Fall 2021 Honors Courses

Courses petitioned for general education credit will appear on student records around the middle of the term. Students may enroll in as many “199” courses as they would like, however, campus policy permits 12 credits of “199” courses towards graduation.


ABE 199 CHP: Water in a Global Environment, Prasanta Kalita, Ph.D.

55376  |  1:00 p.m – 2:20 p.m.  |  MW  |  Online  |  3 Hours

“Water in a Global Environment” proposes to enhance students’ understanding and appreciation of the impact water has globally, including various cultures around the world. Students will be encouraged to step outside their traditional thinking and become knowledgeable about how water availability and quality affect the day to day lives of people. Without water, or suitable water, cultural infrastructure is destined to fail. Water is arguably the most precious resource in the world, and the fact that it is non-renewable provides additional value that students will become well-versed in. Water quality and its impact on global environment will be explicitly covered. Students develop in-depth analyses of case studies, which will examine the historical and current water-related issues and the solutions utilized to tackle the issues in various parts of the world (i.e., Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, South America, USA). This course’s goal is to not only educate students on one of the most important and critical areas of concern in the world today, but to motivate them to use enhanced knowledge to make an impact both locally and globally.

***This course has been approved by all colleges for general education credit for Physical Sciences and Non-Western.***

Instructor: Prasanta Kalita is a professor of the soil and water resources engineering program in Agricultural and Biological Engineering. His research focuses on water management and water quality, hydrology, erosion and sediment control, and global food security. Professor Kalita is an Elected Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and the Indian Society for Agricultural Engineers (ISAE).


ANTH 126 AL1: Humans and Animals – Food or Friend?, Jane Desmond, Ph.D.

75166  |  11:00 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.  |  TR  |  Hybrid (online and in person) 336 Davenport Hall  |  3 Hours

Human relations with non-human animals are one of the most complex, and culturally varied, realms of human relations with the “natural” world. Responding to recent developments in the humanities and humanistic social sciences for a “more-than-human” approach, this course takes our relations with non-human animals as serious realms of investigation, requiring new methods, and worthy of active study, theorizing, and analysis. Emphasizing questions of how we can move toward a more sustainable future, the course focuses on two key realms of human relations with non-human animals: as food, and as “friend,” or pets/companion animals. Student centered, and very hands-on, we will emphasize the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary thinking and research, and take an active approach to experiential learning. We will take a “wicked problems” approach, which defines complex social phenomena as sites of contested change subject to unintended consequences, multiple intertwined strands of effects, and widespread impacts that evade simple solutions.

***This course satisfies the general education criteria for Social/Behavioral Sciences***

Instructor: Jane C. Desmond is Professor of Anthropology and of Gender/Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also holds appointments in the Unit for Critical Theory and Interpretation, the Dance Dept., and the College of Veterinary Medicine. The author/editor of five books, she is a specialist in performance studies, human-animal studies, and transnational studies of the United States, and has served as past-President of the International Studies Association. She is the founding Editor of the Animal Lives book series at the University of Chicago Press, and Founding Resident Director of the UIUC-ASI Summer Institute in Animal Studies. Her most recent book, Displaying Death and Animating Life: Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science and Everyday Life (Chicago, 2016) explores topics as diverse as natural history museums, pet cemeteries, roadkill, and art by animals. Her current book project, tentatively titled Medicine Across the Species Line, examines the cultural dimensions of contemporary U.S. veterinary medicine. Her public writing on animals has appeared in Newsweek, Scientific American, the Washington Post, and The Hill, among others. A former professional modern dance choreographer, she holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale.


ANTH 175: Archaeology and Popular Culture, Helaine Silverman, Ph.D.

43175  |  3:00-4:20 p.m.  |  MW  |  165 Noyes Lab  |  3 Hours

Archaeology pervades everyday life. Millions of people around the world read Agatha Christie’s detective novels set on archaeological digs and watch their TV and movie adaptations. And mummy films have been a mainstay of Hollywood since the silent era. Hotels such as The Luxor in Las Vegas and Atlantis in the Bahamas have archaeological themes. Blockbuster museum exhibitions about ancient civilizations thrill the public. And university professors teach their students that real exploration and ethical methodology are as exciting as the problematic Indiana Jones model of their profession. Not to mention the discipline’s counter-narrative to bogus theories of extraterrestrial visitations and unsubstantiated epic voyages bringing civilization to distant lands. While some of the absurdities about the past in popular culture are benign, the deployment of archaeology to promote fearsome ethno-nationalism has had terrible consequences in the twentieth century, most notoriously with the Nazis. And as new countries seek to be internationally acclaimed and create a national community, they, too, appropriate archaeology to defend their politics of identity. Indeed, real battles are fought to possess key archaeological sites or to destroy them in the name of ideology. This course is about the past in the present in terms of the social, political and economic contexts of archaeology. Through multiple case studies this course explores the manner in which archaeologists and others have reconstructed and conversed about the past – their own past and that of others – the ways in which the ancient past has been interpreted, appropriated, represented, used and manipulated in the present for a variety of reasons by individuals, groups, national governments and others. Studying the past in the present lets us explore contemporary issues such as racism, nationalism, ethnicity, memory, migration, anti- and pseudo-science, orientalism, colonialism, and tourism as well as ideological and/or actual physical possession or destruction of the remains of other peoples’ pasts. The course teaches critical thinking about what constitutes evidence for factual interpretations and what drives non-evidentiary arguments.

