Curriculum
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Courses
Course Schedule -- Spring 2008 (MS Word)
Course Schedule -- Fall 2008 (MS Word)
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Curriculum 
All students at Canisius College (whether in the Honors program or not) are required to complete a series of foundational and introductory courses collectively known as the core curriculum.  While the Honors program curriculum parallels the regular core and has the same number of courses as the regular core, its courses are accelerated; address unique subjects (sometimes in an an interdisciplinary manner); and are usually offered in an intimate academic setting called a seminar.

The Honors curriculum includes four courses in the first year and four in the second. In the third and fourth years, students take a total of four seminars. In addition, there is a Senior Thesis and capstone Senior Seminar. The specific courses may change from year to year. The following list gives the required areas and some of the courses that have been offered in recent years.

First Year (four 100 level courses):
Composition & Literature (HON 101)
Composition & Literature (HON 102)
Religious Studies (HON 130's)
Philosophy (HON 120)

Second Year (four 200 level courses):
History
Philosophy
Religious Studies
Social Science

Third/Fourth Years (four 300 level seminars):
Required: (Science -- usually offered every semester)
Electives (three of the following, but no more than one course/subject):

Art or Literature
History
Philosophy
Religious Studies
Social Science

Fourth Year:
Senior Thesis (HON 451 -- offered every semester)
Senior Seminar (HON 415 -- offered in spring semester)

Each student is also required to take two regular core courses in mathematics and two regular core courses in foreign languages. AP credit may be used to substitute for some or all of these regular core courses.

Education majors in the Honors Program are strongly advised to consult with the director before registering for each semester's courses.

Courses
HON 101  Literature & Composition I  (3)
Various literary genres. Works by writers representing wide variety of places, times, nationalities, philosophies. Student’s writing refined through these readings and through composition assignments.

HON 102  Literature & Composition II  (3)
The thematic focus for this course will be a study of modern heroes and heroines and how these figures have developed from the end of the 19th century to present times. Considerable care will be paid to studying the historical forces shaping modern heroism, including world war, the modern city, political revolutions, and contemporary terrorism. Readings will be selected from a variety of literary traditions. Major writers to be studied include Henrik Ibsen, Theodore Dreiser, Ignazio Silone, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, Peter Shaffer, and Octavia Butler.

HON 103 Heroes & Heroines in American Literature  (3)
This course is designed for secondary students who will be seniors the following year. It provides them with an opportunity to get a head start on their college careers by completing an honors-level course which will be accepted as a course in the Canisius College Honors Program or which has been accepted at many other colleges and universities.

Our subject will be a careful study of various American heroic figures and what they reveal about the unique characteristics of American culture and history. We will explore the special attributes of American heroes and how they differ in many important ways from representative figures of English and European literature. More specifically, we will examine closely the American hero's unique desires for radical forms of freedom, independence, mobility, and innocence. Representative literary texts and films will be studied in detail.

HON 104  Crime & Punishment in American History (3)

HON 120  Honors Philosophy I  (3)
Study of works by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Anselm of Canterbury, as well as selected recent work in philosophy.

HON 130  Religious Experience of the East  (3)
Comparative study of aspects of Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu and Muslim traditions. Topics include man and his predicament, the sacred, ethics, the mystic experience. 

HON 133  Modern Approaches to New Testament (3)
The student will examine the writings of the New Testament in terms of their historical, religious, and social contexts. In addition to becoming acquainted with the theological content of the writings, the student will also be able to trace the historical development of Christianity as mirrored in these New Testament writings.

HON 215  Honors Philosophy II   (3)
Study of Thomas Aquinas, Descartes (or another rationalist), Hume (or another empiricist) and Kant, as well as selected recent work in epistemology or metaphysics.

HON 220  War & Society in Modern European History   (3)
Relationship between culture and society in Europe from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century.

HON 221  Violence in American History  (3)
An examination of 20th century social movements that changed America, including organized labor, the Ku Klux Klan, communism, civil rights, feminism, and the religious right.

HON 223  Revolutions of Latin America  (3)
This course has two main purposes. A first goal is to explore the origins and nature of the Mexican and Cuban revolutions. A second aim is to explain why real revolutions, as distinct from mere changes in rulers, have been so rare in Latin America. By understanding the dynamics that produced and prevented revolutions, the student will discover what forces have been shaping the history of Latin America.

