"The personal attention that I receive at HPU is unlike any other. Through small classes I have been able to establish life-long relationships with my professors. No matter if you're in a class with 25 students or a class with just 7 students, the professors ensure your success."
"HPU has the most eclectic personalities who are full of positive energy. There is a place for everyone here, it definitely feels like a family here at High Point."
"In between studying, leadership projects and classes, I will always find time for any game across campus – whether it’s an intramural, club, or official HPU athletic event."
The Honors Core Curriculum consists of 39 credits amassed through twelve courses and over seven semesters. It includes EXP 1101: President’s Seminar and a world language course. All courses engage students in project-based learning and entail direct writing instruction. This Honors Core Curriculum is in place of the General Education Requirements.
The Foundations Courses (HNR 1100 – 2500) introduce five areas of the liberal arts: humanities, social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences, and arts. Scholar Seminars (HNR 3600) explore interdisciplinary topics and give students the opportunity to lead 40% – 60% of class activities. The Qualifying Signature Project (HNR 3700 & 3800) is the defining piece of the curriculum; students work in multidisciplinary teams to plan, propose, and complete a project related to a public issue or problem. The capstone course HNR 4900 Life, Work, and the Liberal Arts assists students with connecting their liberal arts education to their personal and professional goals.
Students are required to take each course listed below. AP/IB/Cambridge credits do not replace these requirements, though they can count toward prerequisites and graduation, depending on departmental policies. Substitutions are available to students who join the Honors Scholars Program at the start of their sophomore year.
The program has created a Honors Curriculum Checklist for students and academic advisers to track progress toward completion. This can be a useful tool for academic planning.
HNR-1100: Humanistic Inquiry
Students analyze the evolution of human thought and culture, with particular attention to the relationships between stories and truths. With guidance from faculty in multiple disciplines of humanistic study (history, art, music, theater, literature, rhetoric, philosophy, religion), students interrogate how humans use narrative to organize, revise,
and propagate ideas, values, beliefs, and identities. In so doing, they practice strategies for identifying, framing, and examining questions concerning meaning, spirituality, truth, and selfhood. Students complete one unit-length (3-4 week) project. (4 credits)
HNR-1200: Social Scientific Inquiry
Students develop strategies for observing and analyzing individual and collective human behavior. In light of comparative discussions regarding the intellectual traditions that define the social sciences, students identify real-world problems related to human thought and behavior and employ social scientific methods to evaluate research,
generate options, and propose solutions. Readings and assignments prompt students to analyze cultural perspectives and to develop self-awareness about their own sociocultural conditions. Students complete one semester-long project. (4 credits)
HNR-1300: Quantitative Reasoning
Students interpret relationships in nature through mathematical equations, developing facility with mathematical languages and methods of symbolic representation. Students also explore the methods, rhetoric, and ethics of data accumulation, categorization, and representation. Students complete one unit-length project. (4 credits)
HNR-2400: Scientific Reasoning
Students investigate the importance of scientific understanding to human development. In examining science as a human endeavor, students discuss the dynamism and evolution of scientific inquiry, with attention paid to cultural, historical, and ethical contexts. In class activities and project-based labs, they gain experience with the concepts of experimental design, data collection, and interpretation, as well as with handling and manipulating materials. (4 credits)
HNR-2500: Aesthetic Inquiry
Students confront questions about the nature, value, and purpose of art, with consideration of how art is produced and consumed and of how we define beauty. Structured interactions with works of art and critical theory, as well as hands-on experiences in studios, hone students’ abilities to see from multiple perspectives, employ spatial reasoning, appreciate ambiguity, and craft interpretations. Students complete at least one unit-length project. (4 credits)
HNR-3600: Scholar Seminar
Studies in topics that range across disciplines, driven by faculty interests and expertise. Seminars develop students’ abilities to formulate and pursue research questions, explore primary and secondary sources, lead in-class discussions, and communicate new ideas to public audiences. Courses are student-led roughly 40%-60% of the semester. Two Scholar Seminars are required. (4 credits each)
HNR-3700: Methods, Proposals, & Planning
First part of a year-long cooperative project which investigates and proposes a solution to some aspect of a larger issue or problem. Student teams of four students create a problem statement, explore inquiry methods, and complete a project proposal. (2 credits)
HNR-3800: Qualifying Signature Project
Second part of a year-long cooperative project. Student teams of four students, with guidance from a faculty mentor, work independently to complete their projects, keeping in mind the cultural, socio-economical, political, and ethical assumptions and implications. (2 credits)
HNR-4900: Life, Work, & the Liberal Arts
In this capstone experience, students explore the question, How has a liberal arts education prepared me for life and work? To build their answers, students complete a final curating of their Honors Portfolios, using it to shape a professional web presence and a public presentation. (2 credits)
“…this course gives students a hefty dose of Real World pragmatism as they enter HPU. The skills they learn are meant to help them succeed in all aspects of life-academic, professional, and personal. By taking the course as freshmen, the rest of their course work is often experienced through the lens of practical application. It sets the tone for developing an intentional life plan.” ~ Dr. Nido Qubein
World Languages
Honor Scholars are asked to study a world language other than English. They can complete this requirement by completing one of the following options:
One world language course at 1020 level or at placement (whichever is higher); or
Study abroad in a country with a home language other than English and with one course in the home language; or
Participation in an approved language-intensive program; or
Students who place at or above the 1020 level in a world language may elect to take EDU 1020: American Sign Language II (note EDU 1010 is a prerequisite) OR CSC 1710: Introduction to Programming.
