Fall 2023 Course Descriptions

HC101H - Dogs, Past and Present

Professor: Lisa Wolverton

4.00 credits

CRN 12213: Monday & Wednesday, 8:30-9:50am @ CHA 201

CRN 12214: Tuesday & Thursday, 8:30-9:50am @ CHA 201

As workers and companions, dogs have shared human history virtually from its origins. For dogs, the first domesticated animals, human society has always been their natural habitat. Understanding dogs therefore requires analyzing their relationships to and meaning for people. Read more

HC101H - U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Professor: Tobin Hansen

4.00 credits

CRN 12215: Monday & Wednesday, 8:30-9:50am @ CHA 202

CRN12234: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00-5:20pm @ CHA 201

This course examines the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. We will question how borders separate, bring together, and thicken across nations, states, cultures, and geographic territories—and how these processes operate at the U.S.-Mexico border and in the broader borderlands. Read more

HC101H - The Garden and the Wall

Professor: Gantt Gurley

4.00 credits

CRN 12217: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:20am @ CHA 201

CRN 12223: Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:20pm @ CHA 201

Perhaps the most ubiquitous allegory in all of world literature is the garden, the locus amoenus, a concept that is often synonymous with paradise. The garden is both a metaphor of humankind’s contemplation and a location of human activity. Read more

HC101H - The Art and Science of Human Flourishing

Professor: Kate Mondloch

4.00 credits

CRN 12219: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ CHA 201

CRN 12226: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:20pm @ CHA 201

For millennia, cultures have contemplated the question of human “flourishing:” an existence filled with deep satisfaction, well-being, resilience, and accomplishment. Read more

HC101H - Symmetry

Professor: Lindsay Hinkle

4.00 credits

CRN 12220: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ CHA 202

The symmetry of a pattern provides visual interest.  The symmetry of a molecule affects its function.  But what does it really mean to be symmetric or to have symmetry? Read more

HC101H - Making Space for Our Stories: Immigrant and Refugee Experiences of Coming to America

Professor: Yalda Asmatey

4.00 credits

CRN 12222: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ GSH 130

CRN 12227: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:20pm @ MCK 123

This first-year seminar is an exploration of the depth and power of storytelling in our lives. The course will specifically look at graphic memoirs as creative and immersive experiences that share unique stories that all too often are suppressed, ignored, and devalued. Read more

HC101H - Global Problems of the 21st Century

Professor: Ellen Fitzpatrick

4.00 credits

CRN 12224: Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:20pm @ CHA 301

CRN 12236: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00-5:20pm @ CHA 301

This is an interdisciplinary exploration of 21st century global problems and opportunities. Read more

HC101H - Down the Rabbit Hole

Professor: Brian McWhorter & Lisa Munger

4.00 credits

CRN 12225: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:20pm @ CHA 202

In the opening chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice’s riverbank reverie is interrupted by a white rabbit, anxiously muttering and checking its pocket watch as it hurries past. Read more

HC101H - Artificial Intelligence: The Culture of Minds and Machines

Professor: Casey Shoop

4.00 credits

CRN 12228: Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:20pm @ CHA 220

CRN 12229: Monday & Wednesday, 2:00-3:20pm @ CHA 201

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick’s titular question frames the concerns of this course on the relationship between minds and machines. Read more

HC101H - Poetry of Black Liberation

Professor: Courtney Thorsson

4.00 credits

CRN 12231: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20pm @ PLC 361

In this course, we will study poems about figures in the long struggle for Black liberation in the United States. Read more

HC101H - Media Unfiltered: What the Mass Media Should and Shouldn't Do

Professor: Nicole Dahmen

4.00 credits

CRN 12232: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20pm @ ANS 192

The mass media are one of the most powerful and pervasive institutions in our society, and it is paramount that we have a foundational knowledge of how mass media functions and how to take a critical lens to mass media content. Read more

