Centennial Honors College

GENERAL HONORS COURSES

Spring 2024 General Honors Courses.  See STARS for time and location.

HONORS COLLOQUIUM

GH 299 CYBER BAGGAGE  MYERS J, ONLINE  (first eight weeks)

Cyberspace Baggage: Privacy and Problems Besieging Online Information (1):  This online course will examine recent case law and court ordered mandates concerning the legal and ethical issues related to information privacy in a technologically savvy society.  This course will address an individual’s legal right to control the collection, use, or distribution of information about oneself held by others. Specifically, the course will review online accessibility issues, advantages and disadvantages of maintaining online identities and individual branding, and risk assessment and management through legal opinions and ongoing litigation.

This course explores the legal impact and effects of the Internet on all aspects of our lives as global citizens.  The course is designed to make the student aware of some of the existing and emerging legal and policy issues affecting privacy that arise online. Discussions and debates will be based upon legal readings, research, and videos drawn from court cases and legal scholars. The class is designed to encourage students to develop and express their own evidenced-based ideas and to cultivate a technological literacy with which to analyze and critique surveillance policies and technologies as social entities from the emerging legal perspective.

GH 299 WLTH MGT  BRENNAN M, ONLINE  (Two sections: first eight weeks and second eight weeks)

Wealth Management: (1) The purpose of this course is to understand how excess money should be smartly invested in stocks, bonds, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit.  Included in the course is a discussion of internal and external factors that materially affect this “allocation of assets” decision.  How these investable assets should be spread across regular (taxable) investment accounts and retirement (tax-free or tax deferred) accounts is also addressed by the course.  Within this structure, a somewhat detailed understanding of how stocks and bonds are valued and traded is included. 

HONORS GENERAL EDUCATION COURSES

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

ENG 180 or ENG 280 - COLLEGE WRITING 

GH 101  HORROR FICTION            KOZHUKHOVA Y

HORROR FICTION (3) (General Education/Humanities) Horror fiction is often born from the anxieties of its time. In this course, we will explore the way that real-life circumstances give rise to collective fears, and those collective fears give rise to stories. This course is chronologically divided into three units. The first unit will explore the anxieties of the 19th century with a focus on Romanticism and the Enlightenment. The central text of this unit will be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The second unit will explore the anxieties of the 20th century with short stories by Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, Poppy Z. Brite, Jewelle Gomez, and Nalo Hopkinson. The third and final unit will bring us to the present day, where we will explore new forms of media. Texts from this unit will include episodes of the horror fiction podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale and The Magnus Archive, and the comedy horror show, What We Do in the Shadows.  Students may be eligible for WIU Advanced Placement for ENG 180 or ENG 280 but not for both ENG 180 and ENG 280. A grade of C or better is required for WIU AP credit.

PUBLIC SPEAKING

COMM241H  INTRO PUB SPKG   ZANOLLA

Introduction to Public Speaking: (3) (General Education/Communication Skills) Students in this honors class will receive the same amount of speaking experience and practical instruction as in other sections but will engage in a more intensive development of those speeches.  Each student will give three major speeches.  The first will be an informative visual presentation, the second will be an argumentative presentation, and the third major speech will be a persuasive presentation.  Students will also deliver some minor, upgraded speeches.

The course has two objectives.  The first is to have the students master the practicalities of public speaking.  They will learn and put into play the canonical principles of invention, organization, style, memory and delivery, and will do so in both informative and persuasive situations.  The second objective is to introduce students to the richness of rhetorical theory.  The section will be conducted in such a way as to promote both goals simultaneously.

Speeches will be critiqued by the instructor and the class according to the principles outlined in the texts and discussed in class.  With the exception of the days devoted to giving speech assignments, class will be conducted as a seminar and workshop.  Students will be expected to have read the material assigned and be prepared to raise issues about the readings.  Discussion will follow the students' reactions.  Counts as General Honors course towards graduation requirements for Honors Scholar status.

HUMANITIES

GH 301  GAMING THE PAST       ROBERTS T

GAMING THE PAST: (3) (General Education/Humanities) This course will explore several arenas of global interaction and conflict through different history-based games and will examine issues of representation, public memory, and the pedagogical value of interactive play. Each immersive game will be paired with readings from scholars of history, education, and memory to provoke class-wide discussions, the identification with a range of global historical actors, and reflections on the ways that games present, and sometimes misrepresent, the past. Students will develop an interactive history game as a major project.

REL 111H  WEST RELIGIONS   CARR A        

WESTERN RELIGIONS: (3) (General Education/Humanities or Multicultural Studies) (Global Issues) A comparative introduction to the “religions of Abraham” –Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—with attention to historical development, scriptures, beliefs, practices, and diverse cultural expressions.

HUMAN WELL-BEING

FIN 101H  FINANCIAL HEALTH    GRAY S S, ONLINE

Financial Health: (2)  (General Education/Human Well-Being) Develops strategies for achieving and maintaining well-being through personal finance skills. Topics include well-being as it relates to cash management, credit management, sources of educational funding, rental agreements, basic investments, taxes, insurance, financial math, and career planning. Cannot be applied towards meeting the requirements for the Finance major or minor. Counts as General Honors course towards graduation requirements for Honors Scholar status.

MULTICULTURAL STUDIES

REL 111H  WEST RELIGIONS   CARR A        

WESTERN RELIGIONS: (3) (General Education/Humanities or Multicultural Studies) (Global Issues) A comparative introduction to the “religions of Abraham” –Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—with attention to historical development, scriptures, beliefs, practices, and diverse cultural expressions.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

GH 302   DEMOCRACY GAMES      TAYLOR E

Democracy Games : (3) (General Education/Social Science) This course will use Reacting to the Past simulations to explore the difficulties, dangers, possibilities and promises of democracy through a deep engagement with two pivotal moments in the development of democracy.  In the first half of the course, students will be transported to Paris in 1791, during the middle phase of the French Revolution, where they will struggle to build a new Constitution for France.  Informed by the work of thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke, students will confront issues such as the role of the church in government, freedom of speech, the relationship between property and citizenship, and the legitimacy of violence as a tool for revolution.  In the second half of the course, students will leap forward to 1993, to the World Trade Center in Kempton Park, to serve as delegates in the Multiparty Negotiating Process charged with building a new constitution  for post-Apartheid South Africa.  Here, they will encounter a how familiar task—constitution building—in an entirely novel set of circumstances that will build on their previous experience while also introducing new questions regarding the role of diversity and national identities, the importance of consensus building, and th establishment of a process for truth and reconciliation.  Finally, the course will conclude by asking students to identify and reflect on the themes explored during the simulations.  These themes will include the nature of and constraints on political power, the relationship between individuals, national and ethnic groups and the community, and the meaning of justice and social equality.