Honors Program students take between three and four HOPR 3700 Seminar classes on their path to graduation.

Current Seminar

Spring 2024: The Trickster, 3 credit hours

Course ID 245792, HOPR 3700-01, T H 12:30 – 1:45, Sattgast 331, Dr. Mark Fulton

A basic function of the human nervous system is to model the world and predict the future.  Everyone tries to do this, and everyone periodically fails – either through ignorance, or through the general cussedness and unpredictability of everything.  Many cultures have personified this unpredictable element, and we now know this figure as ‘the trickster’. In this course we will examine some of the many masks the trickster – as a metaphor for unpredictability – has worn over the years, and how people have attempted to imprison, exploit, emulate, or kill him.

Past Seminars

  • Gilgamesh to Wonder Woman: Heroism Across Cultures and Disciplines
  • Natives, Art, and Stereotype
  • Extra-Terrestrial Life
  • Information and You
  • Artistic Expression in Soviet 20th Century
  • Censorship and Free Speech
  • Information, Misinformation, and Disinformation
  • Race Relations in the 21st Century: Is There a New Black?
  • The Tao of Animal: Understanding Human-Animal Communication Across Disciplines
  • We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, A Problem-Based Approach
  • World War II: A Cultural Evolution for American Women and Minorities