***This course satisfies the general education criteria for Humanities and the Arts/Philosophical Perspectives***

Instructor: Dr. Helaine Silverman (Department of Anthropology) has conducted many years of fieldwork in Peru with additional research in England and Thailand. Her new project is studying the tourism potential of various downstate Illinois communities based on their historic and heritage resources. She has been on the list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent many times.


ARCH 199 DAH: Daylighting, Architecture & Health, Mohamed Boubekri, Ph.D.

70257  |  11:00 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.  |  TR  |  301 ARCH  |  3 Hours

This is a lab/discussion type of course where students will learn about the basic principles of the use of natural light (daylighting) and how daylight impacts visual comfort and building occupants’ health and well-being. We will use the building occupants as the primary focus in this course in terms of success or failure of an architectural design solution. To do so, the course will be based on a series of lectures, round table discussions led by students focusing on daylighting strategies, and how daylight informs health and well-being of building users. Topics to be discussed are light and circadian rhythm, sleep disorders, vitamin D, and daylighting and human performance. Another portion of the course is lab-based in which students will design a small building (e.g. small office, small town library, etc.) with a sub-focus on daylighting computer and scale model simulation.

***This course is not being petitioned for general education credit this term***

Instructor: Instructor: Mohamed Boubekri earned his Ph.D. in Architecture from Texas A&M University in 1990. His work focuses on sustainable architecture and the intersection of the built environment and human health. Through numerous publications (two recently published books), he explores the impact of the lack of daylight inside buildings on people’s health, behavior and overall well-being. More generally, his work also examines the relationship between architectural design, sustainable technologies and building energy/environmental performance.


ARTJ 209: Chado: The Way of Tea, Jennifer Gunji-Ballsrud, MFA

74959  |  1:00 – 3:40 p.m.  |  W  |  Japan House  |  3 Hours | Due to Limited Enrollment, this course will be for Seniors Only this Semester

The main focus of this course is the exploration of how the Way of Tea can be applied to each different discipline as well as to one’s everyday life. Through the study of the Way of Tea and the Zen worldview, it is hoped that students will acquire a better understanding of Japanese culture and also come to see their own culture in a new light. In this course, the study of Zen aesthetics and philosophy, as well as special rituals and equipment for serving a bowl of tea will be introduced. Serving a bowl of tea is an ordinary act, yet in the tea ceremony this very ordinary act has been elevated into an extraordinary art form. When one wishes to serve a bowl of tea in the sincerest and the most pleasant manner, one has to pay detailed attention to each movement, and the recipient is to enjoy a bowl of tea not only with the palate but also with all other senses. Thus, both host and guest can enrich life through a bowl of tea. Through this course experience, it is hoped that students realize that any simple and ordinary act can be extraordinary and can contribute to their success in all human endeavors. One of the most important objectives of this course is to learn what it means to be a fine human being.

**An additional materials fee of $50.00 is required for this course**

***This course satisfies the general education requirement for Cultural Studies: Non-Western***

Instructor: Jennifer Gunji-Ballsrud is an associate professor and the Director of Japan House for 9 years. She participated in the graphic design program for 13 years. She has been studying the Urasenke Way of Tea since 1990 under various teachers. She has earned the Wakindate level as an intermediate student in the Urasenke Foundation and has been teaching university courses for Japan House for the past 20 years. She was awarded the College of Fine & Applied Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004 and was awarded the Broadrick-Allen Award for Excellence in Honors Teaching in 2017, an award presented annually by the Campus Honors Program.


ASTR 330 CHP: Extraterrestrial Life, Leslie Looney, Ph.D

73938  |  8:30 – 9:50 p.m.  |  TR  |  Online  |  3 Hours

More than half of all Americans believe in aliens, but what do we really know about ET life? In the last 15 years we have gone from knowledge of only 8 planets around only our Sun to nearly 4000 planets around many suns. In the near future, NASA will have missions that may find signs of life on Titan, under the oceans of Europa, evidence of life on Mars, or even imaging of Earth-like planets around nearby stars. In this course, we will examine the current status of one of the ultimate questions (“Are we alone?”), and perhaps raise some new ones. We are searching for signals from ET today, but if we do detect a signal what do we do? Why do “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?” What are the problems with interstellar travel? The class will dive into many fields ranging from cosmology to anthropology with a little science fiction thrown in for fun and speculation.

