Fall 2005 Courses

Courses for First-Year Students

GST 110  The Global Experience
Professor Jean Schwind

This interdisciplinary seminar will examine the social, economic, and political responsibilities of global citizenship. It will explore cultural and natural diversity from Mauritania (a police state in the desert supported by a primitive and tribal form of slavery) to Calcutta (a filthy, overpopulated, and impoverished “hellhole” in the American press, but a “magnet of hope for the world’s third largest population”) to the low-density suburban sprawl of Colorado Springs. It will also examine the challenges and benefits of human communication and cooperation within this diversity.

Like all General Studies courses at Elon, GST 110 strives to promote scholarship, leadership, wholeness, diversity, independence, and foundational skills. All sections of Global Studies explore themes of the importance of individual responsibility; the relationship of humans to the natural world; globalization and tribalization as powerful world forces; the impact of imperialism and colonialism; the nature of culture; and the plights of disempowered groups.

Team-Taught Course for second-year students

HNR 271 Evolutionary Psychology
Professors Greg Haenel and Maurice Levesque

General Studies Distribution: Science and Society
Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:20-3:00

This seminar explores evolutionary accounts of human behavior by examining the biological underpinnings of important adaptive behaviors. The course begins with an introduction to evolutionary theory and continues with an examination of primary research on human behavior relevant to understanding how specific behaviors may be evolved adaptations. Students will undertake a semester-long examination of a particular behavior (e.g. jealousy, attraction, altruism, etc.) to develop an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary explanations of human behavior.

HNR 277 Civil Rights Movement in Memory and Literature
Professors Janet Warman and Jim Bissett

General Studies Distribution: Civilization and Expression (can count for literature)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30-12:10

This course will focus on the Civil Rights Movement, when black and white activists used the tactics of direct, nonviolent action to end the system of segregation in the United States. By immersing ourselves in literary and autobiographical accounts of this fascinating historical development - thereby studying it from an explicitly more personal and human perspective than in more traditional scholarly texts - we hope to gain an appreciation for the complexity and ambiguity of this important development in the history of our nation.

Courses for upper-class students

GST 351 The Indian in American Culture
Professor Clyde Ellis
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:10-3:50

This course considers what our many different and contradictory images of Indians can tell us about ourselves, about Indians, and about our understanding of history and culture. The goal of the course is to examine how, why, and with what consequences Indians have so often been turned into examples of the exotic other. Students will immerse themselves in the literature of several academic disciplines, construct their own arguments about why Americans insist on portraying Indians as we do, and think analytically about the consequences.

English 367 The Arthurian Legend
Professor Helen Mackay

Monday-Wednesday-Friday, 10:40-11:50

Read about the bold knights of King Arthur's Round Table, the most famous love triangle in literature, and the glory and decline of Camelot. Experience the Western world's best-know legend from its possible historical seed in sixth-century Britain to its twentieth-century flowering in fantasy, romance, film, and other popular culture formats. This course meets the General Studies literature or Advanced Studies requirements in the Expression category.

Courses open to all Honors students

MTH 112-H  General Statistics
Professor James Beuerle

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:10-3:50

Upon successful completion of this course, students will have greater competence in descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, probability theory, regression analysis, writing, and technology. More information available at http://math.elon.edu/~jbeuerle.

MTH 121-H  Calculus and Analytic Geometry
Professor Jeff Clark

Students are introduced to analytic geometry, functions, limits and continuity, differentiation of algebraic functions with applications, the definite integral, and the fundamental theorem of integral calculus. A specific graphing calculator is required.