Descriptions for ETHS 390

ETHS 390-01A:  Ethics in Everyday Life 
Jean Keller
Students face a variety of ethical challenges in their daily lives. Finding the right balance between one's obligations to self and to others in one's friendships, romantic life, work life, and family life are one set of ethical concerns.   Daily news headlines, that highlight challenging and seemingly intractable social problems, bring our attention to another.  In this course we'll address ethical issues in everyday life, ranging from the ethics of interpersonal relationships to our obligations as informed citizens with regard to the pressing social problems of our day. We'll study contemporary moral theories (virtue ethics, care ethics, deontology) and debates within moral theory and use this theoretical understanding to engage problems posed by students' own lives and by news headlines.

ETHS 390-02A:  Business Ethics
Jean Ochu
Is business ethics an oxymoron? If you read newspaper articles that describe corporate misconduct and felonious behavior by corporate executives your conclusion would be yes. We will examine the ethical choices individuals must inevitably make in their business and professional lives. We will examine ethical philosophical concepts that are relevant to resolving the moral issues in business. We will identify the moral issues involved in specific problem areas of business and determine the reasoning needed to apply ethical concepts to business decisions. Business ethics has an interdisciplinary character. We will examine issues in politics, sociology, economics, environment, and social justice. This course will be primarily discussion based through the use of case studies and actual moral dilemmas faced by individuals in business. Students should have taken at least one course in accounting, management, or economics and/or have interest in business.

ETHS 390-03A:  Ethics and Performance
Adam Houghton
Great artists use performance to make sense of the world around them and to answer major questions about what it is to be human. The best performance clearly reveals meaning and allows spectators to recognize truth from their varied perspectives. Just seeing a great performance can change a person's life. For example, a film about a family's struggle over an abortion may change a spectator's opinion on the issue. Students taking this course will use artistic performances in theater, film, and television to identify and analyze some ethical issues. Yet no matter how great an artistic performance is, it is not real-it is a formal contrivance devised to make the spectator think, feel, and value the artist's ideas. Therefore students' will peel back the layers of ethical issues not only in the performance stories, but in the performance methods as well. (film lab meets on Wednesdays from 3:00-5:00pm in Alcuin AV1)

ETHS 390-04A:  Ethics in Everyday Life 
Jean Keller
Students face a variety of ethical challenges in their daily lives. Finding the right balance between one's obligations to self and to others in one's friendships, romantic life, work life, and family life are one set of ethical concerns.   Daily news headlines, that highlight challenging and seemingly intractable social problems, bring our attention to another.  In this course we'll address ethical issues in everyday life, ranging from the ethics of interpersonal relationships to our obligations as informed citizens with regard to the pressing social problems of our day. We'll study contemporary moral theories (virtue ethics, care ethics, deontology) and debates within moral theory and use this theoretical understanding to engage problems posed by students' own lives and by news headlines.

ETHS 390-05A:  Business Ethics
Jean Ochu
Is business ethics an oxymoron? If you read newspaper articles that describe corporate misconduct and felonious behavior by corporate executives your conclusion would be yes. We will examine the ethical choices individuals must inevitably make in their business and professional lives. We will examine ethical philosophical concepts that are relevant to resolving the moral issues in business. We will identify the moral issues involved in specific problem areas of business and determine the reasoning needed to apply ethical concepts to business decisions. Business ethics has an interdisciplinary character. We will examine issues in politics, sociology, economics, environment, and social justice. This course will be primarily discussion based through the use of case studies and actual moral dilemmas faced by individuals in business. Students should have taken at least one course in accounting, management, or economics and/or have interest in business.

ETHS 390-06A:  What is a Monster?
Shane Miller
This course will use monsters as a means of examining ethical issues. Using novels, stories, films, and reports, students will explore: how we have historically drawn boundaries between monsters and humans; the cultural and social factors that shape our monsters; and, the issues at stake in how we choose to confront our monsters. Students will learn and use a variety of ethical perspectives to reason through these issues. This course has a lab.  (we are working out the details for the film lab meeting time/place)

ETHS 390-07A:  Finding a Place to Stand
Matt Callahan
Students in this course will explore a variety of ethical theories in their application to the question of "the other" and the relation to the natural world. A number of these theories include ethical subjectivism, cultural relativism, natural ethics, utilitarianism and the ethics of virtue. Students will be expected to bring their own, personal perspective to bear on the various philosophical theories and consider what forces, large and small, shape not only what we think but how we think as well. For inspiration and insight, we will turn to a variety of notable, contemporary writers including Jhumpa Lahiri, ZZ Packer, George Saunders, Jon Krakauer, among others. There will also be a number of short articles and in-class lectures related to various ethical theories.

ETHS 390-08A:  Healthcare Ethics
Georgia Hogenson
This course directs students to re-think ethics in today's system of healthcare, where the best possibilities for ethical healthcare in this century lie beyond traditional and mainstream thought. Students will question assumptions guided by the major principles of healthcare ethics and reflect deeply on clinical cases across healthcare disciplines from the perspective of professional and consumer.

ETHS 390-09A:  Others
Cunningham, Tony
We share our lives by both necessity and design with others.  Born utterly dependent, we rely entirely upon the care and kindness of others for our very survival.  Even when we no longer depend upon others to feed, clothe, and protect us, we must figure out what sorts of responsibilities we bear to others and what responsibilities they have to us.  Some people may seem relatively distant, bound to us only in the basic sense that we share in some common humanity.  Others can seem so important to us that we might not wish to go on without them.  In this course we'll examine the responsibilities we bear to each other in various respects-as human beings, as friends, as family, as brothers and sisters in common causes.  We'll also look at the ways in which people turn their backs on others and misuse them in cruel and oppressive ways.  Using sources drawn from philosophy, literature, history, memoir, and the social sciences, we'll put our minds to what we owe others and what others owe us.

