NSU 2014-2015 Undergraduate Catalog

383 Nova Southeastern University • Undergraduate Student Catalog • 2014–2015 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS HONR 2000T Honors Seminar: Captive Women (3 credits) This course will examine narratives of female captivity and confinement in literature and film. It will explore how women’s lives and deaths are constructed in relation to their confinement and will engage the narrative strategies employed by writers and filmmakers. The course will also consider the ways in which gender, race and sexuality impact stories of female confinement and affect opportunities for escape. Satisfies general education requirements in Humanities. Prerequisite: Honors students only. HONR 2000U The Idea of the Hospital (3 credits) This course explores the hospital through a humanities perspective with an emphasis on literary, cultural, and historical documents. The course will also consider the role hospitals play as theme and background for literature and personal narratives. Satisfies general education requirements in Humanities. Prerequisite: Honors students only. HONR 2000V The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Philosophy and the Western Film (3 credits) This course critically examines philosophical issues that arise in the Western film genre, including the individual and community, justice and vengeance, violence, moral virtue and vice, knowledge and understanding, personal identity, and death. Theories of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant and Nietzsche, as well as contemporary material will be used to discuss selected films. Satisfies general education requirements in Humanities. Prerequisite: Honors students only. HONR 2000W Honors Seminar: The Pathography: Patients’ Stories of Illness (3 credits) This course explores the experience of illness through patient narratives in fiction, biographies and autobiographies. These narratives, in turn, shed light on contemporary medical practice. The course will examine such themes as battle, journey, and rebirth in patients’ narratives. Satisfies general education requirements in Humanities. Prerequisite: Honors students only. HONR 2000X Honors Seminar: Conspiracy Theories (3 credits) This course examines the role conspiracy theories have played in U.S. history from the inception of the Republic to the present day. At various times charges of conspiracies involving Masons, Jews, Slaves, Communists and Right Wing extremists (to name but a few) have played an integral role in U.S. history, while conspiracy theories involving U.F.O.s, presidential assassinations, and terrorist attacks have often taken deep root in the public imagination despite concerted efforts to refute them. This course will challenge students to think objectively and critically about these conspiracies (and the tendency towards paranoia in American politics) by analyzing them within the context of the passage of American history and the evolution of American democracy. Satisfies general education requirements in Humanities. Prerequisite: Honors students only. HONR 2000Y The Book As Art (3 credits) Artist’s books are works of art realized in the form of a book. This practice-based studio arts course visually examines this specialized genre, offering an in-depth view at traditional and alternative book structures in relationship to narrative content. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to creative processes involved in book making, including traditional and alternative book formats, adhesive and sewn binding structures, archival concerns, and methods for generating original images and text. Prerequisite: Honors Student. HONR 2000Z Riders on the Storm: Critical Thinking and the Four Horsemen of Modern Atheism (3 credits) This class presents the key concepts of scientific/ hypothetico-deductive reasoning and develops the student’s critical thinking skills, particularly in applying the guiding principles that distinguish the investigative style of a trained scientist from the style of naïve human reasoning. It emphasizes the nature of both styles of investigation and teaches the specific principles of the former. The key concepts and topics of the course are: the principle of parsimony, falsifiability, the nature of empirical questions, standards of evidence, the value and limits of intuition, the means by which science attempts to curtail the influence of scientists’ biases, and the cognitive psychology of these biases. These topics are all applied to a discussion of religion and atheism. Specifically, each topic is introduced through and applied to those positions that are defended (and those attacked) in the books of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. This course satisfies general education requirements in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Honors students only. HONR 2010A Sleep and Dreams (3 credits) The focus of this course is to provide students with an in- depth introduction to the biological and behavioral features of various states of sleep, sleep disorders and dreams with a focus on emotional and psychological correlates. This course satisfies general education requirements in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Prerequisite: Honors students only. HONR 2010B Deciphering Diversity in the Law (3 credits) The purpose of this course is to explore societal and cultural issues in various areas of the law and the legal implications that result. Students will evaluate case law and literature that probe issues such as conceptions of property rights, gender and sexual orientation discrimination, immigration rights, intercultural