Core Courses Spring 2025

Conversation and Education for Democracy
This class focuses on the practice of productive conversations about complex topics, a necessity not only for university education but for a functional democracy. We will build skills for three distinct kinds of conversation – dialogue, deliberation, and debate – while engaging with three substantive themes: one focused on how humans make decisions, another focused on the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, and the third examining the limits of free expression online. The class will include biweekly mentored, small-group meetings.

Conversation and Education for Democracy

This class focuses on the practice of productive public conversation about complex topics, a necessity not only for university education but for a functional democracy.  We will build skills for three distinct kinds of conversation – dialogue, deliberation, and debate – through engaging with three “cases,” among them artificial intelligence and freedom of expression. The class will include biweekly mentored, small-group meetings.

Justice and Judgment in the Western Imagination
How do we decide what is right and fair?  When, if ever, is it permissible to break the law?  What role should mercy and revenge play in legal and moral judgment?  How should we respond to historical wrongs and how can we rectify legal and social injustices today?  Such questions have not only preoccupied jurists and philosophers but have also figured prominently in literature.  In this seminar, we consider how imaginative writers from the classical period to the present day have examined the nature, problems, and possibilities of justice.  At the same time that we examine the contributions of literature to pressing legal and moral debates, we work on honing your close reading and writing skills.  Texts may include Sophocles’s Antigone; William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure; Herman Melville’s Billy Budd; Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”; Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”; Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird; Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; poems by Amanda Gorman, Nicole Sealey, and Reginald Dwayne Betts; Ida Fink’s The Table; and Ferdinand von Schirach’s The Collini Case.  Our literary texts will be supplemented by selections from jurists, philosophers, and historians, and we will view several film adaptations.

Justice and Judgment in the Western Imagination
How do we decide what is right and fair?  When, if ever, is it permissible to break the law?  What role should mercy and revenge play in legal and moral judgment?  How should we respond to historical wrongs and how can we rectify legal and social injustices today?  Such questions have not only preoccupied jurists and philosophers but have also figured prominently in literature.  In this seminar, we consider how imaginative writers from the classical period to the present day have examined the nature, problems, and possibilities of justice.  At the same time that we examine the contributions of literature to pressing legal and moral debates, we work on honing your close reading and writing skills.  Texts may include Sophocles’s Antigone; William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure; Herman Melville’s Billy Budd; Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”; Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”; Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird; Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; poems by Amanda Gorman, Nicole Sealey, and Reginald Dwayne Betts; Ida Fink’s The Table; and Ferdinand von Schirach’s The Collini Case.  Our literary texts will be supplemented by selections from jurists, philosophers, and historians, and we will view several film adaptations.

Digital Activism in Dystopic Times

Stories about the walking dead, climatic apocalypses, and world-ending disasters are in no way new. Yet they prevail in films, novels, and other media today. Our society continues to seek out stories that present dismal settings of dystopic futures and, within them, moments of hope for humanity. Why?

In this course, we will explore how and why digital activists utilize stories to drive movements and inspire hope for humanity amid a world that feels more and more like a dystopic film. We will investigate how language, digital platforms, and other communicative resources support recent and current activist endeavors and will rhetorically analyze complications with using stories – both fictional and lived – for activist endeavors in public digital spaces. This course is set up for students to dig into what social media and other daily digital expressive deliverables can teach them about effective and meaningful writing and communication, whether in the classroom, in their communities, or in the digital spaces they inhabit in our increasingly socioecological, dystopic world.

Creativity as Practice
In this class we will focus on process—in reading and researching, writing and creating—as a worthwhile endeavor in itself. We will learn about poetry by writing poems, visual arts by drawing, inquiry by writing.

