Spring 2018 Honors Colloquia AIST 4003H 001: EARLY CHINESE EMPIRES Professor: Rembrandt F. Wolpert Colloquium Type: Humanities Taking the Silk Road as our main artery, we shall concentrate on the most colorful changes in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural medieval China from the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and in particular from the rise and following unification of Northern China. Under the Northern Wei (386–534), to the subsequent unification of North and South under the Sui (589–618), through the resplendent Tang (618–907) and the most cultured of all Chinese dynasties, the Song (960–1279), the martial Jin (115–1234), to end with the culmination of power (at a price) in the largest empire emanating from Chinese soil, the Yuan (1271–1368). AIST 4003H 002: READING JAPANESE NOH AS CULTURAL HISTORY Professor: Elizabeth Markham Colloquium Type: Humanities We shall use original Noh chant books (utai-bon) alongside translations of librettos. Most plays will be viewed on film; the others listened to while reading. Our focus will be on the historical and the contextual: we shall work with the earlier poetry, songs, and dance-tunes, referred to as nostalgia in the plays, and also with early Buddhist, theatrical, and secular musical forms that have contributed to and borrowed from Noh. The course does not require specialized knowledge of music, nor of East Asian languages, and it is open to majors in any field. Students address their particular interests via individual projects, culminating in an extended research essay. AIST 4003H 003: UNCOVERING HEIAN JAPAN (794--1192) Professor: Elizabeth J. Markham Colloquium Type: Social Science The invention of an isolated, refined, purely aesthetic Heian Japan (794--1191) has been targeted in recent scholarship (Denecke, 2008, Heldt, 2008, Lamarre, 2000). An alternative placing of the early Heian court within the fold of Táng China (618--907), rather than in ethnolinguistic opposition to it, has been offered. This course traces the reasons for the former view but takes its cue from the alternative to focus on the early Heian court, temple, and shrine in terms of appropriation, assimilation, synthesis -- but also re-positioning and hybridization -- of “China'' in language, literature, religion, culture, and in terms of what these processes meant for the social and political order of the day. ARHS 3923H 001: MEDIEVAL TRANSCRIPTS Professor: Lynn Jacobs Colloquium Type: Humanities This colloquium will examine the wide variety of depictions of women in Dutch art of the seventeenth century, the golden age of Dutch painting. We will consider how women are represented as housewives, maids, prostitutes, potential wives, mothers, and saleswomen, and what meanings were associated with the scenes of women dancing, drinking, writing letters, making music, seeing doctors, and cleaning their homes -- all extremely popular themes in Dutch art of this time. Some of the artists whose works will be studied include Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Jan Steen, and Ter Borch; special attention will be given to women artists in seventeenth- century Holland, particularly Judith Leyster. Students will have the opportunity to study a specific thematic strand within the imagery of women and to give a presentation of their findings. This course does not require specialized knowledge of East Asian languages. It is examined via essays on assigned topics and an extended research essay on a course- related topic chosen by the individual student. BIOL 3923H-001, PLSC 3923H-002: MUSEUM MATTERS Professor: William F. McComas Colloquium Type: Social Science, Natural Science Museums are among the most respected and visited cultural institutions, yet few have thought much about their history, purpose, and what happens behind the scenes. This class is an introduction to museology or the study of museums. We will consider the goals and rationales of museums, examine the distinct types, learn what links these together and what distinguishes them, talk about the distinction between collections, displays and exhibitions and consider the reasons for the occasional controversies that have occurred in the museum context. We will think employment opportunities, architecture, educational challenges, legal issues and other socio-cultural aspects of the wide world of museums. We will hear from local curators, visit several nearby museums in our region, spend some time in the UA museum storage facility and take a two-day field trip (March 30- 31) to Oklahoma City to see museums that we do not yet have here. This museum experience is highly interdisciplinary with students drawn from five departments. Class size is limited because most of the expenses for the overnight field trip are covered by the Honors College. Also, we will need leave campus earlier than