HONR 300A
IN SEARCH OF THE HOLY GRAIL: SEX & VIOLENCE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
4 SEM HRS
WILKERSON
In this course, students will study, discuss, and write about a variety of literary works chosen first from the three "branches" of the tradition from which the Grail legends are drawn (Celtic, Christian, and Chymical), then from more modern sources, such as Tennyson's The Idylls of the King, T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", and T.H. White's The Once and Future King. We will focus specifically on how literary tradition operates over vast spans of time and how, in this case, it is transmitted to, given meaning and shared by peoples of diverse regions, epochs, and faiths (pagan and Christian, Catholic and Protestant, medieval and modern). WRITING INTENSIVE.

HONR 300A
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE
4 SEM HRS
M. DIXON
"Playwrights teach nothing about love, they make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust. They cannot make it true," says Queen Elizabeth in the middle of Shakespeare in Love, and the rest of the film tests her challenge whether "there is one who can..." bring love to life on the stage. This course will test out the theory that Shakespeare not only explored love in all its shapes and shades in his plays and poems, but that in doing so, he helped shape our contemporary ideas and experiences of love. This collision of Shakespeare with contemporary culture takes place most vividly in the cinema, where productions of his plays have achieved such recent popularity. Starting with Shakespeare in Love, this course will focus on the texts and the films of Shakespeare's love comedies and tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Othello, and Anthony and Cleopatra. We will also look at the Sonnets. This will be a discussion class. It will require several short papers and one longer project that will include an oral presentation. Students will be required to attend film screenings outside of class (Wednesday nights, 6:30-9:30 Ness Auditorium). WRITING INTENSIVE.

HONR 300C/S
FOOD AND CULTURE IN EAST ASIA
4 SEM HRS
SMITH
Food is more than just nutrition for the body, more than just a source of pleasure to the senses. Food is also rich with cultural meaning. This course is an anthropological inquiry into the place of food in China, Japan, and Korea. In keeping with the holistic, four field approach of American Cultural Anthropology consideration will be given to geographic and biological constraints on diet in East Asia, but the emphasis of this course is on the theorizing of food ways (including issues such as cooking techniques, table etiquette and ceremonial food use) as part of larger systems of meaning that are logically consistent with other elements of culture and are transformed by changing historical circumstances. In addition to doing library research and classroom presentations, students will be required to visit East Asian restaurants and prepare meals in the professor's kitchen. WRITING INTENSIVE.

HONR 300H
AGE OF CATHEDRALS
4 SEM HRS
LIVINGSTONE
One of the most enduring images of the medieval world is the cathedral. Have you ever wondered why medieval people felt compelled to create such monumental structures? How did they build cathedrals? Who built them? Why? These are some of the questions that this course will explore. Our discussion will begin with the art and society of the period preceding the Age of Cathedrals: the Romanesque. Key to our discussion will be the pilgrimage churches that came to cover much of France and Northern Spain. How did faith and religious practice contribute to the construction of these churches? What social, economic and political factors contributed to the veneration of the saints and the pilgrimage churches? But why and how did the Romanesque period transform into the age of Gothic? What economic and social changes led to the construction of cathedrals such as Chartres, St. Denis, Notre Dame, Amiens and Rheims? Why were cathedrals designed to capture light and to seem to ascend toward heaven? How do cathedrals reflect intellectual and philosophical developments of the central Middle Ages? Finally we will consider what impact cathedrals had on medieval civilization. How do cathedrals embody the cultural changes that characterized the twelfth and thirteenth centuries?

WRITING INTENSIVE: Students will write three short papers, a research paper, and a synthetical essay. They will present research to the class at the end of the semester.

HONR 300R
MYSTERIES OF SELF AND SOUL
4 SEM HRS
REED
The aim of this course is to explore with Honors students a range of traditional questions about the nature and existence of what we variously refer to as "self", "mind", "spirit", "soul", "psyche", "will", "personality", and "character". We will examine some classic philosophical texts and seek to develop answers to the following questions:

• Am I my body, or something more than but including my body, or something in but distinct from my body?
• Can I be aware of anything except through the medium of my bodily sense organs? Can I have an "out-of-body" experience?
• Am I the same person I was 10 years ago, even though almost every cell in my body is different? Would I be the same person if I lost an arm? If I became quadriplegic? If I were just a brain in a vat?
• When did "I" begin existing? When I was conceived as a fertilized egg? When I became a viable fetus? When I was born? When I learned to talk? When I went through puberty?
• Will I survive the death of my body in any meaningful sense?
• What is the relationship between my conscious experience and the functioning of my brain? Are they the same thing? If they are different, how do they influence each other? Do they influence each other?
• Do I constitute myself through my own choices and actions? Or am I constituted made to be who I am by the influences in my environment?
• Am I free or just unaware of the many ways my will is determined by forces outside of me?
• Do I know for sure that other selves exist? Could they all just be extremely complicated mechanisms like robots?
• Am I just an extremely complicated mechanism? WRITING INTENSIVE.

HONR 300S
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
4 SEM HRS
HUDSON
This course considers the major parameters of international security policy, particularly in the light of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Hence, topics to be considered include ones that address the current situation, such as the roots of international terrorism, policy toward terrorism, and the role of intelligence in the international security structure. The class will, however, also consider more "traditional" matters of international security, including strategy in the nuclear age, arms transfers to the third world, international security policy making, and the human face of battle. Overall, the class will probe the question of whether we are entering a new international security system, as many pundits have claimed. Two oral reports and a 20-25 page term paper constitute the basic graded exercises. Active class participation is expected for this seminar. The professor will notify registered students of a reading assignment that they should complete in advance of the first seminar meeting. WRITING INTENSIVE.