Spring 2018 HNRS Courses

During the 20th Century the British fought two world wars, lost an empire, and developed a welfare state. From Winston Churchill to Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair, their Prime Ministers have played a prominent role in world affairs.

The British Invasion of the 1960s brought the Beatles, the Rolling Stones,... Read More...

This course is the gateway course for the LASAL Scholars Program. At its conclusion, students should have a basic understanding of the root causes of poverty in Louisiana; a basic understanding of the daily challenges that Louisiana children and families face who live in poverty; and a basic understanding of... Read More...

The primary goal of this course is to introduce students to the surveillance states of Germany during the National Socialist period as well as during the years of former East Germany. Students will more closely examine the concept of these “Big Brother” societies as they are portrayed in the films... Read More...

How has technology affected business practice in contemporary U.S. Corporations? We will apply critical thinking in both its rational and creative aspects to an investigation of this question with respect to three prominent corporations: Apple, Tesla, and Lamar Outdoor Advertising.

Our readings and conversation will range from Plato’s Phaedrus on... Read More...

This course will look at art produced during the period of the French Revolution, ca. 1775-1825, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It will retrace how neoclassical subject matter developed by Jacques-Louis David and his students became increasingly politicized during the 1780s, and how it provided potent visual allegories during Robespierre’s rule... Read More...

Enjoy the many varieties of murder—political, personal, serial—in about two dozen of the greatest films by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, “the Shakespeare of cinema,” and the undisputed Master of Suspense. We will do close readings of such masterpieces as The 39 Steps, Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Psycho, and we’ll... Read More...

How do the producer, director, designers, technicians and actors of a theatre or film project “read” a script in ways distinct from an audience or literary point of view? Using plays (and film texts) from two of our most important English language playwrights as an entry point, students will explore... Read More...

Through lectures, readings, movies, and discussion, this course will explore how contrasting and contested memories of the Civil War emerged—among whites in the North, whites in the South, and African Americans. It will then explore manifestations of those memories in various novels and movies as well as in movements and... Read More...

Virginia Woolf Willa Cather George Bernard Shaw T.S. Eliot Igor Stravinsky Rupert Brooke Wilfred Owen...

Creative artists respond to the Great War.

This course examines several works of Charles Dickens (such as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Little Dorrit, and Great Expectations) along with a range of important film, television, and dramatic adaptations from 1837 to 2018.
Dickens wrote while acting his characters in front of a mirror, laughing out loud along... Read More...

We will look at some classics in the social contract tradition in political thought: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. As these writers claim that life in states is superior to life in non-state societies (that is, in the “state of nature”) we’ll critically examine the state superiority thesis by work... Read More...

Independent, fashionable, and progressive in her intellectual pursuits, the New Woman was a fascinating
feminist ideal that emerged in late nineteenth century literature and dominated the cultural landscape of early
twentieth-century Europe and the United States. Through a comparison of portraits of the New Woman in
American, Spanish, German, Polish,... Read More...

As populations increasingly moved into cities in the early twentieth century, urban spaces and their representations became common in the arts. This is especially true in modernist fiction, where writers would puzzle over the nature of cities. Were cities alienating landscapes that pitted an individual against an indifferent society? Or... Read More...

The course is designed to focus on the question of the interrelation between philosophy and art. In effect, we will be looking for philosophers in the history of art and artists in the history of philosophy. 

The artistic works at issue will range from Greek sculpture and architecture, through Medieval... Read More...

This course will explore a range of issues surrounding sex and sexuality in the Arab world: marriage, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, obscenity, rape, slave concubines, eunuchs, FGM, sex-change operations, contraception, and aphrodisiacs.

This course will critically examine historical and contemporary LGBTQ activism in the United States. We will study moments when LGBTQ identified people banded together, challenged systems, and demanded change. There is no uniform approach or goal of LGBTQ organizing, and we will study the multiple ways that people have mobilized... Read More...

Taxes affect almost everyone, but few know about the fundamental concepts that influence political, business, and individual decisions. This course will cover taxation and its role in society.

Key focus areas:

"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Why does T. R. Reid call our... Read More...

Faked Out? 

Media Manipulation: Frauds, Hoaxes and Fakes