Spring 2027 Honors Seminars

Honors Seminars Spring 2027

The Women of Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice In Adaptation

HNRS 4000, section1001; Tuesdays (every other week): 11am-12:50pm (1 credit)

Instructor: Dr. Heath Diehl

Description: This seminar will examine the topic of Austen in Adaptation, focusing specifically on adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and the ways in which Austen’s various female characters are imagined and re-imagined over the 220 years since Austen’s novel was written. We will begin the term with an intensive study of the source text, which will be supplemented with readings about the socio-historical conditions of the Regency period taken from nonfiction works like Roy Adkins and Lesley Adkins’ Jane Austen’s England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods (Penguin, 2014), Carolly Erickson’s Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England (William Morrow, 2011), and Venetia Murray’s An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England (Penguin, 2000).

Asian Arts of Healing-Culture, Body, and Mind

HNRS 4000, Section 1002; First 7 weeks: Mondays and Wednesdays 3:30pm-4:20pm (1 credit)

Instructor: Dr. Min Yang

Description: Arts of Healing is an interdisciplinary Honors seminar that explores the rich and diverse traditions of healing arts in Asia through a humanities-based lens. Rather than focusing on clinical training or medical outcomes, the course examines healing as a cultural, philosophical, and aesthetic practice that shapes how people understand the body, emotion, ethics, and the meaning of being human.

Drawing primarily from Asian traditions, students study both ancient and contemporary practices, including calligraphy, Asian herbal traditions, music, Taiji, meditation, and the Kungfu tea ceremony. These practices are approached as systems of cultural meaning that integrate art, philosophy, ritual, and social life. Through readings, visual materials, short lectures, and discussion, students analyze how healing arts function as modes of knowledge, self-cultivation, and reflection rather than as technical medical procedures.

A key focus of the seminar is how arts of healing offer alternative ways of thinking about self-awareness and human vulnerability, especially in moments of illness, epidemics, and pandemics. Students are encouraged to compare these holistic perspectives with more familiar Western frameworks and to reflect critically on how different cultural worldviews respond to suffering, imbalance, and care.

No prior background in Asian studies, languages, or medicine is required. The seminar welcomes students from all majors interested in culture, philosophy, and innovative humanities approaches to health and human experience.

Beauty of the Night Sky

HNRS 4000, Section 1003; Tuesdays 4pm-5:15pm (1 credit)

Instructor: Dr. Andrew Layden

Description: This course is intended for people who are curious about constellations and the beauty of the night sky. We will take an observer’s perspective on the stars, moon, sun, and planets, as well as telescopic views of deep sky objects (star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies). We will focus on the appearance of the sky rather than the scientific and mathematical findings of astronomy. We will connect astronomy with mythology and observations of early cultures, with art and literature, with the history of science, and with recent and future exploration. Students will visit the BGSU Observatory one evening to experience the night sky directly.  We will use robotic telescopes to take pictures of the night sky and use online tools to combine images to make artistic color-representations of selected astronomical objects.

Music and Protest

HNRS 4000, section 1004; Wednesday: 1:30pm-2:20pm (1 credit)

Instructor: Dr. Megan Rancier

Description: This course will examine the multifaceted ways that music and sound function in contexts of social and political resistance. In addition to studying specific genres and purposes of “protest music” through musicology and ethnomusicology, students will learn about music/sound and resistance from the perspectives of communication studies, sociology, history, and political economics. When possible, guest scholars will share their perspectives and academic work on this subject. Students will complete weekly reading assignments and reading questions, participate actively in class discussions, and share their own examples of songs that reflect weekly concepts and themes.