ANT 3410: Global Health – Jonathan Stillo

CRN 24721 Monday 2:30PM-5:00PM GL, SI

This honors seminar takes a holistic, biosocial approach to global health. We will look at the biological as well as social aspects of disease and disorder paying special attention to the social, economic, political and cultural factors that both cause disease and hinder its management. This will be accomplished by focusing on, health inequalities between and within wealthy and resource-constrained settings, how health systems are funded, the globalization of pharmaceuticals and clinical trials, the role of international and local development and civil society organizations, the effects of migration (whether routine or due to conflict/disaster) and how human rights concepts and laws impact (or not) people’s health. Special attention will be paid to anti-microbial resistant infections (AMR) and neglected tropical diseases. This course is particularly appropriate for pre-health majors as well as public health, and social sciences.

 

ENG 3020:Writing and the Community – Ryan Flaherty

CRN 24262 Monday/Wednesday 11:30AM - 12:45PM ICN

In this section of English 3020, we will partner with Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in and around Detroit. The community organizations we will partner with are ones dedicated to education (St. Vincent Sarah Fisher), food insecurity (Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and Michigan Urban Farming Initiative), and environmental justice (Zero Waste Detroit). Other partnership opportunities will likely arise, creating a diverse volunteering environment for English 3020 students. Among other topics, students will study and write about the impact of neoliberal economic policies on community needs, the communication practices of community-based organizations, ethics in community-oriented research, and applying academic research to community-focused writing and advocacy. This course requires 20 hours of service work/ volunteering with one of the course's community partners.

*Eligible to be paired with HON 3000 Field Learning

 

HON 2000: Gangs & Organized Crime - James Buccellato

CRN 23225 Tuesday/Thursday 11:30AM-12:45PM SI, CI

CRN 23226 Tuesday/Thursday 1PM-2:15PM SI, CI

The course examines how the cultural, economic, and political processes of globalization facilitate transnational criminal networks. Students will conduct individual and collaborative research that analyzes and evaluates the past and present transformations of gangs and organized crime groups. Furthermore, we will investigate the global problems emerging from these networks, such as human trafficking, money laundering, crimes against nature, the drug trade, cybercrimes and public corruption.

 

HON 2000: Detroit as Simulation – Stephanie Bundy Winter 2024 Honors College Foundational Seminars

CRN 25909 Tuesday/Thursday 10:00AM-11:15AM SI, CI

CRN 25911 Tuesday/Thursday 11:30AM-12:45PM SI, CI

CRN 25912 Tuesday/Thursday 1PM-2:15PM SI, CI

What do videogames really teach us about the world? Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message” in reference to the growing use of new media and its impact on society. How has media provided “the message” about Detroit? This seminar investigates the simulated Detroit compared to the realistic version. From there, the students will work together to propose a new narrative on Detroit that is accessible to newer generations. Through primary research, students will sharpen their critical view of media culture and collaborate to eventually build a videogame level designed around Detroit. The course introduces game design, narrative, and marketing and is suitable for all majors.

 

HON 2000: Race and Sports in the United States - Bryan R. Ellis

CRN 23219 Monday/Wednesday 1PM-2:15PM SI, CI

CRN 23221 Monday/Wednesday 2:30PM-3:45PM SI, CI

In our everyday, common-sense consumption of cultural production, we view the market of sports as the toy department of human affairs. It is constructed as a site of leisure and enjoyment—as an escape from the real-world. Many Americans naively believe sports are apolitical and meritocratic. This course will move beyond the passive, leisure-faire understanding of sports toward a deeper appreciation of the sports milieu and market as a contested site where race is produced and reproduced. We will study the ever-present but latent social, economic, and political dimensions of sports. Upon completing this course, you will see sports anew.

