Honors Program Courses
Fall 2026: Seminars
ARTS 118-H: Introduction to Community Arts with Professor Kellie Murphy
This section will focus on a mythological narrative steeped in drama, symbolism, and dreams that spans centuries and diverse cultures, wherein a legendary creature captured imaginations and continues to hold relevance in today’s popular culture. The semester will be devoted to project development from conception to execution. Researching/deconstructing historical and contemporary artworks and artistic methods, creating an educational experience replete with zines, puppets/mask making, and literary recitation. The semester will conclude with a social gathering and brief performance in a public setting or venue.
ENGL 275-H: Women in Literature with Professor Sherri VandenAkker
In 1928, the Springfield Republican newspaper reported that Springfield College was about to make “concessions” to allow women to be admitted to a summer graduate program on equal footing for men, but that its President, Dr. Doggett, affirmed that the institution “will never become co-educational in the generally accepted meaning of the term.” Now, of course, women make up about half the student body. How did such a profound change happen in under a century? In this course, we’ll explore women’s journey to equality by reading literature written by women about women’s experience. In the process, we’ll discover some of the ways that women have been oppressed and repressed in the United States and around the world. We’ll also explore how mechanisms of oppression and liberation function, with the intent of empowering ourselves to effect change.
HNRS 283: Seminar in a Discipline: Introduction to Thermal and Statistical Physics with Professor Jason Barlow
This course will cover kinetic theory, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics. Kinetic theory is a microscopic description of the motion of atoms while thermodynamics is an effective theory which studies the flow of energy into and out of systems of particles. Statistical mechanics relates the microscopic details of a system to its thermodynamic properties. In short, we will cover energy, entropy, temperature, time, and how things behave on a very small scale!
HNRS 284: The Civil War Era in History and Memory with Professor Ian Delahanty
In this class, we survey the history of the American Civil War era with a focus not only on what happened but also on the contested and often conflicted memories of those events. Students will practice being Civil War historians by studying firsthand accounts, comparing and contrasting different explanations for how and why events unfolded as they did, and giving their own explanations for the causes, course, and consequences of America’s deadliest war. They will also study films, monuments, music, museum exhibits, and other artifacts of historical memory in order to engage with ongoing debates over the legacies of slavery and war in American history.
PHIL 380-H: The Meaning of Life with Professor Bob Gruber
Does life have meaning? If so, what’s its source? (God? Evolution and biology? Your whims?) Are there different ways in which life can have meaning? Different types of meaning? If it turns out that the meaning of life is whatever you make of it, is that empowering or terrifying? Is death an obstacle to achieving meaning in life? Would it be better if we were immortal? We’ll look at how philosophers have answered these questions, and we’ll try to answer them ourselves.
PSYC 101-H: Introduction to Psychology with Professor Chris Hakala
In this course, we will explore human behavior from a variety of perspectives (including biological, social, emotional, etc.) to understand why folks continue to behave the way they do and what we can do to help those whose behavior is challenging to their ability to adapt to different environments. Along the way, we will ask questions such as: how does the brain control behavior? How do we change as we age? Why do some folks experience depression or anxiety? And, we will explore how different people have interpreted our understanding of those experiences. Psychology is so interesting because it can also help us understand ourselves and why we do the things we do. This course should prepare you to understand human behavior and to, likely, propel curiosity as you move forward in your educational career.
SCSM 101H: Springfield College Seminar with Professor Kate Dugan
The Springfield College Seminar is an interdisciplinary, thematic course developed for students entering the College. The course provides an introduction to the Springfield College Core Curriculum, as well as to the intellectual culture and Humanics mission of the College. The course is designed to engage students through practicing the fundamental skills necessary for academic success: critical thinking, effective writing, analytic reading, and oral communication.
Fall 2026: Colloquia
HNRS 192: The Black-Jewish Alliance from the 20th Century to Today with Professor Avi Dresner
Students in this colloquium will survey the Black-Jewish Alliance from the first decade of the 20th century to the present day, paying special attention to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when professor Dresner’s father, Rabbi Israel Dresner, was the most arrested and jailed rabbi in the movement and an ally and friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As part of the curriculum, students will read primary source materials, including some of the letters King wrote to Rabbi Dresner, and will watch Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s documentary series Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History. There will also be guest lectures, field trips, and a service learning project aimed at renewing the alliance in the 21st century.