HC101H - Misinformation

Professor: Nicole Dudukovic

4.00 credits

CRN 12233: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20pm @ CHA 202

This course examines misinformation from an interdisciplinary, liberal arts perspective. Read more

HC221H - "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead": Narratives of Retribution and Revenge

Professor: Ulrick Casimir

4.00 credits

CRN 12238: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:20am @ CHA 202

CRN 12242: Monday & Wednesday, 2:00-3:20pm @ MCK 122

Focused on both narrative readings (mostly poetry, drama, and short fiction) and films, this course concerns how different cultures, over time, have examined through narrative the mechanics, potentialities, limitations, and consequences of retribution and revenge. Read more

HC221H - 12,000 Colors

Professor: Christopher Michlig

4.00 credits

CRN 12239: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ CHA 301

12,000 Colors is a transhistorical, interdisciplinary survey of color - this class will explore a constellation of scientific, theoretical, and cultural developments that shape our past, present, and future relationship to color. Read more

HC221H - Epic Influences: Poetry, Leadership, and You

Professor: Barbara Mossberg

4.00 credits

CRN 12241: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:50am @ CHA 301

Epic rules! In this course, we are sleuths, investigating the case for and evidence of the questionable theory that poetry is an instrumental aspect of leadership. Read more

HC221H - Music and Meaning

Professor: Lydia Van Dreel

4.00 credits

CRN 12243: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00-5:20pm @ ANS 192

In this seminar, we will explore music as a function of culture. Students will have the opportunity to learn how music expresses community and belonging, storytelling, mood and place, spirituality, individualism, counterculture, rebellion, and political discourse. Read more

HC231H - Oral Advocacy and Argument

Professor: Trond Jacobsen

4.00 credits

CRN 12246: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ LIB 041

This course teaches students the foundations of effective public speaking, the properties and structures that make oral arguments strong or weak, and the strategies and techniques that make speakers persuasive when engaging varied audiences. Read more

HC231H - Islam and Muslims in the US

Professor: Yalda Asmatey

4.00 credits

CRN 12249: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20pm @ CHA 201

In this course, we will critically study the intersectionality of the production of Muslim otherness and we will find that as a construct, it is not unique once compared to the experiences of other racial, ethnic or religious communities throughout the U.S. and Europe. Read more

HC231H - Civil Rights in Higher Education

Professor: Jessica Price

4.00 credits

CRN 15402: Monday & Wednesday, 4:30-5:50pm @ ANS 195

Through a series of readings, guided discussions, and student-generated analysis of caselaw, this course examines the evolving standards of civil rights in higher education. Read more

HC231H - Native American Languages

Professor:  Justin Spence

4.00 credits

CRN 12248: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:20pm @ GSH 131

North America has always been home to an incredible amount of linguistic diversity, with an estimated 500 languages spoken in the region before the arrival of Europeans. This course provides students with a broad introduction to Native American languages, with special emphasis on languages of Oregon, California, and Washington. Read more

HC241H - Unusual Oceanographic Events

Professor: Lisa Munger

4.00 credits

CRN 12251: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ ED 276

CRN 12253: Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:20pm @ CHA 202

In order to understand what is unusual, one must first understand what is “usual”. This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of oceanography and data analysis via exploration of online data sets, readings from scientific literature, short analytical assignments, and other activities. Read more

HC241H - The Science of Learning and Memory

Professor: Nicole Dudukovic

4.00 credits

CRN 12254: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:20pm @ GSH 130

Our memories shape our identities and give meaning to our lives, yet they are not always as reliable as we would like.  In this course, we will explore the successes and failures of our memories by examining key concepts, theories, and methodological approaches for studying human learning and memory. Read more

HC241H - Making Mistakes and Creating Catastrophes

Professor: Robert Mauro

4.00 credits

CRN 12255: Monday & Wednesday, 2:00-3:20pm @ PETR 102

Overview In this course, we will apply physiology, psychology, and system design principles to analyzing accidents and making sense of mishaps to learn how to prevent problems and improve decisions. Read more

