Spring 2025 Honors First Year Seminars & Launches

TR, 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm. Instructor(s): Allen Hurlbert. Enrollment = 24.
In this course you will learn about the biodiversity around us, and the discipline of citizen science as a means to understanding more about that biodiversity. Citizen science is the public generation of scientific knowledge, and in this era of mobile technology and artificial intelligence, non-expert members of the public are providing millions of biodiversity observations each year. We will learn about the promise of citizen science for answering important questions in biodiversity science, we will contribute our own observations to citizen science databases, and we will learn how to make and interpret graphs and figures using citizen science data.

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.

My research seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying broad-scale patterns of distribution, abundance and diversity across the globe, and how that biodiversity is expected to respond to ongoing environmental change. I enjoy observing the natural world (especially birds and bugs), but also figuring out how to best analyze data to yield the most important insights. I hope my students grow in both of those areas!

MWF, 2:30 pm – 3:20 pm. Instructor(s): Emily Baragwanath. Enrollment = 24.
The intersection of history-writing, cinema and fiction will be our focus as we engage with the greatest Greek historians – Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius – against the backdrop of modern renditions of the past and of war in cinema (including Peter Weir’s Gallipoli (1981), Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004) and Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007)), documentaries (including Tolga Ornek’s Gallipoli (2005)), news footage and short stories. We will examine the strategies of each of our ancient writers in confronting challenges that remain pressing for directors, journalists and historians today. These include difficulties of conflicting perspectives, biased evidence, and the limitations of memory, as well as broader questions about the nature of historical representation. Should it present the ‘warts and all’ truth, or commemorate and memorialize? What balance should it strive for between informing and educating us, and providing our entertainment? Where lies the border between history and fiction? Homer’s portrayal of the legendary past will supply a further touchstone. The aim is for students to engage in critical and informed analysis of the strategies of our three ancient historians in ‘writing the past’, and to draw appropriate comparisons and contrasts with the challenges that confront modern counterparts.

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.

Emily Baragwanath’s teaching and research interests lie in the areas of Greek literature and culture, with a focus on the ancient historians, particularly Herodotus (the subject of her book, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, Oxford UP). She is especially fascinated by the literary techniques these writers employ in constructing their historical narratives, and by questions relating to the frontier between historiography and mythology or fiction. A current project examines Xenophon’s portraits of women against the backdrop of Greek myth and literature and Socratic thought.

MWF, 9:05 am – 9:55 am. Instructor(s): Janet Downie. Enrollment = 24.
What does large-scale culture change look like? What does it feel like? What do individuals and communities experience as world-views change from generation to generation? In this course we’ll examine these questions by looking at one example of a period of substantial culture-change in the past: the first three centuries of the Common Era in the Mediterranean world, when Christianity was emerging with new ideas about social organization, community and personal identity, and the structure of the cosmos. In this seminar course, we will explore a range of texts from this period – ancient novels, early Christian gospels and acts, religious satires, pagan hymns, oracular texts, religious inscriptions, philosophical and theological texts – that offer a glimpse of some of the conversations and debates between new and old ideas about human beings, the natural world, and the gods.

 

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.

Dr. Janet Downie teaches courses in ancient Greek language, literature, culture, and thought in the Department of Classics. Her research focuses on Greek literary culture in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious context of the Roman Empire. She is most interested in the “end” of antiquity: what happened as the classical world became Christian? And how does that distant time continue to shape our thinking today?

TR, 9:30 am – 10:45 am ; Recitation: F, 9:05 am – 9:55 am. Instructor(s): Sergio Parreiras. Enrollment = 24.
Introduction to Economics (Economics 101H) is the Honors section of the introductory course in Economics
for undergraduates. The Honors section covers the same material as the large enrollment version but does so in more depth. This is an introductory course in both microeconomics and macroeconomics. In this one-semester course students are introduced to fundamental issues in economics including competition, scarcity, opportunity cost, resource allocation, unemployment, ination, and the determination of prices. This course is the gateway course for the major of Economics; if you wish to major in Economics, you must have at least a C in this course.

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.

Sergio O. Parreiras research focuses on game-theoretic models of contests, tournaments, and relative performance evaluation.

TR, 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm . Instructor(s): Kym Weed / Virlana Shchuka. Enrollment = 24.
When medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman writes that “illness has meaning,” he reminds us that the human experience of being sick involves more than bodily symptoms. Moreover, the effects of illness and disability are rarely confined to one person. In this course, we will analyze a diverse collection of writers who work to make sense of illness and disability through a range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film, comics, podcasts, and scholarship. We will explore the ways that people experience, make meaning from, and represent illness, caregiving, and disability.
FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.
MAY SUBSTITUTE FOR THE ENGL 268H / GATEWAY COURSE REQUIREMENT FOR THE MEDICINE, LITERATURE, AND CULTURE MINOR.

Kym Weed is a Teaching Assistant Professor in English & Comparative Literature and the Co-Director of the HHIVE Lab and Associate Director of graduate programs in Literature, Medicine, and Culture. She earned her PhD from UNC and returned to Chapel Hill after a year in Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. Her research focuses on the intersection of science and literature in late-nineteenth-century American literature and culture as well as contemporary understandings of illness, health, disability, and embodiment. Her most recent project examines narratives around anti-microbial resistance. She teaches courses in health humanities, disability studies, American literature, and writing.
 

Dr. Virlana Shchuka is an SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellow at the Department of English and Comparative Literature’s HHIVE Lab. Her primary research project intersects medical, literary, and cultural narratives to uncover how the Romantic period understood childbirth and postnatal challenges, and how such ideas inform the way we think about labor today. With an interdisciplinary STEM and humanities background, her broader interests in the health humanities are spurring additional research initiatives in such subjects as bibliotherapy, stories of the cell, and expressions of pain in clinical settings.

TR, 11:00 am – 12:15 pm. Instructor(s): Kristin Ondrak. Enrollment = 35.
This course is targeted to students enrolled in Department of Exercise and Sport Science majors as well as other students with interest in medical professions. This course involves a systematic approach to human anatomy and physiology with an emphasis on the musculoskeletal, articular and nervous systems as well as anatomical terminology and homeostasis. No prerequisites are required.

 

MWF, 3:35 pm – 4:50 pm. Instructor(s): Sarah Shields. Enrollment = 24.
Despite its centrality for the lives and the livelihoods of people in the Middle East, water has seldom been examined in its own right as a contributing factor to its history.  This First Year Seminar will explore the many ways in which water has shaped the history of the region, and the effects it currently has on life in the Middle East.
Despite being known as the Fertile Crescent for the great rivers that flow though the region, most of the Middle East is quite arid. This course explores how water has shaped the histories, economies, cultures, and religions of the Middle East and North Africa. Industrialization, consumerism, competition over resources, misuse, war, and climate change have compromised water quality while simultaneously increasing water demand for agriculture and industry. Water and conflict have been indivisible in the region, since water is both a crucial and rare resource in the Middle East.  This course will focus in turn on the historical, cultural, environmental, and public health issues surrounding the presence and absence of water in the Middle East. We will create a final project that will help K-12 students understand the centrality of water issues for the past and present of the region.
FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.

Sarah Shields teaches courses on the modern Middle East, the history of Iraq, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the development and consequences of nationalism and borders in the region. She has been named a “Favorite Geek” by the Independent Weekly. Shields has taken ten outstanding UNC students to Turkey as part of the Burch Field Research Seminar program, and directed the Honors Study Abroad Programs in London and Cape Town. Shields is a Carolina Parent, and both her son and her daughter were part of the Honors Carolina cohort. In addition to her new focus on water issues in the region, she is currently researching the long-term impact of the League of Nations on the Middle East.

W, 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm. Instructor(s): Terry Holt. Enrollment = 20.
A workshop in autobiographical and creative short story, focusing on the complex connections between story-telling, interpretive skill, and the practice of medicine. Students will write and present autobiographical and and creative short stories about illness and medical care; the seminar will meet weekly to discuss these stories, attempting to identify and articulate the key issues each story expresses about what it means to be sick, what it might mean to take care of others in their illness. The writing and (especially) interpretive skills acquired in this workshop are directly valuable to anyone contemplating a career in medicine, but are equally valuable to anyone who might at some point encounter (in themselves or in someone they care for) the trauma of illness. In addition to the weekly workshop, participants will have one-on-one conferences with the instructor (himself an MD with an international reputation as a writer). A semester-long journal, focusing on the reverberations of the pandemic on the writer’s daily (actual and interior) life, will form the basis for a final project, which may (at student option) be in the form of written narrative, an audio composition, or a film, composed using the tools available at the University’s Media Resources Center.
FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY

FULFILLS FC-CREATE requirement.

 

Terrence Holt taught literature and writing at Rutgers University and Swarthmore College for a decade before attending medical school. Hailed as “a work of genius” by the New York Times, his 2009 collection of short fiction, In the Valley of the Kings, was one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Year. Internal Medicine, his New York Times bestselling memoir of medical training, was named best book of 2014 by three industry journals.  Holt teaches medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

TR, 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm. Instructor(s): Regina Baker. Enrollment = 24.
Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, the United States has among the highest levels of poverty and inequality among rich democracies. What does it mean to live in poverty in the “land of plenty” and experience inequality in the “land of opportunity?” Why is the “American Dream” more attainable for some people than it is others? In this First Year Seminar, we will use a sociological perspective to explore these questions and more. We will cover a wide range of topics as they relate to poverty and inequality, such as perceptions, measurement, levels and trends, causes, and consequences for individuals and society. We will also examine different domains (e.g., housing, education, the labor market, health, technology, the criminal legal system) and how they serve as mechanisms of poverty and inequality. Throughout the course, we will discuss the significance of history and place as well as highlight different axes of inequality (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, disability). Although the focus is primarily on the United States, we will touch on poverty and inequality in an international comparative perspective to better understand the U.S. context. Ultimately, this course aims to advance understanding of poverty and inequality in America, and in doing so, highlight why the American Dream is difficult (and becoming increasingly more difficult) for some individuals and families to attain.

This is a reading intensive, discussion-driven course with a mix of written and oral assignments, including reflection papers, weekly writing, in-class activities, and individual and group projects/presentations.

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ONLY.