Courses in College Honors (Division 395)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 – December 22, 1999)

Take me to the Fall Term '99 Time Schedule for College Honors.

Section 001 – Introduction to Historical Research

Instructor(s): Shaw Livermore

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (3). (SS).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Understanding of the past necessarily rests upon the study and assessment of a great variety of records. These range from archaeological finds, official government documents, newspapers, diaries, letters to rare books. Historians depend heavily upon the fact that such materials have been collected and preserved by museums, archives, and even families. Here at Michigan are two well-known repositories of historical materials, one the Bentley Library on North Campus, and the other the Clements Library on South University Avenue. The first collects primarily those source materials that relate to Michigan history, and the second collects primarily materials pertaining to the discovery and early settlement of North America. Early in the term we shall visit each library to see something of the range and texture of their holdings. Then, each student will carve out a modest historical problem or issue that can be addressed from these sources during the remainder of the term. Then the task will be to examine pertinent manuscript collections, take suitable notes, and put together an original work of history. Again, the scope must necessarily be limited by materials available and the time available to complete it.

Section 002 – Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Instructor(s): Frank Whitehouse

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (3). (SS).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Guest lecturers will share insights into critical thinking and problem solving in their own academic and professional specialties. Students will prepare two term papers – the first on critical thinking and problem solving, and the second on an article appearing in the Skeptical Inquirer. Students will present a formal critique of one of these two papers. The section does not satisfy a writing requirement. Students will bring to class current written accounts of news which illustrate flawed critical thinking for discussion.

Section 001 – Imagination

Instructor(s): Frederick Amrine (amrine@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The Romantics made major claims for imagination: that it was both an artistic and cognitive faculty. Thus the seminar will begin by considering both the structure of the Romantic literary imagination and the romantic theory of knowledge in works by Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Kant, and Fichte. Attention will then shift to more general questions: Does artistic imagination tell us anything about reality? Can imagination become a rigorous mode of cognition? What is its relationship to rationality? Does some form of imagination have a place in science and ethics? The nature of metaphorical thinking will be considered, as will the function of imagination in scientific revolutions, the psychology of perception, and visual art.

Section 002 – Race, Racism, and Ethnicity in the Francophone World

Instructor(s): Frieda Ekotto (ekotto@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

These courses will begin with discussions of colonization as a crucial historical point in order to contextualize questions of race, racism, ethnicity, gender and class intolerance which result in instances of inequality in what is now called the Francophone world. Texts and films selected (all in English translation) will deal, on the one hand, with issues of race, racism and ethnicity with special reference to the context of French speaking countries in Europe and their former colonies; and, on the other, with cultural diversity and its productions. An attempt will be made to compare issues involving race, racism, ethnicity, gender and class in different parts of the French speaking world. Lectures and discussions will emphasize issues of religion (e.g., Muslims in Francophone countries) of gender and of social class within specific ethnic communities as well as between ethnic groups (e.g., North Africans versus West Africans; Asians versus Africans; European ethnic groups versus other ethnic groups) and the hegemonic societies involved e.g., France, Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec, (Canada).

Taught in English. All reading material and films are in translation.

Section 001 – Great Books in Physics. Meets with Physics 204.001

Instructor(s): Myron Campbell (myron@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (3). (NS).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Physics 204.001.

Instructor(s):

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (1-4). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit with permission of the Honors Program.

Credits: (1-4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The opportunity is created to enable highly qualified underclassmen to elect a course for independent, guided study under the direction of a professor.

Instructor(s):

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to Honors students. (1-4). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit with permission of the Honors Program.

Credits: (1-4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

A research tutorial course in which the participating student serves as a research assistant for a staff scientist. Valuable research experience and a more personal association with the University research program are provided. Each student is expected to work about four hours a week for each credit.

Section 001 – Rhetoric of Evidence in Research. (Credits: 2 or 3 *)

Instructor(s): Fred Bookstein (flb@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Honors student and permission of instructor. (1-4). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of eight credits.

Credits: (1-4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This upper-class course is concerned with modes of inference from evidence across all of the arts and sciences, from physics through the humanities. The discussion will emphasize commonalties among disparate disciplines in the rhetorical modes in which ambiguous evidence is used: modes such as preponderance-of-evidence arguments, statistical inference, graphics, experiments, or abduction. The seminar meets weekly, Tuesday evenings. Often an invited faculty guest will review the history and the reasoning underlying some earlier publication (handed out the week before), whereupon the seminar will weigh in with a generalized critique. The attack might question the target article's exclusion of plausible alternatives, for instance, or anomalies not pursued, or ambiguities remaining; or it might inquire as to the origin of the disciplinary community's a priori agreement that certain questions of this sort need not have been raised in the main text. In past years, the tenor of these sessions has corresponded to that of a strenuous doctoral defense, but the outcome is rarely so predictable.

* To receive two hours of credit, the student must either submit a term paper drawing upon themes common to some subset of these presentations (not necessarily those of the student's own concentration) or take charge of the seminar for one half of one of these sessions, using a reading of his or her own choice. Those wishing three credit hours must both submit a paper and lead half a session. Maximum class size 15, by permission of the Honors Office.

Instructor(s):

Prerequisites & Distribution: (1-4). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit with permission of the Honors Program.

Credits: (1-4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Independent research under supervision of faculty.

Instructor(s):

Prerequisites & Distribution: Open to upperclass Honors concentrators. (1-4). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit with permission of the Honors Program.

Credits: (1-4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Independent research under supervision of faculty. Includes preparation of undergraduate thesis.

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