HC241H - Science of Climate Change

Professor: Jeffrey Cina

4.00 credits

CRN 12250: Tuesday & Thursday, 8:30-9:50am @ ANS 192

This reading and discussion-based course will delve into the science of human-caused climate change due to the widespread combustion of fossil fuels for energy, heating, and transportation. Read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation - Paty

Professor: Carol Paty

2.00 credits

CRN 12262: Monday, 10:00-11:20am @ CON 330

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. The CHC thesis is the culmination of work in a major—a natural outgrowth from and expression of the ideas, problems, and approaches taught in that particular discipline or field of study. Read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation - Dudukovic

Professor: Nicole Dudukovic

2.00 credits

CRN 12264: Wednesday, 12:00-1:20pm @ FEN 117

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. The CHC thesis is the culmination of work in a major—a natural outgrowth from and expression of the ideas, problems, and approaches taught in that particular discipline or field of study. Read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation - Hinkle

Professor: Lindsay Hinkle

2.00 credits

CRN 12266: Tuesday, 2:00-3:20pm @ GSH 103

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. The CHC thesis is the culmination of work in a major—a natural outgrowth from and expression of the ideas, problems, and approaches taught in that particular discipline or field of study. Read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation - Feddersen

Professor: Jesse Feddersen

2.00 credits

CRN 12261: Tuesday, 10:00-11:20am @ MCK 471

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. The CHC thesis is the culmination of work in a major—a natural outgrowth from and expression of the ideas, problems, and approaches taught in that particular discipline or field of study. Read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation - Altman

Professor: Rebecca Altman

2.00 credits

CRN 12263: Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ FEN 105

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. The CHC thesis is the culmination of work in a major—a natural outgrowth from and expression of the ideas, problems, and approaches taught in that particular discipline or field of study. Read more

HC301H - Research Methods in Environmental Studies and Sustainability

Professor: Ellen Fitzpatrick

4.00 credits

CRN 12269: Monday & Wednesday, 8:30-9:50am @ CHA 301

Sustainability is a term that has been overused and co-opted to mean whatever the user wants it to mean. Read more

HC301H - How Universities Work

Professor: Ian McNeely

4.00 credits

CRN 12270: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:20am @ ED 176

Universities are complex, fascinating, ancient institutions, yet those of us who study, work, and live in universities typically spend little time investigating how they function. Read more

HC301H - Beneath the Surface Science

Professor:  Rebecca Altman

4.00 credits

CRN 12271: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:20pm @ LIB 322

CRN 12268: Tuesday & Thursday, 8:30-9:50am @ VOL 101

Surfaces are avenues for change. From the technology of our touchscreen devices to the evolution of our biological membranes, surface science determines how we relate to and manipulate our world. Read more

HC301H - The Art of the Interview and Writing News Profiles

Professor: Dave Austin

4.00 credits

CRN 12274: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00-5:20pm @ CHA 202

One of the most engaging and artful ways to bring someone to life is through profile writing. Read more

HC421H - Slime and Sliminess

Professor: Christopher Michlig

4.00 credits

CRN 12283: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:50am @ LA 143

What is slime? We are well acquainted with its qualities in conjunction with certain things from which we tend to recoil but to which we are also at times fervently attracted. Read more

HC444H/421H - Latine Testimonios

Professor: Catalina de Onís

4.00 credits

CRN 12284: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20pm @ CHA 301

Latine Testimonios centers on experiences, narratives, and reflections that communicate embodied knowledges and relationships. This “theory in the flesh” can challenge oppressive systems and structures, while also creating interconnections among peoples who are disproportionately harmed by extractivist logics and practices (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1981).Read more

HC421H - Emerson and Einstein, Interdisciplinary Artist Activists: An Inquiry into Genius