***This course is not being petitioned for general education credit this term***

Instructor: Leslie Looney is a professor of Astronomy. With an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering and Physics, he has worked as a system engineer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the Space Shuttle’s digital processing system (i.e., computers, interfaces, and software) – launching shuttles. Afterwards in 1998, he obtained a Ph.D. in astrophysics. Leslie’s main research topic is the early stages of star formation. In particular, he studies the circumstellar disk surrounding young protostars; these disks are thought to be the natal environment of planets. He’s discovered many new worlds and new stars. As protostars form in dense clouds of gas and dust, Leslie uses some of the world’s most sensitive telescopes operating from infrared to millimeter wavelengths.


CHP 395B: Holocaust, Peter Fritzsche, Ph.D.

31625  |  9:00 – 10:20 a.m.  |  TR  |  1022 Foreign Lang Bldg  |  3 hours

The purpose of this course is to provide students from all backgrounds with an introduction to the global refugee crisis, the confrontation with genocide, and the events and memories of the Holocaust. The course will arc from the present back to the early twentieth-century past and return to the present. We will examine the reports of perpetrators, bystanders, victims, and novelists; the role of anti-Semitism and anti-Islam; the interaction of war and genocide; the relationships between “crisis” and state policy; and the general debate about refugees. The heart of the seminar is the discussion of the texts from novels to journalism to philosophical reflections; students will also prepare “mini-presentations” on a diversity of discrete topics to supplement the week’s reading; and finally students will write three short reflective essays drawn on three of the readings so that every student writes both on the past and the present and on fiction and non-fiction.

***This course is a senior capstone course that is restricted for incoming freshmen***

***This course satisfies the general education requirement for Humanities & the Arts and Historical Perspectives.***

Instructor: Peter Fritzsche has taught History at the University of Illinois for nearly thirty years. He has received Guggenheim, Humboldt, and NEH fellowships, has written seven books in German and European history including Life and Death in the Third Reich, Germans into Nazis, Reading Berlin 1900, Nietzsche and the Death of God, and Stranded in the Present, and, most recently, An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler. Fritzsche has served as chair of the Department of History and has been recognized for his excellence in teaching, including regular inclusion on the “Incomplete List of Excellent Teachers.” He taught several courses for CHP in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including an ACDIS-sponsored course with Jeremiah Sullivan on “the United States as a Superpower” and a CHP course on the “Temptations of Fascism.” In more recent years, he has taught honors courses on the Holocaust (fall 2007 and fall 2010) and on World War I (spring 2013, spring 2014, and fall 2015) as well as the wars in Iraq (fall 2016). His pedagogy emphasizes the close analysis of key texts through discussion and debate and the creation of defensible interpretations of human behavior through writing and rewriting and an empathetic understanding of narrative, documentary, and argumentative strategies. His ultimate aim is give students confidence in speaking about the world and ultimately in judging it.


CHP 395C: Journalists in Popular Culture, Matthew Ehrlich, Ph.D.

55838  |  2:00 – 3:20 p.m.  |  MW  |   |  113 Gregory Hall  |  3 Hours

Why should we care about the image of the journalist in popular culture? The main reasons are simple: First, journalism is supposed to provide us with the stories and information that we need to govern ourselves. Second, journalists have long been familiar characters in popular culture, and those characters are likely to shape people’s impressions of the news media at least as much if not more than the actual press does. Third, popular culture is a powerful tool for thinking about what journalism is and should be. This class will examine depictions of journalists in movies, TV shows, and other media over the past century – depictions that are at once repellent and romantic, villainous and heroic—and it will consider their implications for the news media, the public, and democracy. It is intended as a provocative and entertaining way of generating insight into not only journalism, but also ourselves.

***This course is a senior capstone course that is restricted for incoming freshmen***

***This course is not being petitioned for general education credit this term***

Instructor: Matthew Ehrlich is Professor Emeritus of Journalism. He has won the Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois. He also has appeared on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students 38 different semesters. Professor Ehrlich’s books include Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture and Journalism in the Movies. His latest book project is Kansas City vs. Oakland: How Two Cities and Their Sports Teams Fought to Be Big League. Professor Ehrlich has served as Interim Director of the Institute of Communications Research at the U of I. Before becoming a professor, he worked for several years as a public radio journalist, including at Illinois Public Media.


