Honors Course Descriptions

Honors courses are designed to challenge students with thought-provoking content, and a dynamic, discussion-based learning environment. From interdisciplinary seminars to research-driven classes, each course provides unique opportunities for intellectual growth and creative exploration. See some of our recent course offerings below.

Honors 1100 Philosophical Inquiry (Prof. Marcela García Romero)

This course aims to introduce you to the joy of doing philosophy, its rewards and its value towards a fulfilled human life. This course will encourage you to join the great ongoing conversation on life’s greatest questions: What is knowledge and how do we achieve it? How do we know what is real? How do we know what is good? Why does anything exist? Throughout the course, our emphasis will be on ‘learning by doing’. You will develop your own philosophical inquiries into a personal research project. At each step, you will be encouraged to apply the tools that we will find in classic texts of philosophy from different time periods. The goal is to develop intellectual habits that will serve you throughout your life, no matter which career you choose.

Honors 1100 Philosophical Inquiry (Prof. Sina Kramer)

In this class, we will tackle the big questions, together. Some questions speak to our current moment, and some take some distance from the current moment. What is it to be human? What is gender? What is race? Is the soul immortal? What is knowledge, and how is it possible? What is history, and what is it for? What is philosophy? How do we make meaning in the face of our own mortality? Philosophy is if anything a collective practice of sense making, with each other in conversation with the classic works of philosophy: its methods, its concepts, and the discipline it teaches, while born of the tumult of the world, help us to build a space beyond that tumult from which to examine and understand both the world and our selves. The urgency of our own moment is met paradoxically with the vibrant urgency of philosophy. 

Honors 1200 Theological Inquiry (Prof. Roy Fisher)

The Song of Songs (שׁיר השּׁירים). This seminar style course offers a socio-historical, literary, and theological exploration of the diverse ways in which the Song of Songs has provided fertile ground for images of Love, Desire, and the Erotic in Jewish and Christian traditions. In the first half of the class, we will be undertaking a slow readings of the Song of Songs as ancient Hebrew erotic/love poetry. In this slow reading, we will explore the Song’s poetic structure, its socio-historical context, and its literary construction. In the second half of the class, we will pivot to close readings of ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Song of Songs. The course will touch on issues of gender and religious language, on allegory and interpretation, on mystical and literal readings, and on the interplay of the ascetic and the erotic in religion.

Honors 2000 (Dr. Alex Esposito) Research and Exhibition

This course provides an orientation to the practice of research and creative activity, including the formulation by the student of a problem worthy of in-depth study and the public exhibition of the student’s work. This course is intended to be a companion to or preparation for a research project, preferably in your major and most definitely in an area of interest.

Honors 2100 Historical Perspectives & Analysis (Prof. Amy Woodson-Boulton)

This Honors Historical Analysis and Perspectives course covers modern global history, c. 1500 to the present, with a particular focus on environmental history, exploring how humans, animals, natural forces, and science and technology have shaped the environment; the ways in which historical developments such as migration, empire, trade, industrialization, and urbanization have affected humans’ relationships with nature; and how the environment has affected historical developments. Students will consider a wide variety of economic, political, and cultural conceptions of—and relationships with—environments, animals, and “nature.” After studying multiple kinds of sources, you’ll have the chance to produce a variety of research and creative projects, responding both to environmental history and to our own moment of human-caused climate emergency.

Honors 2300 Nature of Science, Technology & Mathematics (Prof. Blake Mellor)

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but symmetry can be clearly described and measured mathematically, as well as artistically. This course will study the mathematics of symmetric patterns in the plane, including the classifications of finite figures, frieze patterns and wallpaper patterns. Many artists and designers have explored these patterns through history, none more so than the great Dutch artist M.C. Escher; we will look at many examples of his work. Our investigation will lead to mathematical structures that have uses far beyond the purely visual, with applications to anthropology, archaeology and cryptography, among other fields. We will also extend the notion of symmetry to consider self-similarity and fractal geometry. Through the mathematics of symmetry we will discover the power, nature and, indeed, beauty of mathematics.

Honors 3000 Colloquium: The Edge of What We Know

The course builds upon the prior Honors Colloquia (HNRS 1000 and 2000) and leads directly to the Honors Thesis (HNRS 5000 or your major’s equivalent course) and your thesis dissemination (HNRS 4000). It is built around a series of curated public talks from LMU faculty. Each professor speaks about how and why an area captured their curiosity and interest. The speakers will then proceed to talk about how they identified the “edge” of that area and discovered a way to move it forward, something which we hope that you, too, will accomplish with your Honors Thesis. Your engagement with these professors will be captured in a class-produced podcast season with one episode devoted to each speaker.