In this course, students will hone their observation, interview, writing, and presentation skills as they become social scientists for the common good. Through extensive service in a local school, students will explore problems in the school’s community and through their research, become agents of educational change. This is a service learning course.
HNR 1204: Learning to be a Mind Reader
Dr. S. Lipowski
The main topic of this course is theory of mind, which is the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires) to oneself and to others. It also involves understanding that others act based on their beliefs, wishes, and goals, which may be different from ours. Students will learn how theory of mind develops throughout childhood, how it is measured, and how understanding varies by culture. Students will also learn how theory of mind is related to a variety of other topics, including autism, empathy, altruism, and religious beliefs.
HNR 1206: Social Collapse and Human Resilience
Dr. S. Rosenfeld
How do human beings adapt to a changing climate and how can societies determine their own futures are issues of tremendous importance. As we consider these issues in present times it is useful to look to the past to see if there is evidence of societies that have succeeded or collapsed in the face of a changing world. This course will examine the popular press books, Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, as well as the response to those books, Questioning Collapse, in an attempt to resolve some of these issues. We will also draw upon original archaeological, historical, and environmental data to further contextualize these case studies. These issues are discussed from a deep historical as well as a present perspective in order to come to some conclusions about where we think human societies are headed.
HNR 1207: Health and Wealth of Nations
Dr. P. Summers
This course will focus on the evolution of standards of living and rates of economic growth in the long run (decades, generations, or centuries). Why are some nations (such as the U.S., Germany, and Australia) so wealthy and others (like Somalia and Haiti) so poor? Some nations that were among the poorest in the world fifty years ago (like South Korea and Malysia) are now some of the wealthiest. What did they do to make that happen, and can their experience be replicated elsewhere? Why do wealthier countries also tend to be healthier? Students will approach these and similar questions using economic growth theory as an organizing framework. Related perspectives from other social science fields such as political science, sociology and anthropology will also be incorporated. Students will also analyze the evidence for these theories using appropriate analytical tools such as data visualization and basic statistics.
HNR 1305: Mathbusters
Dr. R. Harger
Innumeracy is to quantitative skills what illiteracy is to literacy. While illiteracy is not acceptable in most circles, an illiterate person is a pariah in academic circles, many people will revel in their lack of quantitative skills, even in academic circles. In the _rst portion of the course we will cover the necessary mathematics, probability, and statistics through many innumeracy examples; the second portion of the course will transition to focused applications of the material from the _rst half of the course to examples found throughout popular culture. This course will focus on common misconceptions and misrepresentations of numerical data. We will critically consider pseudosciences, such as astrology, numerology, and parapsychology, probability vs coincidence, and fraudulent business and medical schemes. We will also consider basic number sense and apply it to daily news articles; we will see how math and numbers are a key element in many articles we read every day. From the Senate, SATs, crime, celebrities, and cults, we will consider stories that may not seem to involve mathematics and demonstrate how a lack of mathematical knowledge can hinder our understanding of them. Finally, throughout the course we will discuss a wide array of mathematical topics and examples of mathematics in popular culture.
HNR 1303: Mathematical Modeling
Dr. A. Titus
This course is a project-based introduction to mathematical modeling. A mathematical model is a set of equations, determined from simplifying assumptions and constraints, to describe a system. Students will learn to construct models to solve real-world systems in physics, biology, economics, and social science. Students will learn techniques to solve models, will use their models to make predictions, and will use measured data to test and refine their models. Finally, students will learn tools to facilitate writing data- and code-driven narratives.
HNR 2401/L: Story of Color and Light
Drs. K. Fogarty and J. Paul
What does it mean to see? In this class, we’ll use that question to probe the interplay between scientific reasoning, its discoveries, and the cultural context in which those discoveries are made. We’ll begin by exploring how the Classical world, despite a biology consistent with our own, couldn’t perceive blue, had no word for the color…until they developed the means to commercially dye fabric blue. From there, we’ll move to what it meant for the early Renaissance world to contend with the notion that we weren’t, after all, the center of our solar system, let alone the universe. We’ll return from the heavens to grapple with what it meant, upon the discovery of photographic emulsions and the invention of the photograph, for noncombatants to see the travails of modern battlefields. And, finally, we’ll end back in the sky, where our capacity to see blue (and red, too) have allowed us to begin to measure the size, speed, duration of the universe itself.
