Global Warming is considered an artifact of the Industrial Revolution by some and just another blip in the climate history of the earth by others. However one feels about this, can we nevertheless learn from past human-environment interactions? This course, for Honors students and also interdisciplinary in nature, considers the record of humans and their world over the last 50,000 years. Through reading and seminar discussion, we will look at how humans have responded to gradual climate change as well as sudden climate events. As well, we will look at past implications for human modification of the environment, considering conversion of the forests of Europe to agropastoralism, "caring for the land" in Aboriginal Australia, and other such cases. To understand this past record, we will have to become familiar with various common archaeological tools-radiocarbon dating, palynological analysis, and so forth. Ultimately, the aim of this course is to identify human institutions (and the contexts in which those institutions do best) that promote sustainability as well as those that do not. ..

The 1960s was the most exciting, turbulent decade in recent American history. This course focuses on the social movements at the core of the decade's struggles-the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the counterculture, and the women's liberation movement-as we look closely at fundamental issues of national and personal identity and how social change occurs. The course also examines the American experience of the Vietnam War and the presidential administrations of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. In addition to briefer writing assignments, students compose a major research paper and give an oral presentation on a topic of their choice, and they help lead one of the weekly discussions.

"First, do no harm" Hippocrates purportedly advised Greek physicians in the 4th century B.C. This aphorism has been repeated over and over again as a primary moral principle to guide good medical care. But what did it actually mean in practice? And what did it mean when physicians themselves became researchers, seeking to advance knowledge as well as aid individual patients? We will explore the emergence of ethical codes through case studies of key episodes and debates that have marked modern medicine. Our goal is to understand the complex cultural, economic and political circumstances that underlay particularly infamous examples of human experimentation gone awry, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis study and the human radiation experiments, as well as to examine the contexts for other major ethical issues in clinical medicine and medical research. Students will write regular position papers and complete a research project.

This course is about life and the scientist. Too many pre-med students and then medical students get caught up in science and lose sight of other aspects of life. Our theme will be Medicine is about life, not Life is about medicine. The course will explore three topics: How we die, why we live, and how we live. The major readings are Sherwin Nuland's How We Die, Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Bob Smith's Hamlet's Dresser, and Armand Nicholai's The Question of God. These are written by physicians, the last one by a psychiatrist reflecting on a course he has taught at Harvard for thirty years contrasting the world view of Freud and C. S. Lewis. Students must attend three fine arts performances. There are short weekly writing assignments and required class participation. There is a final project.

The seminar will explore the Vietnam War's complicated history, beginning with Vietnam's martial tradition and continuing through that nation's nationalistic struggles against the Chinese, Japanese, French, and finally Americans. The focus will be on what the Vietnamese called the "American War," including the bombing campaigns against North Vietnam, the attrition strategy in South Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, the Nixon Administration's policies of Vietnamization and pacification, the American homefront, and South Vietnam's final collapse in 1975. Postwar myths and misconceptions that have emerged about the war, including the media's role, PTSD, Agent Orange, and MIAs, will also be studied.

The UHON 395H on Actors for the fall semester of 2008-2009 will again concentrate on actors and actresses in film, but this time on actors or actresses who were born or grew up in Nebraska. We will view movies featuring Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Dorothy McGuire, Robert Taylor, Swoosie Kurtz, Sandy Dennis, Nick Nolte, and Henry Fonda. Some of theses movies are well known, such as Fonda's The Grapes of Wrath or The Ox-Bow Incident; Brando's On the Waterfront or The Godfather; Sandy Dennis' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Taylor's Camielle or Quo Vadis; Astaire's The Gay Divorcee or Top Hat; Swoosie Kurtz's Cruel Intentions; Dorothy McGuire's Gentlemen's Agreement or Old Yeller, Nick Nolte's Who'll Stop the Rain? or Afterglow. We will view as many of them as time and availability permit.

The genre of mystery is an extremely popular one, generating hundreds of books annually, and grossing millions of dollars for publishers, if not for the writers themselves. Why are they so compelling? Why do we read them, make them into films, share them? We'll investigate this phenomenon in depth. We will read such "classics" as Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, generally considered to be the first mystery novel, authors Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie and P.D. James, along with Conan Doyle, perhaps Dashiell Hammett, Peter Tremayne, and others. Our primary purpose will be to examine the methods with which women and men authors approach the genre, exploring the ways in which they both treat the crimes, the characters, the investigators, and insert various sub-texts and agendas they may wish to relate to their readers. Students will be expected to complete a mystery novel a week, to review a mystery not on the syllabus, and to complete a research or creative project concerning the genre.

The contributions of women to musical life in Europe and North America---as composers, performers, teacher, and patrons---were until very recently an entirely neglected topic of inquiry. Just in the last few decades, however, women's roles in music have become an exciting and challenging area of historical and theoretical research. This seminar will provide its participants with an overview of the field and a brief survey of the participation of women in folk, popular, and classical music from the Middle Ages to the present day, with special consideration of the societal expectations and limitations that have constrained their engagement in this art. Students will be asked to read and discuss textbook chapters and scholarly articles, and to deliver a major presentation in class later in the semester that will then be turned into a finished research paper. Students are welcome from all colleges and departments; no prior experience in musical performance or in the academic study of music will be presumed.

Over the past two centuries, human beings have made enormous progress in improving the quality and length of life. Life expectancy at birth has doubled as people have become taller and stronger. Along with improvements in sanitation and health care, greater and more secure supplies of food have played an important role in bringing about these changes. Today, there is more food available on a per capita basis than at any previous time in recorded history. Yet there are millions of people who go to bed hungry on a daily basis. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 864 million people, about 14 percent of world population, are malnourished. In this seminar, this paradox will be explored in depth through selected readings including Malthus's Essay on Population (1798) as well as more contemporary works addressing the causes and consequences of hunger and potential solutions of this problem. Students will also explore the food support system for low-income families and the homeless in Lincoln. In addition to leading seminar discussions, students will write a substantial research paper on a particular dimension of the world hunger problem selected by the student.