HON150

This spring semester topic seminar is an introduction to the Honors Program that builds on the foundation each student acquired in First-Year Seminar and brings depth to at least one of the four knowledge perspectives encountered there. The course presents knowledge and meaning as things that are made through human activity and intellectual engagement. It aims to startle and incite, using an unexpected topic to challenge assumptions, engage debate and dialogue, and to further develop critical thinking and writing. Discussions aim to provoke contagious enthusiasm for intellectual inquiry and help students realize the power of ideas, including their own, in shaping the world. The course employs cross-cultural or global perspectives and introduces concepts of race, class, gender and sexuality as lenses through which knowledge is made and meaning perceived. Beyond considering these categories as descriptors, themes or objects of study, students encounter race, class, gender, and sexuality as basic tools of inquiry that can inflect, limit or enhance how each knowledge perspective frames questions and reaches conclusions. The course introduces and explains Honors Components as small investigations students will frame themselves and therefore opportunities to apply knowledge perspectives to solving problems that interest them. It connects first-year students to a larger Honors community marked by curiosity and ambition.