Over the last half of the twentieth century and into the new millennium, the notion of human rights expanded as decolonization, women’s rights, and environmental movements challenged and reconfigured human rights conversations. This course studies these changes to determine how they shaped the way human rights is experienced today. Using both academic and activist sources, students will gain a better understanding of what human rights means, who has influenced ideas about human rights and how human rights efforts play our on the ground. The major project of the course will include students’ researching a specific human rights effort and creating a blog or video about their research project. Pre: 3.40 GPA or better or permission of the director of the honors program.

This course is to invite students on an exploratory journey to the basics of Buddhist history, culture, philosophy, psychology, ethics and logic in the part of the world known as Tibet. Through in-depth study the students will acquire deeper understanding of Buddhist worldview. The course will examine the origins of Buddhism, the chronology of its introduction into Tibet, and important figures and events in its development over the past 1500 years. Students will be invited to explore fundamental Buddhist teachings and practices for achieving states of well-being, meditation, enlightenment and nirvana. Specific attention will be given to how Buddhist forms of compassion, meditation and wisdom traditions can contribute to peace and happiness in a chaotic and politically conflicted world. The course is also intended to help students enrich their knowledge and skills related to diversity, inclusion, and social harmony. The course will conclude with an analysis of the rapidly growing interest in Buddhism in the west for example its potential for neuroscientific research on mind-body connections.

A caste system divides people into hierarchical groups based on aspects of their social identity. Within a caste, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages with your position. As such, the Western beauty caste system, emblematic of larger socio-political beauty norms in the U.S., sorts and stratifies women according to phenotype. Historically, Black women‰Ûªs hair and bodies have been positioned at the bottom of the Western beauty caste system. Engaging critical social theories, such as Black feminist thought and critical race theory, as a methodology, the purpose of this seminar will be to deconstruct, problematize, and interrogate the Western beauty caste system by centering the experiences of women in the African diaspora. Consistent with the methodologies of Black feminist thought and critical race theory, this course engages numerous forms of oppositional scholarship found in peer-reviewed/non-peer reviewed articles, books, documentaries, film, movies, art, music, poetry, spoken word, radio, podcasts, websites, etc.