HNRS 192: Digital Age Qualitative Research with Professor Christie Idiong
How do researchers make sense of the vast amount of information people share in the digital age? Social media platforms have become spaces where individuals express experiences, opinions, and identities, offering new opportunities to understand human behavior and social trends. Yet interpreting these narratives requires careful methods, critical thinking, and ethical awareness. This colloquium introduces students to qualitative research methods through the analysis of publicly available digital content. Students will learn how researchers develop research questions, identify and organize data, and apply coding and thematic analysis to interpret patterns in narratives and online communication. Throughout the semester, students will engage in hands-on activities and discussion while conducting a small qualitative project of their own. The course will culminate in the development of a research poster and a conference-style abstract suitable for submission to undergraduate or professional conferences. This interdisciplinary course is designed for students interested in research, graduate study, or careers that involve understanding human behavior and communication.
HNRS 192: Disability Policy and Advocacy with Professor Jennifer Dashiell-Shoffner
Disability Policy and Advocacy will introduce students to the foundational legislation, policies, and advocacy efforts that shape the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities. The course will examine key disability-related laws—such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act—and analyze their historical context, implementation, and measurable impact on the disabled community. Students will critically assess how policy advances equity, where gaps remain, and how legislation influences access to education, employment, health care, and public spaces.
HNRS 192: Humanics in Youth Sport: Coaching Education and Youth Development with Professor Korey Boyd
Basketball is played by millions of young people in the United States and internationally, and participation can support health, self-esteem, leadership development, and peer relationships when instruction and competition align with learners’ developmental needs. This course is supported by evidence-based physical education pedagogy research on content knowledge, instructional design, and game-based learning. Students will engage peer-reviewed scholarship through a journal club format and apply this evidence to a structured audit of the NBA and USA Basketball youth guidelines and curriculum. Teams will produce a concise, evidence-based recommendation package and a coach-ready tool intended for immediate use in youth basketball settings. Recommendations will be prepared for, and presented to, Don Showalter, USA Basketball Youth and Sport Development Coach Director, as scheduling permits.
HNRS 192: Rhetoric of AIDS with Professor Anne Wheeler
In 1983, behind a banner that read “Fighting For Our Lives,” a group of men living with AIDS took to the stage at the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference and rejected the notion of victimhood: “We condemn attempts to label us as ‘victims,’ a term which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally ‘patients,’ a term which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others. We are ‘People With AIDS.’” This is one of countless moments that exemplify how symbolic resources—language, images, bodies—have been deployed in order to construct the way the public talks about and understands the AIDS pandemic, which has been in existence since the early 1980s. In Rhetoric of AIDS, we will rely upon primary sources (e.g., medical publications, personal journals, government documentation, archival footage) to structure our inquiry into the nature of the discourse that has surrounded the AIDS virus from the beginning of the pandemic through the present.
HNRS 192: The Revolution Will Be Televised: Ken Burns' The American Revolution and America at 250 with Professor Ian Delahanty
Students in this colloquium will use renowned documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ The American Revolution (2024) as a window into how historians and the American public think about the American Revolution 250 years later. Each week, we will watch part of Burns' series and pair it with a sampling of historical scholarship and artifacts of popular memory (films, cartoons, monuments, artwork, and a certain Broadway musical) about the Revolutionary-era people, places, and events it portrays. Students will explore the state of historical scholarship on the American Revolution; disentangle history and historical memory; and critically assess documentary filmmaking.
Spring 2026: Seminars
ENGL 212-H: Science Fiction with Professor Jenny Krichevsky
Science fiction literature has been holding up a mirror to society long before it entered pop culture through movies like Star Wars and shows like Black Mirror. In fact, many of the top-grossing movies of all time, like Jurassic Park and Black Panther, are sci-fi. This genre has always asked us to imagine what could be. Sci-fi writers across the world and across time, in authoritarian regimes, democracies, and everything in between, have used the vehicle of imagination afforded by this genre to ask: What makes us human? Is a just world possible? What can we imagine and, even more importantly, hope for our future? We will begin with short stories by important sci-fi writers like Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin, and Octavia Butler, then move into more recent novels from authors like Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Martha Wells, as well as visual media like Star Trek and Interstellar, to think about what science fiction reveals and critiques about our own world.
HNRS 283: Seminar in a Discipline–Art with Professor Meghan Gaul
The ways we use and understand visual representations are varied and complex. This aspect of our culture, known as visual culture, affects our societal beliefs, or ideologies, across news, science, law, advertising, art, and beyond. In this course, “The Power of Images: A Look at the Visual Culture of Mass Persuasion and Propaganda,” students will examine key aspects of visual culture, with a focus on propaganda and mass persuasion. The class will pay particular attention to propaganda in the context of World War II, looking at various ideological perspectives and a wide spectrum of visual media from Looney Tunes cartoons, to Triumph of the Will. This semester’s section will pull back the curtain on the powerful visual strategies used throughout history to shape opinions, influence behavior, and control narratives. From wartime posters to Looney Tunes cartoons, we’ll look at how images have been used to persuade, manipulate, and drive entire nations to action (and still are today). In learning to read images not just as pictures, but as powerful tools of influence, we will uncover how persuasive, and dangerous, images can be.
