MUHP Honors Seminar

One honors seminar is offered every semester. Course is open to juniors and seniors. Course registration is HONR497, 3 credits.

Past honor seminars have included:

Architecture of Happiness: Tracing Virtue and Vice from Homer to Robinson This course will explore the ways humans have viewed and sought to construct the good life—often failing and sometimes succeeding. Beginning with Homer, we will examine the ideals of virtue and their accompanying vices embodied in the stories of the Iliad and Odyssey. Our pilgrimage will follow these stories from Homer to Virgil to Dante and other thinkers who have worked to net this slippery fish, happiness. We will arrive by reading Marilynne Robinson’s trilogy Gilead, Home and Lila. Throughout we will be asking what we might expect of our own endeavors to find blessedness. We will aim to apply the insights we gain to our own lives as we consider the odyssey of the last four years and the years ahead.

The Kingdom of God and a Decent Society It is no longer uncommon for students to graduate from college without a single course in sociology, yet all of these students will spend their remaining days living in a very social world. This course isn't so much a social theory course (though we'll touch on that) as it is an interdisciplinary course that explores various visions for social life, including the kingdom vision of the Bible. Students in the course will be expected to engage in discussion of several challenging books and readings.

God, Humanity, & Nature Seminar on the history of ideas, focusing on ideas of God, humanity, and nature. The primary method of instruction is discussion of texts.