HON 224  Disease & Medicine in America (3)
This course is about life and death issues - literally - tracing the history of American health and medicine from Columbus’s sailors introducing lethal smallpox amongst the native peoples in 1492 to the 21st century when government leaders warn us that bio-terrorists might release smallpox anew.  From physicians to politicians to insurance carriers and private citizens we cannot inoculate ourselves from concerns about the rising cost of health care and how our treatment dollars should be spent to the medico-ethics of stem cell research, the right to die, or experimentation on human subjects as “easily” as we might inoculate ourselves from some new or recurring disease.  The theory of this course is that the way we define and treat disease reflects contemporary historical events and our social and cultural values as well as the existing science, education, and technology.  Hence we will be examining both  a) how health problems and treatments shaped America and Americans over time and  b) how Americans shaped their health problems and treatments.  While the primary focus will be on the United States we will sometimes look abroad as disease and medical treatments resist geographical boundaries.  Ultimately, we will examine the stark realities of ailments and epidemics considering the impact on the afflicted, the treatments offered, and the community response.

Important factors to be assessed in examining treatments and community response will be the class, race, ethnicity, religion, or gender of the afflicted.  We will also focus on the history of medical education and institutions providing health care such as hospitals and asylums.  Other specific topics will include the depopulation of the Americas due to disease, the public health and vice crusades, the competition between “traditional” and alternative medicine, the rise of industrial diseases & cures, contraception controversies, the miracle of vaccines & antibiotics, and the tragedies of eugenics and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment—plus areas of particular interest to enrolled students.  Students will explore these topics through perusing primary documents, secondary sources, and historical films.

HON 226  America's First Families (3)

HON 234 Contemporary Catholic Social Ethics (3)
This course concerns itself with the religious and philosophical principles underlying the basic social documents of the Catholic intellectual tradition. The framework for assessing the Church’s social role will be studied from economic, social, and political perspectives with special attention to issues that are of contemporary concern in the United States, e.g., economic justice, human rights, health care, and war and peace. The readings in the course aim to tell the story of the Catholic social tradition from the perspective of the official teachings and movements that expressed and shaped that teaching.

HON 238  The American Presidency   (3)
This class will examine various aspects of the American Presidency. While the evolution of the office will be traced, a major focus of this course will be the administration of George W. Bush. Through student research, as well as our discussions of current events, we will become experts on the Bush administration.

HON 240  Introduction to Old Testament (3) 

HON 241  The Western Religious Tradition  (3)
Introduction to and survey of the Western political tradition. How scholars compare the phenomena of religion. Survey of belief systems in the Western political tradition.

HON 247  Islam: Religion, History & Culture (3)

HON 249  Magic, Science & Religion  (3)
Introduces students to some of the approaches that scholars of religion and others have used to understand how diverse peoples of the world conceive, make use of, and tap into the realm of the extra-human. In doing so, we will focus not only on "exotic" societies and peoples, but also explore the meanings of magic, science and religion in more familiar contemporary North America and Europe.

HON 250  The Individual & Community (3)
The purpose of this course is to use the resources of the social sciences to explore what some commentators have recently called our “crisis of community:” that is, the apparent retreat into disengagement and unnatural privatism that some have seen as characterizing the age of television, the internet, and “virtual” reality.

We will begin by familiarizing ourselves with the intellectual traditions of communitarianism and libertarianism, and of American exceptionalism as detected by acute foreign observers such as Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), who saw a unique practice of civic voluntarism as crucial to the young democratic republic. Then we will move to consider the argument for seeing a contemporary crisis of community, in particular by reading the influential 1995 essay by Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone,” along with his full-length 2000 study by the same title. We will also explore a rejoinder to the Putnam thesis in E. Carl Ladd's recent book The Ladd Report. William Langewiesche offers a vivid study of the spontaneous formation of community in the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombings, and Alan Ehrenhalt’s Lost City provides an unforgettable portrait of the full spectrum of community life in 1950s Chicago.

Then some thematic case studies on the social and community consequences of the arts in an individualistic society, on the one hand, and on the role of government in the solution of social problems, on the other, will occupy us.

HON 254  Problems in American Modernism (3)
This course is a multidisciplinary investigation of the problems and possibilities of American culture from the year 1900 to September 11, 2001. It will employ a rich variety of texts from literature, architecture, art, history, sociology, and film to analyze American responses to urbanism, war, economic depression, suburban development, and contemporary terrorism.