CHP 396C: Gender Communication, Grace Giorgio, Ph.D.

40536  |  2:00 – 3:20 p.m.  |  TR  |  1051 Lincoln Hall  |  3 Hours

This course investigates how gender and sexuality are communicated. Language, our statements as well as our demeanors, both explains and defines us. It sends covert as well as overt messages about us and our culture. In a complicated and not generally symmetrical fashion, our gender and sexuality inform our language and our language informs our gender and sexuality. This course focuses on the ways in which we discuss and enact – the ways in which we verbally and physically speak – gender and sexuality. This course interrogates social and cultural notions of gender and sexuality, and examines the way in which language serves to both reinforce and challenge these notions.

Course objectives: Develop a fundamental understanding of how gender and language interface in contemporary social and political contexts; analyze and critique how gendered language shapes individual subjectivity in social, cultural, and political spheres; increase skillfulness in analysis, theory, and praxis; apply qualitative research methods to the study of gendered communication.

***This course is a senior capstone course that is restricted for incoming freshmen***

***This course has been approved by all colleges for general education credit for Social Sciences and Advanced Comp***

Instructor: Grace Giorgio has been teaching in the Department of Communication since she arrived on campus as a graduate student in 1995. In 2001, she began teaching fulltime for the University, developing and teaching courses in popular media, gender communication, public policy and sustainability, and the geography of culture. Dr. Giorgio began teaching for Campus Honors in the fall of 2012, launching a course on place making, Communicating Public Policy: Our Cities/Ourselves (CMN 220). She also taught Gender Communication for CHP in the fall of 2015 and 2019. In 2013, Dr. Giorgio received the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Teaching Award. In the fall of 2015, she received two Provost Office grants to develop and launch Writing Fundamentals, an online, interactive grammar program for Illinois writing courses. In concert with Engineering faculty, Dr. Giorgio received a Strategic Innovations Instructional Program grant to support Engineering students with public speaking. Her research interests include an experimental use of qualitative research methods to investigate the intersection of self, culture, and the public sphere.


CLCV 323B/CWL 323B/THEA 323F: The Comic Imagination, Ariana Traill, Ph.D.

57613/57619/57617  |  1:00 – 2:20 p.m.  |  TR  |  145 Armory  |  3 Hours

“Comedy” (Greek komoidia) originated in the democratic culture of fifth century Athens. Publicly funded comedies played a vital role in the social and political life of the city, developing and changing for several hundred years before they were transplanted and transformed at Rome. This course traces the evolution of ancient comedy from the political satires of Aristophanes to the conspicuously Greek-styled domestic (“situation”) comedies of Terence.

We will be examining the plays as reflections of the politics, social climate and religious beliefs of the societies that produced them, in order to explain how a genre originally associated with Athenian democratic identity could become a mark of cultural sophistication for aristocratic Romans and still succeed as popular entertainment with the Roman public. To what degree is their humor culturally specific? Are there universals? From the start, comedy functioned as a vehicle both for social criticism and escapist wish-fulfillment. Why does one element or the other become dominant in different periods? Many elements from the ancient tradition have persisted. We will look at modern staging adaptations, plus interesting parallels in the modern comic tradition.

***This class satisfies the general education criteria for Advanced Comp, Humanities: Literature and the Arts, and Cultural Studies: Western general education credit***

Instructor: Ariana Traill (B.A. University of Toronto 1991, Ph.D. Harvard 1997) is Associate Professor and Lynn M Martin Professorial Scholar in the Department of the Classics. She is also affiliated with Theater Studies. Her research interests include Greek and Roman comedy, women in antiquity, and the reception of ancient comedy. She is the author of Women and the Comic Plot in Menander (Cambridge, 2008) and co-editor of A Companion to Terence (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, with Antony Augoustakis). Current book projects include a commentary and edited volume on Plautus’ Cistellaria, and a translation of Menander’s Periceiromene. She has had the richly rewarding experience of teaching classes for CHP since 2005.


CPSC 199 CHP: Agriculture and the Environment, George Czapar, Ph.D.

15375  |  10:00 – 11:20 a.m.  |  MW  |  W121 Turner Hall  |  3 Hours

This course will examine the effects of current agricultural practices on the environment. Discussion topics include pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, water quality, water supply, organic production, food safety, and international agriculture. This course will be a combination of lecture and student-led discussions of assigned readings. Regardless of their career paths, CHP students will likely be required to interpret and explain research results to their peers and the general public. One goal of the class is that students will be able to critically evaluate research articles and refine their opinions concerning environmental issues. Emphasis will also be placed on effective communication of technical information and enhancing presentation skills.

