Honors College Distribution
CAS:  Consult academic advisor
GSB:  Consult academic advisor
CALS:  Written Communications
CEMS:  ENGR: Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students consult with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS: Consult with academic advisor
CESS: Consult academic advisor

Being it pursuing a major, an academic degree, a career, a skill, or just a hobby, we are all trying to develop expertise in certain areas. Nevertheless, what is the nature of the expertise we are trying to develop? While it is no surprise that experts in a classical sense – those with deep knowledge of specific domains – can effectively grasp nuance and complexity of their domain of expertise, does that mean they can respond successfully and flexibly to novel, atypical, unexpected, complex, and ill-structured problems that involve their domain of expertise? What does it take to achieve the latter? **This course explores the concept of adaptive expertise and its implications on the modern workforce in an increasingly diverse, complex, and changing world. We will begin with learning about what adaptive expertise is and what attributes adaptive expertise has. We will refine our understanding through examining examples of how adaptive experts navigate new terrains and respond to complex, unexpected, and novel problems, and discussing what these qualities of adaptive experts mean to human learning in a rapidly changing world. From there we will proceed to learn about how to develop adaptive expertise through deliberate practice. We will apply insights gained from course readings, lectures, discussions, and group projects to an individual project in which students dig deeper into adaptive expertise in the domain(s) of their interest (e.g., academic major, professional area, etc.) and reflect on how this renewed understanding changes their perception of their own practice towards expertise in the particular area(s).

CAS:  Literature
GSB: D2, Social Science Core or Humanities Core
CALS:  Social Sciences
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students check with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with your academic advisor
CNHS: Elective – consult with your academic advisor for further clarification
CESS: Consult with advisor

The world by itself can’t tell us what gender is, or what race is; it is up to us to decide what in the world, if anything, they are.

Sally Haslanger

“Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?”

In the first three weeks of HCOL 085, when we discussed Ta-Nehesi Coates’s Between the World and Me in the company of Dorothy Roberts’s “The Invention of Race” and Anne Fausto-Sterling’s “Gender, Race, and Nation,” we were all, I think, convinced of what the philosopher Sally Haslanger says about race in the passage above. Without leaving race behind, this course will bring some of the frameworks of thought we used in that first unit of HCOL 085 to the thing we call gender.

Because I am an English professor and convinced of the formidable work narrative does in facilitating our explorations into what in the world anything is, we’ll spend most of our time in this class with stories. We’ll start at the beginning, with an in-depth consideration of the story of Adam and Eve, a story that is, among those many other things, about the invention of gender. We’ll consider it first in its original form, in the biblical Book of Genesis. And then we’ll consider it in its most famous retelling, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic poem first published in England in 1667.

The stories we’ll explore in the second half of the semester are from our own time. All of them will remind us of the paradox that clarity frequently arises out of disruption. Three wonderfully disruptive texts will lead us into this paradox: Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home, Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, and Janet Mock’s memoir Reimagining Realness.

Throughout the course, a handful of critics and theorists will provide us with some of the vocabulary and analytical tools we’ll need to conduct our explorations: Sally Haslanger, Meghan Cope, Deborah Rooke, Judith Butler, and Katherine Jenkins (among others).

One more thing. It should go without saying, but I’ve found that it does need to be said: gender is not just an issue for feminists and other gender activists. We are, all of us, gendered. This course aspires to acknowledge that in an open and inclusive environment of generous inquiry that includes folks of all genders who are mutually committed to avoiding the narrowness of dogmatism.