HON 303  Economics of Sport (3)
How do economists explain the behavior of professional and college sports teams, their players, and their fans?  Tools used by the economist will be examined and then applied to topics that include player salaries, the effect teams have on a region, the value of team franchises, attaining competitive balance, and the role of sports on college campuses.  The course assumes no prior economics course.

HON 304  The New Woman in Literature  (3)
The emergence of the figure of “new woman” in nineteenth-century literature and the ways in which this literary type has influenced modern literature. 

HON 305  American Schools: A Nation Still at Risk?  (3)
Social science seminar that engages students in a focused investigation of American school reform movements.  We begin with President Reagan’s commissioned report, “A Nation at Risk” (1982) and study reform initiatives that followed.  The course provides students the opportunity to engage in a wide range of current research devoted to various problems in American education.

HON 306 Education & Culture: Russia (3)
The premise of this course is that there is an interlocking relationship between the culture in which education is conducted and the influence of education on that culture.  Historical and contemporary influences of philosophy, politics, economics, and religion on education in Russia will be explored from the time of the Rus, through the Tsarist period, the 1917 revolutions, and the Communist and post-Soviet eras.  The inter-relationships between education and language, literature, art, and music as well as the “hard sciences” in Russia will be examined.  Students will be exposed to the works of the great artists, musicians, writers, philosophers, scientists, economic theorists, and religious thinkers who have emerged from the Russia onto the world’s stage.  Russian and American education will be compared.

HON 311  Marx, Nietzsche, Freud  (3)
Careful analysis of major works by these seminal thinkers and an analysis of their influence on modern thought.  

HON 313  Holocaust in Literature, Film, Music, & Art (3) 
For many historians, the defining moment of the twentieth century has been the Holocaust, that is, the systematic and deliberate extermination of an estimated ten to eleven million people, of whom six million were Jews.  Coming to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust has posed a challenge of immeasurable proportions to the artistic imagination of the postwar world.  Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in Theodor Adorno’s famous dictum:  “To write poetry after Auschwitz is in itself an act of barbarism.”

The purpose of this course is to provide a synthetic and comprehensive overview of how the Holocaust has been portrayed in literature, film, art, and music since the end of World War II.  It will assess the efforts—both by those who experienced the Holocaust first-hand and those who experienced it from afar—to describe the indescribable, to give aesthetic form and content to an event that negated the very possibility of beauty and meaning, to discover in the wanton destruction of human life a meaning and lesson for all mankind.

The course will begin with a brief discussion of how Holocaust has captured the popular imagination of Americans.  It will then move to first-person testimony, that is, to the memoirs and reflections of those who survived the Holocaust and their efforts to make sense of their own pain and suffering.  The course will next examine literary and poetic representations who viewed the Holocaust from a distance.  A section on cinematic and musical representations of the Holocaust will follow.  The course will conclude with some final reflections on the moral dimensions of the Holocaust.

HON 315  Biography and Autobiography  (3)
The goal of this course is to introduce students to a number of the classics in these genres from the ancient world to the present, and to explore the fundamental theoretical issues underlying the writing and reading of lives.   Students will write both as critics - analyzing and evaluating - and as autobiographers and biographers - collecting and interpreting data, preserving pieces of lives in language.

HON 318 Nineteenth Century Novel (3)
Students in this seminar will study three major works to learn how Scott, Dickens, and Tolstoy salvage the private and public past. All three authors use the novel as both a record and a reenactment of individual, cultural, and psychic memory, and explicitly defend such fictional self-reflection as the means to forge a sane individual and societal future. Closely related to the concern for "the past" in these works is the authors' treatment of political fanaticism, moderation, and the survival of social institutions. We will preface our study of the novels with a look at William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Thomas Gray's "Elegy: Written in a Country Churchyard" as prologues for the seminar. The class work would be made up mainly of weekly student reports and papers.

HON 319 Religion & Politics: U.S. Roman Catholic Perspectives (3)
Studies contemporary approaches to the Roman Catholic understanding of religion and politics in the United States after an initial investigation of some of the important concepts in the New Testament and the classical Western Catholic tradition on the subject. Writings of John Courtney Murray, S.J., the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, including Joseph Cardinal Bernardin on a consistent ethic of life, and David Hollenbach, S.J., will be used to study the principles in Roman Catholic ethics that can help to evaluate the political and legal issues of importance in the United States today, e.g., warfare, health care, foreign policy, and beginning and end of life decisions.

