Fall 2024 Honors Seminars
HONS 1810W-84
“Pop Music and its Meanings”
TR 1:15-2:30 pm
Professor Emily Lordi, Department of English
AXLE: Humanities & the Creative Arts (HCA)
In this class, we’ll treat pop songs—from pop to rock to rap–not simply as mere entertainment but as texts we can decode to better understand our world. We’ll hone this way of listening in part by reading the work of America’s finest, most influential music scholars and critics. These writers will teach us to read song lyrics as poetry, and to assess how other aspects of music contribute to—and complicate—a song’s overall meaning. We’ll also explore what makes certain artists such celebrated, insightful and controversial interpreters of contemporary life. How do they capture fleeting feelings, nuanced identities, and new realties? Assignments will include several short essays, longer papers, a presentation, and lots of close listening. No prior musical expertise is necessary, although a love of music will enhance students’ experience of this course.
HONS 1820W-43
“Exposed: Early French Photography from Portraiture to Pornography”
TR 11 am-12:15 pm
Professor Raisa Rexer, Department of French and Italian
AXLE: Perspectives (P)
No invention has changed the way we perceive and reproduce the world around us more dramatically than the photograph. Focusing on France, where photography was officially invented in 1839, this class surveys the first six decades of photography in thematic modules including portraiture, colonial photography in North Africa, pornography, the transformation of Paris, crime scene photography, and the rise of the personal camera. Looking at photographs, fiction, non-fiction, and visual works in other media, it explores how the invention of photography raised fundamental questions about our relationship to reality and its representation that continue to resonate in the age of social media nearly two centuries later.
HONS 1850W-34
“Murmurations and Emergence
TR 2:45-4 pm
Professor John Wikswo, Department of Physics
AXLE: Math and Natural Sciences (MNS)
A flock of starling careening over Rome is an example of a murmuration, as is a swirling school of sardines avoiding a marine predator. These are popular examples of emergent phenomena, wherein a collection of entities with agency exhibits a group behavior that no entity can possess on its own. This student-driven seminar will explore the science of emergence, spanning the origins of multi-cellular life, the thermodynamics of evolution, the appearance of intelligence within populations of neurons, the creation of societies and religion, and, as a subject of in-class experimentation, the emergence of a collective consciousness as the seminar participants learn how to minimize competition, enhance mutual trust and respect, and work together to identify and answer intellectual questions of common interest.
HONS 1860W-32
“Food in Chinese History”
TR 4:15-5:30 pm
Professor Peter Lorge, Department of History
AXLE: International Cultures (INT)
This course examines the history of food in China, from its earliest times to the present, including its spread abroad. The culture of food extends from changes in agriculture to regional variations in practice, and the social differentiation of eating habits. Food played a prominent role in literature, philosophy, and religion. Imports of new products like chili peppers dramatically changed regional cuisines. The course will include some sessions in Vanderbilt’s demonstration kitchen.
HONS 1860W-33
“Jewish Diaspora in Mexico through Literature and Art”
MWF 10:10-11 am
Professor Christina Karageorgou-Bastea, Department of Spanish & Portuguese
AXLE: International Cultures (INT)
Claudia Sheinbaum: do you know that she will probably be the next president of Mexico? Do you know that Dr. Sheinbaum, former mayor of Mexico City, a physician, and now the candidate with more favorable prediction for her election in the rally of June 2, is Jewish? Do you know that she is of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic origin? The answer to these questions is yes. Now, can you imagine how, in the course of a century, a Jewish woman, whose ancestors arrived in Mexico between the 1920s and the 1940s from Lithuania and Bulgaria, can become the public, national and international face of a majorly catholic nation, known internationally for the toxic male character of the macho? If you can’t imagine, but you do want to know, this seminar will lead you to explore the long line of Jewish diaspora in Mexico which includes obscure although fundamental figures persecuted by the Inquisition such as Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo, to women whose names and work you know and admire, such as the iconic painter Frida Kahlo. On the way to mapping the presence of Jews in Mexico we will learn from history, sociology, diaspora, gender, migration, and Jewish studies, linguistics, Mexican literature, visual arts, film. In this course we will also analyze the effect of Jewish diaspora in Mexican society as seen by non-Jewish artists. Grading system includes quizzes, mini essays, oral presentations, and a final piece of research.