Professor: Barbara Mossberg

4.00 credits

CRN 12285: Tuesday & Thursday, 8:00-9:50am @ CHA 301

Poetry and science merge, converge, blur, and blend in this study of genius that rocked—and still rocks—our world. Bursting and bending disciplines, joyously defying definitions of field--Einstein the scientist playing the violin and encouraging humanities, Emerson the poet urging study of science and history. Read more

HC421H - Inside-Out Prison Exchange: The Ethics of Ambiguity, Studies in Fiction and Narrative Medicine

Professor: Dawn Marlan

4.00 credits

CRN 12286: Tuesday, 6:00-8:30pm @ LIB 322

This course is open only to CHC students. An an application and instructor approval are required to register for this course. If you are not familiar with the Inside-Out Program, please check out the information on the Honors College website here:  http://honors.uoregon.edu/story/inside-out-prison-exchange-program and watch the Inside-Out documentary here: https://uoprisoned.org/inside-out. Students may only take one Inside-Out class in a given term. However, given the limited spaces available, students are encouraged to apply to multiple sections if their schedule allows.

Institutions manage and process people. Medicine, like many institutions, tends to define people in terms of their problems – disease, drugs, mental illness. Fiction inverts this structure, seeing character as something that transcends problems. Read more

HC421H - Written on the Body: Exploring Embodiment through Creative Nonfiction

Professor: Brian Trapp

4.00 credits

CRN 16103: Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:50pm @ PET 107

In this seminar/creative nonfiction workshop, you’ll (1) explore how creative nonfiction authors write the body in contemporary literature and (2) write and workshop your own embodied creative nonfiction. You’ll explore how embodiment intersects with identity in its many forms: race, ability, gender, and sexuality. Read more

HC421H - Book Love

Professor: Mai-Lin Cheng

4.00 credits

CRN 16108: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:50pm @ GSH 132

In this course, we will analyze the connections between reading and writing as we explore what "book love" means...Read more

HC431H - Labor Organizing and the Struggle for Justice at Work

Professor: Gordon Lafer

4.00 credits

CRN 12288: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:50pm @ CHA 301

This is an interdisciplinary course that will ask students to examine the dynamics of power relations in the workplace and introduce them to labor organizing. Read more

HC431H - Eighteenth-Century Things: Material Cultures of the Enlightenment

Professor: Daniel Rosenberg

4.00 credits

CRN 12289: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:50am @ GSH 132

The mundane objects of our world—the things we write with, eat with, play with—structure our every experience. They also reveal our interests, conflicts, and values. Read more

HC434H/431H - To Eat, or Not to Eat: Humans’ Complex Relationship with Animals

Professor: Hannah Cutting-Jones

4.00 credits

CRN 12293: Monday & Wednesday, 2:00-3:20pm @ CHA 202

In what ways did our dependence on animals make us human? How did domestication, urbanization, industrialization, and organized religion change our relationship to animals and the natural world? Read more

HC441H - Volcanoes and Human History

Professor: Kathy Cashman

4.00 credits

CRN 12296: Monday & Wednesday, 2:00-3:20pm @ GSH 131

This course will introduce the topic of volcanology to non-specialists by viewing iconic volcanic eruptions of the past through the lenses of both the people who experienced these events and the scientists who studied them. Read more

HC441H - The Cyrosphere: Ice's Role in the Climate System

Professor: Dave Sutherland

4.00 credits

CRN 12300: Tuesday & Thursday, 8:30-9:50am @ CHA 202

The general public is faced daily with images from the cryosphere, whether it is a polar bear floating on a sea ice floe to a tidewater glacier calving off enormous chunks of ice. Read more

HC441H - Physics & Sports

Professor: Stanley Micklavzina

4.00 credits

CRN 12297: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00-5:20pm @ PSC B040

Sports do not require detailed knowledge of physics - athletes are able to make rapid judgements and accurate predictions about complex physical systems without the use of equations or computational analysis. Likewise, physics does not require athleticism nor even an appreciation of sports. Read more

HC441H - Listening to the Earth – interpreting patterns and extreme events in natural data