HNR 2402/L: Uniquely Developing You
Dr. K. Ackerman
This section will use Biological Concepts to explore characteristics that initiate within the womb and that ultimately define us as unique adult human beings. The biological fields of genetics, cell/molecular biology, and embryology will provide the backbone to understanding physical development. The impacts of these developmental cues on our daily adult lives will also be explored with ideas from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, ethics, and global inquiry. This course will be divided into six main modules, and each will explore a distinct timeframe during the first 4 months of development: 1) Gross/Physical human development, 2) Intelligence, 3) Gender Identity, 4) Skin Color, 5) Face Shape, and 6) Handedness.
This course is about doing and thinking about science as professional scientists do. We will work together to ask questions, design experiments, make predictions, take risks, fail, revise experiments, fail again, and keep working until we get it right. Specifically, this section will use biological concepts to explore crop and animal domestication. The fields of evolution, genetics, and physiology will be used to explore how and why the same suite of traits are selected during domestication (sometimes referred to as the domestication syndrome). We will use historical, archaeological, and anthropological approaches in understanding how domestication shaped human civilizations and why humans have benefited from domesticating particular species of plants and animals. We will explore how domestication has changed in the last 10,000 years from trial and error approaches to modern crop and animal breeding and genetic modification. We will also explore the ethical implications of all approaches in domestication. In lab, we will conduct our own domestication and selection experiments.
HNR 2404/L: Neglected Tropical Diseases
Dr. T. Lyda
This course is directed at thinking about science as professional scientists do. We will work together to ask questions, design experiments, make predictions, take risks, fail, revise experiments, fail again, and keep working until we get it right. Specifically, this section will use biological concepts to explore the dynamics involved with Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). This course will combine 3 main units in lecture and lab, each will explore Neglected Tropical Diseases: 1) Getting to know the major NTDs, 2) Drug Discovery Research and 3) Global Outreach.
HNR 2501: Building and Being
Mr. J. Linn
This course is an intentional inquiry into the natures of practice, value, and experience within the realm of aesthetics. We will explore the practice of aesthetics through inquiries of building and drawing, reading and analyzing. We will discuss the value and meaning of aesthetics through collective inquiry, and discern the experience of aesthetics through reflection. In general, this is a course intended to develop your abilities in aesthetic awareness and discernment; it is not a course intended to develop your manual craftsmanship or ‘artistic’ skills, although both could evolve.
HNR 2503: Hip Hop
Dr. J.W. Turner
In HNR 2503 Aesthetic Inquiry: Hip Hop, students will consider the nature, value, and purpose of Hip Hop music in light of its context, history, production, and aesthetics. The course will focus on the sources and development of Hip-Hop from the late 1970s to the present day, with an emphasis on critical listening and interpretation. The major assignments will include song analyses, a 5-7 page research paper, and an original four-song EP created with a digital audio workstation (DAW) demonstrating specific historical styles.
HNR 2504: When do Newsletter Become Art?
Dr. E. Trauth
In this class, students will examine art as well as professional writing conventions and technologies with the aim of understanding how to best respond as writers and designers employing both artistic and visual content and information and data in professional genres. As such, students will acquire rhetorical flexibility and the ability to analyze and respond to evolving professional writing contexts. The course will guide students to compose professional information effectively and artistically, particularly in newsletter formats.
HNR 2505: Art, Protest, Persuasion, or Propaganda?
Dr. G. Cruz
This course examines how art functions in the world, including times when art aims to persuade, when art explicitly uses or responds to socio-political moments, and when art verges on–or becomes–propaganda. We will develop our skills as readers and viewers through theoretical readings, novels, plays, poetry, films, posters, photography, and paintings. Using our new knowledge, we will create our own art, including pieces meant to respond and persuade.
HNR 3602: (Neuro)Science Fiction
Ms. A. Walker
Have you ever wondered why the science fiction narrative remains so pervasive in our culture? Despite our technological advances, we never seem to tire of fantasies that speculate wildly beyond our own reality. We devour science fiction in literature, film, video games, and pseudoscience, our hearts pound when we watch a scary sci-fi movie, and we delight in the telling of a good speculative yarn, even as it unravels under our scientific scrutiny. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains light up with “mirror neuron” pathways when we read, see, or hear of another person’s narrative peril. Some of our earliest memories revolve around make believe, and while we may not view ourselves as “creative” individuals, millions of us create and consume elaborate fantasy and science fiction narratives our entire lives. So how might science fiction stories help us survive? How might an examination of the theories of popular cognitive psychology and popular neuroscience enhance our understanding of the science fiction literary genre? By exploring our shared evolutionary history and the multilayered complexity of that “big brain” that makes our species unique and enables us to tell such entertaining and prescient stories, students will develop intellectual STEAM, solidifying our place as the storytelling species and proving why, indeed, we can’t live without science fiction.
HNR 3608: Death
Dr. J. Davis
Death is a topic that is universal, but that invokes fear, dread, and mourning. As such, it is often avoided. In this course, we will look at death as clearly and objectively as possible. We will first address the scientific question: What is death? Then we will go on to explore death in its cultural contexts, examining the portrayal of death in art, literature, and music and ultimately identifying how these factors influence our own understanding of death and, in turn, life.