Honors 3200 Literary Analysis: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Prof. Yanjie Wang)

This course introduces students to a critical exploration of film analysis, using Chinese-language cinema as a central case study. Students will examine films from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and other diasporic or transnational contexts to understand cinema as a medium of aesthetic experimentation, cultural expression, and political critique. During the course of the semester, students will engage closely with a range of genres, visual forms, narrative structures, and aesthetic strategies. Students will analyze how specific cinematic choices create meaning while situating these choices within broader historical, cultural, and political contexts. We will examine how filmmakers use cinematic language to reflect on, critique, or reinforce societal norms, official historiography, and dominant cultural narratives. We will also consider how these films raise awareness of underrepresented groups and expose various forms of social injustice. Through close viewing of films, critical readings, and seminar-style discussions, students will sharpen their literary and visual analytical skills and learn to engage critically with cinema as both an artistic form and a powerful mode of social and political intervention.

Honors 3200 Literary Analysis (Prof. Alexandra Neel)

One of literature’s powers is to allow us to see beyond our immediate experience. To illustrate the importance of literary analysis within a Jesuit education, John O’Malley uses Ludwig Wittgenstein’s metaphor of “the fly in the bottle”: “What the rhetorical tradition is meant to do is help the fly out of the bottle, that is, help students escape the confines of their experience up to this point, to expand their thinking beyond the comfort zones of the assumptions with which they grew up, to expose them to other cultures and to other modes of thought, to lift them beyond the quotidian. To help them expand the areas in which they can dare to ask questions not only in the areas in which their trade or profession moves but about life itself” (5). The works that we’ll be reading in this class do just that. In this sense, literature has tremendous ethical power; indeed, some critics have argued that literature is the basis for our understanding of human rights. We can sympathize alongside those with whom we have no immediate contact. As such, reading literature is a highly affective experience: good literature moves us, angers us, makes us feel; it sometimes can make us act, or act out. Its function is also aesthetic: it astonishes us, and allows us to wander into new worlds. “The humane letters,” O’Malley continues, “sharpen student’s aesthetic sensibilities, but, more to the point, in their authentic depictions of characters and situations they mirror the ambiguities of our own life experiences and invite reflection upon them”(5).   This course introduces students to different ways of interpreting short stories, novels, and plays, including works by Jamaica Kincaid, Margaret Atwood, and Cormac McCarthy. We’ll explore the formal and technical aspects of different forms of literature: we’ll discuss point of view, setting, character, plot, tone, and talk about how these aspects of literature affect the meaning and power of particular narratives. In other words, you will learn how to read literature closely and will acquire the technical and critical vocabulary necessary to say what is happening in various genres. Here are some questions we will return to over the course of the semester: How do authors use the resources of literature to engage with the social and political issues of their times? Does fiction help shape history? What kind of perspectives does it offer?  

Honors 4200 Beyond Good and Evil (Prof. Daniel Speak and Prof. John Parrish)

This course considers the ethics of public life: both how individuals may act responsibly and ethically within institutional contexts, and how institutions can be designed so as to promote ethical aims more reliably and effectively. The course will consider the contexts of both political institutions (administrative, legislative, and/or judicial) and economic/market institutions. Topics include a selection of the following: consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics; conflicts between values; ethics of institutional roles; legitimacy, authority, and official discretion; rational choice and collective action; markets, property, and justice; cost-benefit analysis and public choice; freedom and paternalism; and institutional design.

Honors 4200 Beyond Good and Evil (Prof. Scott Roniger)

This course is an in-depth investigation of moral philosophy (or ethics) in which we will discuss, from a philosophical perspective, questions concerning the nature of a good human life. We will examine the role of action, free choice, character, virtue, law, and happiness in ethics. We will study ancient, medieval, and modern approaches to these issues. The readings will be taken from Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, J.S. Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Martin Luther King Jr. A central objective of this course is to acquaint ourselves with the answers that some of the finest thinkers have formulated to the most fundamental questions that we still ask today, questions concerning what is true, good, and beautiful in the realm of human action and conduct. We will attempt this task by reading, conversing, thinking, and writing about such questions. We think and act better in the company of friends, as Aristotle says, so we will grapple with these questions together as a learning community.
FFYS 1000 Honors: Childhood in International Cinema (Dr. Aine O’Healy)