At the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, Greta Thunberg noted that ‘We are in the beginning of a mass extinction’. She attributed this to a long history of misguided environmental policies that were driven by ‘money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth’. Thunberg’s speech rightly points out that our understanding of the environment is routinely informed by adjacent cultural values, like, as Thunberg suggests, economy. Though, the opposite relationship between culture and environment is also true: attitudes toward the environment often implicitly justify other kinds of political action, like the colonization of particular lands and people. As Karen J Warren suggests, ‘there are important connections between how one treats women, people of color, and the underclass on one hand and how one treats the nonhuman natural environment on the other.’ This course will investigate the ways in which thinking and re-thinking environment has influenced various political and aesthetic movements, including feminism, Black Power and Black Arts, capitalism, Marxism, indigenous belief systems, and queer activism. We’ll do this primarily by examining how authors from myriad cultural experiences have represented the environment. Attention will also be devoted to film, fine art, and political cultures. 

At the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, Greta Thunberg noted that ‘We are in the beginning of a mass extinction’. She attributed this to a long history of misguided environmental policies that were driven by ‘money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth’. Thunberg’s speech rightly points out that our understanding of the environment is routinely informed by adjacent cultural values, like, as Thunberg suggests, economy. Though, the opposite relationship between culture and environment is also true: attitudes toward the environment often implicitly justify other kinds of political action, like the colonization of particular lands and people. As Karen J Warren suggests, ‘there are important connections between how one treats women, people of color, and the underclass on one hand and how one treats the nonhuman natural environment on the other.’ This course will investigate the ways in which thinking and re-thinking environment has influenced various political and aesthetic movements, including feminism, Black Power and Black Arts, capitalism, Marxism, indigenous belief systems, and queer activism. We’ll do this primarily by examining how authors from myriad cultural experiences have represented the environment. Attention will also be devoted to film, fine art, and political cultures. 

History and Trauma
This class explores the concepts of trauma, history, and memory as experienced by individuals and communities. We read works in the fields of psychoanalysis, sci-fi, philosophy, and history, to see how memory of historical events is affected by trauma.

Writing for Social Change: Interrogating Community Health and Wellness Advocacy through a Social Justice Lens

This class focuses on the challenges and the opportunities influencing the social health and wellness of the diverse communities living in and near to the city of Milwaukee. We will engage with local community organizations, institutions, and groups that advocate for community health and wellness and will analyze issues inhibiting that goal through a social justice lens. Specifically, we will explore how marginalized communities in our local area advocate for their own health issues using writing and other forms of communication to make positive change for their communities. We will also consider how digital forms of writing and communication help or harm local health advocacy projects. This course will include engagement in class discussions, research, reflective writing, and creative solutions to local community health issues. 

This class will examine the material, ideological, and institutional structures that affect urban development and frame our lives in the City of Milwaukee.  It is oriented around a series of readings aimed at illuminating the themes of the class and engaging students in the process of critical thinking. 

This class will examine the material, ideological, and institutional structures that affect urban development and frame our lives in the City of Milwaukee.  It is oriented around a series of readings aimed at illuminating the themes of the class and engaging students in the process of critical thinking. 

Placemaking and Memory in Urban Landscapes
This course draws on theories about landscape from archaeology, anthropology, geography, and philosophy to explore how places are made, embodied, remembered, erased, and forgotten in urban environments. Students will conduct research and fieldwork on a chosen topic that demonstrates the connections between place, memory, history, and cultural identity, situating themselves ethnographically by dwelling within the ongoing and dynamic process of placemaking.

 TBD

BIOL 1002H  Stephanie Abramovich

901 Lecture MWF 9 - 9:50am
902 Lecture MWF 11 - 11:50am

961 DISC M 3 - 3:50pm 
962 DISC T 12:30 - 1:20pm    

CHEM 1002H 902 Lecture MWF 10 -10:50am Llanie Nobile 

CHEM 1002H 903 Lecture MWF 1 - 1:50pm  Llanie Nobile 

941 Lab W 2 - 4:50pm, Staff

942 Lab W 2 - 4:50pm, Staff

961 Discussion T 9:30 - 10:20am, Staff

962 Discussion  Th 9:30 - 10:20am, Staff

You must enroll in a lab first. Once you enroll in a lab, you will automatically be enrolled in the lecture and then you can choose a discussion section.

CHEM 1014H   901  MF 9 -10:15am, Nicholas Reiter

Lab 941  W 9 - 11:50am, Vijay Vyas      

*For Chem 1014H, requests will not be accepted before Nov. 4th.  On that date or after, please email Jennifer Van Able and include your MUID. She's out of town until Nov. 4th and won’t look at any emails sent prior to Nov. 4th. 