***This course has been approved by all colleges for general education credits for Natural Sciences & Technology: Life Sciences and Physical Sciences(choose one).***

Instructor: George Czapar is a former Associate Dean and Director of University of Illinois Extension and an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Crop Sciences. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in agronomy from the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. in agronomy from Iowa State University. His research and extension programs focused on interdisciplinary projects that address the environmental impacts of agriculture, especially related to water quality. He was the leader of a Strategic Research Initiative in water quality for the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR) and he helped establish the Illinois Council on Best Management Practices (C-BMP). He previously was the Director of the Center for Watershed Science, Illinois State Water Survey, Prairie Research Institute and Water Quality Coordinator for University of Illinois Extension.

Czapar is Associate Professor Emeritus in the Campus Honors Program and has been named to the “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students” numerous times. He also received the Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement and the College of ACES Award for Excellence in Teaching and Outreach.


ECON 102 CHP: Microeconomic Principles, Martin Perry, Ph.D.

63021  |  11:00 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.  |  TR  |  Online  |  3 hours

This course focuses on the fundamental concepts and analysis of microeconomics, including supply and demand, the price mechanism, costs and revenues, theories of the firm, market structures, factor and resource markets, market failure and the impact of government in promoting economic efficiency. The course examines economic decision-making by individuals and firms and encourages students to apply microeconomic tools to current economic policy problems and issues such as pollution, rent controls, farm subsidies and welfare policies.

Upon completion of the course, a student will:

  • Have a strong foundation in the theory and concepts of microeconomics
  • Make connections between real world and academic economics
  • Understand the relationship between conceptual and pragmatic applications of economics to the economic behavior of the “representative” individual, product, firm, market, price, etc.
  • Learn how to apply the tools of microtheory to policy problems and issues such as global warming, pollution, health care, and government subsidies.

***This course satisfies the general education requirement for Social Sciences***

Instructor: Martin Perry is the Department Head and Professor of Economics. Dr. Perry specializes in the antitrust analysis of mergers and vertical restraints. Before joining the University of Illinois in 2011, Dr. Perry served as Professor of Economics at Rutgers University in New Jersey since 1989. In addition, Dr. Perry held positions in research groups at Bell Telephone Laboratories and Bell Communications Research; has visited the Wharton School of Management at the University of Pennsylvania; and is a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Economic Analysis in Spain. During 2004, Dr. Perry served as the Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission. In that position, he worked on the investigation of the merger between Cingular Wireless and AWE Wireless. Dr. Perry has consulted for federal and state agencies on mergers in various industrial product markets and the casino gaming market in Atlantic City. Dr. Perry has also consulted on private antitrust cases involving aftermarket pricing, exclusive dealing, price discrimination and casino gaming.


ENGL 199 CHP: Why Do We Love Terror?, James Hansen, Ph.D.

40419  |  11:00 – 11:50 a.m.  |  MWF  |  44 English Bldg  | 3 Hours

Horror is like a serpent: always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. Like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious, it can’t be hidden away. —Dario Argento Have you ever asked yourself: “Why do I enjoy being frightened?” When the novel came into being in the in middle of the eighteenth century, its most popular genre was the Gothic—the novel of horror. The modern era—the era of science, reason, and democracy—has been haunted by terror, fear, and the unknown since its very inception. So, why do we like to be terrified? What is it about scary stories that so appeals to modern culture?

We often avoid delving into such questions because they reveal to us that our pleasures are woefully uncivilized and terribly unseemly. Beginning with one of the earliest Gothic horror novels, the course will trace out a literary, philosophical, and filmic history. Each unit of the course will explore how a different psychological/cultural concept of terror plays out in an aesthetic context.

Novels for the class will include: Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Stephen Graham Jones’s Mongrels (2017), Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1794), H.P. Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu (1928), and Paul Tremblay’s A Head full of Ghosts (2015). Films will include: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), Karyn Kasama’s Jennifer’s Body (2009) Robert Eggers The Witch (2015), and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). Course requirements will include two 5-page essays, one 4-page film review, weekly contributions to a course Wiki, weekly contributions to the course’s online discussion forum, active class participation, and a final exam.

***This course has been approved by all colleges for Humanities & the Arts and Cultural Studies: Western Comparative Cultures general education requirement this semester***

Instructor: James Hansen won the Humanities Council Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Illinois, and he has regularly been on the University-wide list of “Teachers Ranked as Excellent” by their students. Over the years, his teaching has spanned a good deal of the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and has investigated a range of literary theoretical approaches. In addition to classes such as “Beckett’s Late Theatre” and “The Gothic Tradition from Radcliffe to Gaiman,” which relate directly to his research, James also taught undergraduate courses on conspiracy theory films and fiction, on the history of the graphic novel, and on filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan.


FAA 110C: Exploring Arts and Creativity, Bradley Mehrtens, M.S., J. W. Morrissette, MFA, MA.

66964  |  1:30 – 2:50 p.m.  |  R  |  Online  |  3 hours

High and street art, tradition and experimentation, the familiar and unfamiliar, international and American creativity provide this course’s foundation. Students will attend performances and exhibitions, interact with artists, and examine core issues associated with the creative process in our increasingly complex global society. Faculty from the arts, sciences, humanities, and other domains will lead students through visual arts, music, dance, and theatre experiences at Krannert Center and Krannert Art Museum to spark investigation and dialogue.

The class meets twice per week: once a week for discussions, and a second time to attend performances and/or exhibitions at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and/or Krannert Art Museum. Event dates will vary. Admission to all events will be provided without charge to students enrolled in the course.

***This course satisfies the general education requirement for Humanities and the Arts: Literature and the Arts.***

Instructor: Bradley Mehrtens is an Instructor and Advisor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. He earned his bachelor’s in biology from Truman State University, and his master’s in microbiology from Illinois. His research interests include educational pedagogy, course design, and assessment. His advising interests include transitions for freshmen and transfer students, preparing for professional or graduate programs, understanding the undergraduate research experience, and acknowledging and addressing academic or personal issues. As for hobbies, he enjoys acting, theatre, movies, music, and sports.

Instructor: J.W. Morrissette is the Associate Head of the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He has served in the Department of Theatre for 24 years. He has served as chair of the BFA Theatre Studies Program, the Assistant Head for Academic Programs as well as the assistant program coordinator for INNER VOICES Social Issues Theatre. He completed his BFA in Acting at Otterbein College in Westerville, OH and both his MFA in Acting and MA in Theatre History at the University of Illinois. While attending Otterbein, he worked for Stuart Howard and Associates Casting in New York interning as a casting assistant for many Broadway productions and television commercials. J.W. has taught and directed for the past 22 years with the summer Theatre Department at Interlochen Center for the Arts. For the University of Illinois his classes include Acting, Directing, Introduction to Theatre Arts, and Broadway Musicals. He has been integral in developing components for the online course offerings in the department as well as supervising all senior Theatre Studies Thesis Projects. He has spent several summers acting with the Utah Shakespeare Festival and the Interlochen Shakespeare Festival and directs professionally when time allows. He has received the Provost’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award at the University of Illinois.


***This Course has been Canceled for Fall 2021***

FSHN 199: Nutrition and Health, Hannah Holscher, Ph.D., R.D.

54313  |  12:30 – 1:50 p.m.  |  T Asynchronous Online/R In Person  |  3 hours

The Nutrition and Health course is designed to provide an overview of how foods influence health and disease. Students will develop broad knowledge in nutrition and the application of this knowledge to promote health across the lifespan. The overarching objectives of the course are to provide students with opportunities to 1) discuss foundational knowledge in nutrition and 2) develop and refine skills that are necessary to critically evaluate nutrition and health claims. Class sessions will include a combination of lecture and problem-based learning group activities that allow students to apply information to real life examples. Course projects will provide students with opportunities to evaluate their diet, develop a critical and reflective orientation toward cultural differences and how they influence health, and immerse themselves in the challenges of living with the chronic disease by reading a memoir of someone experiencing it. Lastly, they will be able to explore and evaluate research studies that serve as the basis of our nutritional recommendation for the treatment or prevention of a selected disease and create a unique project to summarize and share their findings with the class.

***This course will be petitioned for general education credit for Life Sciences & Technology.***

Instructor: Dr. Holscher is an Assistant Professor of Nutrition in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. Her research laboratory studies the connections between diet, the gut microbiota, and health. Her work informs dietary recommendations to improve health and well-being. Prof. Holscher received the New Innovator in Food and Agriculture Research Award from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research in 2017. She also received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Division of Nutritional Sciences at UIUC in 2017 and the Outstanding Educator Award from the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at UIUC in 2018.


GER 199 LJ1: Harry Potter and Western Culture, Laurie Johnson, Ph.D.

64578  |  12:30 – 1:50 p.m.  |  TR  |  336 Davenport Hall  |  3 hours

How does one of the most significant literary and pop-cultural phenomena of all time—the Harry Potter series—reflect and transform central aspects of Western culture? We investigate ways in which myth, fantasy, and the novel relate and differ as forms. We examine issues of character, genre, structure, and the philosophical and ethical issues raised within and by the Harry Potter series. We read all volumes in the series and also consider the relation between the books and the corresponding films, and explore how different media represent and transform content. By the end of the semester, you will have learned and used the tools of close reading, explored different methods of literary and cultural analysis, acquired familiarity with significant movements in Western thought, and become acquainted with contemporary discussions about connections between traditional and popular culture as well as between literature and film. Readings and discussions are in English, with no prerequisites.