HNR 3615: History of African American Education
Dr. P. Ringel
This class will examine the history of African-American education in both a traditional and a hands-on manner. While grounding ourselves in the historical and systemic racial inequalities of educational systems in the United States and the attempts of reformers and activists to overcome those inequalities, we will also investigate how this process played out here in High Point, North Carolina. In this city, schools were overwhelmingly segregated by race until 1968, and for the most part public education was not even offered to black students for more than a half-century after the end of slavery in 1865. As we study the national story through pre-existing scholarship, we will undertake our own archival research in local records of property ownership, school management, and city politics, and perform oral history interviews with community members, to understand how the Jim Crow system rose and fell (to the extent that it has) in High Point. Students will use their findings to build upon the work previous HPU undergraduates have done on the William Penn Project website (williampennproject.org), a public history project chronicling the story of William Penn High School, High Point’s segregated black high school from 1891 until its closure in 1968. At the end of the semester, they will also present their findings to a community audience, including (with any luck) a contingent of local and regional media.
HNR 3614: [Scholar Seminar] Ideal Community
Dr. R. Moses, Assistant Professor of Religion
The course probes questions of inclusion, exclusion, and the challenges of diversity by examining various ancient religious and secular communities and associations. The course will investigate the entrance requirements, initiation rites, membership practices and rituals, internal governance, and community rules for various ancient groups and associations, probing questions of exclusivity and inclusivity in each group’s model for community. The course will wrestle with issues concerning the benefits and drawbacks of inclusive and exclusive communities and how the boundaries each community creates may result in exclusion. In other words, the course will examine how attempting to create an inclusive community can itself result in exclusivity. The course will draw on the tools and resources provided by the study of these ancient communities— Greco-Roman and movements growing out of Judaism: Qumran sectarians and the early Christians—to address contemporary discussions and debates concerning diversity.
HNR-1100L Humanistic Inquiry Lab (0 Credits)
Dr. Nathan Hedman, Director of the Honors Scholars Program
Required colloquium session for HNR 1100: Humanistic Inquiry. The lab sessions introduce students to the requirements and practices of the Honors Scholar Program, paying particular attention to the academic habits of mind necessary for student success: inquiry, analysis, information literacy, and reflective thinking. Zero credit.
HNR 1102: [Humanistic Inquiry] The Beautiful and the Good: Must Art Be Moral?
Dr. Matthew Carlson, Assistant Professor of English
Dr. Nathan Hedman, Assistant Professor of Theater and English
Dr. Claudine Davidshofer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Our work together will entail a survey of the most penetrating insights into aesthetics and ethics in Western philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Kant), complemented by three case studies in artistic practice and reflection (Greek sculpture, Medieval Painting and Theatre, 19th-century Aestheticism) and framed by the unique socio-cultural concerns of these artists and thinkers. More, students will have regular opportunity to reflect critically on the often hidden assumptions and proclivities of contemporary American taste. Toggling between theory and practice, historical context and universal concerns, our course will enable students to build their own working theory of beauty and goodness, informed by the Western tradition but crafted for a contemporary audience.
HNR-1103 [Humanistic Inquiry] Working Class Protest Culture (4 Credits)
Dr. Paul Ringel, Assistant Professor of History
Dr. Jack Turner, Assistant Professor of Music
Dr. Virginia Leclercq, Assistant Professor of English
Students analyze the evolution of protest in working class thought and culture, with particular attention to the relationships between stories and truths. With guidance from faculty in multiple disciplines of humanistic study (English, History, and Music), students interrogate how humans use narrative to organize, revise, and propagate ideas, values, beliefs, and identities. In so doing, they practice strategies for identifying, framing, and examining questions concerning meaning, spirituality, truth, and selfhood. Four Credits.
HNR 1305: [Quantitative Reasoning] Mathbusters
Dr. R. Harger
Innumeracy is to quantitative skills what illiteracy is to literacy. While illiteracy is not acceptable in most circles, an illiterate person is a pariah in academic circles, many people will revel in their lack of quantitative skills, even in academic circles. In the _rst portion of the course we will cover the necessary mathematics, probability, and statistics through many innumeracy examples; the second portion of the course will transition to focused applications of the material from the _rst half of the course to examples found throughout popular culture. This course will focus on common misconceptions and misrepresentations of numerical data. We will critically consider pseudosciences, such as astrology, numerology, and parapsychology, probability vs coincidence, and fraudulent business and medical schemes. We will also consider basic number sense and apply it to daily news articles; we will see how math and numbers are a key element in many articles we read every day. From the Senate, SATs, crime, celebrities, and cults, we will consider stories that may not seem to involve mathematics and demonstrate how a lack of mathematical knowledge can hinder our understanding of them. Finally, throughout the course we will discuss a wide array of mathematical topics and examples of mathematics in popular culture.
This course is a project-based introduction to mathematical modeling. A mathematical model is a set of equations, determined from simplifying assumptions and constraints, to describe a system. Students will learn to construct models to solve real-world systems in physics, biology, economics, and social science. Students will learn techniques to solve models, will use their models to make predictions, and will use measured data to test and refine their models. Finally, students will learn tools to facilitate writing data- and code-driven narratives.
