Kansas State University

Keeping in mind that wholeness is one key to good scholarship, this course can help you integrate different aspects of your scholarly identity—most notably, your interests, instincts, and skills—to both sustain you as a scholar and propel you in service to society. Drawing on the psychological and sociological insights of Drs. Carol Dweck, Oliver James, and Edwin Friedman, the course offers a path to growing in scholarly competence, identifying complex “wicked” problems that multidisciplinary-minded scholars ought to address, and exercising leadership while “sticking” to your values. Course assignments involve reflecting on questions designed to help you discover what it means to be a scholarly, thoughtful leader.

This course will open the doors to resources and connections to expand the horizons for student development and training. In addition to references to the KSU Freshman book, students will navigate various methods to optimize opportunities that surround them. Students will gain insight into capitalizing on these resources and connections to facilitate a growth mindset as specified by the Honors Program.

Contact the office of Pre-law Advising, 215 Fairchild Hall for permission to enroll.

Obtain permission to enroll in 013 Bluemont Hall.

Do women really talk more than men? Are men really worse at listening? Is there such a thing as “sounding gay”? Differences between women‘s and men’s speech have been anecdotally recorded throughout history, and the subject continues to be a popular topic in media ranging from self-help guides to respected newspapers and journals.  In this course we will explore connections between language use and gender identity to investigate the various ways distinct disciplines establish and communicate knowledge. We will critique discussions of “female language” in the media, analyze representations of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality in news reports, movies, and comedy sketches, and use insights from these activities to evaluate primary research on the topic of language and gender. Along with in-class and homework activities designed to practice speech analysis, students will produce written reactions to works ranging from editorials to peer-reviewed journals and structure an independent investigation into a question about language and gender. These activities will provide students with the written and oral communication skills necessary to communicate with popular and academic audiences.

Turning on primetime television, picking up a newspaper or going to the movies, it is almost impossible to escape representations of criminality, whether in the form of crime scene investigators solving crimes or superheroes facing off against villains of all kinds. Crime has long been a principal focus in literature, and our course will engage with literary texts in addition to films, music, and television as well as social science texts and social theory. In particular, we will focus on how criminalization in the United States is racialized.

During this course, we will focus on writing analytical essays about the themes and debates in the class. During the semester, we will go through the process of writing and revising three essays in addition to several shorter assignments. Writing is a collaborative process, which means that there will be substantial in class collaboration and peer review of each other’s writings. This course will be discussion based, requiring regular attendance and classroom participation in relation to both the readings and assignments.

How do specific places (prairies, mountains, deserts, cities) affect the psyches of people who call those places home? Why do some people claim humanity as a part of nature, while other separate it from nature—and  what’s the difference, anyway? How do economic circumstances affect people’s views of the land and the animal species that also live there? What is the difference between Cli-Fi and Sci-Fi? What are attitudes toward hunting that we see in literature and what implications do they have? How do cultural views of nature contribute to the ethical decisions a community makes? How can nature writing invite larger, metaphysical speculation and conversation? Can literature about the environment change lives? Can it save the world?  Pursuing such questions, this course will examine ways writers have presented the natural world in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. K-State 8 Tag: Aesthetic Interpretation.

All seats in Section S are reserved for CS Scholars Group.

The United States entered the 20th century with a literature and culture inherited from the 19th century, but with a dynamic, rapidly-changing society. Immigration had transformed American demographics, escalating from the 1840s to the end of the century; factory production and industrialization, urbanization, and the mechanization of agriculture had transformed daily life; the federal government had suppressed a regional rebellion and established jurisdiction over the 48 contiguous states; and slavery had been abolished. But while the US was poised to become the dominant world power of the new century, its culture was steeped in the old. We will examine the transformation of American literature and culture: the persistence of the sentimental and Genteel culture of the 19th century into the 20th, the challenge of insurgent literature and culture (modernism, both high and low; elements of African-American literature; the literature of the political right and left), and the emergence of a literature and culture that engaged with the realities of a new century. Some of the writers we’ll read: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, Willa Cather, Sara Teasdale, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, John Dos Passos, and E.E. Cummings. Requirements: regular participation; short out-of-class response papers; a presentation; a final research project. 

Obtain permission in ECS108.

We constantly perform the Middle Ages, whether at Medieval Times restaurants, on gaming platforms, or by calling something “medieval.” This class will ask whether the past can come alive in these performances or whether such efforts undermine our ability to see the past as distinct from the present. To consider this conundrum, we will sample modern performances of the medieval in works like Game of Thrones, A Knight’s Tale, and the 1938 classic The Adventures of Robin Hood, while reading works from the Middle Ages that continue to appeal to modern readers. Such texts include romances by Marie de France and Sir Thomas Malory, poems by Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve, and anonymous plays and ballads. 

Obtain permission in ECS108.

Obtain permission in Kedzie 105 or by emailing journalism@ksu.edu.  Laptop computer required.