An Honors Colloquium is an HON-H 399 seminar course. Typically, it is led by different instructors in different semesters and the topic changes from semester to semester. To complete the Honors Program each student must complete two HON-H 399 Colloquium courses.
Spring 2025 (Online)
Wendy Grice, Director of Music
In this fully online Honors seminar, we will take a deep dive through the music of our planet examining why and how every culture creates music. By the end of the semester, you will have a broader, more diverse global aspect of music and you will have a better understanding of our connection to the world around us through music.
Summer 2025 (Online)
Dr. Niki Weller, Professor of Sociology
Why are we so captivated by visions of perfect or broken worlds? This honors course explores dystopian and utopian ideas in literature, film, video games, and politics, examining what these imagined futures reveal about our present society. You'll study classic and contemporary works, uncovering how they reflect our values, fears, and hopes. Through various media, we'll investigate portrayals of possible futures, discuss the likelihood of these scenarios becoming a reality, and debate whether aspects of our current world mirror dystopian or utopian ideals.
This course invites you to think critically and creatively about our world and the future we are shaping. Whether your interests lie in literature, film, technology, or social issues, you'll gain fresh insights into how dystopian and utopian ideas shape our understanding of society and our place within it.
Fall 2022 (Tuesday/Thursday 2-3:45 p.m.)
Wendy Grice
Why is singing no longer participatory? Until recent decades, people sang at work, at family gatherings, in church, and just for fun. Ask yourself, when was the last time you sang outside of your car or in the shower? We will discuss singing in Eastern versus Western cultures, the gender factor, social anxiety, and how singing impacts us emotionally, spiritually, and physically. We will also touch on the benefits of singing to stroke and Alzheimer's patients. Let's talk!
Fall 2022 (Tuesday/Thursday 10-11:15 a.m.)
Dr. Jim Coby
Monsters: they haunt our thoughts, patrol the periphery of our imaginations, and keep us awake at night. And yet...
Be they cryptids, vampires, zombies, or aliens, we find ourselves compelled by and drawn to monsters and the monstrous. In this HON 399 seminar, we will investigate our love/repulsion dilemma with monsters through readings of several critical texts exploring concepts such as monstrosity, the uncanny valley, abjection, and othering. To help reify these theoretical ideas, we will engage with several popular pieces of film and literature. Authors who will likely populate the syllabus include Jefferey Jerome Cohen, Sigmund Freud, Octavia Butler, Carmen Maria Machado, Jordan Peele, Stephen King, and a host of other nightmare instigators. Enroll...if you dare.
Spring 2023 (Monday/Wednesday 11:30 a.m.-12:45 p.m.)
Deb Jaworski
In this seminar, we will investigate current issues impacting foster care in the United States. Students will discuss readings, explore regulations, analyze statistics, perform cost analysis, and consider issues such as racial bias in the system. Students will engage in service learning, conduct interviews, select an area of focus, and develop a proposal. At the end of the seminar, students will present their proposals on how we can create a brighter future for students who have been in foster care.
Spring 2023 (Online)
Stephanie Medley-Rath
Historical moral panics include the Salem witch trials among Puritans, the satanic panics of the 1980s, the Red scare during the Cold War, the war on drugs, among others. More recent moral panics include misplaced or disproportional concern about trans rights, the war on Christmas, human trafficking, crime surges, and cancel culture. Moral panics involve disproportionate media coverage and social media attention of a phenomenon thought to threaten societal values. Claims of harm and the size of the problem are typically exaggerated. Further, more legitimate threats may be minimized resulting in a moral calm, or lack of concern for other phenomena (e.g., viewing Covid-19 vaccines for children as unnecessary or lack of concern around the climate crisis).
This course will focus on a variety of moral panics and moral calms and sociological approaches to studying them. Urban legends and conspiracy theories may also be explored. Students will research a moral panic or calm, urban legends, or a conspiracy theory of interest and use data to make the case that society should be more or less concerned about the phenomena, whether societal concern or lack of concern is misplaced, or both. Students are expected to present their research at the IU Kokomo Research Symposium.
Indiana University Kokomo
765-453-2000