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IUB Honors Courses Indiana University Bloomington

HON-H 228 – A History of Consumer Culture

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#7550

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON

TR 11:15am-12:30pm

HU 111

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

 

If you made the decision to purchase the latest generation of the Apple iPhone, then you’re aware of how deeply consumer culture permeates our lives. The smartphone is foremost among many material possessions of the 21st century that have transformed our lives and our relationship to the world in which we live. Our use of brand-name goods purchased in a mass consumption marketplace has increasingly become the cultural context for everyday living, individual identity, and even our emotional attachments to the people in our lives and the places in which we live. By tracing the history of consumer culture from the 15th to the 21st century, we will begin to understand how this happened, as we explore the terrain where politics, economics, and culture have intersected in different times and places. Our attention will be global in scope, while concentrating ultimately on the history of consumption in the United States, where we will focus largely on the tension between Americans’ identities as citizens and consumers. The goal of this course is to understand how and why societies became committed to mass consumption and, for better or worse, its far-reaching consequences.

SLAV-T 214 – Central & East European Immigration and Ethnic Identity in the U.S.

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#11364

JEFFREY HOLDEMAN

MW 4:00pm-5:15pm

GA 0005

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit; COLL (CASE) Diversity in U.S. credit. This class counts as a 3-credit HON-H course in the Hutton Honors College.

The United States has been called “the great American melting pot”—a hodge-podge of the peoples of the world—and some foreign visitors contend that it has no discernible culture or identity of its own. Is America a fondue of uniform taste and consistency? A mixed salad of various, separate components? A stew of blended but identifiable ingredients which has a flavor all its own?
In the largest wave of immigration to the U.S.—from the 1880s until 1914—tens of millions of people arrived from Central and Eastern Europe. Over the course of the 20th century, they were joined by millions more. This course will focus on the peoples from the areas of modern-day Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, and Montenegro, as well as stateless groups like Ashkenazi Jews, Carpathian Rusyns, Sorbs, Tatars, and Roma.

In this course we will explore ways in which one’s ethnic culture and identity (traditional and contemporary, from one’s homeland and in one’s new environment) can manifest themselves in art, music, food, clothing, language, social structure, religion, worldview, etc. We will do this through posing a series of questions: What do people arrive with beyond their physical baggage? What do they choose to keep and discard from their native or heritage culture? How do they choose to “perform” or display this for themselves, to each other, and to outsiders? What benefits and costs come from maintaining a foreign ethnic identity in the U.S.?

Students will learn and discuss core concepts from a variety of fields, things such as language maintenance and shift; boundary construction and negotiation; material culture; generation gap; regional variation; endogamy and exogamy; and acculturation, assimilation, and transculturation. At the core will be the concept of identity and the many forms it can take. Students will also learn basic techniques of urban fieldwork and research in order to carry out interviews and projects later in the semester. All of these will come together in the process of trying to answer what it means to be “ethnic” in America.

The course will consist of at-home readings and writing assignments, in-class discussions and group work, essay tests, films, and optional fieldtrips, and it will culminate in the presentation of multimedia course projects based on an ethnic community from our target region in a U.S. locale and time period chosen by the student. Readings and discussions will expose students to a variety of disciplines and approaches, such as those from ethnography, sociology, history, psychology, sociolinguistics, and ethnomusicology.

POLS-Y 109 – Introduction to International Relations

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#7553

DINA SPECHLER

TR 4:00pm-5:15pm

GA 0001

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd S&H credit; COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

 

Poverty. Inequality. Scarce resources. Ethnic identity. Territorial ambitions. Ideology. Political aspirations. As we move farther into a new millennium, nearly every area of the world is beset by violent conflict arising from these and many other sources. This course will provide you with basic conceptual tools and information to help you understand some of the major problems in world politics in recent decades and think critically about possible solutions to those problems. The primary focus will be on the causes of conflict and war; the relative advantages and disadvantages of relying on military measures, economic instruments or diplomacy for achieving foreign policy goals; and ways of preventing or reducing the likelihood, severity and duration of war. The course will include a simulation of the United Nations General Assembly in which all students will participate as delegates, representing a country of their choice.

HON-H 251 – Hutton Honors Study Abroad – Indonesia: NGO’s as Community Educators

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#31890

MARGARET SUTTON

T 5:30pm-7:30pm

HU 108

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd World Culture credit. This class includes travel to Indonesia during spring break.

Application for this course is required; for more information, click here

Participants will enroll in a semester-long honors seminar course, titled “Indonesia: NGOs as Community Educators.” On campus, the course will discuss how small and large Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Indonesia work to promote educational opportunities and gender equity. Over spring break, participants will travel to Indonesia to gain firsthand experience of these topics.

