CURRICULUM

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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 almost 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 three 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. 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* (three 100 level courses):
English (HON 101)
Western Tradition I (HON 110)
Western Tradition II (HON 111)
*science majors usually take only HON 101 & HON 111 in the first year.

Second Year (four 200 level courses*):
History
Philosophy
Religious Studies
Social Science
*one of these courses must be in the "American Experiment"

Third/Fourth Years (four 300 level seminars*):
Fine Arts
Literature
Religious Studies
Science or Mathematics or Technology

Fourth Year:
Senior Thesis (HON 451 -- offered every semester)

Each student is also required to take two regular core courses in ancient or modern foreign languages. AP/IB credit may be used to substitute for some or all of these regular language courses.

Each student must take one course on the "American Experiment" which can be satisfied in several different courses after the freshman year.

Additionally, students must take an Honors course that is designated for its emphasis on diversity and/or global awareness.

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 110  Western Tradition I (3)
Introduces students to significant intellectual and material elements of Western Civilization from the ancient world through the middle ages. This interdisciplinary course examines influential developments in art & architecture, history, law, literature, philosophy, religion, and science in order to investigate the presumptions, motivations, and expectations of westerners and to ascertain what is peculiarly "western" about the world in which we live and think.

HON 111  Western Tradition II (3)
Introduces students to significant intellectual and cultural elements of Western Civilization from the Renaissance to the 20th century. This interdisciplinary course examines influential developments in art & architecture, history, law, literature, philosophy, religion, and science to ascertain how westerners shaped the modern world.

HON 211 Marx, Nietzsche, Freud (3)
Careful analysis of major works by these seminal thinkers and an analysis of their influence on modern thought.

HON 216 Honors Philosophy (3)
Selected topics in philosophical inquiry, such as rationalism, empiricism, 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)
This history course considers the prevalence and persistence of violence in American society. Because of the scope of violence and its multiplicity of forms, the topics selected for this course are illustrative but necessarily arbitrary. The topics range from murder (in a variety of forms), rioting, kidnapping, wartime atrocities, sexual assault, bank robbery, ethnic violence, blood sports, media coverage, labor unrest, terrorism, school shootings, and the death penalty.

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 225  Empires & their Aftermath (3)

HON 226 America's First Families (3)
The course focuses on five of America's "First Families:" John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore and Edith Kermit Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and John and Jackie Kennedy.  It explores the political and public roles of these families, each in its own historical context, and examines how their internal dynamics helped shape the ideals of the larger society to which each belonged.

HON 227 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 230 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 about 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 231 War & Peace since 9/11 (3)
Since September 11, 2001, a lot has changed in the world. These days, it is hard to argue that the United States is unaffected by what goes on in the rest of the world.  The ongoing conflict in Iraq has brought to light a simmering “anti-Americanism” in various parts of the world, which runs deeper than mere opposition to the US-led war and how it has been handled by the Bush and Obama administrations. Should we care what the rest thinks of us?  In this seminar, we will consider how such attitudes might matter for US foreign relations, including issues such as trade, assistance to developing countries, regional conflicts, and national security (e.g., fighting terrorism).

Given such foreign views and how they might matter, as well as how things work in the world politics and American’s position as a global power, what kind of goals should the U.S. pursue and what is the best way to achieve these? Although this course may not provide you with definitive answers to these very important questions, this seminar should improve your ability to form your own views on US foreign policy and increase your sensitivity to what people from other countries think about your country - and why you, as a responsible citizen, might care about this.

HON 232 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 233 Left, Right & 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 234 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 235 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 236 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 237 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 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 239 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 240 Old Testament: Cultures, Contexts, and Criticism (3)
An exploration of the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the people who wrote them in light of their cultural and historical setting.  We will look at a lot of parallel materials from other cultures, the historical developments, the archaeological record, and also look at how these texts have been used and interpreted by both Jews and Christians ever since.