This seminar introduces students to critical writing through an exploration of international cinema. Our particular focus is the representation of childhood in approximately twelve feature films produced around the world since the 1940s. To engage critically with these films, drawn from different national contexts and historical periods, we apply the tools of audiovisual analysis to identify the symbolic function of the figure of the child on screen. The body of work we examine is organized into groups of two or three films linked by a common theme (childhood in wartime; childhood and disability; dilemmas of the transgender child; border-crossing children; and so on). We thus explore how the construction of children in cinema intersects with discourses of nation formation and with the representation of gender, sexuality, national identities, and social class. The assigned readings, drawn for the most part from cinema studies, will guide our explorations, allowing us to place the filmic analyses in a broader context that encompasses issues of historical memory, globalization, social conflict and cultural diversity. Additional outcomes include engaging critically and dynamically in scholarly discourse; exercising critical thinking through audiovisual analysis; and refining research skills along with the ability to evaluate the appropriateness of secondary sources.

FFYS 1000 Honors: On the Technological Sublime (Prof. Sue Scheibler)

The sublime invites us to, in the words of the poet Pierre Reverdy, “stroll elegantly along the edge of the abyss;” an abyss that, as we stare into it, fills us with wonder, curiosity, delight, terror, joy, and awe. In this course, we will explore the various ways that filmmakers, TV creators, video game developers, writers, poets, musicians, and others have produced works of art that, at least for a moment, in their sublimity, challenge our sense of self, experience, and perceptions by carrying us out of our “normal” ways of thinking, feeling, and perceiving, into a sublimely transcendent encounter with the other as well as ourselves that can leave us forever changed.

FFYS 1000 (Prof. Juan Mah y Busch) Honors: The Poetry of Meditation

Description forthcoming.

FFYS 1000 Honors: Liberal Education in the Age of Enlightenment (Prof. Jeffrey Wilson)

This course engages students with themes in the philosophy of education (especially moral education) from the Age of Enlightenment, primarily through eighteenth-century European texts. The emphasis is on the 18th century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant and a range of thinkers from England, Ireland, France, and Germany. These other authors connect Kant’s version of Enlightenment education to the ideas that motivate the French Revolution as well as the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) centered in Berlin. In order to connect the ideas of the Enlightenment period to the present, students read selections from Paolo Freire’s anti-colonialist writings (Brazil) and from the Black feminist thinker bell hooks (United States). Each of these intellectual streams wrestles with questions of how human beings are to be educated for moral reform (ethical freedom), the relation of faith and reason in educational practice (religious freedom), and education as preparation for citizenship and empowerment in a free society (political freedom). As a First Year Seminar, the course introduces students to intellectual rigor, critical thinking, and effective writing skills while laying the foundation for a lifelong commitment to learning.

HNRS 1000 Honors Colloquium: Introduction to Honors (Dr. Alex Esposito)

This course introduces you to the discussion format predominant in Honors courses, as well as to certain practices of reading, writing and engagement with the Honors Program that you need for success in college as Honors Students. The reading assignments offer practice in a deep form of reading that represents a sustained conversation with authors in which we listen well to what they have to say and interrogate their reasons for saying it. In our discussions, students learn to teach one another through conversational practices that make room for diverse voices to be heard, including the voices of the authors we read and the voices of those present. We will learn to give the class an atmosphere of challenge, where we empower one another to state our thoughts more clearly and persuasively, to give reasons for our views, to entertain the views and reasons of others with seriousness and charity, and to examine these views critically and with open minds. The writing assignments are structured to train students to read more attentively, deeply, and critically and to engage in dialogue with the authors, faculty, and one another with greater intellectual integrity in ways that promote mutual understanding and growth. This course is designed to demonstrate the value of conceptually applying, analyzing, and evaluating information and evidence gathered from observation, reflection, reasoning and communication. Students will develop the critical thinking required to distinguish truth from falsehood, enthusiasm for taking on difficult projects, courage to fail and try again using the lessons learned, an understanding of their place in history, and an ability to discern for themselves what is important and worth pursuing in college as well as in life

HNRS 1100 Honors Philosophical Inquiry (Prof. Joshua Mason)

The practice of philosophy is often understood as a pursuit of wisdom. But, like many issues in philosophy, the nature of wisdom itself is in dispute: what is it, where does it come from, what is its purpose, and who can be said to possess it? In this course we will explore various conceptions of wisdom from across history and around the world, and we will try to understand what it might mean to be wise in our contemporary society. While inquiring into the concept of wisdom, we will engage with the related ideas like truth, reality, human nature, common sense, and cultural variation. Together we will read and discuss the classics of western philosophical traditions alongside texts from Indian and Chinese traditions. Expanding our horizons in this way, we will use the ideas and insights we find there to reflect on the possibilities for becoming ever wiser in our own lives.

