Honors Program

Honors classes at Columbia College Chicago are open to all students who have a 3.5 GPA or higher, and as long as all prerequisites are met.

Honors Course Characteristics

• Academic and Intellectual Challenges: Honors courses provide engaging and academically challenging opportunities for all students. Classes are committed to inclusive academic excellence.
• Interrogation of Power and Privilege: Honors courses provide spaces where students can question how factors including race, class, gender, disability, and ethnicity influence culture and knowledge.
• Independent Learning: Honors courses provide opportunities for students to further develop their own areas of interest through independent and self-directed projects.
• Smaller Class Sizes: Honors courses provide robust mentorship from faculty instructors and, in many cases, more involvement with faculty members' scholarly and creative interests.
• Scholarly Communities: Honors courses provide academic and professional development through an expectation of collaboration, research, and interdisciplinary work.

For questions about Honors classes, contact honors@colum.edu. 

Spring 2024 Honors Classes

• ARTH 105H - Introduction to Visual Culture: Honors (HU and DEI credits)

  Wednesdays 12:30-3:20 p.m. (Instructor Glenn Socki)

  In this course, students will refine their skills of seeing, discussing, and writing about visual culture. Structured according to methodologies for visual analysis rather than chronology or artistic style, the course introduces students to critical approaches that can be applied to a wide range of images, objects, and spaces. Through assignments that emphasize writing, research, and presentation skills, students will explore a broad range of perspectives on visual literacy.

• BIOL 235H - Evolution of Sex: Honors (SC and DEI credits)
  Tuesdays 9:00 -11:50 a.m. (Professor Michelle Rafacz)
  
  Understanding the nature of sex and its relationship to evolution is important in biology. This class will cover sex and sexual selection across the animal and plant kingdoms. We will discuss the nature of science and the influences of culture on science, specifically the role of feminism on our understanding of female choice. Monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, homosexuality and other types of sexual and asexual relationships will be explored in an evolutionary context through primary literature.
• COLL 480H - Undergraduate Research Mentorship: Honors
  The Undergraduate Research Mentorship connects talented students interested in conducing academic research with faculty. This course, available to students from across the College, gives students the opportunity to share the intellectual excitement of inquiry into new questions, the solving of scholarly and creative problems, and the creation of knowledge with faculty mentors. Students learn research and scholarly techniques as they assist faculty practitioners in their academic and integrative disciplines, gaining valuable experience in pursuit of professional fields or higher academic degrees.
  
  Prior to the project semester, the supervising faculty and student must submit a joint proposal outlining the project. 
For more information, contact honors@colum.edu.
  
  
Requirements: Permission Required (DP) and 3.5 or Higher GPA (35GP) and Junior Standing or Above (JR)
• CULS 101H - Introduction to Cultural Studies: Honors (HU and DEI credits)

  Thursdays 12:30-3:20 p.m. (Professor Jaafar Aksikas)

  This course introduces students to the terms, analytical techniques, and interpretive strategies commonly employed in cultural studies. Emphasis is on critical approaches to exploring how cultural processes and artifacts are produced, shaped, distributed, consumed, and responded to in diverse ways. Through discussion, research, and writing, class members investigate these varied dimensions of culture; learn to understand them in their broader social, aesthetic, ethical, political, and economic contexts; and thereby prepare for more advanced coursework in cultural studies.

• EASC 110H - The Science of Global Change: Honors (SC credit)

  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50 a.m. (Professor Gerry Adams)

  This course examines the idea of global environmental change and the mechanisms by which global change occurs. We will use an approach combining Earth history with modern Earth processes (Earth systems) to understand changes in the physical environment like plate movement and climate change, and changes in the biological environment like evolution and extinction. We will analyze some of the relationships between physical and biological changes on Earth (physical mechanisms for extinction, biological inputs to climate change, and others). Students will be challenged to use their knowledge to better inform public awareness of global change, and public policy on global change issues.

   

• ECON 310H - Ethics and Economics – Controversial Policy Issues of our Time: Honors (SS credit)
  Thursdays 12:30-3:20 p.m. (Professor Rojhat Avsar)
  
  Conventional economic justification for policies embodies a particular moral logic despite its claim to value-neutrality. This course surveys alternate moral/political perspectives from which legitimacy (or moral acceptability) of contemporary economic policies could be debated. Students will be invited to apply these theoretical arguments to a set of contemporary policy issues in the U.S.
  
