Spring 2026 KHC First-Year Seminars

Please use the information below to identify your spring 2025 seminar preferences. Note that courses with a MyBU Class Number (e.g., 18053) after the course title below are currently viewable in the MyBU Student portal; courses without a Class Number below are not yet in MyBU, but will be soon. All seminars are 4 units.

KHCAN 102: The Lives of Others: The Power, Politics, and Ethics of Storytelling (18698)
Carroll Beauvais, Kilachand Honors College
Wednesday, 2:30-5:15 pm

This course delves into the ethical and political dimensions of storytelling, explores various cultural and historical forms of storytelling, and examines the deployment of storytelling in applied contexts such as narrative medicine.

Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration

KHCAN 106: Scientists in Society (3561)
Jean Morrison, CAS Earth and Environment; Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences
Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30-1:45 pm

Understanding the nature of science and the role of the scientist in society is critically important in an increasingly technologically driven and interconnected world. Through an examination of the work of 5 impactful scientists and their interactions with prevailing institutions and societal norms, we will explore the fundamental nature of science and how individual scientists have navigated unique challenges created by their work. We will examine the work and controversies that surrounded:

Galileo Galilei and Church authorities in the 1600’s
Alan Turing and the British Government post WWII
Percy Lavon Julian and higher education in the US in the 1900’s
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and the battles over credit and patent rights for CRISPR-9 technology
Antony Fauci and his leadership role in the nation’s public health during COVID-19

Through a combination of assigned readings, lectures and interactive classroom discussions, students will explore the scientific achievements of each person(s) and then explore their broader circumstances and interactions with society. Using this knowledge students will consider and reflect on the nature of scientific contributions and important societal institutions and norms.

Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry I, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking

KHCEH 103: Race in America: Understanding the Present by Exploring the Past (17502)
Luther Young, CAS School of Theology
Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00-3:15 pm

Course explores how contemporary racial dynamics in the US have deep roots in the country’s cultural imagination. Using books, music, film, art, and journalism, we will examine topics including slavery and higher education, #BlackLivesMatter, Christian nationalism, and more.

Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy

KHCEN 103: Poetry as Activism (3551)
Jessica Bozek, CAS Writing Program
Tuesday and Thursday, 3:30-4:45 pm

Do artists have a responsibility to bear witness to their times? This course explores the work of contemporary poets who directly engage the current moment, who show us that art can function as political action. Among the controversial topics that these authors draw attention to and comment on are racial injustice, mass incarceration, war, LGBTQ rights, immigration policy, and environmental devastation. Through our course texts and students’ own poems, we will consider the ethics of appropriation and representation, as well as the use of personal experience and found documents in poetry.

Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community, Creativity/Innovation

KHCEN 105: The Romance Novel (18868)
Amy Fish, Kilachand Honors College
Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00 am-12:15 pm

Romance novels have been scorned, adored, and most of all, widely read. This course examines the history, artistry, and social significance of the genre, with attention to the ways in which romance novels have variously reinforced and disrupted norms of race, gender, class, and sexuality. What do debates over the value of love stories tell us about our society? What can we learn by focusing our academic studies not only on the world’s problems but also on the world’s pleasures?

Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, The Individual in Community, Research and Information Literacy

KHCFT 102: Global Cinema (18768)
Hiba Aleem, Kilachand Honors College
Monday, 2:30-5:15 pm

Our course will examine cinema as an art form, engaging with diverse film traditions, movements, and voices from around the world, especially from beyond Hollywood. Through films from diverse regions, including but not limited to Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, we will explore how cinema reflects, distorts, shapes, and challenges historical, social, and political contexts. We will consider together as a class questions about the transnational production, circulation, reception, and consumption of films, as also the ways in which local storytelling traditions, aesthetics, politics, and audience demands interact with the medium. We will also go over key concepts in film theory and cultural studies, analyze narratives, visual rhetoric, genres, and representation across national and cultural boundaries, and learn to situate and appreciate films within their cultural and historical contexts. By the end of the semester, we will be able to value cinema both as an artistic medium, and as a form of cultural expression that is both a reflection and a distortion of our material realities.

Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Research and Information Literacy

KHCIR 104: The Ethics of War and Political Violence (3562)
Alexander de la Paz, Pardee School of Global Studies
Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30-10:45 am

This course surveys key debates in the ethics of war and political violence. When, if ever, is resorting to war justifiable? How should wars be fought? Are these two questions at all interrelated? Does it even make sense to speak of the ethics of war and political violence? Are arguments for pacifism or nonviolence, for example, more compelling? Are these hopelessly political questions, unsuitable for ethical consideration? Throughout this course, we will study a range of perspectives on these issues—many of which have informed international law, including the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions. In the process, we will also address topical debates in international ethics, including the ethics of self-defense and preemptive war; humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect; combatant liability and noncombatant immunity; “proportionality” in collateral damage; guerrilla warfare and terrorism; and more. Course materials draw widely from political philosophy, international law, literature, and film.

Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy

KHCMU 105: Displacement and Arts (18869)
Kinh Vu, CFA Music in Music Education
Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00-3:15 pm

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that more than 122.6 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2024. This figure represents refugees, asylum seekers, people in need of international protection, and internally displaced people (UNHCR, 2025). Vũ and de Quadros (2020) defined displacement generously, situating the term both inside, near, and perhaps farther afield and beyond the purview of the UN definition of displacements. Examples of this expanded definition include domestic violence, LGBTQIA+ discrimination, and climate change as potential antecedents to displacement (de Quadros, 2020).

Artists’ roles in attending to, addressing, ameliorating, and/or disrupting the effects of displacement have scarcely been explored due in part to necessary, emerging, and ongoing life-saving undertakings (e.g., evacuation, health and human services, housing) for victims of various kinds of emergency cross-country and/or cross-border movements. Community arts organizers, university arts professionals, as well as refugee camp and asylum center aid workers are beginning to enter displacement frontiers to offer an assortment of arts-based initiatives (e.g., theatre, music, visual arts) for displaced and dispossessed peoples to process displacement experiences.

Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration

KHCPO 105: Controversies in Youth Politics (18954)
Seth Blumenthal, CAS Writing Program
Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30-1:45 pm

Youth in the 20th century created new ways to consider how young people thought of their generational identity but also developed a more potent social and cultural agency that shaped an evolving political influence. This emergence provoked compelling questions about this bloc. Why don’t young voters turn out as much as older voters? What familial, cultural and social factors shape youth’s politics? Do they always lean left? To what extent is youth a valuable category for a generation? And finally, what is the best way to compel young people to engage in civic or political activism? This class invites students of all backgrounds and academic disciplines to examine the controversial field of youth politics and investigate the ways in which this topic can be best understood to explain current attention and conceptualization of young people’s activism in America and internationally.

Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, The Individual in Community, Writing-Intensive

KHCPS 103: Performance Psychology (18942)
Carly Block, Wheelock College of Education and Human Development
Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30-10:45am

This course is designed for students interested in the psychological and social factors related to performance across domains such as sports, performing arts, medicine, military, and business. Students will explore core theories and evidence-based practices in performance psychology while learning strategies to address mental performance challenges (e.g., performing under pressure) within these domains. They will also engage with diverse performer experiences and develop skills to critically analyze research and apply concepts in real-world contexts.

Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Teamwork/Collaboration, Creativity/Innovation

KHCRH 104: The Pursuit of Happiness (18703)
Matthew Parfitt, College of General Studies
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 12:20-1:10pm

What is happiness? Can we hope to achieve it and how should we pursue it? We will study how happiness has been understood by different cultures over time, and students will engage with diverse authors and genres from scripture, philosophy, and social science. Students will write three essays, and keep a reading journal.

Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking

KHCRN 103: Islam in the Eyes of the West (17503)
Teena Purohit, CAS Department of Religion
Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00am-12:15pm

An introduction to how and why Islam came to be viewed as a static, essentialized tradition opposed to the West. Covers Orientalist and neo- Orientalist debates about Islam and provides a historical survey of the texts, practices, and beliefs of the Islamic tradition, from the 7th century to the present, in the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa, and the U.S. through a study of the Quran, poetry, philosophy, and political treatises.

Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy