Arts and Letters - Honors (ALHN)

This is a year-long writing-intensive humanities seminar involving challenging cross-disciplinary readings running from ancient Greece to yesterday. There is an emphasis on critical thinking and informed constructive discussion.

The seminar, which explores the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, serves two main purposes. First, it introduces students to film as a distinctive art form. Students will become familiar with the questions and categories with which one can most meaningfully interpret and evaluate any film, including film-specific dimensions. Like theater, film is a visual, temporal, and linguistic medium, but film differs from theater insofar as it is defined by camera or shot, which frames our sight; montage or editing, which allows film to be spatially and temporally discontinuous; and mis-en-scene, the totality of expressive content in the filmed image, from setting, props, and costumes to gestures, facial expressions, and lighting. Together these three elements bring forward not only a distinctive art form but also an unusually capacious and creative ontology. Second, we will consider the ways in which Hitchcock=s works raise questions and convey meaning. Although Hitchcock is justly famous for eliciting powerful emotions, he is also a cerebral director, whose works reflect on art and its relation to reality. Power and love are the two great intersubjective themes that dominate Hitchcock=s concept of the social world. His films play with identity, mistaken identity, and identity crises. Hitchcock stresses the difficulties of achieving certainty in intersubjective relations and the various ways in which we try to navigate this uncertainty, which can evoke fear, thwart love, enable evil, and hinder the revelation of truth. Hitchcock is also a Catholic director who thematizes the gap between what is and what ought to be. His assessment of a human impulse toward cruelty is nonetheless paired with concepts of grace and providence. Hitchcock plays with diverse genres, but his most distinctive mode may be humor, which represents a persistent but loving critique of an inadequate world. The course will be student-centered, with considerable focus on discussion. Students will write extensively on the films and thereby develop not only their interpretive but also their oral and written capacities.

This is a year-long writing-intensive humanities seminar involving challenging cross-disciplinary readings running from ancient Greece to yesterday. There is an emphasis on critical thinking and informed constructive discussion.

This is a year-long writing-intensive humanities seminar involving challenging cross-disciplinary readings running from ancient Greece to yesterday. There is an emphasis on critical thinking and informed constructive discussion.

This is a year-long writing-intensive humanities seminar involving challenging cross-disciplinary readings running from ancient Greece to yesterday. There is an emphasis on critical thinking and informed constructive discussion.

This course will engage students in the art and craft of writing for the public. Students will closely analyze works of creative nonfiction (personal essay, memoir, op-eds, columns, and long-form narrative journalism) by scholars and public intellectuals from across the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM fields that were written not for scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, but for blogs, online newsletters, and general audience magazines. Textual analysis will be undertaken with an eye toward the structural, stylistic, and rhetorical decisions made by the writers, in order for students to expand their own understanding of what is creatively possible for them as scholars and writers, and what is possible when it comes to the real-world impact of scholarly research. Course readings will be treated as literary texts whose intent is to educate, elucidate, and raise awareness in the general public (i.e. those outside of the discipline-specific discourse communities scholars tend to inhabit) about issues that the general reader might not have access to or feel intimidated by. Analysis of the readings will in turn provide models and motivation for students to write their own works of nonfiction connecting their scholarly interests to public concerns.

This course is a close reading of Nathan Hill's 2016 American novel The Nix. In addition to reading the novel, students will watch several episodes of Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's documentary The Vietnam War, and Aaron Sorkin's recent HBO film The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Assignments will include a short class presentation with a written summary and a final paper (3 pages). The Nix bridges monumental historical events and takes the reader from the suburban Midwest to New York City, from the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago and the Democratic National Convention, to the political climate that resulted in the election of President Donald Trump. Like all great narratives, the plot lines thread out, twist, and wind down separate paths, cross each other, and eventually knot together. This course will attempt to weave all these threads together and arrive at a clearer picture not only of the divisions that have galvanized contemporary American culture but those things that tie us together and show us a path forward.

The Glynn Research Practicum will introduce you to the essentials of scholarly research and professional development. You will learn the skills necessary to develop a research plan, write a grant proposal, locate an advisor, and research a senior thesis. You will also gain professional development experience by networking with other programs on campus to prepare you for post-college life, whatever form it may take.