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)
Islam and Muslims are now in the news every day, and the reasons to know something about Islam, Muslims and their religious practices are obvious.  Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion; recent statistics put the current population of people professing their religion as Islam at around one billion, roughly 20% of the world’s population.  Yet in spite of all the news coverage (or because of it?), Muslims are among the most misunderstood of the world’s religious practitioners.  Contrary to popular misconception, there is no such thing as a monolithic ‘Muslim’:  Islam is practiced in a myriad of ways by the more than 300 ethnic/ linguistic groups who call themselves Muslim.  In this course, we will study Islamic scriptures, Muslim cultures, social institutions, religious practices, and Muslim and Western writings about them in order to better understand Islam and Muslims in the U.S. and throughout the world.

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 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 320 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 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 321 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 322  Critical Mess: 20th Century Art & Philosophy (3)
No century has been more of a question to itself than the 20th Century. Art and philosophy are two disciplines by which we attempt, in vastly different ways, to articulate our own identities and situations. The dialogue between artists and philosophers (and between artists themselves and theorists) is at the very center of the modern problematic. If the work of art has been a repository of our humanity for the ages, then the story of twentieth-century art is also the history of the struggle of the avant-garde to survive in the face of brutal repression and traumatic dislocations. As Leon Trotsky once summarized the modern condition, those who value “peace and tranquility [have] done poorly to live in the twentieth century.” In many ways, the strange ‘anti-aesthetics’ of much of twentieth-century art has been an attempt to respond to these circumstances. This course will help students track changing ideas of art as they appear in two records: the recording of ideas in written texts by theorists and the recording of ideas as embodied in artistic production.

HON 323 Opera (3)
This course introduces students to opera; no previous musical knowledge or experience is required. Students will develop an understanding of the aesthetics of opera by studying its elements, aspects of the operatic (trained) voice, and the genre’s history. Most importantly, students will listen to and view representative examples of the art form recorded on CD, on DVD (or VHS), and in live performance. Students will also learn how to listen critically to music.

HON 324 The Symphony (3)
The course introduces students to the symphony and its development from the 1700s to the present. No previous musical knowledge or experience is required.

Students will discuss the meaning of “symphony” and its origins and forms.  Musical vocabulary and elements will be applied to the analysis of symphonies. Students will listen to and view representative examples of the genre recorded on CD, DVD (or VHS) and in live performance.

Besides the musical study of symphonies, other related topics will be discussed. The course will cover biographical information of composers from many geographic areas including Austria, Germany, France, Russia and United States. It will also investigate and examine the cultural and historical aspects of the societies in which composers wrote symphonies. Students will read first hand accounts and letters written by the composers, peers and critics to form an understanding through literature of the circumstances around which symphonies were composed and performed. In the study of choral symphonies students will discuss the correlation between the text and the music.

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 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 332 Environment & Society (3)

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 354 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 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 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 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 372 Contemporary Poetry (3)
A study of American poetry from the end of World War II to the present.

HON 373 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 374 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 396 Technology and Literature (3)
Modern science and technology and how they are envisioned in representative literary works. Team-taught.

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 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 the following test scores and alternative coursework:

(a) pertinent Advanced Placement courses taught in high school, provided the exam scores are 4s or 5s (no more than two such scores accepted)
(b) exam scores of 6s or 7s in pertinent subject areas of the International Baccalaureate (no more than two such scores accepted; no additional credit for qualifying AP exam scores that duplicate credit awarded for IB exams)
(c) Summer Honors courses taught at Canisius College, provided the grade is "B" or better
(d) pertinent study-abroad courses at foreign universities, provided the grades are "B" or better (no more than two such courses accepted)
(e) pertinent courses taken at accredited institutions of higher learning by college students transferring to Canisius, provided the grades are "B" or better

The Honors Program will accept a maximum of five (5) test scores and alternative academic courses.

Honors students who receive 4 or 5 on the AP English exam or 6 or 7 on the IB English exam must nonetheless 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.