  Prerequisites: ENGL 112 Writing and Rhetoric II or ENGL 122 International Writing and Rhetoric II
• ENGL 112H - Writing and Rhetoric II: Honors (EN credit)
  Section 1: Mondays/Wednesdays 10:30-11:50 a.m. (Instructor Christopher Bower)
  Section 3: Mondays/Wednesdays 2:00-3:20 p.m. (Professor Hilary Sarat-St. Peter)
  Section 4: Mondays/Wednesdays 3:30-4:50 p.m. (Professor Hilary Sarat-St. Peter)
  Section 5: Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:50 a.m. (Professor Karl El Sokhn)
  Section 6: Tuesdays/Thursdays 3:30-4:50 p.m. (Instructor Katrina Kemble)

  
  
  Writing and Rhetoric II helps students use writing to develop and sustain an in-depth personal and intellectual inquiry into a subject of their choosing. The course unfolds in a series of assignments designed to lead students through a continually deepening creative research process that ripens into a written project of considerable length and complexity. Focusing on methodology, rather than specific course theme, students learn to generate worthwhile questions, collect primary data, locate secondary resources, and form original research insights.
  
  Prerequisites: ENGL 111 Writing and Rhetoric I or ENGL 111H Writing and Rhetoric I: Honors or TWC-T-7 EXAM-TWC WRITING MINIMUM SCORE = 7

• HIST 262H - History of the American City: Honors (HI and DEI credits)
  Mondays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Instructor Nick McCormick)
  
  Course examines the history of the development of the U.S. as an urban nation. It analyzes the rise and decline of various urban systems that developed over the course of American history. Students investigate the social, economic, political, technological, and demographic trends that have shaped the modern American city.
• LITR 110H - Introduction to Poetry: Honors (HL credit)

  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Professor Lisa Fishman)

  Students study poetry ranging from traditional forms and figures to contemporary experimental forms. Course may include selected significant poems from all major periods. This is primarily a literature course, not a writing workshop.
  
  
  Prerequisites: ENGL 109 Writing and Rhetoric I Stretch B or ENGL 111 Writing and Rhetoric I or ENGL 111H Writing and Rhetoric I: Honors or ENGL 121 International Writing and Rhetoric I or TWC-T-7 EXAM-TWC WRITING MINIMUM SCORE = 7 

• LITR 225H - Postcolonial Literature: Honors (HL and DEI credits)

  Thursdays 9:00-11:50 a.m. (Professor Madhurima Chakraborty)

  Generally understood as the literature written in countries that have gone through colonization and decolonization, postcolonial literature includes writing concerned with a wide variety of political and literary issues that include, but are by no means limited to: colonial power and anticolonial conflict, political and cultural legacies of imperialism in the newly independent postcolony, and the role of diaspora. Our class will be structured around these three broad sets of ideas, and will attempt the daunting work of balancing a global understanding of the various moves in postcolonial literature with a particularized and intense analysis of individual works.
  
   
  Prerequisites: ENGL 109 Writing and Rhetoric I Stretch B or ENGL 111 Writing and Rhetoric I or ENGL 121 International Writing and Rhetoric I 

• LITR 268H - Literature on Film: Honors (HL credit)

  Wednesdays 12:30-3:20 p.m. (Professor Deborah Holdstein)
  
  

  Class concerns the relationship between written and filmed versions of a story, novel, or play. Course explores how character development, plot, narrative, symbols, and language are translated from text to film. To facilitate analysis, students acquire a basic vocabulary for discussing literature and film. Instructors may focus on a particular theme, such as the love story, fantasy, or mythology. Works studied have been as diverse as The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.
  