This survey course will introduce students to major developments in 20th-century art, primarily in Europe and the Americas. Emphasis will be placed on modernist and avant-garde practices and their tenets. The first half of the course will trace Modernism's unfolding in the avant-garde practices of the late- nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second half of the course will address art production as the neo-avant-garde attempted to construct continuity and repetitions of the heroic modernist legacies of the past. We will consider issues such as the self-criticism of art, the myth of the artist-genius, the reign of abstraction, spirituality in art, race and gender, art and class, and art's intersections with mass culture. Artists we will study include Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Jacob Lawrence, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol. This course is a lecture format and grading is largely exam-based. The curriculum will also include visits to the university museum.

Art and visual culture have shaped our conceptions of ourselves and others. This course examines contemporary art in a variety of media in order to understand how art contributes to, reflects, affirms, or critiques specific stereotypes of roles and values. It will feature work and theoretical writing that is engaged with issues related to identity in all of its various forms. Some topics include standards of beauty; gender and sexuality; race and identity; performance and multiculturalism; and class, social justice, and ethics. Many of the objects that are examined explicitly challenge conventional notions of "good" art, so aesthetic standards of value will be a key topic as well. No specific prerequisites are necessary, but it is useful to have some background in cultural studies, art, or visual culture. Assignments include exams and short papers.

This course will take as its starting point nearby art collections and exhibitions in Chicago and the surrounding areas. This semester we will look primarily at paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations at the Art Institute of Chicago. Drawing heavily on its strong holdings in modern and contemporary European and American art, each class session will be devoted to the careful research and analysis of one or two objects in the collection. We will read art historical texts that contextualize each work, allowing us to practice engagement at the visual, critical, and art historical levels. We will focus on looking at and writing on visual subjects, so discussion, writing, and participation will be essential components of the course. Some of the artists on whom we will focus include Monet, Cassatt, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, O'Keeffe, Pollock, Warhol, and Sherman. At least one trip to Chicago will be a required part of the course.

The course traces the interlocking histories of the city of Rome, its rulers, its buildings, and the wider world from Antiquity to the birth of the modern Italian state. The organizing question is that of power: how do individuals and states gain it, and how do they express it in concrete terms—in this case, in the fabric of a city, in its buildings and artistic spaces? Rome has provided a model for the articulation of political power (whether republican or imperial) from pagan times to the rise of the Catholic Church, from the age of absolutism to the age of revolutions—an age in which, it could be argued, we continue to live. Topics will include the ideologies and architecture of the ancient Republic and Empire; the transformations of Christian Rome; the urban fabric of Rome from the Renaissance to the Baroque; and the reactions to and reappropriations of Roman ideals by revolutionaries, Fascists, and modern urban reformers from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. The course includes a trip to Rome over spring break with class visits and presentations. Students will write a short paper on an ancient or early Christian monument and then undertake a longer research project on a post-medieval Roman building, topographical site, or interior space in its historical and political contexts, on which they will present their findings both in Rome and in a final research paper.

The course, which explores the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, serves two main purposes. First, it introduces students to film as a distinctive art form. Students will become familiar with the questions and categories with which one can most meaningfully interpret and evaluate any film, including film-specific dimensions. Like theater, film is a visual, temporal, and linguistic medium, but film differs from theater insofar as it is defined by camera or shot, which frames our sight; montage or editing, which allows film to be spatially and temporally discontinuous; and mis-en-scene, the totality of expressive content in the filmed image, from setting, props, and costumes to gestures, facial expressions, and lighting. Together these three elements bring forward not only a distinctive art form but also an unusually capacious and creative ontology. Second, we will consider the ways in which Hitchcock's works raise questions and convey meaning. Although Hitchcock is justly famous for eliciting powerful emotions, he is also a cerebral director, whose works reflect on art and its relation to reality. Power and love are the two great intersubjective themes that dominate Hitchcock's concept of the social world. His films play with identity, mistaken identity, and identity crises. Hitchcock stresses the difficulties of achieving certainty in intersubjective relations and the various ways in which we try to navigate this uncertainty, which can evoke fear, thwart love, enable evil, and hinder the revelation of truth. Hitchcock is also a Catholic director who thematizes the gap between what is and what ought to be. His assessment of a human impulse toward cruelty is nonetheless paired with concepts of grace and providence. Hitchcock plays with diverse genres, but his most distinctive mode may be humor, which represents a persistent but loving critique of an inadequate world. The course will be student-centered, with considerable focus on discussion. Students will write extensively on the films and thereby develop not only their interpretive but also their oral and written capacities.