HNR 2402/L: [Scientific Inquiry] Uniquely Developing You
Dr. K. Ackerman
This section will use Biological Concepts to explore characteristics that initiate within the womb and that ultimately define us as unique adult human beings. The biological fields of genetics, cell/molecular biology, and embryology will provide the backbone to understanding physical development. The impacts of these developmental cues on our daily adult lives will also be explored with ideas from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, ethics, and global inquiry. This course will be divided into six main modules, and each will explore a distinct timeframe during the first 4 months of development: 1) Gross/Physical human development, 2) Intelligence, 3) Gender Identity, 4) Skin Color, 5) Face Shape, and 6) Handedness.
This course is directed at thinking about science as professional scientists do. We will work together to ask questions, design experiments, make predictions, take risks, fail, revise experiments, fail again, and keep working until we get it right. Specifically, this section will use biological concepts to explore the dynamics involved with Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). This course will combine 3 main units in lecture and lab, each will explore Neglected Tropical Diseases: 1) Getting to know the major NTDs, 2) Drug Discovery Research and 3) Global Outreach.
HNR 2503: [Aesthetic Inquiry] Hip Hop
Dr. J.W. Turner
In HNR 2503 Aesthetic Inquiry: Hip Hop, students will consider the nature, value, and purpose of Hip Hop music in light of its context, history, production, and aesthetics. The course will focus on the sources and development of Hip-Hop from the late 1970s to the present day, with an emphasis on critical listening and interpretation. The major assignments will include song analyses, a 5-7 page research paper, and an original four-song EP created with a digital audio workstation (DAW) demonstrating specific historical styles.
HNR 2505: [Aesthetic Inquiry] Art, Realism & the Politics of Representation
Dr. V. Leclercq
An especially dynamic period for art and politics, the nineteenth century in Britain and France saw the rise of the middle class, the explosion of the periodical press, and the reign of a new paradigm for apprehending and understanding human experience: Realism. Through examinations of novels, short stories, paintings, photography, and music in nineteenth-century Britain and France, we will explore how Realism revolutionized aesthetics and the political implications of these new forms of representation. Our discussion will ask many of the questions that artists and the public at large were debating: what and who is worthy of representation (both aesthetic and political)? How best can one capture experience? What is the real and is it art?
HNR 2510: [Aesthetic Inquiry] Autobiographics
Professor Melissa Richard
This course considers what feminist scholar Leigh Gilmore terms “autobiographics,” life narratives that highlight the construction of the self as a complex act, particularly for individuals belonging to historically / culturally marginalized groups. In other words, the texts we encounter purposely call attention to self-representation as a performance that troubles easy distinctions between “truth” and “fiction.” Along the way we also have to consider questions about the nature of autobiography as a generic category, how (and, more importantly, who) shaped and institutionalized the qualities of texts defined as autobiographical. We reflect on issues such as the working of memory and the tension between invention and disclosure, and we examine texts that blur and taunt generic boundaries. These texts include Oscar Wilde’s prison writings, particularly De Profundis; Nora Krug’s recent graphic novel of reckoning with Nazi connections in her family’s past, Belonging; Kiese Laymon’s powerful memoir Heavy, which contends with race, education, addiction, and abuse (written as a letter to his mother); and Maggie Nelson’s hybrid (auto)biography of her aunt’s murder, Jane. We’ll also look at autobiographics in photographs, art, and film by artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Frieda Kahlo, and Natalia Almada. We’ll consider how music, especially popular music, performs a generational and cultural sense of self. Course assignments and projects include weekly class blogs and open group-led discussions centered on the texts and theories of interest to students, a presentation on music that has defined students / their generation, and a multi-modal autoethnography where students create and / or gather a set of artifacts and genres that tell a story from their family or community histories.
HNR-3605 [Scholar Seminar] Cost & Value of Higher Education
Dr. N. Hedman
The years spent at a university are unlike any other, differing in demographics, finances, social opportunities, educational expectations and much more. While students inevitably experience these aspects of college life, they do not always take time—or have time—to think about how they experience them. This course, therefore, intends to give you time. It presents an opportunity to think about what higher education means and how it works. What does it mean to be an educated person? What kind of education—social, moral, mental or vocational—should a university offer? How should it offer any of these kinds of education? General debates about higher education will, in turn, provide a forum in which to consider HPU’s own opportunities and limitations. In each case, the goal will be to increase awareness through writing and thinking about what others have said in relation to your own experiences. Becoming aware of how diverse educators have defined education and how various universities have sought to deliver it will enable you to take increased ownership of your own college experience.
HNR 3613: [Scholar Seminar] Politics of Prosecution
Dr. Scott Ingram, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
Does the President have the right to do whatever he wants to do with the Department of Justice? Can he order someone prosecuted? Can he order a case dismissed? Today’s news headlines are littered with the intersection of politics and criminal prosecution. This course examines the relationship in-depth and from a variety of perspectives. Students will spend the first third of the class learning about the prosecutor’s powers and how politics should or should not influence prosecutorial discretion. For the remaining two thirds of class, students will create their own podcast episodes examining real life incidents of politics and prosecution.