***This course has been approved by all colleges for Western Cultures general education credit this semester***

Instructor: Laurie Johnson works on eighteenth- through twenty-first-century intellectual history, literature, psychology, philosophy, and visual studies, with emphasis on Romanticism and its afterlife. She is the author of three books and numerous articles and essays. Her work has been supported by grants from the Fulbright and Humboldt foundations as well as by the German Academic Exchange Service. Johnson has won several teaching awards, and was named Helen Corley Petit Scholar at the University of Illinois for exceptional research and teaching while on the tenure track. She has taught and researched at public and private universities, a liberal arts college, and a community college, and has studied or researched at several institutions overseas, including the Universities of Cologne, Tübingen, and Regensburg, and the German Film Archive in Berlin. Johnson has coached faculty around the country for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity’s Faculty Success Program, and she was a Campus Workshop Facilitator for the NCFDD. She also was Visiting Professor for a year at the University of Ghent.


KIN 340 SP1: Sociology & Psychology of Physical Activity, Steven Petruzzello, Ph.D.

64961  |  1:00 – 2:20 p.m.  |  TR  |  130 Freer Hall  |  3 hours

Social and Psychological Aspects of Physical Activity is designed to acquaint you with how psychological and social processes and constraints influence human action in physical activity environments. The course will utilize both lecture and laboratory/discussion formats, with ample opportunity for interaction and discussion between professor and students and among yourselves. There may be occasional guest lectures. You, as the student, should feel free (and are strongly encouraged) to ask questions, take alternate viewpoints, present supportive arguments for statements, and generally make yourself a presence in the class. This cannot be emphasized enough. Keeping your insights and ideas to yourself will deprive us all of potentially illuminating, interesting, and useful information.

I believe in the following statement by Socrates: “I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.” From you I expect: (a) commitment to excellence, that is, I don t want you to overlook other important aspects of your life, but I do expect you to do work, spend the time, and do the reading and writing (and thus, thinking) necessary to be successful in this course; (b) self-motivation; and (c) initiative and critical thought. If you leave my classroom and have acquired a stronger ability to think, I will have done my job.

***This course satisfies the general education requirement for Advanced Composition.***

Instructor: Steven Petruzzello is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. He received his Ph.D. in Exercise Science, Psychology of Exercise and Sport from Arizona State University in 1991. He began his career at UIUC in 1991 and has served as the Associate Head for Graduate Studies, Department of Kinesiology & Community Health since 2011. He has also been a Research Scientist for the Illinois Fire Service Institute since 2005. Professor Petruzzello’s research focuses on determining the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of exercise in improving affect/emotion. The second line of research examines the physiological and psychological aspects of firefighting. Professor Petruzzello has been awarded the College of Applied Health Sciences Undergraduate Teaching Faculty Award, the Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and has consistently been named to the “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students.”


LER 199 IR: Immigration & Race: Inequality in Work, Michael LeRoy, Ph.D

70463  |  3:30 – 5:50 p.m  |  T  |  134 Armory  |  3 hours

Throughout U.S. history, whites have erected legal barriers to racial equality in the workplace. This course examines public policies, drawn from the U.S. Constitution, laws, court rulings, executive orders and related policy directives that have led to inequality in work. Our weekly readings will examine these topics:

  1. Constitutional debates, admission of free and slave states, and related court rulings that maintained and enhanced slavery as well as inferior legal status for free blacks.
  2. Public policy debates over “compassionate” repatriation of blacks to Liberia, and the presumption that whites and blacks are inherently incapable of working side-by- side.
  3. Court rulings declaring that slaves and peons are property or of such inferior legal status as to deny those individuals basic human rights of liberty and equality; and protests, revolts, and other organized resistance by slaves and people of color.
  4. Radical Republicans, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.
  5. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, white terrorism, quasi-slavery, and sharecropping; and passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act.
  6. Chinese immigration and “Yellow Fever”; and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
  7. Legal dismantling of the Ku Klux Klan Act and emergence of Jim Crow.
  8. Japanese and pan-Asian immigration restrictions; the National Origins Formula.
  9. Labor unions and the reborn KKK: The segregated workplace.
  10. The Two Faces of FDR: Japanese Internment and Executive Order 8802 (ordering integration of U.S. industrial plants).
  11. Legislating racial equality in the workplace, 1964-2016: Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
  12. White Supremacy and Nativism in the Age of Trump.