  Prerequisites: ENGL 112 Writing and Rhetoric II or ENGL 112H Writing and Rhetoric II: Honors or ENGL 122 International Writing and Rhetoric II

• RELI 210H - Religion and Gender: Honors (HU credit)

  Tuesdays/Thursdays 12:30-1:50 p.m. (Professor Stephanie Frank)
  
  In this course, we will look at examples from many different cultures to consider forms of religiosity that are traditionally ‘gendered’, including spirit possession and practices relating to food, ritual, purification, and so on. We will also analyze religions’ constructions of masculinity and femininity around the issues of sex, reproduction, pain and agency, and the religious significance of people who do not fit into traditional gendered categories. Finally, we will take up political problems associated with religion and gender, particularly those associated with secularism and colonialism.

   

• SCIE 155H - Science of Musical Instruments: Honors (SL credit)
  Tuesdays 1:00-4:50 p.m. (Professor David Dolak)
  
  Students study the scientific principles by which sound is generated in common acoustic musical instruments and discover the mathematical foundation of musical scales. This course explores mechanical oscillation, frequency, wavelength, and the harmonic series. Students investigate the complex timbre of musical instruments through hands-on laboratory experiments using wave and spectrum analysis, and develop scales using sound-generation software. For a final project, students construct a functional instrument and perform an original musical composition. This is an Honors course and students need a cumulative GPA of 3.50 or higher to register.

Fall 2023 Honors Classes

• ARTH 105H - Introduction to Visual Culture: Honors (HU DEI credits)

  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Christopher Reeves)

  In this course, students will refine their skills of seeing, discussing, and writing about visual culture. Structured according to methodologies for visual analysis rather than chronology or artistic style, the course introduces students to critical approaches that can be applied to a wide range of images, objects and spaces. Through assignments that emphasize writing, research and presentation skills, students will explore a broad range of perspectives on visual literacy.

• BIOL 235H - Evolution of Sex: Honors (SL or SC credit)
  Thursdays 9-11:50 a.m. (Michelle Rafacz)
  
  Understanding the nature of sex and its relationship to evolution is important in biology. This class will cover sex and sexual selection across the animal and plant kingdoms. We will discuss the nature of science and the influences of culture on science, specifically the role of feminism on our understanding of female choice. Monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, homosexuality and other types of sexual and asexual relationships will be explored in an evolutionary context through primary literature.
• CCCX 199H – Big Chicago: Honors (FE credit)

  Section 1 - Access, Civic Life & City Design
  Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:50 a.m. (Marcella David)

  "Access" has many connotations. It can mean the actual physical means of entering a location, the permission given to people seeking to enter a location, start a career, or communicate with a person, or the ability someone may have to make use of a resource. Each pf these instances of "access" is linked to a design or plan: an architect's choice between a ramp or stairs, the decision to limit enrollment of a new school building to children living within 20 blocks and not 25 blocks, the decision to locate a free clinic far away from public transportation. We will investigate how Chicago's design choices influence how people experience and use the city. On walking tours and site visits throughout the city, students will examine and critically evaluate the current condition of Chicago's urban spaces and investigate how different people may be welcomed or discouraged from fully participating in Chicago's civic life. As part of our analysis we will explore how markers of difference, including physical ability, race, socio-economic status and gender, may be influential elements of design that expand or restrict access.

  Section 2 - The Global Metropolis
  Mondays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Erin McCarthy)

  This course will introduce students to Chicago’s economic, ethnic, racial, cultural, and political development. Students develop knowledge concerning the impact of technological change on Chicago and the economic and demographic forces that have helped shape the city’s history. In addition the class will help CCC freshman to gain access to the various cultural institutions and neighborhoods of the city.

   

  These courses are only open to freshmen students with less than 14 credit hours. 

• COLL 480H – Undergraduate Research Mentorship: Honors

  The Undergraduate Research Mentorship connects talented students interested in conducing academic research with faculty.  This course, available to students from across the College, gives students the opportunity to share the intellectual excitement of inquiry into new questions, the solving of scholarly and creative problems, and the creation of knowledge with faculty mentors.  Students learn research and scholarly techniques as they assist faculty practitioners in their academic and integrative disciplines, gaining valuable experience in pursuit of professional fields or higher academic degrees.

  Prior to the project semester, the supervising faculty and student must submit a joint proposal outlining the project. 
For more information, contact honors@colum.edu.