CAS: Social Science  
GSB:  D2, Social Science Core
CALS: Social Science, Humanities 
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Major/Minor Requirements

Elective for Health &  Society (HSOC) major and minor

For optimal well-being, is happiness the ultimate goal or should one focus more on personal growth, positive relationships, and a purpose driven life? While there is no current consensus on a single definition of well-being, researchers agree that well-being is a multidimensional construct involving biological, social, and psychological influences occurring over the course of one’s life. Optimal well-being is a state where one experiences good emotional, physical, and social health. So how do we attain positive states of well-being? Is optimal well-being the absence of suffering? Positive emotions, absence of negative emotions or cognitions, mastery in chosen field, and satisfying interpersonal relationships provide us the ability to face life’s challenges successfully. However, the pursuit of optimal well-being and the different ways of knowing about aspects of well-being differs across cultures and societies. The central theme of this course is to explore the main research topics guiding our understanding of the different ways in which well-being is conceptualized and pursued in different cultures and societies across the East and West. How we know what we know about well-being differs across cultures, and students will explore these different ways of knowing and its application. Students will engage in in-class activities each week to explore their own well-being based on the readings and lectures. The human potential to develop an optimal social, physical, and psychological well-being is best understood when we can appreciate the strength of integrating the different perspectives on well-being across cultures and societies.

CAS:  Humanities
GSB:  D2, Social Science Core or Humanities Core
CALS:   Humanities & Social Science
CEMS: Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students check with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

This course will examine the ways power and privilege have been theorized, with attention to class, gender, race, and other categories, by those who go on actively to support, and also to engage in, activity that promotes political change in the world that is in line with the complexity of their own abstract reflections about engagement with the world. We will spend time looking at the relationship between education and democracy, with readings that trace the necessity of an informed citizenry, the obstacles to cultivating a life of the mind in a democracy and ways to overcome them, and the question of how best to cultivate cosmopolitanism in education. In the second section of the course, we will inquire why the habits of mind encouraged by the formation of intellect (the questioning, creative life of the mind as opposed to the goal-oriented, narrowly focused problem-solving of intelligence) so often lead, not to withdrawn contemplation but rather to progressive political engagement (and to resistance from dominant mainstream culture threatened by intellect). We will then examine theoretical and autobiographical writings by those who have both articulated and lived theories of social change across questions of class, race, culture, and sexuality and how the life of the mind informed, shaped, and altered the course of their political engagement. These figures include a diverse range of intellectuals, artists, and political figures from both within and beyond the United States.

Honors College Distribution
CAS:  Humanities
GSB:  Consult academic advisor
CALS:  Consult academic advisor
CEMS:  ENGR: Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students consult with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS: Consult with academic advisor
CESS: Consult academic advisor

Do we have free will, or do we not? Before we can answer this question, we ought to answer two related questions: first, what do we mean by 'free will', and second, why do we care? This course seeks to analyze these and related questions by examining the nature of the will and what it means for the will to be free or unfree. We will also examine the broader question of the ways in which we value free will, and of how our understanding of free will affects our social practices and institutions. This course will look at a range of approaches to understanding free will, including the philosophical literature on the meaning of free will and of its metaphysical possibility and the scientific literature on willpower and neurobiological determinism. We will also discuss whether the concept of free will has any value for us.

CAS:CAS elective credit
GSB:  Social Science
CALS: Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

In this course, we will examine the scientific, political, and legal challenges that surround the “wicked problem” of nutrient pollution in Lake Champlain. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to understand the fundamental tenants of watershed management, the strategies available to address agricultural sources of pollution, and the ongoing legal battle over the future health of the lake. We will review scientific and technical reports, as well as primary materials with a focus on state and federal statutes and regulations. Class sessions will often feature round-table discussions with important stakeholders, including watershed scientists, attorneys, farmers, and state regulators. Students will work together to propose practical policies that can be applied locally.
Section Expectations: Course objectives: At the end of this class students should have a working knowledge of watershed management issues in Vermont, and the basic skills necessary to interact with the agencies and stakeholders involved in watershed management decisions. Specifically, this course should help students: - Develop a broad understanding of watershed science and the hydrologic cycle, and develop the ability to assess various threats to water quality and supply. - Develop a functional understanding of the structure and function of the US legal system as it addresses water quality. - Explain and assess the watershed/basin planning process in the United States generally, and in Vermont specifically. - Explain the structure and function of the federal Clean Water Act, assess its efficacy in addressing water quality issues, and critically evaluate any flaws in the statute. - Critically evaluate the “TMDL” process under the Clean Water Act as a tool to address impaired waters. - Assess specific watershed impairment issues and evaluate various management strategies to address those impairments, including point-source pollution, non-point source pollution and nutrient management, stream channelization, erosion, and buffer issues, aquatic nuisances and lake impairments, fishery habitat issues, public outreach and education concerns. - Develop the ability to read and summarize a legal case and assess the impact of the court’s decision. - Develop the ability to read and analyze environmental statutes and regulatory rules. - Reflect on the history of land use practices in Vermont and the corresponding evolution of environmental policies over time, and argue for which policies will best address current and foreseeable future problems related to water quality. - Policy preparation, prioritization, and assimilation of policy goals into salient, actionable policy recommendation.

