Hon 202

Engage: Practice & Scholarship

In the final semester of the Honors core sequence, students will move from design to execution, taking the next step of conducting active research, inquiry, and/or creative practices with a faculty member in their area of expertise. In these classes, students will learn about core concepts of ethical theories, interpret ethical issues, and apply those concepts to their research and lives.

Course Learning Outcomes:

Students develop skills in designing research, scholarly projects, or creative practices and working collaboratively under the guidance of faculty from across the university. Topics vary, but will center on the environment, sustainability, and how humans interact with the natural world.

General Education Requirement (GER):

Satisfies Ethics GER.

Spring 2027 HON 202 Course Offerings*:

*Courses may be modified or cancelled based on enrollment, staffing, and other factors.

Hunting: Privilege or Right?

Cristina Arrigoni Martelli

Students will tackle the current landscape of American hunting grounding it in the main issues and concepts of ethical theory. Hunting involves killing and obvious ethical implications. This class will specifically look at divergent attitudes and motivations of contemporary hunters resulting in sometimes wildly different relationships to wild animals and the land they live on, as well as the hunters’ own justifications for their actions. Through research of contemporary material from a variety of sources, students will be tasked with developing a research project that asks the hard ethical questions. They will track attitudes and their consequences trying to determine if ethical hunts are possible, what they look like, and who should establish the ground rules for them.

an art deco style image go a scholar and a marble statue

Conscience and Character

Don Beith

As ethical beings, we find ourselves put to the test when our values clash with our societies. Our study will take up the issue of how conscience, rather than being locked up by these clashes, is defined by them. To this end, we will read together Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Apology, Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, MLK’s “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail,” some short stories from Ursula Le Guin, and some of Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners. We will also read from Sandel’s book on justice for theoretical context. This is a generative discussion-oriented seminar.

The painting "Netherlandish Proverbs," 1559, by Peter Breughel the Elder

Words to Live By: Aphorisms, Proverbs, Maxims

James Brophy

This course explores how aphorisms and other forms of short, memorizable, wisdom have transmitted normative cultural ideas, values, and advice. We will explore more formal forms of aphoristic wisdom in Greco-Roman and Chinese philosophy and Abrahamic religious texts, and less formal ones in modern self-help slogans and folk-sayings, considering how they function to internalize broader ideas and ideals that inform our ethical reasoning and actions. Finally, we’ll take stock of our own personal words to live by.

A painting of Aristotle with his arm stretched out

Aristotle’s Ethics Today

Jimmy Fazzino

This HON 202 examines Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a sustained exploration of what it means to live well. Through close reading, interdisciplinary inquiry, collaborative discussion, and independent research, we will investigate questions of happiness, virtue, character, friendship, justice, practical wisdom, pleasure, and community, connecting Aristotle’s arguments to contemporary problems and perspectives. You will develop and execute a scholarly, creative, or community-based project that engages these questions and communicates its findings to appropriate audiences. The course emphasizes intellectual curiosity, productive disagreement, reflective inquiry, and the ability to listen, facilitate discussion, and communicate across perspectives. We will critically assess both the possibilities and limits of Aristotle’s account of flourishing.

Freedom

Hao Hong

This particular HON 202 class approaches the question “What is freedom?” in the PPE-style (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics–a popular interdisciplinary model first developed by Oxford University) from three distinct but interconnected perspectives. In philosophy, we examine the metaphysics of free will: Do human beings genuinely author their own choices, or are our decisions determined by prior causes beyond our control? In politics, we investigate the nature and limits of political freedom: What does it mean to live in a free society, and when, if ever, is the state justified in constraining individual liberty? In economics, we explore the theory and practice of free markets: What are the philosophical foundations of market freedom, and what are some concerns about the free market from the perspective of social democracy? Running through all three areas is a sustained attention to ethics. We ask not only what freedom is, but what ethical implications from different answers.

Black and white line art illustration showing a fully armored medieval knight on a charging horse pointing a lance toward a man in a plaid shirt and bowler hat who is perched up in a tree.

Remembering the Middle Ages

Tobias Hrynick

The past is a mine of ideas, which can be used to couch practical and moral arguments about our own world. When we call a political policy “medieval” or a person “chivalrous,” we rely on shared opinions of the past to articulate an ethical judgement. But memories are held in human minds, and conform to the shape of the container: how we talk about the past says as much about us as it does about our ancestors. This class explores how memories of the Middle Ages respond to contemporary needs, and express contemporary values.

A circular, hand-woven indigenous basket featuring a sunburst pattern with alternating coils of natural tan, light blue, and brown fibers.

Cultural Wellbeing

Mimi Killinger

In this section of HON 202 we will trace historical and literary roots of wellness practices that have proven defining and nourishing for cultures out of which they have arisen. We will study indigenous teachings about vision quests as a spiritual act; we will learn about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, its physical demands and its promise of healthy renewal. We will explore Tai Chi and its Taoist foundations, as well as yoga and its origins as an ancient Hindu practice for achieving mind-body union. Through active learning and engaged discussions, we will furthermore consider the ethical foundations of these cultural pathways to wellbeing over time.

Monty Python's Life of Brian: "Well, obviously, it's not meant to be taken literally"

Fan Fiction

Mark Raymond

Fan Fiction sees students actively engage the participatory culture of scholarship. Fan fiction, fan communities and fan theories provide a lens through which text-based traditions can be analyzed in terms of what can be said about a text or about the world, how canon formation and received traditions include or exclude voices and truths, and how research questions can “read between the lines” to uncover the tensions and negotiations within the transmission of information and arguments. Fan fiction and fan theories are by their very nature transgressive, their work explicitly extra-canonical. Students will explore the ethical structures depicted within texts and the ethics of creativity and interpretation itself.

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