"Faith, Doubt, and Reason" explores scholarly questions of great existential interest. What various forms of faith exist? What obstacles exist to faith? What thoughts and experiences trigger doubt? In what ways do doubt and reason undermine or reinforce faith? How might we distinguish and evaluate different forms of reason? How far can reason take us? The seminar explores these three concepts not only in relation to God and religious questions, but also in relation to one's sense of self, trust in other persons, belief in institutions, and identification with values and ideas. When students leave home for college, questions about the relation of faith and reason arise naturally. As students gain new knowledge, they are confronted with challenges to the unity of faith and reason. Doubt is as essential to college education as the harmony of faith and reason is to Catholicism. This course seeks to provide a context where students can explore religious and existential puzzles in an atmosphere of trust and support, maturity and mutual respect. The link between the student's search for meaning and intellectual refinement and rigor will be a guiding principle. Readings will be taken from, among others, Plato, the Bible, Lessing, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. We will also analyze a selection of films and visit the Snite Museum of Art. The course is designed as the second semester of a year-long seminar for Glynn sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Juniors who would like to take the spring semester course but who spent the fall abroad may, with the permission of the instructor, sign up for the spring continuation. "Faith, Doubt, and Reason" satisfies the University Requirements in either Second Philosophy or Catholicism and the Disciplines. For students majoring in German, the course can also be counted as an English elective for the German major.

How did the medieval Church’s great women mystics create a space where they could connect with God? Despite enclosure in convents, many medieval nuns held religious authority and contributed to the life and literature of the Catholic tradition. Paradoxically, the convent was a privileged space of female culture, where women authors and mystics flourished. This course will explore the spaces, both architectural and spiritual, where medieval nuns explored their relationship with God and wrote to help the souls of others. Focusing on Germany and on remarkable women such as Hildegard of Bingen, students will contextualize medieval women's mysticism in its historical milieu, including the realities of female enclosure, the daily round of convent life, and liturgical worship. We will compare mysticism in the convent to the writings and social context of women mystics in the city or at noble courts. In Spring 2025, this course will make a class trip to Germany during Spring Break to visit the sites of medieval convents and continuously active communities of nuns. Students must apply to the instructor to participate in this course.

An introduction to the ways in which the Holocaust has been remembered and examined through literature, from early survivor narratives to second-generation works and the recent culture wars in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Contingent upon funding, the course will include a study tour to Berlin and to Auschwitz, where we will visit memorials and documentation sites, speak to representatives of Jewish organizations, and get a better sense for the continuities of Jewish life in Central Europe throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All expenses for this study tour will be covered by the University, and students must be able to commit to the entirety of the trip. Authors covered might include Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Ruth Klüger, Art Spiegelman and Helen Epstein, while theorists covered could include Hannah Arendt, Raoul Hilberg, Shoshana Felman, Marianne Hirsch, and Michael Rothberg. Students interested in the course should submit a paragraph to Tobias Boes (tboes@nd.edu) stating the reasons for wishing to take the course and must also fill out the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxxY1dgFgdKWO2VwYuBAX_LgP8U-E9UxGGu7FTZ2mv3f-slw/viewform?usp=header

The Glynn Research Practicum will introduce you to the essentials of scholarly research and professional development. You will learn the skills necessary to develop a research plan, write a grant proposal, locate an advisor, and research a senior thesis. You will also gain professional development experience by networking with other programs on campus to prepare you for post-college life, whatever form it may take.

This course builds upon the Senior Research Thesis colloquium taken in the fall. The spring colloquium consists of weekly meetings of Glynn seniors, in for the purpose of reading and offering feedback upon installments of individual students' theses. Small groups will report weekly to the instructor with both the thesis installment and a report of the feedback from each session.

This is a one-credit seminar consisting of presentations of ongoing thesis research as a spur to the successful completion of the senior thesis or research project.

Winter Session Undergraduate Research

The capstone requirement for the arts and letters honors students is a substantive two-semester thesis to be completed in April. This project is accorded three credits in the fall for the completion of a rough draft and three credits in the spring for the polished finished project.