 

HON 2000: Creating iDetroit – Bryan Ellis and Beth Fowler

CRN 24184 Monday/Wednesday 10AM-11:15AM SI, CI

This class is a partnership between i.Detroit, a researcher-artist project that focuses on everyday community agents in the city. By employing the i.Detroit research and artistic methodologies, students will learn how to and will be encouraged to present their work graphically by creating infographics, story maps, and other interactive technologies. Furthermore, students will learn how to use both statistical data and theories about urban communities to document and analyze Detroit. A key goal of the class is to give students an intimate and more nuanced understanding of the lives of residents in Detroit beyond HON 1000, while also allowing you to use your creative side.

*Eligible to be paired with HON 3000 Field Learning

 

HON 2000: Pop Goes the World: Global Freedom Movements and U.S. Popular Culture - Beth Fowler

CRN 23224 Monday/Wednesday 11:30AM-12:45PM SI, CI Winter 2024 Honors College Foundational Seminars

This seminar class will teach students to examine how American popular culture, especially music, was used to challenge political and social systems in the United States, Europe, Central America, Asia, and Africa between the 1940s and 1980s. Topics include popular culture within the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and Third Worldist Decolonization movements.

CRN 23223 Tuesday/Thursday (Online – Synchronous) 10AM-11:15PM SI, CI

This seminar class will teach students to examine how American popular culture, especially music, was used to challenge political and social systems in the United States, Europe, Central America, Asia, and Africa between the 1940s and 1980s. This class is a designated Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) class, which means that students will partner with students from a university in South Korea to work on a collaborative project. Project topics will include K-Pop, K-Dramas, and Korean anime. Beyond this project, we will also examine the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and Third Worldist Decolonization movements.

 

HON 2000: Detroit Moves – Nicole Gerring

CRN 25879 Wednesday/Friday (HYBRID) 1:00PM-2:15PM SI, CI

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values of many contemporary private and public institutions, including Wayne State University and major employers. Before DEI was a mainstream value, individual leaders and policy entrepreneurs broke ground and led struggles for social change. In this course, we will learn about social change using individual narratives of social justice leaders in Metro Detroit, and study the methods leaders used to advance their causes, including labor and community organizing, social relief, community and solidarity building, business ownership and entrepreneurship, and consciousness raising. The class will culminate in students choosing a contemporary local activist and writing a research paper about that activist's work engaging local communities in social or political action.

 

HON 2000: Thinking Through Technology - Aaron Martin

CRN 24183 Tuesday/Thursday 8:30AM-9:45AM SI, CI

The text that will guide this course is the best-selling book of its genre, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Much of its success is owed to its style: more a travel memoir than a piece of philosophy, we’ll use it to examine various ways of approaching technology-related issues, including to what extent do new technologies add meaning to our lives as well as for whom technology tends to help and in other ways hurt. Central to this course is better understanding why it’s worth allowing ourselves the time and space to really think through the role certain technologies play in—and over—our lives, particularly as we’re located in the “Motor City”—whatever that means, or will mean, going forward. Winter 2024 Honors College Foundational Seminars

 

HON 2000: Food in America- Aaron Martin

CRN 23218 Monday/Wednesday 8:30AM-9:45AM SI, CI

If kids hate eating broccoli, but kids need their veggies to be healthy, and where kids love pizza, then let's just make pizza a vegetable so they'll be healthy, right!? (Yes, we did that.) This seminar introduces analytical tools to identify and evaluate various discursive points at which food narratives and cultural politics intersect in society and within research programs—ones like engineering, health sciences, anthropology, and, well, yours. By semester's end, you'll have learned about what informs people's relationship with food as well as how institutional processes shape—and, at the same time, are shaped by—food habits.

 

HON 2000: What Plagues Detroit? - Tim Moran

CRN 23220 Monday/Wednesday 10AM-11:15AM SI, CI

CRN 23227 Tuesday/Thursday 11:30AM-12:45PM SI, CI

A history overview of the city's development with a focus on response to epidemic disease, public services, and public health, this seminar will explore the shaping of the city as a response to biological events, resource constraints, and social and medical advances. We will consider the rise of diseases and the city's cultural and structural responses to traditional infectious disease outbreaks over time, creation of health infrastructure, and social response to disease. We will also examine factors that have affected the city through public health issues such as violence, criminalized activity, access to clean water, adjacency to pollution, and the health impact of the underground economy for things such as street drugs.