HON 320 Insight & Self-Understanding (3)
This course will be an examination of Bernard Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Lonergan’s work focuses on method to characterize the conditions of our thinking process.  Grasping these operations leads the reader to the act of self-appropriation: to understand oneself and one’s nature, how one thinks, and how and why we fail to perform these operations well.

HON 326  Sex & Religion in Baroque Art (3)
This course is a seminar that will explore the dramatic and passionate art of the 17th century in Europe, and consider how it reflects the historical developments and cultural changes of the time.  We will examine the deeply spiritual art of the Catholic Counter Reformation in Italy and Spain, the sensuous sculpture of Bernini, the boisterous figures of Rubens, and the inner psychological explorations of Rembrandt.  We will travel from the enormous palace of Louis XIV at Versailles to the tiny kitchens of Dutch housewives.  Students will learn to look closely at works of art in order to understand both their visual beauty and their relationship to the history and society of the period.  You will also become familiar with some of the basic tools and methods of art historical research, and explore some of the current controversies in the field.

HON 327  Christian Concept of God (3)

HON 328  Age of Michelangelo (3)
A seminar about the art of Michelangelo and the culture of the Italian High Renaissance period in which he lived. The career and works of Michelangelo will be the central focus of the course, but it will also investigate the context in which he worked and the art of his contemporaries, including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Bramante. We will begin with an overview of the period and of Michelangelo's career, and then examine a variety of topics related to the artist and his time.

The choice of Michelangelo as the main thrust of the course material will provide a pathway into the investigation of many different themes. His works deal at one time or another with all of the major political and religious questions of his society, while his letters and sonnets reveal his private thoughts. Recent scholarship on Michelangelo has raised fascinating questions about the position of the artist in society, and the much publicized cleaning of his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel has stimulated heated debate about the conservation and restoration of our aesthetic heritage.

HON 329  Contemporary Poetry (3)
A study of American poetry from the end of World War II to the present.

HON 330  Economics of Public Issues (3)
The primary goal of this course is to develop rudimentary economic principles and to use them to analyze an array of public policy issues.  Economics provides insights into public policy, the effects of policy on the behavior of consumers and producers, the costs and benefits of specific policies, and the distribution of these costs and benefits.

This course will teach you how economists think – how they examine problems and arrive at public policy conclusions.  We will apply economics to understand current policy debates, such as income inequality and poverty, pollution and environmental issues, health care, international trade and education.

There are no economics prerequisites for this course.  Students should be comfortable with algebra, graphical analysis, abstract reasoning, and developing arguments logically from basic postulates.

HON 332  Environment & Society (3)

HON 336  Great Trials of the Millennium  (3)
This course examines some of the great trials in the West.  That examination will be done with three goals in mind: to explore the procedural mechanisms employed to determine innocence and guilt; to determine the extent to which the trials lived up to the notions of justice as generally understood at the time; and finally an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the procedures used in the quest for justice.  We will examine the current procedures used in the United States and assess their effectiveness in achieving justice.

HON 337 Left Right and Center: The Political Spectrum in America (3)
This course considers the range of political thought in America today. It asks whether the United States has a coherent political tradition or merely a paranoid style of politics, a loosely knit tradition of conspiracy theories. Although one often hears the terms “conservative” and “liberal” and sometimes the terms “socialist” and “anarchist,” few things are as confusing as this set of labels used to define the parameters of American political discourse. Is it possible to make sense of the political arena?  A good start will be to by examine the signal events in American history that have shaped present discourse. These would include the Founding, the Civil War and the corporate economy that emerged in its wake, the great Depression and the rise of Communism, and more recently fundamentalist Islam and the “culture war.” Were the Founders liberals, conservatives or something outside the range of these terms?  What happened to the political tradition in its confrontation with industrialism and the corporation? The course will draw on the findings of social scientists & historians, political theory, & current events, and examine political think tanks, politically-slanted periodicals, and such prominent figures as Patrick Buchanan, George Will, and Bill O’Reilly on the “right” and Edward Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and George Soros on the “left.”

HON 351  Biotechnology & Society  (3)
An examination of recent developments in Biotechnology and how they have shaped contemporary society. 

