Honors Courses:  Fall 2005

HONORS 210.  The French Revolution & Napoleon:  Politics and Art in a Revolutionary Age

Dr. Robert Whalen (North Carolina Professor of the Year, 1996)

Tuesday-Thursday 2:50pm

The guillotine!  The Marsaillese!  Revolutionaries and Romantics! Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette; Napoleon and Josephine; Beethoven; Wordsworth; Goethe; Goya; Mary Wollstonecraft; Horatio Nelson, Wolfe Tone, and Toussaint L’Ouverture – all this and much else rushes through the volcanic moment in French and European  history that runs from the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 to the collapse of Napoleon’s empire in 1815.  This course will explore politics and the arts in this tumultuous generation, and examine the interrelationships among revolutionary politics, war, poetry and prose, music and the visual arts.  3 hrs.

Though set in a distinct period in the past, this is not a "history" course but is rather an interdisciplinary investigation of politics and culture, not in the abstract, though, but in the concrete moment of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.   While students would study political texts, they would also consider poetry, music (Beethoven’s Eroica for instance), and the visual arts (from David to Goya).  The course will conclude by examining the ways later generations of both politicians and arts have tried to come to terms with the legacy of the Revolution.

HONORS 210:  Jazz and the Development of American Democracy

Dr. Emily Seelbinder and Prof. Connie Rhyne-Bray

Tuesdays 8:30-11:00am

This course explores the history and development of jazz as a form of musical expression and as a vehicle for shaping American life and culture to better express the principles of democracy, first articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Among the artists and writers to be discussed will be W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, Benny Goodman, James Weldon Johnson, and John Coltrane.  3 hrs.

This course, which combines music, literature, history, political science and sociology, will be experiential and discussion based. We plan to bring in speakers and performers and to use videos and recorded musical examples in addition to the core readings. It will provide the opportunity for students to explore in depth a musical style, which is truly American, its origins, its evolution, and its continuing impact on American life and culture.