Course list and descriptions with faculty videos
HON 3515-101: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Professor Louis Gallien
Monday 5:00-7:30, AH 161
This course explores the various economic and political ties to chattel slavery that were held in common across the United States. It is widely believed that American slavery was uniquely situated in the Deep South and while its labor was centered on those States, the economic impact of chattel slavery was felt through the entire Nation.
By the genesis of the Civil War, the South’s economy was fourth in the world in production and profit. However, the economic impact it had on the whole nation was disproportionate to all other industries. We will examine the ways and avenues that this insidious and horrific slave trade benefitted the entire country. We will read and experience (through a field trip) and with guest speakers coupled with the main text explore how slavery is implicated throughout the entire American experience.
HON 3515-102: Tycoons, Titans, Founders, Financiers, and Blaggards
Professor Leigh Dunston
TR 11:00-12:15, Peacock 4140
This course is anchored in the idea that the well-informed person should be familiar with the broad business history of America. The format for the course is to utilize select portions of the biographies of the most impactful persons in American business history. Through those lives and stories, the student will learn the principles and history of business as it evolved in America and tangentially in the world from 1770 through 2008. This will be a broad overview focusing on the exploits, successes, failures and the ethical and leadership challenges of persons such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Diamond Jim Brady, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett, Sandy Weill, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, and Steve Jobs in an effort to provide a broad contextual framework within which to begin to know, understand and appreciate the history of the most dynamic business environment in the history of the world.
HON 3515-103: Lead the Charge!
Professor Toussaint Romain
Wednesday 5:00-7:30, Location TBD
Open up your Instagram app. Or Twitter. Or even, look out of your window and you will likely see protestors of all different colors, genders and ideologies out there. Some you will agree with, most you will not. And yet what’s missing the most is that no one seems to be bringing these two groups together. In fact, no one really knows what to do. Is it because we are divided as a country? Well, yes but was this division caused by one president or the shooting of an unarmed person by the police? No. The truth is, this division has always existed and in America it was memorialized in our country’s genesis charter when We The People was penned in our Constitution.
Today’s current events have only exposed this division and accelerated the inevitable clash that we see in social media. Consequently, freedom, equality, and the pursuit of happiness or upward mobility have been denied and delayed for so many. But there is hope. There is you! Mahatma Gandhi is often quoted as saying “Be the change you wish to see.” But what Gandhi actually said was “if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.” Throughout the centuries, brave students have found themselves in the midst of leading within a crisis. However, Gandhi’s discovery of “self” only occurred for those students when they relied on the wisdom of the elders. If you want to change the world, then it is imperative that you become the change you wish to see. But you will need help. The question that many students get stuck on is “where do I start.” The answer is that change starts within you.
Lead the Change! is an effort to combine young people’s energy with the timeless precepts found in history. There is a way to make change happen (utility) but there is also a way not to (futility). This course will help brave students understand the difference in order to enact the change they want to see. To help them find their voice and to free others to find theirs too! More specifically, this course will cover three things (i) creating awareness through active and experiential learning and exposing students to the nature of systemic injustices (ii) helping students identify a problem-based or community-based learning opportunity where the student can personally make an impact or lead change in, and (iii) providing students with actual civic engagement and leadership opportunities to implement that change in the community by working collaboratively with various community partners, businesses and groups towards that mutually beneficial end. It is possible! Guest lecturers will likely include NFL player(s); Civil Rights icon(s); Fortune 500 CEO(s); Activists and lawyers, like a New York City Attorney who manages the payments for wrongful death by police officers; former ex-con Ronnie Long and his wife (a black man released from prison after 44 years); a photographer who has traveled the nation capturing images at protests, riots and mass gatherings; philanthropists and many more.
Ultimately, we will explore case studies that will enable the student to analyze movements that were successful and glean strategies and tactics from them in order to develop the tools they need to Lead the Change!
HON 3515-104: Navigating Difference
Professor Garrett McDowell
TR 9:30-10:45, AH 162
Many of us have been stuck at home in various ways, whether that means our individual living spaces and/or our national borders, due to the global pandemic. Yet, today more than ever, we face social and political divisiveness, racial inequalities, and global interconnectedness. In this current context, we are called to understand our individual, cultural, political, linguistic, national differences, to embrace and navigate those differences, and to develop competency in connecting and communicating across those differences. These are and will increasingly be requirements in any job, and these are the goals of the Honors International Education requirement, which this course will fulfill for any Honors student without travel abroad. In this course, students will be challenged by and seek answers to all of the following: Who am I (situated in all social and national hierarchies)? How can I better understand those who are different from me? How can I connect and communicate with those who are different from me? What does it mean to be a (local and global) citizen? Students in this course will search for answers to these questions and actively engage with others across lines of difference. This course will give Honors students opportunities, through exercise and critical examination, to become citizens ready to collaborate across all differences, globally and locally no matter the context.
Note: Fulfills Honors College international education requirement but does not require travel.
HON 3515-105: Making Sense of the Present
Professor Michael Behrent
MW 3:30-4:45, AH 161
Philosophers and poets have long commented on the difficulty of grasping the present, which, by its very nature, seems elusive and fleeting. At certain historical junctures, it seems especially difficult to find any coherent meaning in the present. In the United States as well as in other parts of the world, the past several years have been described by many as a period of particularly intense upheaval, uncertainty, and unpredictability.
This course will be structured around two questions. First, what intellectual tools, dispositions, and methods are required to make sense of the present—that is, a period of time in which the future is unknown and hindsight lacking? Second, what are some specific intellectual frameworks that have been proposed for making sense of the problems currently afflicting our society and the world? The course will consider recent political, social, economic, and cultural trends both to try to understand them and to reflect on how we go about understanding them. Special emphasis will be placed on recent attempts to make sense of three national and global trends: the transformation of capitalism and the onset of so-called “neoliberalism”; the rise of populism; and the global preoccupation with politics centered on the affirmation of identity.