Signature Seminars
About the Signature Seminars/HNRs 401H3
The Honors College offers Signature Seminars on cutting-edge topics taught by top professors, who are named Dean's Fellows in the Honors College. You must apply to participate, and if admitted, will be designated a Dean's Signature Scholar – a great plus for your resume. These seminars give you three hours of honors credit and in some cases, may also satisfy requirements specific to your degree. Please consult individual course pages for more information.
Check out our Public Preview Lectures introducing the Spring 2025 Signature Seminar lineup. (You will also receive a reminder email.)
For a full listing and descriptions of past Honors College courses, visit our course archive.
Animal Minds
Join us for a Public Preview Lecture on Tuesday, September 10th at 5:15 p.m.
Is there is a great divide between human beings and other animals, marked by mental or psychological characteristics that distinguish “us humans” from even our closest animal relatives? Such features might include rationality, language, tool use, culture, and self-awareness or sense of self. The idea of a wide gulf between humans and animals reinforced by perceived difficulties in obtaining knowledge of animal minds. After all, they cannot tell us what they think or feel. Some have regarded radical differences between humans and non-humans has as rationalizing the use of animals for human purposes. For example, if animals are thought not to be self-aware, their capacity to suffer, or at least the significance of their suffering, might be called into question.
Such (until recently, widespread) skepticism about animal minds contradicts the experience of animal trainers and others who work with animals on a daily basis. Moreover, their “folk knowledge” of the animals with whom we live, often criticized as anthropomorphic, is supported by recent advances in the scientific study of animal behavior. Researchers increasingly find – as Darwin and evolutionary theory would suggest – that the basics of rational thought, communication, culture, and self-consciousness are present in non-human species. In other words, the differences between “us” and “them” have in some ways been exaggerated. Does the breakdown of such a stark human/animal divide have consequences for how we human beings should treat our fellow creatures?
In this seminar, we shall explore some of these recent developments in our knowledge of animal minds. Questions will include: What is consciousness, what is it for, how did it evolve, how widespread is it in the animal kingdom? How much can we learn about what it is like to be a dog, a bat, an octopus? Can we experience the world from an animal’s point of view? What about self-consciousness or self-awareness in animals? And about knowledge of “other minds”? (Can your dog know what you are thinking or feeling?) What range of emotions do animals have? What do we know about animal communication, and how is it best studied? What is culture, where and how is it exhibited in animals? How should our approach to these and related questions affect our attitudes toward the moral status of animals?
Professor Ed Minar will lead this seminar.
Visit course page for more information.
Cancer and chronic disease
Join us for a Public Preview Lecture on Tuesday, September 24th at 5:15 p.m.
In the United States in 2024, there will be over 2 million newly diagnosed cases of cancer, and over 600,000 will die from the disease. One out of three people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during the course of their life. Despite an overall improving trend in cancer-related death rates over the recent decades, annual expenses for the medical care of these patients will total more than $125 billion, but even this staggering figure ignores the broader costs to society- financially as well as socially. Despite these daunting numbers, we are at the cusp of a revolution in the way we understand, diagnose, treat, and prevent cancer.
Cancer is not a single disease, but rather, a broad collection of various classifications and subtypes. Any cell type in the body may lead to its own unique form of cancer, and even two people with exactly the same type and stage of cancer, treated in exactly the same way, may not have the same outcome. Despite these challenges, we have never understood the basic biology of cancer better than we do now, and current research has lead to great strides in the way we treat- and often cure- many types of cancer.
There is significant progress to be made, scientifically as well as societally. How do we allocate resources to combat cancer? Can we better treat patients as a whole person, rather than just their disease? How can we better address healthcare disparities to improve overall outcomes? The enormous funding and attention that cancer has received also raises concerns about the “cancer / industrial complex:” are funding agencies prioritizing the right things when it comes to treating an aging population and other chronic diseases? This course will explore these broad and complex issues that cut across science, medicine, industry, and society.
Professor Tim Muldoon will lead this seminar.
Visit course page for more information.