  
Requirements: Permission Required (DP) and 3.5 or Higher GPA (35GP) and Junior Standing or Above (JR)

• COMM 326H - Semiotics for Creators of Popular Culture: Honors (SS credit)

  Thursdays 12:30-3:20 p.m. (Herb Allen)

  Writing-intensive course explores the study and use of semiotics (or symbolic meaning) in the development of advertising and other creative works that contribute to the content of popular culture. Interdisciplinary in scope, the course explores how advertising uses symbolic language from diverse disciplines such as literature, cinema, television, performing arts, architecture, fashion, and other fields that shape the overall popular culture.

• CULS 101H - Introduction to Cultural Studies: Honors (HU DEI credits)

  Mondays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Jaafar Aksikas)

  This course introduces students to the terms, analytical techniques, and interpretive strategies commonly employed in cultural studies. Emphasis is on critical approaches to exploring how cultural processes and artifacts are produced, shaped, distributed, consumed, and responded to in diverse ways. Through discussion, research, and writing, class members investigate these varied dimensions of culture; learn to understand them in their broader social, aesthetic, ethical, political, and economic contexts; and thereby prepare for more advanced coursework in cultural studies.

• ENGL 111H - Writing and Rhetoric I: Honors (EN credit)

  Section 1: Mondays/Wednesdays 9-10:20 a.m. (Hilary Sarat-St. Peter)
  Section 2: Mondays/Wednesdays 12:30-1:50 p.m. (Doug Reichert Powell)
  Section 3: Mondays/Wednesdays 2-3:20 p.m. (Doug Reichert Powell)
  Section 4: Mondays/Wednesdays 3:30-4:50 p.m. (Kyle Francois)
  Section 5: Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:50 a.m. (Ryan Kulefsky)
  Section 6: Tuesdays/Thursdays 3:30-4:50 p.m. (Kate Wisel)
  Section 7: Tuesdays/Thursdays 2-3:20 p.m. (Lloyd Sachs)

   

  Writing and Rhetoric I helps students understand and refine their own writing processes. Designed to assist students in making connections between their knowledge, cultures, worlds, and the multiple-literacies and discourses of academic, communicative and performing life, the course encourages students to develop their distinctive voices as they learn to make conscious rhetorical decisions. Writing and Rhetoric I connects personal reflection with critical analysis, providing plentiful and varied opportunities for writing, strengthening reading skills, and becoming a member of a writer-reader community.
  
  Prerequisites: TWC-T-4 EXAM-TWC WRITING MINIMUM SCORE = 4

• ENGL 112H – Writing and Rhetoric II: Honors (EN credit)

  Section 1: Mondays/Wednesdays 12:30-1:50 p.m. (Dylan Weir)
  Section 2: Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:50 a.m. (Matt McCurrie)
  Section 3: Tuesdays/Thursdays 3:30-4:50 p.m. (Valer Popa)

  
  Writing and Rhetoric II helps students use writing to develop and sustain an in-depth personal and intellectual inquiry into a subject of their choosing. The course unfolds in a series of assignments designed to lead students through a continually deepening creative research process that ripens into a written project of considerable length and complexity. Focusing on methodology, rather than specific course theme, students learn to generate worthwhile questions, collect primary data, locate secondary resources, and form original research insights. 
  
  Prerequisites: ENGL 111 Writing and Rhetoric I or ENGL 111H Writing and Rhetoric I: Honors or TWC-T-7 EXAM-TWC WRITING MINIMUM SCORE = 7

• ENGL 130H - Oral Expression: Honors (SP credit)

  Mondays/Wednesdays 12:30-1:50 p.m. (Alexis Sarkisian)

  Students overcome difficulties they may have in public speaking, such as stage fright and poor diction. Students are made aware of important elements such as delivery and posture, use of gestures, and good grammar. Course introduces students to informative, persuasive, and occasional modes of public speaking and helps students develop well-organized and purposeful speeches.