HNR 3606 [Scholar Seminar] Beyond the Frame
Professor Jay Putman, Associate Professor of Theater
A creative research seminar into the nature and performance of immersive and non-traditional theatre. In this course, students will research the growing trend in ways of performance that shift the relation of performer and audience. Students will explore and discuss source material that examines the nature of audience desire and the ways in which theatrical performance has evolved to meet these needs. And, students will develop personal creative skills in order to test and communicate these ideas in performance.
HNR 3608: [Scholar Seminar] Death
Dr. T. Kemerly
Death is a topic that is universal, but that invokes fear, dread, and mourning. As such, it is often avoided. In this course, we will look at death as clearly and objectively as possible. We will first address the scientific question: What is death? Then we will go on to explore death in its cultural contexts, examining the portrayal of death in art, literature, and music and ultimately identifying how these factors influence our own understanding of death and, in turn, life.
HNR 3700: Methods, Proposals, & Planning
Various Honors Faculty
First part of a year-long cooperative project which investigates and proposes a solution to some aspect of a larger issue or problem. Student teams create a problem statement, explore inquiry methods, and complete a project proposal.
HNR 1204: [Social Science Inquiry] Learning to be a Mind Reader
Dr. S. Lipowski, Associate Professor of Psychology
Dr. S. Vess, Associate Dean of the School of Education
The main topic of this course is theory of mind, which is the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires) to oneself and to others. It also involves understanding that others act based on their beliefs, wishes, and goals, which may be different from ours. Students will learn how theory of mind develops throughout childhood, how it is measured, and how understanding varies by culture. Students will also learn how theory of mind is related to a variety of other topics, including autism, empathy, altruism, and religious beliefs.
HNR 1207: [Social Science Inquiry] Health and Wealth of Nations
Dr. P. Summers, Assistant Professor of Political Science
This course will focus on the evolution of standards of living and rates of economic growth in the long run (decades, generations, or centuries). Why are some nations (such as the U.S., Germany, and Australia) so wealthy and others (like Somalia and Haiti) so poor? Some nations that were among the poorest in the world fifty years ago (like South Korea and Malysia) are now some of the wealthiest. What did they do to make that happen, and can their experience be replicated elsewhere? Why do wealthier countries also tend to be healthier? Students will approach these and similar questions using economic growth theory as an organizing framework. Related perspectives from other social science fields such as political science, sociology and anthropology will also be incorporated. Students will also analyze the evidence for these theories using appropriate analytical tools such as data visualization and basic statistics.
HNR 1208: [Social Science Inquiry] Material Culture
Dr. R. Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Dr. M. Sayre, Associate Professor of Anthropology
This course will introduce you to Material Culture, which has long formed an important part of the archeological studies and within the past twenty-five years has emerged as an interdisciplinary method to critically explore contemporary society and culture. Material culture focuses on the tangible and intangible aspects of human’s relations with things. Material Culture studies utilize social science theories and methods to generate knowledge about the contemporary worlds we create, share, and dwell within and will consider topics such as cultural heritage, shopping, the internet and technology, fashion, architecture, film and photography, nature and cities, disasters. Accordingly, this course employs a range of images, films, recordings, material objects and written texts to consider key social science topics, debates, concepts and practices with relevance to Material Culture.
HNR 1301: [Quantitative Reasoning] Graph Theory & the Science of Networks
Dr. J. Fuselier, Associate Professor of Mathematics
This course is a project-based introduction to the field of network science. Network science allows students to craft solutions to real-world problems arising in a variety of fields using the mathematical language of graph theory. Graph theory is the study of graphs formed by collections of vertices (or points) and edges between them. Graphs can be used to represent data in many realms, including biology, political science, travel, and social connections between people groups. In conjunction with an introduction to graph theory, students will learn methods for collecting network data, representing it in graphs and matrices, and analyzing network models.
HNR 1304: [Quantitative Reasoning] Math of Democracy
Dr. A. Graham-Squire, Associate Professor of Mathematics
Mathematics of Democracy examines quantitative aspects of democracy, including methods of voting, apportionment, and redistricting/gerrymandering. Concepts will be taught through inquiry-based exploration, followed by simplified examples, and capped with real-world applications and data analysis from current and historical elections and events. While certain historical events, including laws passed and supreme court cases, will be included in the course to illuminate the context of changes to democracy, the focus will be on methods of quantifying democracy and the fairness of electoral systems.
HNR 2102: [Honors Elective, 2 credits] Movies to Live By
Dr. Nathan Hedman, Director of Honors Scholar Program
This course will teach students how to view movies critically and then respond thoughtfully to the issues and ideas they uncover. Students will place the movies in conversation with primary sources from literature, philosophy, and psychology. Movies and overarching themes will change each semester.