our scheduled meeting time a few times for our local museum visits. CLST 4003H-001: CLASSICAL BACKGROUND TO ENGLISH LITERATURE Professor: Joy Reeber Colloquium Type: Humanities This course is an exploration of the many ways English poetry and prose has imitated, borrowed, and challenged literary themes and genres from classical antiquity, from Milton's epic to the satire of Swift, and from the Romantics' fascination with Greece to Auden's more prosaic take on Rome. The classical legacy, and knowledge of the Greco-Roman canon, has been put to many uses in the English-speaking world, and we will also spend a certain amount of time studying its reception more generally to help contextualize the literature we read. The course is open to majors or minors in any field, and no prior knowledge of Greek or Roman literature, nor of the languages, will be required (though students with experience in Latin or Greek will have the opportunity to work with texts in the original if they wish). In addition to frequent shorter assignments throughout the semester, students will have the opportunity to research and write about a specific topic, author, or poem and present their findings to their peers. ENGL 3923H-001: MEDICAL HUMANITIES Professor: Casey Kayser Colloquium Type: Social Science The kinds of issues we’ll focus on in this class will give you a different perspective on medicine than you’ll ever gain in your science classes, by attending to the social rather than technical aspects of medicine, focusing on such topics as the human condition; social responsibility; the history of medicine; and doctors’ and patients’ perspectives and how these are informed by larger cultural, economic, political, and social forces. Through readings, class discussion, writing activities, and first-hand observation, students will practice critical analysis and reflection to instill in them a commitment to compassionate, community-minded, and culturally competent medical care. This course requires a service-learning component that involves close interaction with a physician at a local clinic and service hours at a local agency in addition to the classroom time commitment. It is only open to premedical students who must meet with Dr. Jackson Jennings to enroll. EUST: 4003H-002: SURVEY RUSSIAN LIT SINCE 1917 Professor: Nadja Berkovich Colloquium Type: Social Science or Humanities The course examines four great novels: Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What is To Be Done?, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons, Der Nister’s The Family Mashber (Di Mishpokhe Mashber), and Dovid Bergelson’s Judgement (Mides-hadin). The latter two are lesser- known works of Yiddish modernism. Dostoevsky’s and Der Nister’s novels, set in the same time period, both deal with psychological crisis and ultimate death, although within different cultural backgrounds and circumstances. Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky share a lot in common. They both advocated for political change, experienced a mock execution, and were exiled to forced labor prisons in Siberia. Der Nister and Bergelson were victims of Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign. The former died in a GULAG in 1950 and the latter was shot in 1952. Bergelson’s novel centers around the Bolshevik, the embodiment of “judgment,” who enforces the new Soviet regime in a Jewish border town. GEOS 4383H-001: HONORS HAZARD & DISASTER ASSESSMENT, MITIGATION, RISK & POLICY Professor: Thomas Paradise Colloquium Type: Natural Science or Social Science The course addresses the broader perspectives of Hazards Studies that include comprehensive and inter-disciplinary approaches to various geologic, atmospheric, and environmental hazards including hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunami, and earthquakes. This course will also introduce students to aspects of law and policy- making, perception of risk and danger, mitigation of hazardous landscapes, and the diverse ways in which people, families, communities and nations deal with disaster, injury, destruction, and death. HIST 4823-001: BLACK FREEDOM IN THE AGE OF EMANCIPATION Professor: Caree A. Banton Colloquia Type: Social Science or Humanities This course is a comparative study of Black Atlantic World freedom movements and experiences of post-emancipation. Enslaved Africans in the US, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa sought emancipation in different ways and had high expectations of freedom. But as they would discover, slave emancipation as a crowning achievement of freedom was merely a myth. Though former slaves and their descendants hoped that emancipation would give them, amongst other things, the vote, land, equality, and control over their time and labor, various factors affected their ability to fulfill their hopes of freedom. They would confront the