HON 353 Age of Robotics (3)
From self-parking cars to robotic pets, from modern weaponry to robot vacuum cleaners, robots are increasingly becoming a part of the human experience. Robots help us to explore outer space, perform long-distance surgery and provide other aspects of medical care, disarm explosive devises and search collapsed buildings for victims. Robots are also employed extensively in industry and in high throughput biomedical research. Softbots are virtual agents that exist only in computer programs and networks, including shopping bots and agents in games and virtual reality environments. Research in cognitive robotics includes studies that address the question of whether machines can have feelings. This course will introduce students to some of the most important and innovative robot creations to date as well as explore the future of robotics through fact and fiction. Over the course of the semester we will become acquainted with robots, androids, cyborgs, and virtual intelligent agents. We will ask questions about the nature of cognition, examining non-human intelligence through readings in psychology, computer science, and philosophy of mind. In addition to readings we will explore robots through film and video, including the movies AI and I, Robot, and video clips from Futurama and The Twilight Zone.

Students will gain hands-on experience with robots in the Canisius Robotics Laboratory where we will experiment with different programmed behaviors in Aibo and NXT robots and ask whether or not these robots demonstrate intelligence.

Throughout the course we will touch on social, ethical, and legal issues relating to robotics. Do robots have rights and responsibilities? Who is responsible if a robot causes injury or death? Is it ethical to create a highly intelligent robot slave? Could a human fall in love with an android (or vice versa)?

HON 355  Media Culture   (3)
Assessment of the political economy of popular culture production, distribution, and consumption relative to how media ownership, financing, and social control affect content.

HON 355  Perspectives on Health & Illness (3)
Medical sociology applies a sociological perspective to the analysis of health, illness, and health care institutions.  We will be concerned this semester with both the “micro” and the “macro” perspectives on health and illness; we will look at the individual experience of health and illness -- the sick role, stress and health, how we maintain good health, how we define health and illness, differences in health among subgroups of the population -- as well as society’s influence on our health.

Health and illness are not only pressing public policy issues, they affect each and every one of us on a daily basis.  We all engage in “health maintenance behaviors,” including awareness of diet and exercise, visiting health care providers of various types, and practicing personal hygiene.  In addition we all have had experiences with illness or injury and know others with various health problems, or who engage in unhealthy behaviors.  Consequently we all have a vast wealth of personal information -- data, if you will -- that we bring to this class.  I would like to harness this personal data and all our ideas, opinions, etc. on this topic by asking you to try your hardest to apply the sociological frameworks and theories to your personal examples.  For example, lets say your friend has diabetes but regularly drinks a lot on weekends: What function does drinking play in his/her life? How might this be a coping mechanism? Is this a reaction to pressure to adopt the sick role? Is it a response to stress? What factors contribute to the continuation of this behavior? Are there structural/macro/societal reasons he/she drinks in spite of its negative consequences? What role do the manufacturers of illness play in his/her drinking?

HON 356  Shakespeare (3)
The first half of the seminar focuses on the theme of the bed-trick as represented by Machiavelli’s play Mandragola and by two of Shakespeare’s “problem comedies,” Measure for Measure and All’s Well.  We will pay particular attention to the ethical and psychological implications of the bed-trick as a plot device.  

The second half of the course will take up the theme of forbidden knowledge as represented by Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and by Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and his late comedy The Tempest.

HON 356  Jesuit Spirituality & History (3)
This course will introduce students to the life of Ignatius of Loyola and his spiritual and educational goals and give a brief overview of the history of the Jesuits, e.g., their work with inculturation in Japan, China, and India, and their development of the Ratio Studiorum and the Reductions of Paraguay, before studying the activities of Jesuits in the Twentieth Century, e.g., their work in science, theology, and the pursuit of social justice.

HON 357 Global Pentecostalism (3)
It is now common knowledge that Western Christianity is declining, especially within its traditional institutions of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.  What is less well known is that outside of the west, especially in Africa, Latin America and South Asia, Christianity is growing at unprecedented rates primarily among exuberant, tongues speaking and faith healing traditions known as Pentecostal or Charismatic.  This growth is so explosive that it is now estimated that over 25 percent of the global Christian community is now charismatic. Through the interdisciplinary lenses of history, theology, anthropology and sociology, this course will carefully examine the essential nature, history and global manifestations of this movement that some scholars refer to as the “Third Force in Christianity.”