This course is directed at thinking about science as professional scientists do. We will work together to ask questions, design experiments, make predictions, take risks, fail, revise experiments, fail again, and keep working until we get it right. Specifically, this section will use biological concepts to explore the dynamics involved with Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). This course will combine 3 main units in lecture and lab, each will explore Neglected Tropical Diseases: 1) Getting to know the major NTDs, 2) Drug Discovery Research and 3) Global Outreach.
HNR 2402/L: [Scientifice Reasoning] Uniquely Developing You
Dr. N. Coffield, Assistant Professor of Biology
This section will use Biological Concepts to explore characteristics that initiate within the womb and that ultimately define us as unique adult human beings. The biological fields of genetics, cell/molecular biology, and embryology will provide the backbone to understanding physical development. The impacts of these developmental cues on our daily adult lives will also be explored with ideas from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, ethics, and global inquiry. This course will be divided into six main modules, and each will explore a distinct timeframe during the first 4 months of development: 1) Gross/Physical human development, 2) Intelligence, 3) Gender Identity, 4) Skin Color, 5) Face Shape, and 6) Handedness.
HNR 2401/L: [Scientifice Reasoning] Story of Color and Light
Drs. K. Fogarty and J. Paul
What does it mean to see? In this class, we’ll use that question to probe the interplay between scientific reasoning, its discoveries, and the cultural context in which those discoveries are made. We’ll begin by exploring how the Classical world, despite a biology consistent with our own, couldn’t perceive blue, had no word for the color…until they developed the means to commercially dye fabric blue. From there, we’ll move to what it meant for the early Renaissance world to contend with the notion that we weren’t, after all, the center of our solar system, let alone the universe. We’ll return from the heavens to grapple with what it meant, upon the discovery of photographic emulsions and the invention of the photograph, for noncombatants to see the travails of modern battlefields. And, finally, we’ll end back in the sky, where our capacity to see blue (and red, too) have allowed us to begin to measure the size, speed, duration of the universe itself.
HNR-2405 [Scientifice Reasoning] How Molecules Shape Experience
Dr. A. Wommack, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
What makes a chemical good or bad? Molecules are a part of everything around us and are incorporated into every product that we use. In this course, we will use lessons of scientific misunderstanding and misconduct to evaluate the past and current production of consumer goods. We will also look at the creativity behind how drug-like molecules are isolated and designed by engaging in the practice of chemical synthesis and analysis in the laboratory. Accompanying this modern laboratory experience will be discussions of how performing and communicating science is always accompanied with the potential for error and fraud. To further contextualize the issues around appropriate categorization and application of different molecules, we will consult readings related to cultural and ethical traditions while we learn about drug approval processes, ethnopharmacology, and illicit drug scheduling. This course seeks to provide a deeper understanding of how molecules can impact our environment, personal health, and culture. Four credits.
HNR 2505: [Aesthetic Inquiry] Art, Realism & the Politics of Representation
Dr. V. Leclercq, Assistant Professor of English
An especially dynamic period for art and politics, the nineteenth century in Britain and France saw the rise of the middle class, the explosion of the periodical press, and the reign of a new paradigm for apprehending and understanding human experience: Realism. Through examinations of novels, short stories, paintings, photography, and music in nineteenth-century Britain and France, we will explore how Realism revolutionized aesthetics and the political implications of these new forms of representation. Our discussion will ask many of the questions that artists and the public at large were debating: what and who is worthy of representation (both aesthetic and political)? How best can one capture experience? What is the real and is it art?
HNR 2510: [Aesthetic Inquiry] Autobiographics
Professor M. Richard, Instructor in English
This course considers what feminist scholar Leigh Gilmore terms “autobiographics,” life narratives that highlight the construction of the self as a complex act, particularly for individuals belonging to historically / culturally marginalized groups. In other words, the texts we encounter purposely call attention to self-representation as a performance that troubles easy distinctions between “truth” and “fiction.” Along the way we also have to consider questions about the nature of autobiography as a generic category, how (and, more importantly, who) shaped and institutionalized the qualities of texts defined as autobiographical. We reflect on issues such as the working of memory and the tension between invention and disclosure, and we examine texts that blur and taunt generic boundaries. These texts include Oscar Wilde’s prison writings, particularly De Profundis; Nora Krug’s recent graphic novel of reckoning with Nazi connections in her family’s past, Belonging; Kiese Laymon’s powerful memoir Heavy, which contends with race, education, addiction, and abuse (written as a letter to his mother); and Maggie Nelson’s hybrid (auto)biography of her aunt’s murder, Jane. We’ll also look at autobiographics in photographs, art, and film by artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Frieda Kahlo, and Natalia Almada. We’ll consider how music, especially popular music, performs a generational and cultural sense of self. Course assignments and projects include weekly class blogs and open group-led discussions centered on the texts and theories of interest to students, a presentation on music that has defined students / their generation, and a multi-modal autoethnography where students create and / or gather a set of artifacts and genres that tell a story from their family or community histories.