  TBA

ENGL 4442 101 MWF 10 - 10:50am Steven Hartman-Keiser              

ENGL 4230 101 LEC MWF 11 - 11:50am Rebecca Nowacek
ENGL 4230 601 DISC F 12 - 12:50pm Rebecca Nowacek

*This is an Honors for All course, a course that requires an application and an interview to enroll.  The application due date was 10/28/2024.

ENGL 4351 101 MWF 11 - 11:50am John Curran

This is not officially an honors section, but honors student who enroll will receive honors elective credit.

** This course requires a permission number to enroll and spots are limited, so please use this form to request a permission number.

HEAL 1025H 901 T 9:30am - 12:15pm Theresa Schnable

HEAL 1025H does not require a permission number. If you have trouble enrolling, please contact the Nursing department.

HEAL 4901H 901 Th 11 - 12:15 pm Amy Newman

*This is a hybrid course, including both in-person and online components. The first week will be in-person. Further details pertaining to meeting dates and delivery methods will be provided in the course syllabus at the start of the semester.

HEAL 4901H does not require a permission number. If you have trouble enrolling, please contact the Nursing department.

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HIST 4298 101 MWF 11 - 11:50pm Alan Ball

This is not officially an honors section, but honors student who enroll will receive honors elective credit.

** This course requires a permission number to enroll and spots are limited, so please use this form to request a permission number.

HIST 4931 101 MW 3:30 - 4:45pm Benjamin Linzy

*Required spring break travel. Hybrid on Wednesdays.

**This is not officially an honors section, but honors student who enroll will receive honors elective credit. More information about this course here.

MATH 1700H 901 LEC TTh 9:30 - 10:45am Carl Mueller, 3 cr

         PSYC 1700H 901 Lab W 9 - 9:50am Debra Oswald, 1 cr

         PSYC 1700H 902 Lab W 10 - 10:50am Debra Oswald, 1 cr

The PSYC 1700H lab is required to earn Honors credit for the course. It is not intended only for PSYC majors.

MUSI  1120H  Wed, Sun 5-7 pm Andrew Mountin

^please note MUSI 1120H is 1 credit. To receive one full honors elective credit, students will need to complete three semesters of MUSI 1120H.

MUSI 1160 701 M 5 - 6:50pm Debra Duff

^please note MUSI 1160H is 1 credit. To receive one full honors elective credit, students will need to complete three semesters of MUSI 1160H.

PHIL 1001H 901 MWF 12 - 12:50pm Claire Lockard

PHIL 1001H 902 MWF 1 - 1:50pm Claire Lockard

PHIL 1001H 903 MW 2 - 3:15pm Daniel Swaim

PHIL 1001H 904 MW 3:30 - 4:45pm Daniel Swaim

PHIL 1001H 905 TTh 11 - 12:15pm Daniel Collette

PHIL 1001H 906 TTh 12:30 - 1:45pm Corinne Bloch-Mullins

PHIL 1001H 907 TTh 2 - 3:15pm Daniel Collette            

PHIL 1001H 908 TTh 9:30 - 10:45am Daniel Collette

PHYS 1004H 901 MWF 10 - 10:50am; M 6-8pm Jax Sanders    

PHYS 1004H 902 MWF 12 - 12:50pm; M 6-8pm Dave Haas

PHYS 1004H 903 MWF 2 - 2:50pm; M 6-8pm Dave Haas     

            942 Lab Th 5 - 6:50pm Melissa Vigil

            961 Disc W 5 - 5:50pm Melissa Vigil

PHYS 1014H 901 MWF 1 - 2:50pm Andrew Kunz

POSC 2601 102 TTh 9:30 - 10:45am Noelle Brigden

*This is not officially an honors section, but honors student who enroll will receive honors elective credit.

** This course requires a permission number to enroll and spots are limited, so please use this form to request a permission number.

THEO 2240H 901  TTh 2 - 3:15pm Cathal Doherty

THEO 4300H 901  TTh 12:30 - 1:45pm Joe Simmons