This seminar will be entirely based in discussion, led by members of the seminar on a rotating basis. The first part will analyze the movement according to its essence, history, internal issues, and cultural attitudes and practices.  The second part of the course will feature individual presentations by seminar members based on their ethnographic field research projects. During the course of the seminar we will view a few pertinent films, hear from several special speakers, and travel to important Pentecostal churches in the Toronto and Buffalo areas. 

HON 358  Women & Religion   (3)
Analyzes the social construction of gender by looking at four major religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism), as well as the modern Goddess movement.

HON 360  The Nude in Modern Art: Sex, Spectatorship, and Difference (3)
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), the celebrated Abstract Expressionist, once famously uttered that, “flesh was the reason paint was invented.” His words evoke the work of painters of past eras: Titian, Rubens, Goya, Boucher. However, as de Kooning’s own work demonstrates, the figure persists as a subject for the modern painter. The subject of the nude will provide a guide for our inquiry into the history of modernist art, from the mid-19th century in France to post-War scene in New York. We will study a number of masterworks of modernist painting that remain provocative precisely because of the frankness with which they address us, the spectator—often through the gaze of the female nude represented. These include Manet’s Olympia (1863), Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), and de Kooning’s Woman series (ca. 1952). To whom are these examples of painterly erotics addressed? Can—do—female and male viewers occupy the same space before such paintings? What have art historians made of Manet’s inclusion of a French-African maid in Olympia? Or, of Picasso’s use of ‘Primitivist’ masks in the Demoiselles? This course seeks to address these and other questions as we examine how painters of the modern era have painted the difference.

HON 361 Through a Lens Darkly: Critical Issues in the History of Photography (3)
The “battle for photography” was won here in Buffalo in 1910, according to Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), the great American photographer and gallerist, when the Albright Art Gallery exhibited a collection of Pictorialist photographs alongside the modernist painting in its galleries. With this special exhibition, it seemed to many that this medium, which was once dismissed by a critic as being no more than “a bastard of science left on the doorstep of art,” had finally attained the status of a fine art. The photographs on display, which the gallery later acquired for its permanent collection, had all the qualities we traditionally ascribe to works of art: originality, beauty, individual expression, and technical prowess. In short, they were seemingly far-removed from the surfeit of everyday photographic images that have continued to super-saturate modern culture. This seminar proposes to examine the long-standing critical issues surrounding the many discursive spaces that photography occupies in our common (that is, shared) culture.

HON 370 Battle of the Books (3)
This Seminar is unabashedly elitist: contradicting the egalitarian dogmas of our day, it claims the ideas of great men have great consequences; or to speak more boldly, as did economist John Maynard Keyes, “the world is ruled by little else” than “the ideas of economists and political philosophers.” While not denying the supplementary influence of political, religious, and military leaders, this course foregrounds the essential impact of philosophic and poetic writers instigating one historical change crucial to today’s world: “modernization,” the making secular and commercial liberal republics (e.g. England, America, France).  Our readings suggest how certain writers in the philosophic and poetic “Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns” argued effectively for the kind of societies we in the West now inhabit.  Beginning with books by Machiavelli in 16th century Italy (and later by his disciples in France and England), the Modernist side of the Quarrel inspired great political Revolutions transforming England, America, and France.  More specifically, England “modernized” after its Glorious Revolution of 1687 from (to take extreme points on an historical time line) the Christian, aristocratic, chivalric nation of Shakespeare’s History plays to the secular, Parliamentary, commercial nation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol.  Such modernizing, of course, occurred gradually over years (and in England under more favorable conditions than elsewhere on the continent); but crucial to motivating such changes (as Keyes claims) is its philosophic justification.  In a practical sense, therefore, the Moderns “won” the Quarrel.  Nonetheless, they did not persuade everyone; the persistence of thoughtful “Ancient” critics of Modernity then (Swift and Rousseau in the 18th century; Nietzsche and Heidegger in the 19th and 20th) and in our day (those speaking of “postmodernism,” “the End of History,” or The Closing of the American Mind) make this Quarrel a continuing and thus seminal topic for our Seminar.

HON 371 Art & Philosophy (3)
Only in recent times has criticism of poetry and other fine arts broken from political philosophy. From the time of Aristotle through that of Nietzsche, some of the best criticism was written by philosophers, who thought of art as part of their domain.  More recently, criticism, having declared its independence, branched off into rival factions, aestheticism and historicism, each vying for the hegemony philosophy once held.  We will investigate both the newer and the older traditions of criticism by the same standard: does a given critical theory account for the practice of poets or artists? As we shall see, some poets reflected on their art as thoughtfully as did philosophers.