• HIST 262H - History of the American City: Honors (HI DEI PL credits)
  Mondays/Wednesdays 3:30-4:50 p.m. (Nicholas McCormick)
  
  Course examines the history of the development of the U.S. as an urban nation. It analyzes the rise and decline of various urban systems that developed over the course of American history. Students investigate the social, economic, political, technological, and demographic trends that have shaped the modern American city.
• HIST 321H - The Enlightenment: Honors (HI GA credits)

  Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:30-11:50 a.m. (Kate Hamerton)

  Learning about the Enlightenment as a complex, trans-national intellectual movement, we will focus in this class on the Enlightenment in Paris, its heart. Issues studied will vary by semester, and may include science, social satire, women’s roles in the Enlightenment, the development of a public sphere, the use of fictional literature to ?do? Enlightenment, commerce, education and epistemology, political thought, penal reform, aesthetics, racial and gender theory, the transmission of ideas, and the question of how the Enlightenment may be linked to the French Revolution of 1789.

  Requirement: Sophomore Standing or Above (SO)

• HIST 353H - Oral History: The Art of the Interview: Honors (HI credit)

  Wednesdays 9-11:50 a.m. (Erin McCarthy)

  The foundation of this multi-layered, applied history course is immersion into a specific period in United States history to acquire the contextual knowledge necessary to conduct a well-informed oral history interview. After an extensive introduction into the field of oral history and the discipline’s methodology, a series of colloquiums on question formulation, script development, interviewing techniques, and transcription standards are held. Finally, after the interview and full transcription is completed, each student will present a content analysis and edit of their interview. All interviews will be archived with an established oral history project.

• HUMA 110H - Western Humanities: Honors (HU credit)

  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Carmelo Esterrich)

  This course introduces and engages with the historical, intellectual, and aesthetic development of ideas, values, arts, and traditions in western culture through a survey of art, architecture, literature, music, philosophy, and religion.

• LITR 268H - Literature on Film: Honors: Outcasts and Others (HL credit)

  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Mark Withrow)

  Class concerns the relationship between written and filmed versions of a story, novel, or play. Course explores how character development, plot, narrative, symbols, and language are translated from text to film. To facilitate analysis, students acquire a basic vocabulary for discussing literature and film. Instructors may focus on a particular theme, such as the love story, fantasy, or mythology. Works studied have been as diverse as The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.

  Prerequisites: ENGL 112 Writing and Rhetoric II or ENGL 112H Writing and Rhetoric II: Honors or ENGL 122 International Writing and Rhetoric II 

• LITR 281H - Victorian Illustrated Poetry: Honors (HL credit)

  Tuesdays 9-11:50 a.m. (Ken Daley)

  In this seminar, we will focus on Victorian illustrated poetry and its dynamic interplay between image and word. We will consider the function and effect of illustration in general, and the special problematic associated with the visual interpretation of poetry. We will also pay attention to the illustrated book as a material object, a collaboration of many makers working within the context of particular human, institutional, and cultural relationships.

   

• PSYC 214H - The Evolution of the Mind: Honors (SS credit)

  Tuesdays 3:30-6:20 p.m. (Rami Gabriel)

  The human mind is a product of biological and cultural evolution. This course will study the philosophical and psychological implications of this claim. What makes the human mind unique, compared with those aspects of mind we share with non-human animals? What is the relationship between emotion and thought? What are the successes and failures of evolutionary psychology and philosophy of mind? Are religion and ethics products of the evolution of the mind?

  Prerequisites: ENGL 112 Writing and Rhetoric II or ENGL 112H Writing and Rhetoric II: Honors or ENGL 122 International Writing and Rhetoric II 

• RELI 213H - Religion and Violence: Honors (HU credit)

  Mondays/Wednesdays 2-3:20 p.m. (Stephanie Frank)
  
  Much violence perpetrated in the world today is considered religious in nature. This class will interrogate that assumption by considering several important questions: Is there something inherently violent about religion? What work does violence do, for religion? What is religious terrorism, and what do the techniques of terror earn for those who use them? Is violence ever justified? Must it be justified with religion, if it is to be justified at all? Most centrally: is the category of religious violence meaningful?

   

• SCIE 155H - Science of Musical Instruments: Honors (SL or SC credit)
  Tuesdays 1-4:50pm (David Dolak)
  
  Students study the scientific principles by which sound is generated in common acoustic musical instruments and discover the mathematical foundation of musical scales. This course explores mechanical oscillation, frequency, wavelength, and the harmonic series. Students investigate the complex timbre of musical instruments through hands-on laboratory experiments using wave and spectrum analysis, and develop scales using sound-generation software. For a final project, students construct a functional instrument and perform an original musical composition.