***This course has been approved by all colleges for U.S. Minority Cultures general education credit***

Instructor: Michael LeRoy has published extensively on antitrust in professional sports, immigration, race, and employment policy (in particular, the “gig economy”), strikes and lockouts, voluntary and mandatory arbitration, employee involvement teams, and labor law implications stemming from national emergencies. Professor LeRoy has testified before the full U.S. Senate Committee on labor and human resources; consulted at the request of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in connection with the Taft-Hartley labor dispute involving Pacific Maritime Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union; and served as an advisor to the President’s Commission on the United States Postal Service.


LING 199 RS: Hittite Language and Culture, Ryan Shosted, Ph.D.

22037  |  2:00-2:50 p.m.  |  MWF  |  1026 Lincoln Hall  |  3 hours

In this course, students explore the grammatical structure of the oldest‐attested Indo‐European language. They use clay and reeds to master the art of composing texts in cuneiform, one of the world’s oldest writing systems. They read and comment on primary texts relating to the decipherment of the language, as well as cuneiform ‘autographs’ of Hittite inscriptions. They investigate how nineteenth‐century orientalists with a thirst for empire used the re‐discovery of Hittite to promote themes of racial supremacy. They observe how the earliest predictions of modern linguistics were borne out once Hittite was deciphered and fully understood. They reflect on the truly ancient nature of multilingualism and multiculturalism by better understanding how Mesopotamian cultures strongly influenced the language, religion, and culture of the Hittite world. For an article with more information about this class, go to https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/804992

***This course has been approved by all colleges for the general education requirement for Cultural Studies: Non-Western and Humanities & the Arts***

Instructor: Prof. Shosted studied Czech language and literature at the College of Wooster and Beloit College before transferring to Brigham Young University and graduating in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics. He was a Student Fulbright Fellow at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, where he studied Changana. He then began his post-doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. He was a Visiting Professor at the State University of Campinas, Brazil in 2015 and has was promoted to the rank of Professor at Illinois in 2020. He is interested in phonetics, phonology, and the development of sound-symbol correspondences, particularly in cuneiform.


PHIL 214H: Biomedical Ethics, Jonathan Livengood, Ph.D.

75438  |  1:00-1:50 p.m.  |  MWF  |  1136 Foreign Lang Bldg  |  3 hours

Biomedical Ethics (PHIL 214) teaches students to think critically about ethical problems that arise in the fields of medicine and bioengineering. The course is organized roughly around the three areas of medical procedures, medical research, and medical resources. We will consider ethical challenges surrounding specific medical procedures, such as abortion, euthanasia, and cosmetic surgeries; we will consider ethical challenges for medical research, such as privacy, informed consent, and the moral status of research animals; and we will consider ethical challenges connected to public health and scarce medical resources, such as organ transplantation, triage, vaccination, and the provision of healthcare. Special emphasis will be placed on the relationship between ethical theory and public policies governing medical practice.

***This course satisfies the general education requirement for Humanities; Historical & Philosophical Perspectives***

Instructor: Jonathan Livengood is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research is motivated by his interest in scientific method — an interest he’s had since reading C.S. Peirce’s Illustrations of the Logic of Science as an undergraduate. For those who want to read the Illustrations as they originally appeared, Google Books has you covered: The Fixation of Belief, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, The Doctrine of Chances, The Probability of Induction, The Order of Nature, and Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis. Currently, Professor Livengood is working on several problems under the umbrella of causal reasoning. Some of his research concerns the psychology and semantics of causal reasoning, the normative questions about causal inference from data, and the role and legitimacy of causal reasoning in science.


SOCW 245A: Doing Good for Society through the Non-Profit Sector, Ben Lough, Ph.D.

73423  |  9:00 – 10:15 a.m.  |  TR  |  166 Wohlers  |  3 hours

Do you want to change the world? Are you passionate about addressing homelessness, sexual violence, or environmental problems? Do you volunteer or make donations to charities? Want to create new solutions to social problems? Much of this happens in the nonprofit sector, yet most people know little about it. The nonprofit sector, also called the non-governmental or voluntary sector, employs around 10% of the US workforce and covers nearly 9% of all wages and salaries in the US economy. Nonprofit organizations meet needs not covered by business or government, provide many important resources that help people in need, and greatly enrich our lives through the arts. This course provides a general overview of the benefits and challenges of this critical sector.

***This course satisfies the general education credit for Social Sciences***

Instructor: Professor Lough earned his BS in Sociology, his MSW from Brigham Young University, and his PhD from the Brown School at Washington University. Dr. Lough has extensive international research and practice experience, having worked as a Senior Researcher and Resident Consultant to the United Nations in Germany, a Foreign Expert in the People’s Republic of China, an independent consultant to the Department of Human and Social Services of American Samoa, and program evaluator for the Foundation for International and Community Assistance in Armenia and the Republic of Georgia. In addition to considerable research and teaching experience, Dr. Lough also worked as a clinical social worker.