The course begins with the contemporary tradition by studying what can be said pro and con about the two recent forms of literary criticism.  Does A.E. Housman’s aesthetic theory fully explain his own poems?  Does Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism adequately account for Shakespeare’s Tempest?  Does Greenblatt refute Cantor’s criticisms of his method?  As we shall see, despite their claims to independence, both aestheticism and historicism premise themselves upon philosophic claims.

After this contemporary tradition, we turn to the older and longer tradition of criticism.  Here likewise our purpose is not to indoctrinate but to consider arguments both pro and con.  Often this debate is between poets and philosophers, whether Aristophanes and Socrates over the best way of life, or Rousseau and Moliere over the character of the misanthrope, or Sophocles and Aristotle over tragedy. Finally, G.E. Lessing claims some poets misunderstand the limits of sculpture versus poetry, the arts in space as opposed to those in time.  Sometimes this dialectic is between philosophers: e.g. Nietzsche argues contra Aristotle’s Poetics that the nature of tragedy resides in The Birth of Tragedy.  And the two philosophers favor different kinds of tragedy: Shakespearean for Aristotle, Wagnerian for Nietzsche.

As we shall see, our course questions art's relation to history, to philosophy, and to civil society. Its interdisciplinary range stretches from philosophy to poetry and other fine arts (music, sculpture, and painting).  To support this range, we will invite guest lecturers from the departments of Art History and Music.

HON 385  The British Monarchy  (3)
This seminar will explore the history of Britain's monarchy from the end of the middle ages to the present.  Emphasis will be placed on the transformation of the monarchy from the center of government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to a largely symbolic, even vestigial constitutional mechanism in the twentieth.  The history of the monarchy will be placed in the context of broader social, cultural, economic and political developments such as the emergence of democracy, the industrialization and urbanization of British society, the acquisition and loss of empire, and the growing power of popular culture.  In addition, attention will be paid to the historiography of monarchy, and in particular to a comparison of popular, political, and scholarly approaches to the subject.

The course will be conducted as a seminar, and therefore primarily based on class discussion, to be supplemented on occasion with brief lectures and with in-class viewing of video material.

HON 394  Imperialism and Decolonization  (3)
An advanced study of imperialism and decolonization in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will examine the causes of the “scramble for colonies” in the late 19th century by Western powers, and the nature of the imperial systems that were created. Empire will be considered as both a formal and an informal phenomenon. In the 20th century we will look at the rise of anti-colonial attitudes in the various colonial systems, and the reasons for the decline and collapse of these systems after the Second World War. We will then study how the global strength of the United States might or might not be considered “imperial.”

HON 396  Technology and Literature  (3)
Modern science and technology and how they are envisioned in representative literary works.

HON 398  The History of Science  (3)
Historical approach to the development of modern physical science from Galileo to Einstein. Seminar course based upon original scientific works and laboratory experience.

HON 415A Human Rights Issues   (3)
This course expands the philosophical discourse to include (a) previously suppressed peoples, including women, and (b) multiple perspectives that  profoundly challenge the tenets, values, and presuppositions of traditional Western philosophy. We will consider several key questions, all of which are interconnected: "What is a human being," "What is nature?" "What is the purpose of society and government?" Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, we will consider, "How should human beings treat one another?" This last question raises questions about human rights, what they are, how to establish them, and then how to actualize them in the everyday lives of ordinary human beings. These questions cannot be answered solely on an empirical basis, for they are
inescapably philosophical questions. Their answers will have profound practical, observable effects on the future well-being of human beings and of the greater natural world.

HON 415B  War & Peace After 9/11  (3)
Explores the nature of world politics and US foreign policy after 9/11. Drawing on the work of Joseph Nye, Jr., the course focuses on what the U.S. must do to maintain its traditional reserves of “hard” and “soft” power in an age of globalization and terrorism. In doing so, the course considers the significance of foreign views of America’s citizens and government. Several aspects of the course are regularly changed in keeping with current events. For example, in fall 2006, the new National Security Strategy of the U.S. will be examined. Instruction in the seminar mixes power point presentations with class discussions, team learning, and meetings with international students.