ETHS 390-10A:  Good, Evil & the Limitations of Human Nature
John Houston
All of us are familiar with the terms "good" and "evil". Furthermore, we have all at some time used these terms in reference to persons or their actions. This phenomenon is the focal point of this class. In this course we will seek to address a variety of questions related to good and evil. Some of these questions include: What are the conceptual origins of our judgments about good and evil? Can we objectively say of some actions or persons that they are good or evil?-Or do terms like good and evil merely serve as expressions of our individual preferences? In virtue of what do we describe people as good or evil? Are some people born evil and others good, or do they become so? If they become so, how does this happen? Philosophers and famous literary personalities have grappled with these questions. We will draw upon their resources to reflect on these questions and attempt to articulate our own answers to them. In this course students will be required to read, think, write, attend class, and contribute to thoughtful dialogue.

ETHS 390-11A:  War & Memory
Nick Hayes
Our course examines the ethical issues of the conduct and representation of war from the Great War (WWI) to today's "war on terrorism." Our theme follows that shift of strategy from targeting military casualties to the predominant emphasis on civilian casualties as evident in the case studies of the Vietnam War, WWI, the Holocaust, the Troubles in Ireland, and the wars of genocide in our time - Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the post-Cold War conflicts of Russia, and the "war on terrorism."

ETHS 390-12A:  Reading for Life
Cunningham, Tony
Everyone loves a good story.  Great stories can provide us with far more than mere recreation.  Stories can provide us with rich character portraits that can reveal the subtleties and nuances of what it means to live well and responsibly.  In this course we'll use novels and films to address Socrates' most basic ethical questions, "How should one live?" and "What sort of person should I be?"  We'll do so by attending to all the concrete, particular details of real life and fictional characters thoroughly embroiled in the "business of living."  Reading well offers the possibility of vicarious experience and ultimately, ethical insight.

Our readings will include: 

The Crucible (Arthur Miller)
Ransom (David Malouf)
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Beloved (Toni Morrison)
Hecuba (Euripides)
How To Be Good (Nick Hornby)
Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet)
Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier) 

ETHS 390-13A:  Good, Evil & the Limitations of Human Nature
John Houston
All of us are familiar with the terms "good" and "evil". Furthermore, we have all at some time used these terms in reference to persons or their actions. This phenomenon is the focal point of this class. In this course we will seek to address a variety of questions related to good and evil. Some of these questions include: What are the conceptual origins of our judgments about good and evil? Can we objectively say of some actions or persons that they are good or evil?-Or do terms like good and evil merely serve as expressions of our individual preferences? In virtue of what do we describe people as good or evil? Are some people born evil and others good, or do they become so? If they become so, how does this happen? Philosophers and famous literary personalities have grappled with these questions. We will draw upon their resources to reflect on these questions and attempt to articulate our own answers to them. In this course students will be required to read, think, write, attend class, and contribute to thoughtful dialogue.

ETHS 390-14A:  Contemporary Political Thought: Markets, Identify, and Justice - CANCELLED
James Read
The theme of this section of Honors 390 is "Markets, Identity, and Justice." We will examine several competing contemporary theories of justice (including John Rawls' "justice as fairness," Robert Nozick's free-market libertarian justice, and Charles Taylor's understanding of justice as mutual recognition) and apply those theories of justice to two important types of contemporary political conflict involving ethical choice: distributional politics and identity politics. Should the wealthy be taxed to support health care for the poor? Should the operations of the free market be guided by principles of justice -- and if so, by which principles of justice? These questions involve ethical choice with respect to economic distribution, and we face them every time we vote, or debate about tax policy, or volunteer at a homeless shelter. But contemporary debates about justice are not limited to distribution of material goods and economic opportunities. They also involve arguments about whether and in what way justice requires recognition of someone's ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, or national identity. Advocates of same-sex marriage rights, for example, do not demand a redistribution of wealth but instead a change in the way their fellow citizens talk about, think about, and publicly recognize same-sex relationships. When Muslim girls wear head scarves to public schools in France, is this an affirmation of religious freedom and cultural heritage, or a rejection of French identity and a badge of women's submission? Identity politics can become especially fierce when each group perceives the other's identity as a threat to its own. What principles of justice, if any, can guide our decisions - personal and political - about who to recognize and how? This course seeks to make students more aware of the political and personal choices they make every day that implicate questions of both distributional and "recognitional" justice.

ETHS 390-15A:  Folktales and the Foundation of Modern Morality
Andreas Kiryakakis
The study of Folktales is especially well suited for a discussion of ethics because it presents us with a wide variety of issues and moral situations.  It gives us an opportunity to make informed and responsible decisions about a multiplicity of different concerns. An understanding of the meaning of an individual's life is not something acquired at a particular age.  It is the result of a long development and does not occur fully developed like Athena springing from the Head of Zeus.  It is an ongoing process gained from one's experiences.  To find deeper meaning in life one must be able to rise above the confines of self-centered existence and a believe that one can make a difference in the world.  One must be able to develop one's inner resources so that emotions and intellect become integrated.   This process of integration is structurally developed in Folk tales.   It mirrors cognitive, psychological, philosophical, social and moral ideas and theories familiar to most of us.  We will use the Folktales of the Grimm Brothers as a resource and concentrate on the following topics: Parenthood;   Welfare and charity;  Death, Punishment and Executions; The Psychology of Children; The Role and Function of Women and Girls; The Image of Men and Boys;  Religion, Superstition and Evil.