HNRS 1200 Honors Theological Inquiry (Prof. Kim Harris): Faith & Culture, Theological Ideas & Spiritual Practices

This course introduces students to the meaning and significance of spiritual practice in its expressions associated with Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as a diversity of other traditions. The focus of the course is on “lived religion”—the embodied, eclectic, and often improvisational character of spiritual experience, both collective and individual. It also seeks to understand the critical role of practice in shaping spiritual meaning and identity. In this course, we turn to the relationship between theological ideas and spiritual practices. How have particular people lived in the light of the theological ideas of their religious tradition? How have the spiritual practices of particular persons and groups affected the theological ideas of their religious tradition? Throughout the course, we attend to issues concerning religious pluralism, social justice, and change.

HNRS 1200 Theological Inquiry (Prof. Saqib Hussain)

This course will provide a broad introduction to the Qur’an, the sacred text of the religion of Islam. About one fifth of the global population are Muslims (those who believe in Islam), making it the second biggest religion in the world after Christianity. For Muslims, the Qur’an is the word of God, believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of about twenty years. It is a text of moral guidance, as well as one enjoyed for its beauty in the way it is recited and the artistry it inspires. 

We will begin by exploring the early chapters of the Qur’an (i.e., those revealed to Muhammad near the start of his Prophetic career), in which the urgency of belief in God and the closeness of the Day of Judgement is emphasized. We will introduce major prophets in the Qur'an (such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus), and see how the Qur'an deals with stories familiar from the Bible. We will look at what the Qur'an says about Jews, Christians, and what it says about who will be saved in the Hereafter. We will consider issues that have given rise to particular controversy, in particular the Qur’an’s legal code on issues such as slavery, gender, sexuality, and violence. We will also discuss how Muslim interpretations of the Quran have changed over time, particularly with the onset of modernity. Along the way, we will encounter devils and angels, ghosts and spirits, and near-death experiences.

HNRS 2000: Honors Colloquium: Research and Exhibition (Dr. Alex Esposito)

This course provides an orientation to the practice of research and creative activity, including the formulation by the student of a problem worthy of in-depth study and the public exhibition of the student’s work. This course is intended to be a companion to or preparation for a research project, preferably in your major and most definitely in an area of interest.

HNRS 2100 Honors Historical Analysis and Perspectives: Empires of Faith (Dr. Ali Olomi.)

All empires imagine themselves as a force for good. Why? This course seeks to answer the question as a global history of the entanglements of religion and empire from the premodern to the modern era. Informed by an interdisciplinary approach, we will examine empire through the entanglements of religion, ideology, capitalism, identity, and colonialism. Taking a comparative analytic, we will explore the construction of political ideologies and their relationship to religion by examining the origins of the Islamic caliphate, medieval divine right of kings, apocalypticism, corporate colonialism, anti-colonial resistance, and the rise of contested nationalisms. Together we will analyze a diverse range of primary and secondary sources and develop a robust lens of historical analysis. Through historical inquiry we will uncover the underpinnings of the modern world as either continuities with past imperial formations or ruptures.

HNRS 2200 Honors Nature of Science, Technology, and Mathematics (Prof. Timothy Shanahan)

Wait. Another science course? Nope. This is not a science course. This is a course about science, which is something else entirely. Rather than doing or learning science, we'll be asking and trying to answer challenging questions about science, e.g.: What is "science"? How is it similar to yet different from other attempts to understand the world (e.g., philosophy or religion)? What distinguishes science from "pseudoscience"? Can a sharp line be drawn between them? Is there such a thing as the scientific method (as you may have been taught in middle school)? If not (spoiler alert!), what (if anything) unites the various activities called "science"? Why should we trust what scientists tell us? How should we think about "science denial" regarding evolution, climate change, or vaccines? How does the social structure of science contribute to the objectivity of scientists' claims? Does science aim at and occasionally attain "truth"? We'll tackle all these questions and more in a quest to understand "science" from historical, social, and philosophical perspectives. 