 

HON 2000: Politics of Urban Education – Serena Wilcox

CRN 25866 Tuesday/Thursday 10AM-11:15AM SI, CI

CRN 25865 Tuesday/Thursday 11:30AM-12:45PM SI, CI

CRN 26027 Wednesday 11:30AM-2:00PM SI, CI

A history overview of the city's development with a focus on response to epidemic disease, public services, and public health, this seminar will explore the shaping of the city as a response to biological events, resource constraints, and social and medical advances. We will consider the rise of diseases and the city's cultural and structural responses to traditional infectious disease outbreaks over time, creation of health infrastructure, and social response to disease. We will also examine factors that have affected the city through public health issues such as violence, criminalized activity, access to clean water, adjacency to pollution, and the health impact of the underground economy for things such as street drugs.

*Eligible to be paired with HON 3000 Field Learning

 

PH 2100: Intro to Public Health – James Mallare

CRN 25744 Monday/Wednesday 11:30AM-12:45PM NSI

These past few years have been extraordinary -- multiple infectious disease outbreaks; powerful movements for racial, social, and economic justice; global warming and climate change; war and interpersonal violence, and more. This class investigates those significant factors -- "social determinants" -- that contribute to some people living long healthy lives while others experience more suffering and substantially shorter lives. We will focus on the role of race, place, and social class. Our whirlwind tour of public health includes mental health, health inequalities, risks for suicide, gun violence, and the differential health challenges experienced across the life span.

*Eligible to be paired with HON 3000 Field Learning

 

PHI 1110: Ethical Issues in Healthcare – Layla Saatchi

CRN 26033 Tuesday/Thursday 11:30AM-12:45PM CI, DEI

CRN 26034 Tuesday/Thursday 1PM-2:15PM CI, DEI

This course is a must for anyone interested in pursuing an occupation related to the health care profession - broadly construed. Here, you will have an opportunity to engage with controversial topics from choices about bringing human life into this world to choices about ending a human life and many relevant topics in between. You will learn how to take a principled approach to these controversial issues, meaning how to understand and identify the ethical principles that are believed to differentiate what is morally right from morally wrong decisions and policies. Finally, you will learn how to interrogate these principles within the context of Detroit, beginning with understanding that Hippocratic ethics is only one among many ethical approaches to health care decisions.

 

SOC 2300: Urban explorations: social (in)justice in Detroit —Lauren Duquette-Rury

CRN 25561 Thursday 11:30AM-2:00PM SI, DEI

Students in this course will explore the theme of social justice in urban contexts like Detroit. We will investigate the historical roots of contemporary social inequalities and examine systems of privilege and oppression that perpetuate unequal access to resources, agenda-setting, and power. We will cover punitive policing and mass incarceration, immigration enforcement, reproductive health, and environmental justice. In tandem, the course invites students to consider how the production of creative acts generate alternative vehicles for deliberation and dialogue, empathic engagement, and understanding outside the confines of the academic ivory tower. In consideration of selected topics, students will conceptualize, design, and install a museum-style exhibit composed of their individual and collaborative creative acts for justice. Harnessing the creative zeitgeist of Detroit, students will venture outside the classroom to the Detroit Institute of Art, visit Detroit-based artist’s studio, and meet with conceptual artists and curators to learn how to translate the social science-based arguments we learn about into tangible representations of storytelling. The course calls on students to stretch their creative verve to become mediums of explanation and provocation grounded in empirically informed sensory platforms. Winter 2024 Honors College Foundational Seminars

 

SW 1010--Introduction to Social Work and Social Welfare-- Shantalea Johns

CRN 23092 Online – Asynchronous DEI

This course explores issues of fairness and equality in economic, political and social systems, and teaches how to apply social justice principles to major social problems in everyday life. Students attend out-of-the-classroom events on campus and in the community to learn from social workers and social justice leaders who are engaging in work with vulnerable and at-risk populations in Detroit.

*Eligible to be paired with HON 3000 Field Learning