Honors College Courses:

There are three categories of Honors classes offered at LSU. First, the Honors College courses are offered through the Honors College, denoted in scheduling as HNRS. These include the Honors interdisciplinary courses which have curriculum equivalents and satisfy general education requirements. Second, various academic departments on campus offer Departmental Honors classes as equivalents to some of their classes. Third, Honors students are also allowed to earn Honors credit in other classes through completion of an Honors Option contract. See below for details.

Honors 1001/1003: Classical Civilization
Classical Greece and Rome are the focus of this six-credit-hour seminar/lecture class. The course examines the distinctive element of classical art, thought, and literature within the historical context of the rise and fall of empires. Readings begin with The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer, and then move to an extended examination of the superb tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides are studied, as are the Philosophers, Plato, and Aristotle. The final topics cover Roman civilization, with the primary emphasis on Virgil’s Aeneid. Students explore the concepts of polis, justice, happiness, and duty within the context of classical culture, as well as the importance of those ideas for our own lives and our own time.

Honors 1101/1103: Comparative Civilizations
Comparative Civilizations is an introduction to the way culture and personhood are formed through careful examination in lecture and seminar of the great traditional civilizations--India, Greece, China, and Japan, and the West African and Mesoamerican civilizations that became involved in the mix of cultures we call the Atlantic world system. Students journey with great heroes of these cultures, Rama, Odysseus, Monkey, Nianankoro, and the Heike Clan, into marvelous adventures and the building of whole world views. Through exploring the concepts of Cosmos, Society, and Person, students come to see the essential web of symbols that connect all human beings.

Honors 2002/2004: Roman and Medieval Civilization
This seminar/lecture picks up where the ancient civilization classes end and examines European civilization throughout the Middle Ages. St. Augustine’s Confessions, The Song of Roland, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bonaventure’s The Mind’s Road to God, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are typical of the readings. Recent seminar topics have included "Love in an Imperfect World," "Exile, Battle, and Poetry," "From Egypt to the Promised Land," and "God and Grace." From understanding the cosmology of a geocentric universe to "reading" a cathedral; from knowing the significance of numbers to applying the Great Chain of Being to the kingdom of beasts; from learning the symbolic language of courtly love to climbing the ladder of contemplation to a mystical experience, students are immersed in medieval ways of doing things.

Honors 2202/2204: Colonial and Early National America
In addition to reviewing the political, economic, and social history of early America, this new seminar/lecture is designed to include the study of cosmology, mythology, and oral forms of knowledge of peoples indigenous to America and Africa; patterns of religious belief and worship; political theory; regimes of domestic culture; and visual arts and architecture. The texts to be studied will include historical documents such as testimonies, accounts, and letters; political documents; personal, reflective, and satiric essays; novels and poems; mythological narratives, and visual texts such as paintings, pictures, diagrams of houses and official buildings, and cosmological charts. This course is constructed to provoke students to reexamine the American past for themselves and explore perspectives that may result from viewing western, particularly English-speaking culture, within a world-cultural and world-historical context.

Honors 3001: The Renaissance
The first semester of the Honors sophomore sequence,"The Renaissance: 1350-1700," builds upon the classical and medieval foundations and introduces the students to the literature, art, history, and religious controversies of the Renaissance. Though the course studies begin in Italy with The Decameron of Boccaccio and The Prince of Machiavelli, the primary emphasis falls upon the superb literature of England, particularly Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, and Jonson. The Renaissance and Reformation comprise the last period of a religiously dominated culture, and students will study a culture experiencing enormous artistic and literary creativity in the midst of religious and imperial conflict. The Renaissance was a time of excitement, innovation, and experiment, and the students will see this juxtaposed against elements of social and religious continuity in the literature of the age.

Honors 3003: The Modern World
"The Modern World, 1789-1989" is the capstone of the Honors sequence. The course introduces the students to the complex relationships among literature, art, science, psychology, history, and politics arising out of the chaos of the French Revolution as the disciplines forge new bonds and create new paradigms in the modern world. A European concentration allows students to examine that political and geographic area as it gives rise to the novel and the poetics of the city in Balzac, Baudelaire, and Dostoevsky, among others. The transformation of our notions of space, time, and the cosmos is approached through both physics and painting. Students examine the wrenching social and political changes as we move from a century of peace to the era of world war and ideological conflict.

Honors 1007/1008: Life Sciences
This is a basic biology course, which fulfills a total of 8 hours of the general education "Natural Sciences" requirement, including 2 hours of lab. The first semester course is organized in accordance with the principle of organic evolution, emphasizing the chemical basis of life and cell biology. Honors 1008 emphasizes phylogeny, morphology, function of multicellular organisms, and people’s relation to their environment.

Curricular Equivalent of Honors Courses
In meeting the requirements for their degrees, honors students will necessarily substitute a number of honors courses for non-honors courses required for their degree programs. If the equivalent is a general education course, the honors course will also be a general education course.

Departmental Honors Classes
Below is a sampling of departmental honors courses and their equivalents. Many departments also have honors seminars, honors independent study hours, honors tutorial hours, and honors thesis hours with no equivalents. Consult the General Catalog or the departments individually for a complete list of their honors courses.

NOTE: BIOL 1201 is not an honors course, but when it is followed by BIOL 1503 (an honors course), it will be accepted toward fulfillment of the 20 hours requirement for Sophomore Honors Distinction. Taking BIOL 1201, BIOL 1207 or 1208, and BIOL 1503 will give you 8 honors hours. The combination of Physics 1201, 1202, 1208, and 1209 will give you 10 honors hours.

Honors Option

The honors option is available to students at the upper undergraduate level (3000 or above). Honors option courses may be used to fulfill requirements in the existing upper division honors programs. Students enrolled in colleges not currently offering upper division honors programs may also employ the honors option.

The Honors Option Agreement and Honors Option Report Forms are available in the Honors College office.

Regulations:

• A student, with ample notice, will work with a professor to produce a detailed contract outlining the work to be done over and above the regular work for a given course. The student will enroll in this course and will obtain honors credit by successfully completing the work outlined in the contract.
• A copy of the contract will be retained in the Honors Dean's office.
• The option is open only to students:
  1. Who are eligible to enroll in 3000 courses or above
  2. Who have a minimum GPA (overall and in honors courses) of 3.0.