uncover the logical structure of ordinary language; to recognize, represent, and assess everyday statements and arguments; and to work competently within formal logical systems. The material will be presented in three distinct sections, with an exam after each section. Section 1 is introductory. Topics include basic logical concepts, the informal analysis of statements, the nature and analysis of arguments, and fallacies (including statistical fallacies). Section 2 concerns categorical logic. Topics include categorical statements, the logical relationships amongst categorical propositions, and categorical syllogisms. Section 3 concerns propositional logic. Topics include the truth-functional operators , the use of truth tables to establish validity semantically, and a formal proof system to establish validity syntactically. If time permits, we will also cover basic probability theory and inductive logic. PAYOFF: This course will prove extremely helpful to those who anticipate taking any of the various graduate entrance examinations (LSAT, MCAT, GMAT), all of which have a section on logic.
Psy 201 Section 9, General Psychology
This course is an overview of the broad field of Psychology and is designed to introduce the student to the scientific study of behavior and the cognitive and physiological processes that underlie behavior. Topics include the historical development of psychology, research methodology, brain/behavior relationships, perception, variations in consciousness, learning and memory, cognition and intelligence, emotion, personality, and social behavior. Psychological disorders and their treatment will also be discussed. This course differs from the regular sections of PSY 201 in the written and oral assignments that are built into the course. Students are required to keep a “journal” that contains reflections/observations about each chapter that is discussed. This is a way to keep a dialog going between the instructor and students about what is being learned and questions about how the topics apply to their own lives. Students are also required to give a 10-15 minute presentation in class on a topic assigned by the instructor. The topic for the upcoming semester will be a commonly held “myth” related to psychology that has little or no scientific support. Due to the small class size, examinations involve identification and short essay questions in addition to multiple-choice questions.
Psy 201 Section 15, General Psychology
This course overviews the discipline of psychology, the scientific study of behavior and experience, and its major subfields (biological, clinical, health, social). A large portion of this course is devoted to appreciating the science of psychology and the relevance of psychological concepts in everyday life, and much class time is spent discussing real-world application of the concepts. Unlike the non-Honors courses in General Psychology, ample time is afforded for class discussion, students read about common myths in the field of psychology, and they give a brief oral presentation to the class dispelling one of these myths.
Psy 327 Section 2, Psychology and Law
The course systematically presents material relating to the interface between the fields of psychology and law, including forensic, police, and correctional psychology. Major emphasis is also placed on psychology’s role in the courts and criminal behavior prevention and intervention.This course contains material that some may find disturbing, such as sexual deviance and sex offenders (adult and juvenile). Coverage of these topics is necessary given the nature of the course. We will approach sensitive material in a professionally appropriate manner.
Span 202 Section 15, Intermediate Spanish II
Spanish 202 is the fourth language course in the series 101, 102 and 201 or its equivalent at the University of Mississippi. Spanish 202 concentrates on the last four chapters of the textbook ¡Arriba! Students exchange information about themselves and the real world while engaging in language activities. This communicative method makes the class meaningful and entertaining. Span 202 is also a computer-enhanced course that requires My Spanish Lab to submit online homework. The emphasis of this Honors section of Spanish, however, is on talking, participation and interaction. It also incorporates substantial audiovisual resources and technologies in order to better appreciate language learning, culture and diversity.
Span 304 Section 4, Conversation and Composition II
Spanish 304 is a continuation of the two-semester conversation and composition sequence. Students will improve their speaking and writing skills while learning about the Spanish-speaking Americas and Hispanics in the US. The Croft/Honors section will offer Honors College students more varied activities than are usually available at this level, including debates, analysis of texts and video, role-playing, and different kinds of writing tasks. Spanish 304 is a requirement for the Spanish minor and major.
S St 102 Section 2, Intro to Southern Studies II
This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary study of the American South—especially the history of racial thought in the region—through a critical reading of southern protest culture. Students will be asked to examine and deconstruct the social, demographic, economic, cultural, and intellectual context(s) of protest songs such as Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn,” protest novels such as Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were watching God, and protest films such as Steel Magnolias (2012). Early sections of the course will consider theoretical and conceptual questions such as, “what is race?”; “what is racism?”; and “what constitutes protest?” Subsequent sections will trace the arc of southern history, from the Antebellum period to present, along the currents of individual and collective protest(ations).