PHIL 105-H: Introduction to Philosophy with Professor Bob Gruber
Get ready to explore three big questions that will keep you up at night. Do we have free will? Do we have souls? Does God exist? These questions have occupied philosophers for thousands of years, and we will get a chance to study some popular answers. More importantly, we will learn about how to explain and evaluate philosophical arguments, a technique that will help us to make our own progress on answering these enormous questions.
PSYC 345-H: Adolescent and Young Adult Development with Professor Juan Zhong
Ever wonder what shapes who we become during the whirlwind years of adolescence? This course dives deep into the fascinating world of individual differences in early adolescence through emerging adulthood. We’ll explore major developmental theories, unpacking the physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional changes that define these transformative years. While we focus on normative development, we’ll also tackle the risks and challenges that can arise, giving you an in-depth understanding of this critical life stage.
Spring 2026: Colloquia
HNRS 192: Cultivating Curiosity with Professor Becky Lartigue
In this colloquium, we’ll investigate the theme of curiosity in support of professor Becky Lartigue’s 2025-2026 Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics project. To be happy, successful people, we all need to be curious about the world, about others, and about ourselves; we need to keep learning about a variety of subjects, and we need to cultivate the intrinsic motivation to do so. We’ll study what psychologists and educational researchers have to say about the trait of curiosity, and together we’ll plan and facilitate a number of programs for members of the campus community to cultivate their curiosity and life-long learning: facilitating reading/discussion groups, moderating panel discussions, hosting guest speakers, and collaborating with various campus departments and divisions on programming related to the theme.
HNRS 192: Educational Reform and Innovation: Applying the Long History of Educational Reform Efforts to Inform Innovation in our Schools with Professor Emily Lyons
We often assume schools can and must look a certain way—often similar to those we ourselves attended. Through this first half of the class, students will broaden their perspectives on what schools might look like as well as begin to think critically about what the purpose of school really is in the first place. This prepares students to engage in a school redesign project, which will be the focus of the second portion of the class. Through this project, students will have the opportunity to think critically and apply creative new ideas to propose and design an innovative school to best support children’s learning and development.
HNRS 192: History of Disability Rights with Professor Kathy Post
Like the people who led and participated in the Civil Rights and Feminist movements after World War II, people with disabilities united to celebrate their identities and fight for their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Students in this course will explore the legal and cultural landscape that led to such landmark legislation as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the end of involuntary sterilization programs, and the closure of large-scale custodial institutions for people with intellectual, physical, and mental health disabilities.
HNRS 192: Let's Learn about Pope Leo XIV with Professor Kate Dugan
The world has its first-ever pope from the United States. Let's explore who he is. We'll look into his biography, check out his love for the White Sox, and explore his family tree. We'll also look into his life in Peru and read some of his sermons from his time as a priest. We'll also explore the politics around his election and what commentators have to say about this papacy.
HNRS 192: Media Madness: Exploring the Social and Psychological Effects of Media Representations of Mental Health and Illness with Professor Jessie Quintero Johnson
Media play an integral role in shaping public perception about mental health, illness, and treatment. The goal of this course is to familiarize students with social scientific research about the influence of mediated depictions of mental illness on public perception about mental health in contemporary society. We will examine the social and psychological effects of portrayals of mental illness in news, entertainment, and social media. Central to this goal is an examination of how media perpetuate social stigma surrounding mental illness by shaping beliefs about the causes, effects, and treatments of mental illnesses. We will also explore how media messages can be used strategically to disseminate mental health education and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness.
HNRS 192: Tripping Over Tropes in Storytelling & Visual Media with Professor Justine Dymond
Stories of all kinds—verbal, visual, musical, political—surround us our whole lives, and they influence and shape the ways in which we “see” and understand the world around us. Some stories intentionally disrupt popular perceptions and mainstream discourse, but more often than not, we encounter narratives that recycle familiar tropes. This 1-credit Honors Colloq focuses on contemporary narrative clichès—overly familiar concepts and plot lines that reinforce social norms. We will explore a range of narrative genres, from graphic novels and film to news stories and music, while asking questions, such as what gives these tropes lasting power and how might we apply a critical framework to interpreting them? The course will culminate in the creation of a reflective narrative of your own in the genre/media of your choice.