Nongovernmental (NGO) and voluntary organizations play vital roles in democratic societies. Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, is home to numerous and varied NGOs that work to improve the welfare of Indonesians and the well-being of the nation and the world. Some of these originated in faith-based social welfare organizations during the colonial era; others began in the late 20th century as global institutions encouraged development of non-state social welfare organizations. Studying the work and impact of these NGOs provides a unique window into the ways in which Indonesians voluntarily engage with collective issues and challenges that concern them the most.

NGOs are shaped by the economic, cultural and political contexts in which they reside. Understanding Indonesian NGOs thus requires both contextual knowledge of contemporary Indonesia and theoretically informed knowledge of NGOs. The travel component of the class will enable students to see what the work of these organizations looks like “on the ground” and to inquire about it directly with the practitioners. Each student will engage in an individual inquiry project linked to the travel component. Indonesian NGOs. They will present a summary of their travel experience in a poster session coordinated with the monthly Indonesian coffee hour sponsored by SEAS.

HON-BV 299 (MUS-Z 203/HON-H299) – History of Rock ‘n’ Roll III/Honors Discussion

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#9990

ANDREW HOLLLINDEN

MW 1:30pm-2:45pm
T 2:30pm-3:20pm

MU 110
M 271

This class takes up where Z202 – The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll II leaves off, the splintering of rock music into categories including Art Rock, Glam Rock, Singer-Songwriters, Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, Southern Rock, Country Rock, Heartland Rock, AOR Top 40 Rock, Jazz Fusion, Funk, The Philadelphia Sound, Disco, Electro Funk, Rap, Reggae, Dub, Alternative, Punk, New Wave, Hardcore, Grunge, Techno, Industrial, and variations within each. Extensive listening and video show how changing sounds, technologies, and attitudes affected the landscape of rock music over the course of the 70s and 80s, In addition to learning more about your favorite artists, you will undoubtedly find some new likes among the unfamiliar or misunderstood.

MATH-S 344 – Honors Course in Differential Equations II

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#10507

SIAO-HAO GUO

MWF 9:05am-9:55am

AC C112

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) N&M Breadth of Inquiry credit

The first part of the course will cover the Laplace transform in chapter 6 and a brief review of the linear algebra in sections 7.2 and 7.3.

The second part will cover systems of first order ODE. We will study the theory of linear systems in chapter 7 and nonlinear systems in chapter 9.

The last part will cover the boundary value problems and its application on PDE. This includes the introduction of Fourier series in chapter 10 and the Sturm-Liouville theory in chapter 11.

HISP-S 328 – Introduction to Hispanic Literature

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#5527

RYAN GILES

TR 11:15am-12:30pm

BH 246

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit; COLL (CASE) Global Civ & Culture credit

 

This course studies representative Spanish texts from the Middle Ages to the present.  We will read, discuss and analyze early poetry, theater and prose, observing how characters, themes and literary devices are developed and reinterpreted in changing cultural and historical contexts. This course will enable students to articulate and identify characteristics that define different genres in the literary histories of Spain and Latin America. Learning to analyze the complex structure of classic works, through close reading exercises, activities and class discussions students will hone their ability to interpret Spanish literary texts from different periods.

The class is conducted entirely in Spanish.

HISP-S 326 – Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#6301

STAFF

MWF 10:10am-11:00am

SY 0009

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) N&M Breadth of Inquiry credit

This course provides the opportunity to learn the tools of linguistic analysis and to apply them to the study of Spanish. Attention will be given to different levels of linguistic analysis including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, second language acquisition, and language variation. Class time will be divided between problem-solving tasks, lecture, and active discussion. Evaluation will include in-class engagement, homework, experiments, and exams. The class is conducted entirely in Spanish.

HISP-S 308 – Composition and Conversation in Spanish

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Sections offered SPRING 2020:

#29859

STAFF

TR 1:00pm-2:15pm

BH 240

This course provides focused opportunities for learners to develop their oral and writing abilities in Spanish. Students will develop their writing skills in Spanish by learning and practicing the main components of different writing styles- including description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. They will learn compositional elements that provide cohesion and coherence in both formal and informal writing styles. Students will develop their oral skills by watching and discussing a number of critically acclaimed films from different Spanish-speaking countries which deal with a variety of cultural, social, and political issues. To foster increased oral proficiency, students will participate in several in-class discussions and debates on controversial topics presented in the films. By the end of this course, students will be able to write in a variety of formal and informal writing styles and to discuss a wide range of topics. This course is conducted exclusively in Spanish.

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