Professor: Leif Karlstrom

4.00 credits

CRN 12298: Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-1:50pm @ TYKE 240

Earth Science is undergoing a data revolution that stands to transform the way we observe and understand the natural world. But along with exciting new discoveries come challenges associated with an onslaught of information – What constitutes good data? Read more

HC444H/421H - Los Angeles and the Dreamlife of American Capitalism

Professor: Casey Shoop

4.00 credits

CRN 12305: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00-5:50pm @ PETR 103

In Los Angeles, as Joan Didion once observed, “the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent. Read more

HC444H/421H - Black Feminist Literature

Professor: Courtney Thorsson

4.00 credits

CRN 12303: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:50am @ PLC 184

In this course, we will study works from the vast body of Black feminist literature. Our texts will be by African American women writers, activists, teachers, and intellectuals and will span the late-nineteenth century to the present. Read more

HC444H/431H - Continuing the Search for the Cayuse Five

Professor: Michael Moffitt

CRN 12304: Fridays, 10:00am - 12:50pm @ CHA 202

Note: Registration for this course requires permission of instructor. Please see below for instructions on how to apply.

In 1850, five Cayuse men were hanged and buried in or near Oregon City. Three years earlier, missionary Marcus Whitman and about a dozen others had been killed near Walla Walla, Washington. Read more

HC444H/431H - Decolonizing Knowledge & Power: The Black Radical Tradition as a Counter-Catastrophic Social Science

Professor: George Barganier

4.00 credits

CRN 16420: Friday, 10:00-12:50pm @ Online Synchronous

This is an intensive seminar on the Black Radical Tradition. This course takes a decolonial, transdisciplinary approach to the study of knowledge and power and considers possible modes of intervention to confront the problems around inequality in society. Read more

HC477H - Thesis Prospectus - Casimir

Professor: Ulrick Casimir

2.00 credits

CRN 12306: Monday, 12:00-1:50pm @ MCK 471

CRN 12315: Wednesday, 4:00-5:50pm @ MCK 348

HC 477H Thesis Prospectus requires preauthorization before each term. To obtain preauthorization, you must complete an online Thesis Prospectus Application Form, which will route to your Primary Thesis Advisor for signature. You have the best chance of getting your first choice of H477H section if you submit this information by Friday of Week 6 of the term before you plan to take the course. Read more

HC477H - Thesis Prospectus - de Onís

Professor: Catalina de Onís

2.00 credits

CRN 12307: Tuesday, 10:00-11:50am @ FR 217

CRN 12308: Thursday, 10:00-11:50am @ FR 217

HC 477H Thesis Prospectus requires preauthorization before each term. To obtain preauthorization, you must complete an online Thesis Prospectus Application Form, which will route to your Primary Thesis Advisor for signature. You have the best chance of getting your first choice of H477H section if you submit this information by Friday of Week 6 of the term before you plan to take the course. Read more

HC477H - Thesis Orientation - Gallagher

Professor: Daphne Gallagher

2.00 credits

CRN 12310: Tuesday, 2:00-3:50pm @ STB 251

CRN 12313: Wednesday, 2:00-3:50pm @ MCK 345

HC 477H Thesis Prospectus requires preauthorization before each term. To obtain preauthorization, you must complete an online Thesis Prospectus Application Form, which will route to your Primary Thesis Advisor for signature. You have the best chance of getting your first choice of H477H section if you submit this information by Friday of Week 6 of the term before you plan to take the course. Read more

HC477H - Thesis Orientation - Hansen

Professor:  Tobin Hansen

2.00 credits

CRN 12312: Mondays, 2:00-3:50pm @ MCK 345

HC 477H Thesis Prospectus requires preauthorization before each term. To obtain preauthorization, you must complete an online Thesis Prospectus Application Form, which will route to your Primary Thesis Advisor for signature. You have the best chance of getting your first choice of H477H section if you submit this information by Friday of Week 6 of the term before you plan to take the course. Read more