USM Honors Curriculum

Entry Year Experience (EYE) Courses:

HON100: Thinking and Writing in Honors
Prepares you to do the kind of thinking, reading and writing you will need for your other courses and particularly for the final Honors thesis project. It is also a course on the essay both as a literary text and as a vehicle for reflection and self-exploration. Throughout the semester we will read classic and contemporary essays, think about them, write about them, discuss them, and use them and the issues they evoke as jumping off points for our own essay writing.

View a recent study guide
Contact Dr. Kaitlin Briggs

HON101: Wisdom Stories From Antiquity
The worlds of Greece, ancient Israel, and the early Christian Middle East structured their cultures in ways that have profoundly affected our own. All have unique ways of defining origins, the relationship of the individual to society, and the nature of truth and justice. This course questions how our own present-day stories are related to those of our past and how you define Wisdom in your life.

View fall 2008 study guides:
Professor Jeremiah Conway
Professor Ron Schmidt

HON102: Truth(s), Lie(s), and Legacy(s) in a Medieval Mindscape
What is Truth? This course will explore the functions of religion in human society including the creation of community and the creation of outsiders with special emphasis on the medieval period.        

View the 2008 study guide
Contact Dr. Katharine Lualdi

Or...

Mid-Career Courses:

HON201K : Interdisciplinary Inquiry in the Sciences of the Human Body
An interdisciplinary introduction to scientific discourses and scientific practices concerning the human body. It combines selected concepts and methods of inquiry from several disciplines, including molecular biology, human genetics, anatomy, biological anthropology, human ecology, and the history of medicine. Students and faculty will critically examine the history of various constitutive practices and scientific representations of the body, including many Western scientific conceptions of the body as these have emerged from the European Renaissance through modernity. *SENCER

View a recent study guide
Contact Professors: George Caffentzis
                           & Lisa Moore
Summer 2008 Readings:

1. Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World. Any edition will do.

2. Garreau's Radical Evolution
3. Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future

HON202: Progress, Process, or Permanence: All That is Solid Melts Into Air
This quote by Karl Marx is an apt metaphor for this course which examines concepts of certainty and uncertainty from various 19th- and 20th-century perspectives. Who has the answers? Are there any answers? Can there be such a thing as “progress,” and does our “modern” perspective (whatever that is) give us a unique point of view for addressing these issues?                           

View the spring 2008 study guide
Contact Professor William Gavin

Or...

Hon203: Environment, Population, Behavior, and Global Change: A Comparative Perspective on the HIV/AIDS Pandemic and Bird Flu
Over five million people in South Africa are HIV positive, and over 26 million in sub-Saharan Africa (contrast with estimates of slightly over 1 million in the USA). But the effects of AIDS/HIV are much greater than mere economics.  What are the effects on populations and globalization, as well as on culture and literature? Also, there are implications in the AIDS/HIV story for how we deal with other potential pandemics such as bird flu. *SENCER

View the spring 2008 study guide
Contact Professor Rob Sanford

Concluding/Capstone Courses:

HON301: Cultural Practices and Ambiguous Identities
This course begins the last phase of your Honors work. For others it is the beginning of a focused interdisciplinary capstone experience.  You will use theory to analyze various texts on the topics of cultural, political, economic, sexual, and racial production of marginal identities and the ethnographic, field studies of your own involvement in the local community. You will be asked to do one in-class exam on the theoretical part of the course, to produce a fieldwork paper on a particular topic of your research, and to write a book review at the end of the semester.

View the syllabus for 2007
Contact Professor Dusan Bjelic

HON311: Thesis Workshop
Building on the theoretical foundations and fieldwork experience of Honors 301, the focus of this course is to develop your fieldwork project into a thoroughly researched, thoughtfully revised, and faculty-approved thesis proposal. This writing intensive course functions as a research community and marks the turn in your development as a student from a thinker and a writer into a researcher.

HON312: Thesis II
The thesis proposal developed in Honors 311 will then function as a map or plan of action to actually carry out and complete your thesis in Honors 312. You will have a thesis committee of three faculty advisors who will guide your work. You will give an oral presentation on your findings called a thesis defense. Your final written thesis will be bound and archived both for the Honors Program Library and for the University of Southern Maine Library, where it will then be catalogued, shelved and made available to other researchers within the University on URSUS and externally on WorldCat.

Honors students may also choose from the following elective courses:
HON321 : Honors Directed Research
HON331 : Honors Directed Study

*SENCER: These courses were designed through a collaboration with several departments at USM, the General Education Council and SENCER Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities

For further information or problems with this page, contact Beth Round: bround@usm.maine.edu