HNRS 3000 Colloquium: The Edge of What We Know

The course builds upon the prior Honors Colloquia (HNRS 1000 and 2000) and leads directly to the Honors Thesis (HNRS 5000 or your major’s equivalent course) and your thesis dissemination (HNRS 4000). It is built around a series of curated public talks from LMU faculty. Each professor speaks about how and why an area captured their curiosity and interest. The speakers will then proceed to talk about how they identified the “edge” of that area and discovered a way to move it forward, something which we hope that you, too, will accomplish with your Honors Thesis. Your engagement with these professors will be captured in a class-produced podcast season with one episode devoted to each speaker.

HNRS 3200 Honors Literary Analysis: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Prof. Yanjie Wang)

This course introduces students to different approaches for analyzing film through the case of Chinese cinema. We will discuss contemporary Chinese-language films produced in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and other countries. We will examine diverse cinematic genres, forms, aesthetics, and techniques, analyzing how Chinese filmmakers use cinematic language to reflect on, critique, or reinforce societal norms, official historiography, and mainstream cultures. We will also discuss how these films raise awareness of underrepresented groups and different forms of social injustice. By situating Chinese filmmaking in local, national, and trans-regional/transnational contexts, we will explore topics such as women and gender, memory and trauma, class and post-socialist development, migration, urbanization, environmental crisis, ethnic minorities, (post)colonialism, and globalization. Through readings and discussions, students will develop an understanding of cinema as both an art form and a powerful social and political intervention.

HNRS 4000: Honors Colloquium: Portfolio (Dr. Alex Esposito)

After conducting your research you will then enroll in HNRS 4000: Portfolio & Assessment, which is a placeholder for fulfilling Honors requirements that are not part of a specific class. This course tracks fulfillment of the following: Completion of Senior Exit Survey, Thesis Completion, Submission of Honors Thesis to Digital Commons, Including accompanying, Signed Thesis Release Form, and Evidence of dissemination of your Honors Thesis. With the submission of your Honors Thesis being one of the final steps to graduating from the Honors Program you should only be enrolled in Honors 4000 in the same semester that you plan to graduate. Despite the numbering of the courses, seniors typically enroll in Honors 4000 in their last semester before graduating and Honors 5000 in the second to last semester before graduating because Honors 5000 is the course in which you conduct and compile your research and Honors 4000 is when you actually submit your final thesis.

HNRS 4200 (Prof. Carissa Phillips-Garrett)

Ethics, at its core, is about what is necessary for a valuable and meaningful life, both for the individual and for our lives together. This class will be focused around trying to figure out how to answer questions about what we should value, who we should aim at being, and how to live together well. We will be reading philosophical classics—both historical and contemporary—with the assumption that these are our interlocutors in answering these questions for ourselves, not sages to be followed. An important aim of the class is the development of ethical reasoning skills, the use of those skills to reflect on your practices and goals, and the incorporation of ethical habits into your own life. In other words, the goal for the course is not just to understand ethical ideas better but to use that understanding to actually live better. Given this aim, there will be a special focus on these questions as they apply to virtue and vice.
Honors Philosophical Inquiry (HNRS 1100, Sections 1 and 2), Dr. Ian Moore.

This course aims to introduce students to basic fields of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics) through an examination of philosophy’s relation to death. We will first look to ancient Greek tragedy for its mythological and religious accounts of death, justice, and the afterlife. We will focus on the ways in which limits to human knowledge and life are depicted, as well as on the consequences of crossing these limits. Then, beginning with the birth of philosophy, we will examine some of the most influential and profound philosophical accounts of death, investigating whether and to what extent philosophy marks a definitive break We will likely read texts by Sophocles, Plato, Lucretius, Seneca, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Heidegger, Martin Luther King, Jr., Hans Jonas, Bernard Williams, and Martha Nussbaum.

Honors Theological Inquiry (HNRS 1200, Sections 1 and 2), Dr. Sarah Emanuel.

Honors Theological Inquiry courses at LMU offer historical, literary, and social explorations of theological images of creation and the divine. Considering the Bible a collection of creative narrations about these topics, this course examines the role of humor within it. Some questions we will ask include: What does the Bible have to do with humor? Is it inappropriate to laugh at—or with—biblical texts? How might humor in the Bible relate to the development of culture and communal identity? How might it relate to conceptions of the divine? In addition to engaging these questions, students will also consider the role of biblical texts in comedy arts today, as well as within students’ own comic creations.