HON 415C  America's Greatest Scandals  (3)
This course examines a wide range of infamous scandals in American history, including sexual hijinks, shady financial practices, political corruption, and sports fixing. Among other episodes, we will read about Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings; Andy Jackson's "petticoat" war; the alleged adultery of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher; Crédit Mobilier; the financial machinations of robber baron Jay Gould; the graft of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall; the throwing of the 1919 World Series; Teapot Dome; the alleged rape by movie star Fatty Arbuckle; the Watergate crisis; Ronald Reagan's Iran-contra affair; the Clinton-Lewinsky affair; corporate profiteering during the Iraq war; and the predatory emails of former Florida congressman Mark Foley. By examining such episodes, the course will reveal the seamy underside of American cultural, financial, and political values.

HON 415D The City in Literature  (3)
We will examine the city as concept, character, and agent in important literary texts, especially concentrating on literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England and nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America, the time and place where our notions of the modern self were developed, where industry and immigration boomed, and our great migration to cities took place.  In literature of this time period, the city becomes more than a backdrop; real urban spaces shape the literary imagination, and imagined urban spaces shape our cultural conceptions of what a city should be and could be—both utopic and dystopic visions of urban life.  We will consider how the contrast between city and county contributes to the shaping of modern notions of identity, how the vision of the city as cultural mecca, as dangerous, beautiful, industrial, infectious, and innovative drive the plots of novels as well as the rhythm of poetry.  We will also look at the ways the city’s blurring of boundaries—of privacy, ethnicity, social class, and gender—play a major role in literary conceptions of the modern self and of the individual’s relationship to society. 

HON 451  Senior Thesis  (3)
Independent research on topic selected by student, culminating in research paper. Student works closely with a faculty advisor.

HON 499 Independent Study
Permitted only rarely and not at all when a comparable course is being or soon will be offered. Requires permission of the Honors director.

Honors Credit Policy
Students seeking transfer credit must see the Honors director, who has discretion in the matter.

The All-College Honors Program generally permits Honors students to gain credit for four kinds of alternative coursework:

(a) pertinent Advanced Placement courses taught in high school, provided the scores are 4s or 5s (no more than two such scores accepted)
(b) Summer Honors courses taught at Canisius College, provided the grade is "B" or better
(c) pertinent study-abroad courses at foreign universities, provided the grades are "B" or better (no more than two such courses accepted)
(d) pertinent courses taken at accredited institutions of higher learning by college students transferring to Canisius

There is a maximum of five (5) alternative academic courses that the Honors Program will accept.

Honors students who receive 4s or 5s on the AP English exam must enroll in HON 101
(a gateway course to the Honors Program) in their first semester at Canisius and can be exempted from HON 102 in the spring semester.

Honors students who desire credit for study-abroad coursework should see the Honors director before departing and, upon returning, must bring course syllabi, completed papers or other academic work, and a grade transcript to the director. Initial approval of study-abroad courses is contingent upon at least two factors: (a) completion of courses previously approved by the director and (b) receipt of grades of “B” or better in academically rigorous courses. Students are encouraged to communicate their progress and/or concerns to the director via email (dierenfb@canisius.edu).

No Honors credit can be granted for the following kinds of coursework or experience:
*Courses designed by college faculty but taught in high schools by high school teachers
*Courses taught by college faculty but transmitted by television into high school classes
*Community college courses
*Regular Canisius College courses instead of Honors courses
e.g., ENG 101 instead of HON 101
*Courses taken pass/fail
*International travel 

Good Standing (effective fall 2008)

Minimum Standards
In order to remain in the All-College Honors Program, students must complete all required coursework, including the senior thesis. Students are expected to earn at least a solid “B” in each Honors course.

Beginning with the class of 2011, Honors students must also graduate with an overall GPA of 3.25 in all courses at Canisius.

Dismissal
Honors students who receive three grades of “B-” or lower, two grades in the “C” range, or one “D” or “F”/“FX” in Honors courses will be dismissed from the Honors Program. Students whose academic work in Honors courses or in non-Honors courses is found to be plagiarized will also be dismissed from the Honors Program. Any senior whose Honors thesis receives a “D” or an “F” will be ineligible to graduate with Honors.

Appeal
Students who are dismissed from the Honors Program may petition the Honors Committee, which considers all such appeals. This committee is composed of the Honors director, several faculty members, and an Honors student chosen by the Honors student body. Students who have been dismissed from the Honors Program may petition the Honors Committee only once.