HNR-2506 [Aesthetic Inquiry] Semiotics: Visual Pop Culture
Dr. T. Kemerly, Associate Professor of Exercise Science
Images permeate our everyday lives. We are in constant interaction with images and it is the meanings of these images that construct our world view. In this course, we will learn why semiotics is important in understanding the meaning of these images. What do images tell us? How do we ‘read’ them? How do we produce them? The course explores these questions by introducing students to the theories of semiotics, or how ideas, concepts, and narratives are conveyed through images – both still and moving. Semiotics is fundamental to the processes of communication and the production of meaning. This course provides semiotic theories and practices useful for thinking critically about popular culture through the analysis of characters’ bodies and appearance. Students will analyze how bodies create meaning within a larger visual (semiotic) context by using those messages to see how bodies create embodied knowledge.
HNR-2507 [Aesthetic Inquiry] The Story of Cool
Dr. N. Hedman, Director of the Honors Program
The cool-its attitude of isolation, imperturbability, nonchalance, and slow-burn sexuality-is an immediately recognizable aesthetic; may very well be the popular aesthetic of modern America. We will study the rise of cool in the novel, the play, and the lyric poem, at the same time we compare these developments to twentieth-century artifacts and celebrities. Together we will trace a genealogy of how and why the cool has reached an aesthetic popularity unrivaled today.
Have you ever wondered why the science fiction narrative remains so pervasive in our culture? Despite our technological advances, we never seem to tire of fantasies that speculate wildly beyond our own reality. We devour science fiction in literature, film, video games, and pseudoscience, our hearts pound when we watch a scary sci-fi movie, and we delight in the telling of a good speculative yarn, even as it unravels under our scientific scrutiny. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains light up with “mirror neuron” pathways when we read, see, or hear of another person’s narrative peril. Some of our earliest memories revolve around make believe, and while we may not view ourselves as “creative” individuals, millions of us create and consume elaborate fantasy and science fiction narratives our entire lives. So how might science fiction stories help us survive? How might an examination of the theories of popular cognitive psychology and popular neuroscience enhance our understanding of the science fiction literary genre? By exploring our shared evolutionary history and the multilayered complexity of that “big brain” that makes our species unique and enables us to tell such entertaining and prescient stories, students will develop intellectual STEAM, solidifying our place as the storytelling species and proving why, indeed, we can’t live without science fiction.
HNR 3603: [Scholar Seminar] Music and Identity
Dr. J. Turner, Assistant Professor of Music
This course will consider the role of music in constructing identity, including what constitutes the “self,” how identity may be an external, rather than an internal phenomenon, and several case studies of musical genres and works that have significantly contributed to national and political identities, or represent unusual appropriations. Students will lead discussions and expand upon the assigned topics (homology, essentialism, aesthetics, etc.) through research in the primary and secondary literature, and course work will culminate in a research paper intended for submission to an academic conference or journal.
HNR-3604 [Scholar Seminar] Spanish Civil War: Words & Images
Dr. A. Winkle, Assistant Professor of Spanish
This Honors Seminar introduces students to literature and the arts produced by participants and observers of the war in Spain. In conjunction with a historical and geographical appreciation of the conflict, students will study primary sources originally in English and in Spanish-to-English translation. Films, poems, photographs, novels, paintings, memoirs, and propaganda posters will lead students to question how a conflict is remembered through the various narratives that are told about it.
HNR 3606 [Scholar Seminar] Beyond the Frame
Professor J. Putman, Associate Professor of Theater
A creative research seminar into the nature and performance of immersive and non-traditional theatre. In this course, students will research the growing trend in ways of performance that shift the relation of performer and audience. Students will explore and discuss source material that examines the nature of audience desire and the ways in which theatrical performance has evolved to meet these needs. And, students will develop personal creative skills in order to test and communicate these ideas in performance.
HNR-3615 [Scholar Seminar] History of African-American Ed
Dr. P. Ringel, Assistant Professor in History
This class will examine the history of African-American education in both a traditional and a hands-on manner. While grounding ourselves in the historical and systemic racial inequalities of educational systems in the United States and the attempts of reformers and activists to overcome those inequalities, we will also investigate how this process played out here in High Point, North Carolina.
HNR-3616 [Scholar Seminar] Performing Cultures
Dr. N. Hedman, Director of the Honors Program
Humans rarely just act in the world, they typically perform those actions for others. Many of these performances become highly codified cultural traditions documenting the commitments of a people. We will examine several non-Western theatrical traditions so as to sharpen our intercultural competence with the unfamiliar and better understand our own performance traditions.
HNR-3800 Qualifying Signature Project
Various Honors Faculty
This course is the second part of a year-long cooperative project. Student teams, with guidance from a faculty mentor, will work independently to complete the research projects they proposed in the Methods, Proposals and Planning course (HNR 3700), keeping in mind the cultural, socio-economic, political, and ethical assumptions and implications. Once the research projects are complete, students will develop a research report, give a public poster presentation, and create an artifact (to be made available to the public) that appropriately represents their projects (i.e., a website, commercial, public service announcement, app, physical device). Prerequisite: HNR 3700. Two credits.
