Course list and descriptions with faculty videos
HON 2515-101: Arts-Based Research Methods
Professor Peaches Hash
TR 11:00-12:15, Location TBD
This course will introduce students to arts-based research methods and methodologies. During the semester, we will explore how art functions as a way of knowing, from individual knowledge construction, to how art-making can function as forms of data and analysis. This course will work under the Expressive Arts belief that anyone is an artist if effort and reflection are included in a process of making. Assignments will promote creative risk-taking and experimentation. By the end of the course, students will understand how art-making can function as a form of research.
HON 2515-102: Revolution and Political Freedom in Russian Literature
Professor Irina Barclay
MWF 11:00-11:50, Location TBD
This course examines the historical development of Katorga (the Russian/ Soviet system of penal labor) expounded in masterpieces of Mikhail Bulgakov, Anna Akhmatova, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, and Leonid Bolotov. These works emphasize the political, social, cultural, and psychological qualities of characters imprisoned behind razor wire, in shocking settings, without trial, for decades. Significant questions will be addressed about the chaotic years, 1917 – 1957, in the Soviet Union. How was controlled living, the demise of individual freedoms, restricted social contact, and severe intellectual controls viewed under a dictatorial life? We will also explore literary traditions and ramifications manifested by these chefs-d'oeuvre in the global community in literature, politics, music, art, and film.
HON 2515-103: Investigating the Intersection of Race and Severe Disability
Professor David Koppenhaver
MW 2:00-3:15, AH 162
Inability long has been ascribed to both African Americans and people with (severe) disabilities primarily by White people in America. In this course, we will explore the human experience found at the intersection of race and severe disability. We will attempt to investigate beneath the surface in diverse areas of human experience including families, education, healthcare, the justice system, employment, leisure pursuits, and politics. Relying on a seminar structure, we will challenge one another’s thinking in interdisciplinary discussions, seek and reflect on connections to and intersections with our individual and collective areas of study and personal experience, and research and discuss both informational and narrative text sources. Ultimately, we will carefully examine what “good trouble” might look like in our individual and collective lives at this intersection.
HON 2515-104: Us and the U.S.: The View from Outside
Professor Chrissie Faupel
TR 11:00-12:15, AH 187
During most international and/or intercultural experiences we participate in, we tend to partake in “othering” thinking. We observe the new environment, people, foods, smells, etc. and reflect on the ways that they are different from us. It is second nature to place our own selves and cultures at the epicenter of our landscape, as we are “normal” to ourselves, and look at the new culture as the one that is “abnormal.” While this is not inherently bad (in many cases, we delight in being a part of something that is different), it is a profound experience for us to similarly feel the effects of being “othered.” Together, we will explore the ways in which the world views American culture. This course intentionally puts the Appalachian Honors student in the position of the other. Whether it’s your first time with such an occurrence, or your millionth, we are going to experience this together. And yet, America is not one monolithic culture. We are a diverse and varied country, affording one a true intercultural experience simply by crossing a state border (or two). This course seeks to dispel the myth that there is one American Culture (capital “c”), and will seek out evidence of many American cultures (small “c”). Join me as we explore these fascinating ideas!
Note: Fulfills Honors College international education requirement but does not require travel.
HON 2515-105: Observing Death:
Interdisciplinary Examination of Death and Dying Utilizing Films and Novels
Professor Louis Gallien
Tuesday 5-7:30, AH 161
This interdisciplinary, literary and cinematic seminar will explore issues centering on death and dying from a variety of written and film genres that are fictional, factually based, and contain deeply personal and moving written experiences with accompanying film accounts. While death is an inevitable experience for all of us, the examination of such a topic is not a popular topic and is considered to be by some people a rather morose one especially for young people. The central question posited in this course is: How can we explore the subject of death and dying in ways that are illuminating, instructive, personal and even generative?
Six books and one play will guide our existential journey on this subject from a variety of literary genres based on both fact and fiction along with six movies that underscore the themes flowing out of the following narratives: 1) C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, (Considered to be a classic cri de Coeur on the loss of a famous writer’s wife in England) 2) Reynolds Price, The Promise of Rest (A son who has contracted AIDS comes home to North Carolina to his fractured family to die. From the pen of a famous Duke Professor of English), 3) I Was Amelia Earhart (A fictional epistolary of the dying days of a pioneering American female pilot on a deserted island during World War II), 4) Four Friends: Friends Whose Lives Were Cut Too Short (A story of four friends who all attended the same elite prep school in New England and died close together in very different circumstances, including John F. Kennedy Jr.), 5) Into the Wild, (A foreboding coming of age journey of a post-college young man from Atlanta as he faces the terminal dangers of the Alaskan terrain) and; 6) The Fault in our Stars (Two teenagers traverse through a late adolescent journey together of hope, despair, love and death); 7) Romeo and Juliet (Two Verona families battle over internecine conflict, lovesickness, painful choices and untimely deaths).
The movies and one play included in these discussions are a) Shadowlands starring Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger and Julian Fellowes; b) Into the Wild starring Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener; c) The Fault in our Stars starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort; d) Finding Neverland starring Jonny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie; e) The Hours starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris; f) Amelia staring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor and g) Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare and the movie starring Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting.
HON 2515-106:
AI, Aliens, Q-Anon and Religion: New Religious Movements in the 21st century
TR 3:30-4:45, AH 162
Dr. Randy Reed (Philosophy/ Religion)
It is a fact. The number of self-identifying religious people has declined since the beginning of the century. This has been particularly true among the younger generations of millennials and gen-z where over 1/3 of those generations are religiously unaffiliated. The question most often asked is "What will replace institutional religion for these generations?" This class will examine several different options: The conspiracy theory of Q-anon which has already spawned a religious-like devotion in its followers and is spreading rapidly through conservative political and religious circles. The advent of new technologies designed to provide ways of creating spiritual experiences using the power of artificial intelligence to personalize these to the individual. The reality of Unidentified Flying Entities (formerly UFOs) which have now been admitted by the government is presenting an opportunity for some to reassess human spirituality in a truly universal context. Each of these represents a direction that the unaffiliated and even religiously affiliated people may move in search of a post-modern religious experience. We'll interrogate these phenomena and students will do projects in which they investigate in more detail one of these paths.