Honors class replaces core requirements, challenges students to consider new ideas
Bailey McBride
Issue date: 1/14/09 Section: News
The Honors Humanities Project, or H2P, has been offered to Honors students for about 10 years. However, many students on campus have never heard of it.
H2P is a four-semester progression of classes that replaces World Literature I and II, World Civilizations I and II, a fine art requirement and a humanities colloquium.
"H2P has been really challenging, but I've really enjoyed learning history from this perspective," said Laura Peery, a sophomore in her fourth semester of the program. "We read actual documents from a particular culture instead of hearing an objective accounting of it, which I think helps me to understand the culture better."
Each semester of the program focuses on a different time period, arranged in chronological order, beginning with founding myths in the first semester and ending with the Vietnam War and Rock N' Roll in the last semester. Each semester of the program is team-taught by three professors, who each lecture on areas they specialize in. Students attend lectures twice a week, and participate in a one-hour discussion period with their instructor once a week.
Sophomore Laura Sharp agrees with Peery.
"The class can be very intense, but it allows us to study cultures in a way that is not normally possible in a regular history or literature class," she said.
The class focuses on five different pieces of culture each semester as a means for students to learn about parts of history not usually included in other survey style classes. These cultural icons include works of architecture like the Great Wall of China or the Brooklyn Bridge, works of literature such as the Mahabharata of India, the Popul Vuh of the Mayans, or Othello by Shakespeare, and also the study of movements in history such as the colonization of the New World and Africa. Students learn about each of these periods through the study of primary texts produced within each culture.
The program had its genesis about 10 years ago, and was the brainchild of professor no longer at the UA. A grant proposal written and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed for experts from around the globe to come to Fayetteville over two summers to show faculty how to teach the subjects covered in H2P in a productive way.
H2P is a four-semester progression of classes that replaces World Literature I and II, World Civilizations I and II, a fine art requirement and a humanities colloquium.
"H2P has been really challenging, but I've really enjoyed learning history from this perspective," said Laura Peery, a sophomore in her fourth semester of the program. "We read actual documents from a particular culture instead of hearing an objective accounting of it, which I think helps me to understand the culture better."
Each semester of the program focuses on a different time period, arranged in chronological order, beginning with founding myths in the first semester and ending with the Vietnam War and Rock N' Roll in the last semester. Each semester of the program is team-taught by three professors, who each lecture on areas they specialize in. Students attend lectures twice a week, and participate in a one-hour discussion period with their instructor once a week.
Sophomore Laura Sharp agrees with Peery.
"The class can be very intense, but it allows us to study cultures in a way that is not normally possible in a regular history or literature class," she said.
The class focuses on five different pieces of culture each semester as a means for students to learn about parts of history not usually included in other survey style classes. These cultural icons include works of architecture like the Great Wall of China or the Brooklyn Bridge, works of literature such as the Mahabharata of India, the Popul Vuh of the Mayans, or Othello by Shakespeare, and also the study of movements in history such as the colonization of the New World and Africa. Students learn about each of these periods through the study of primary texts produced within each culture.
The program had its genesis about 10 years ago, and was the brainchild of professor no longer at the UA. A grant proposal written and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed for experts from around the globe to come to Fayetteville over two summers to show faculty how to teach the subjects covered in H2P in a productive way.
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