Honors Theological Inquiry (HNRS 1200, Section 3), Dr. Saqib Hussain.

Introduction to the Qur'an begins with a historical background to the Qur’an, which includes an overview of life of the Prophet Muhammad, and an introduction to the religious traditions (especially Judaism and Christianity) that were present in Arabia at the time of the Qur’an’s proclamation. We proceed chronologically by examining several early short surahs (= chapters) of the Qur’an, and paying close attention to the emergence of the Qur’an’s theology. We move on to chronologically later, longer surahs, in which the Qur’an is more actively engaged with the Jews and Christians, and we consider how the Qur’an addresses their beliefs and their stories. In the second half of the course, we look at various themes in in the Qur’an, and their relevance to the world today, including gender, violence, Shariah law, salvation, and the relationship between human beings and God. Along the way, we consider near-death experiences, magic and demons, and heaven and hell!

Honors Colloquium: Research & Exhibition (HNRS 2000, Sections 1 and 2), Dr. Alex Esposito.

This course provides an orientation to the practice of research and creative activity, including the formulation by the student of a problem worthy of in-depth study and the public exhibition of the student’s work. This course is intended to be a companion to or preparation for a research project, preferably in your major and most definitely in an area of interest.

Honors Historical Analysis & Perspectives (HNRS 2100, Sections 1 and 2). Dr. Nicholas Rosenthal.

This course examines the history of the United States and its place in the world through the lens of civil rights activism and advocacy, from the late-nineteenth century to the present.  It traces the efforts by different groups to achieve and expand the full rights of United States citizenship, focusing on women, African Americans, and LGBTQ people.  Throughout the course we will address a series of questions as we trace the experiences of these groups over time, contextualized within the broader changes of American society and culture: What have been the conditions of these groups and what demands have they made for full citizenship in US society?  What have been the different forms of activism and advocacy and how have they changed?  How have their efforts been received and what changes have they made?  What is the nature of these struggles today and how can we better understand them by examining this history?

Honors Nature of Science, Technology, & Mathematics (HNRS 2200, Sections 1 and 2). Dr. Carla Bittel.

This honors course examines the history of European and North American societies and cultures through the lens of science and nature. It concentrates on evolving methods of natural inquiry from the 16th century to the present and links the history of nature study to broader social, cultural, economic, and political changes, demonstrating the inseparability of science and social context. It also follows the cross-cultural and trans-oceanic proliferation and exchange of ideas, natural objects, and disease via exploration, colonialism, and imperialism. In the process, it examines nature as a historical locus of knowledge, power, and politics.

Honors Research Colloquium: The Edge of What We Know (HNRS 3000), Dr. Jeffrey Wilson.

This course seeks to introduce you to the boundaries of knowledge and art within the fields of selected LMU professors—and how they crossed them. The course builds upon the prior Honors Colloquia and leads directly to the Honors Thesis . This colloquium is built around a series of curated public talks from LMU faculty. Each professor will be invited to speak about how and why an area captured their curiosity and interest. The speakers will then proceed to talk about how they identified the “edge” of that area and determined a way to move it forward. In so doing, they contributed to their field and took this “edge” further out for future scholars and creatives, something which we hope that you, too, will accomplish with your Honors Thesis. Your engagement with these professors will be captured in a class-produced podcast season with one episode devoted to each speaker.

Honors Literary Analysis (HNRS 4200 Sections 1&2), Dr. Robin Miskolcze

This course introduces students to different ways of interpreting fiction and aims to help students develop their close reading and analytical skills. Students will refine their abilities to articulate their insights and arguments effectively as we explore the formal and technical aspects of different modes of fiction written by authors from diverse backgrounds. We will explore point of view, setting, character, plot, and tone and how these aspects of literature affect the meaning and power of storytelling. Additionally, our literary texts will be situated within the context of its production as we find ways that literary expression is both a product and producer of culture.

Honors Beyond Good and Evil (HNRS 4200, Sections 1 & 2), Dr. Jason Baehr.

This course will revolve two main questions: How should I live? What kind of person should I be? In our exploration of these questions, we’ll engage the work of influential historical philosophers, including Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Aristotle. We’ll also engage with several contemporary authors, especially on the topic of virtues and vices, including Phillipa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Lisa Tessman. Students will be challenged to develop a firm personal understanding of the material and to engage in thoughtful reflection on their own ethical practices and character.