CAS: Humanities
GSB: D2, Humanities Core
CALS: Humanities
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

This course will introduce students to some of the core concepts of intersectional feminist thinking and to expose students to both the assumptions and aims of several different feminist theoretical frames. The course will investigate how and why the insights of intersectional feminist thought are not only practically and politically significant, but also essential to developing an adequate understanding of our own and others’ experiences as members of a gendered and racially divided society.  In so doing, the course will help students develop greater awareness and understanding of the diversity (especially gender and racial diversity) of lived-experience in our local, national and global communities, and put students in a position to engage productively with this wide range of individual perspectives.

This course will also help students continue to develop a set of critical thinking and communication skills can be usefully applied in a variety of different domains within and outside of academia.  Both through written work and through discussion, this course will help students develop the capacity to communicate clearly and concisely, to reconstruct arguments for a position or view from a piece of text, to apply a theoretical tools in analyzing current events, cultural phenomena, etc., to critically evaluate an argument, analysis, or theoretical framework, to construct persuasive arguments of their own in defense of a position or view, and to anticipate and address potential objections to arguments that they find persuasive. 

CAS: Literature
GSB:  Humanities
CALS: Humanities & Fine Arts or Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Climate change isn’t science fiction, but there’s plenty of thought-provoking science fiction about it, both cautionary tales and the more hopeful and aspirational sub-genre of 'solarpunk.' We’ll start the semester by reading and talking about the ways in which sci-fi can tackle the climate crisis more effectively than literary fiction and where it still falls short. Then, we’ll use journalism, non-fiction essays, and of course, fiction novels and short stories to examine how climate change threatens sustainable development and how lack of investment in sustainable development in turn contributes to climate change. We will read each work of fiction through the lens of one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), enabling you to see the intersections between goals. Through close reading and discussion, we will link the causes and impacts of the climate crisis with the specific, hypothesized events in the world each author creates and examine how those impacts both jeopardize the sustainability goals in question and emerge from failures to achieve sustainable development. This course fulfills the Sustainability requirement.

CAS: Literature
GSB: Humanities
CALS: Humanities & Fine Arts or Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

We’ll start by considering that “race” (as a meaningful biological category, especially in the service of racial hierarchies) constitutes one of the most pernicious science fictions of recent human history.  Pseudo-scientific narratives establishing fundamental, socially meaningful differences among “races” have rationalized slavery, segregation, and many other forms of oppression. It’s no surprise, then, that writers of science fiction and fantasy (often collectively labeled “speculative fiction” or “sf” these days) have been well-positioned to challenge racism and to expose its effects. 

The works we’ll read will frequently challenge basic assumptions about race (and class and gender), but they’ll also push us to read in new ways. Speculative Fiction challenges readers through shocks to the imagination as we’re invited to view our societies radically transformed and our texts playing by new rules. We’ll spend some of our time orienting ourselves in the new worlds and their new rules (which have implications in terms of social and literary models). As diverse readers ourselves, some of us may come to these texts with a background in fantasy, science fiction, dystopian narratives and the like; others will be new to these genres. Those with familiarity can teach us to see these texts through the eyes of experience; those who are new to this sort of work will teach us to see things we haven’t noticed yet!

CAS: Humanities, Non-European Cultures
GSB: Humanities Core
CALS: Consult with your academic advisor
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students check with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

In the United States, Latin America is often associated with authoritarianism, corruption and human rights violations. This course invites students to consider why this is, and the local, regional and global factors that have historically contributed to the rise of authoritarian regimes in the region, as well as their undoing during periods of democratization. In the process, we will study the particular impact of different kinds of authoritarianism, both left and right, on particular populations that were targeted by these regimes, including indigenous people, women, LGBTQ people, and young people in general. This is therefore also a course about long-term struggles in Latin America for human rights in addition to political freedom and civil rights.

This course is divided into three parts. In the first several weeks of the semester, students will study long-term regional trends of the rise of different forms of authoritarianism Latin America in the 20th century. The second part of the course is divided into four case studies of various forms of Latin American authoritarianism, both left and right, from roughly 1960 to the present. These will be studied chronologically, in the following order: Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala. The third part of the course examines region-wide processes of democratization from the 1980s onward, and some of the long-term legacies of authoritarian rule in the past in Latin American countries today.
These case studies have been selected to give students a wide range of examples of the historical reasons for the emergence of authoritarian regimes in different places across Latin America. For instance, students will compare military dictatorships in Argentina and Guatemala, left vs. right authoritarianism in Cuba and Argentina, and less clear-cut examples of non-democratic political systems in places like Mexico.
These case studies have also been selected in order for students to better understand the lived experience of authoritarianism in different places, and particularly the impact on populations that were targeted for persecution and sometimes extermination by the regimes in question: gay men in Cuba, as vividly illustrated by Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir, Jews in Argentina, indigenous people in Mexico and especially in Guatemala, and young people and students in nearly all cases. This is therefore also a class that focuses especially on the long-term struggle for human rights and equality in modern Latin America.
Lastly, students will use these case studies to compare democratization (and/or the lack thereof) in each of these cases, and what made it possible as well as what made it so challenging in practice.

Honors College Distribution
CAS:  Literature
GSB:  Consult academic advisor
CALS:  Humanities
CEMS:  ENGR: Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students consult with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS: Consult with academic advisor
CESS: Consult academic advisor

Among other cultural and material exports such as gourmet food and high fashion, France and the French language are commonly associated love, sex, and romance. In “French Kiss,” we will explore these ideas as they are represented in French texts in translation and in French film. To what extent is the stereotype that French is the language of love reflected in these French cultural productions? To answer this question, we will read and watch a variety of texts and films by diverse Francophone authors, examining topics such as gender change, adultery, consent, and women’s agency. All texts are in English and no previous knowledge of French language or culture is required.

CAS:   Social Science
GSB:  Social Science Core
CALS:  Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students check with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Why use such a pejorative term as ‘madness” for the title of this course? This term has history and the stigma often associated with mental health diagnoses. And why use the plural “meanings”? Insanity, craziness or madness were terms used to describe a spectrum of behaviors characterized by abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person becoming a danger to themselves or others, though not all such acts are considered insanity; likewise, not all acts showing indifference toward societal norms are acts of insanity. In modern usage, insanity is most commonly encountered as an informal unscientific term denoting mental instability, or in the narrow legal context of the insanity defense. In the medical profession the term is now avoided in favor of diagnoses of specific mental disorders; the presence of delusions or hallucinations is broadly referred to as psychosis. When discussing mental illness in general terms, "psychopathology" is considered a preferred descriptor. In 1973, the weight of empirical data, coupled with changing social norms and the development of a politically active gay community in the United States, led the Board of Directors of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Some psychiatrists who fiercely opposed their action subsequently circulated a petition calling for a vote on the issue by the Association's membership. That vote was held in 1974, and the Board's decision was ratified. Thus, a new diagnosis, ego-dystonic homosexuality, was created for the DSM's third edition in 1980. Ego dystonic homosexuality was indicated by: (1) a persistent lack of heterosexual arousal, which the patient experienced as interfering with initiation or maintenance of wanted heterosexual relationships, and (2) persistent distress from a sustained pattern of unwanted homosexual arousal. Widespread prejudice against homosexuality in the United States meant that many homosexual people were convinced that they should go through mental health treatment to overcome their homosexuality because it could be considered ego dystonic. In 1986, the diagnosis was removed entirely from the DSM.