HON

Experimental course.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

What is justice, and who or what has authority over it? Why do humans understand and pursue justice in the ways we do today? What makes a society good? What characteristics do we find in a good leader? To answer these questions accurately, we must begin with the ancient world. In this first-year honors course, we study evolving approaches to justice in a variety of ancient texts, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; the lyrical poetry of ancient women writers; the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides; and the teachings of Socrates and Plato. We explore what justice looked like for men and women, slaves and landowners, refugees and natives living primarily in Greece, with forays into Troy (modern-day Turkey), Rome, and Egypt. Through our readings of ancient texts-combined with creative and critical writing assignments, presentations, and engaging class discussions-we will journey together toward an understanding of justice that is informed by literary, philosophical, and archaeological histories. Fulfills INQ 111 , SPE 111 , and WRI 111 requirements.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

Prerequisite

Honors status or permission of course instructor.

This course focuses on the transformative cultural and intellectual movements in Europe that spanned the 14th to 17th centuries. Understanding perspective and human anatomy transformed art and gave way to masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s David, Botticelli’s Venus and da Vinci’s Last Supper. The printing press allowed for the dissemination of information to a wide audience and encouraged discoveries in science and mathematics. New thinking about the self and authority led to the reformation of the Western church by Protestant leaders, such as Luther and Calvin. Advances in navigation led to the investigation of new worlds. This course studies contributions to the ongoing quest for knowledge, and includes the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Galileo and Copernicus.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

Prerequisite

HON 201 or permission of course instructor. Intellectual Perspective: RP

“He who controls the present controls the past.” This famous quotation from George Orwell draws our attention to the complicated relationship between ourselves and our history. History is not just what happened prior to the present. It is also the way we choose to tell the story of past events. How we choose to present the stories of our past is often a complicated and highly contentious process. The information that individuals choose to highlight and ignore say at least as much about contemporary social and political relationships as they do about the events being retold. This class will focus on a number of conflicts over public memory, both personal and political. Topics will include obituaries, memorials, the construction of museum exhibits, the impact of nationalism and political ideology, and the selective preservation and destruction of ancient artifacts.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This an introductory course for honors students that explores the pathology, epidemiology, and control of infectious diseases of global importance. It includes in-depth information on the basic pathogenesis and epidemiology of selected infectious diseases of global public health importance. Students obtain a working knowledge of the biology and ecology of these diseases, epidemiology, prevention, and control methods at both the individual and public health levels. Moreover, this course explores the challenges encountered when developing and implementing strategies for their effective control and prevention. This course will emphasize seminar-style student presentations of case-studies and group discussions. During laboratory sessions, students will learn laboratory methods used to diagnose and study infectious agents and acquire skills in epidemiological research and outbreak investigations. Students that are not enrolled in the honors program will need to meet honors-level expectations set by the instructor.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This honors seminar represents the burgeoning field of the medical humanities, which advocates a mingling of the arts and humanities with medical education and practice and explores how science and the humanities benefit one another. Biology lectures will present the molecular underpinnings of cancer biology, HIV infection and resistance, and rare diseases. In laboratory sessions, students will explore techniques related to diagnosing disease, as well as interpreting and assessing the overwhelming online content available regarding human disease. The English portion of the course will focus on human experience of the illnesses covered in biology lectures. Students will analyze literary texts spanning the seventeenth century through the present, research the cultural contexts of illness, and study the depiction of patients, families, and caregivers. Together, we will explore how a combination of scientific and literary knowledge deepens our understanding of illness and its treatment.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This honors seminar engages students in the theory and practice in the art of oratory, oral argumentation and debate. Students will develop an understanding of argumentation as a tool for inquiry and advocacy. Students will explore argument as communicative activity, constructing sound arguments and analyzing the contribution of argument to public dialogue on contemporary issues.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This course provides honors students the opportunity to look at language and its interaction with humanity-or maybe that goes the other way around: humanity and its interaction with language. Either way, we spend the semester looking at how these two things interact. We start with an exploration of language itself, answering questions like, “what is a language?” and “how do languages work”? From there, we move to discussions about how language impacts people and how people impact language.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This course explores the topic of nationalism and national identity formation. It surveys the existing theoretical literature on nationalism and national identity formation, introducing students to the works of several significant scholars and reviews the scholarly debates over this complex phenomenon. Students examine nationalism from a broadly comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. The first half of the course reviews these major theoretical debates and examines the origins of nationalism and its historical development in the European context. The second half of the course moves beyond Europe focusing on a variety of issues related to varied contemporary expressions of nationalism and its relations to other forms of modern political identity in an increasingly globalized world.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This is an honors-level introduction to contemporary environmental and ecological philosophy. Students in this course will learn to think and write critically about their world and their place in it, as they read material from contemporary ecological philosophy and the ecological and biological sciences to better understand how human beings and other lifeforms coexist on this planet.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This Honors introductory course, designed for non-English majors and English majors alike, investigates the dramaturgy and stagecraft of William Shakespeare, the English language’s greatest poet-playwright, in the four dramatic genres of tragedy, comedy, romance and history play. The syllabus offers eight specimen plays (of his thirty-seven), by which we may trace Shakespeare’s development as a poetic writer for the theater in a dynamic age of public stage presentations of ancient and contemporary stories. Throughout the course, we shall consider Shakespeare’s continued impact on our own time and experience. Course work will concentrate on the texts themselves and their critical reception. The instructor will screen film examples of the plays, in their entirety or in selected clips to illustrate the performance nature of the writing.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

A study of contemporary religious beliefs, practices and organizations, primarily in the United States, as they derive from and influence a social context. The focus is on the ongoing debate about secularization, the religious sects of the Old Order Amish and evangelical Christianity and new religious movements.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

Experimental course.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

Experimental course.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

Experimental course.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

This is a short-term study abroad course that enriches students’ first year in honors by providing onsite exploration of many of the archaeological sites and cultural innovations they learned about in the classroom. Travel typically occurs in May of the first year. Grading is Pass/Fail. While travel abroad is strongly recommended, students who are unable to do so may satisfy HON 520 through a virtual directed study.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

2

Credits (max)

2

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

These units of project credit are for use by students who are pursuing the Honors Project in an interdisciplinary area. Students who are pursuing the Honors Project in a single discipline should use the Honors Project numbers listed for that discipline.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

These units of project credit are for use by students who are pursuing the Honors Project in an interdisciplinary area. Students who are pursuing the Honors Project in a single discipline should use the Honors Project numbers listed for that discipline.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

These units of project credit are for use by students who are pursuing the Honors Project in an interdisciplinary area. Students who are pursuing the Honors Project in a single discipline should use the Honors Project numbers listed for that discipline.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu

These units of project credit are for use by students who are pursuing the Honors Project in an interdisciplinary area. Students who are pursuing the Honors Project in a single discipline should use the Honors Project numbers listed for that discipline.

Subject

HON

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

Semester Hours

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Catalog

2026-2027 Westminster College Catalog

Source

catalog.westminster.edu