• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Communication
• Instructor: Daniel Linz
• Instructor Email: linz@comm.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Thursday 2:00-3:50 in HSSB 2202
• Enroll Code: 26443

Course Description:  This course will require students to observe attorneys in the courtroom, at trial, in the Santa Barbara courthouse. The students may choose to focus on a number of topics relevant to effective communication. This may include making effective opening statements, visual presentation of evidence, interviewing witnesses on the stand and increasing jury persuasion. The course instructor will facilitate meetings and discussions with attorneys and the judge participating in the trial. This course may be especially useful for students considering a career in the legal system.

Bio:  Professor Linz’s research and teaching involves empirically testing the social psychological assumptions made by the law and legal actors in the area of communication. This research spans the topics of First Amendment and freedom of speech and censorship, forensic communication, sexual violence, media violence, pornography, sex-oriented entertainment in the community, communication and race, and transgender rights and law.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Asian American Studies
• Instructor: John Park
• Instructor Email: jswpark@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 4:00-5:50 in HSSB 1207
• Enroll Code: 26450

Course Description:  I've taught this seminar several times before for the College, it's about the moral and legal dilemmas that Americans have faced when implementing or obeying American law.  Rules governing slavery, rules about exclusion, rules in favor of segregation--Americans have oftn disobeyed and resisted such rules, and this seminar examines those dilemmas in their historical context.

Bio:  John Park has been a Professor of Asian American Studies at UCSB since 2002.  He has published several books on American immigration law and American legal history.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Spanish and Portuguese
• Instructor: Silvia Bermúdez
• Instructor Email: bermudez@spanport.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesdays 4:00-5:50 IN HSSB 3202
• Enroll Code: 61580

Course Description:  The course examines some of the most famous 20th- and 21st-century Latin American women pioneers—composers and singers—within the musical traditions of boleros, salsa, Mariachi, Tejano music, and contemporary pop, among others. We’ll investigate how these individual women, through their performances, established their status as musical stars, some of whom became globally recognized, by embodying an iconic identity. We aim to comprehend the profound cultural impact and extensive influence of these performers within the social, political, and cultural contexts that have shaped Latin American music.

Bio:  Silvia Bermúdez is Professor of literature and Iberian Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her current scholarship focuses on Iberian feminisms, Latin American music, and the work of Galician women photographers.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Black Studies
• Instructor: Roberto Strongman
• Instructor Email: rstrongman@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 2:00-3:50 in HSSB 1210 
• Enroll Code: 26492

Course Description:  Yoga is a Sanskrit term that can be best translated as "Integration." The course aims to develop an integral understanding of the history of yogic knowledges with roots in South Asia, creolization with XIX Century European body culture during the era of British imperialism, and a capitalist and often culturally-appropriative global spread in the late XX Century and beyond. This historical and philosophical material will be "yoked" (a cognate of "yoga") with a physical asana practice: the class will be organized in weekly two-hour sessions, with the first hour devoted to lecture, presentation, discussion and journal writing and the second hour to a physical postural and breathing practice thematically wedded to the readings. As such, the deeper, even metaphysical, goal of the course will be to bring "union" to the budding scholar, fomenting a balanced, equanimous and holistic body-mind.

Bio:  Ph.D. Literature (UCSD 2003). I am a scholar of embodiment, specializing in trance states. My latest book "Queering Black Atlantic Religions" (Duke UP, 2019) speaks to my interest in fomenting an awareness of the unity within the body-mind construct, the goal of "yoga." In addition to my academic credentials, I am also a health care provider certified by the state of California, a massage therapist through the California Massage Therapy Council and an experienced registered yoga instructor at the 500-hour level (E-RYT 500, the highest recognizable credential in the field) ) through the Yoga Alliance.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Earth Science
• Instructor: Alexander Simms
• Instructor Email: asimms@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Thursday 4:00-4:50 in HSSB 2202 *This seminar has an overnight weekend fieldtrip
• Enroll Code: 26500

Course Description:  This course will provide an overview of the geology of the California Coast.  We will discuss plate tectonics, coastal geomorphology, sea-level changes, and physical threats to our coastline.  The majority of the course will be an overnight campout to explore a portion of the Central Coast of California.

Bio:  Professor Simms has taught at UCSB since 2010.  Prior to that he was a professor at his undergraduate alma mater, Oklahoma State University.  He earned a PhD in Earth Science from Rice University.  His research interests include sedimentology, with a particular emphasis on the geologic history of coastlines. He has conducted research on coastlines across the globe including Texas, Antarctica, Scotland, and California.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Computer Science
• Instructor: Maryam Majedi
• Instructor Email: majedi@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 5:00-6:50 in ILP 4207
• Enroll Code: 57174

Course Description:  In an era where technological advancements are occurring at an unprecedented rate, the course Ethical Tech: Navigating the “Should” in Innovation offers a crucial perspective on the intersection of ethics and technology. This seminar invites students to embark on a thought-provoking journey, exploring not just the limitless possibilities of what they can create with technology, but more importantly, reflecting on whether they should create them.

Throughout this course, students will engage with fundamental ethical theories and principles, applying them to real-world scenarios and emerging technological trends. The seminars will foster critical thinking and ethical reasoning, encouraging students to contemplate the broader implications of technology on society, the environment, and future generations.

Possible topics include:

The Role of Ethics in Technology Development

Balancing Innovation with Moral Responsibility

Privacy, Security, and Ethical Dilemmas in the Digital Age

AI and Data Privacy: Where Should We Draw the Line?

Through a combination of interactive discussions, case studies, and presentations, students will gain insights into how ethical considerations can and should influence technological innovation. They will learn to identify potential ethical issues and develop strategies to address them, ensuring that the technology they create contributes positively to society.

Bio:  Dr. Maryam Majedi joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as an Assistant Teaching Professor in 2023. She completed a teaching stream postdoc at the University of Toronto, where she worked with the Embedded Ethics Education Initiative (E3I) team and introduced the first ethics modules for CS courses in Canada. Dr. Majedi earned her Ph.D. in data privacy at the University of Calgary. Her Ph.D. work presents a novel privacy policy modeling technique. Prior to her Ph.D., she earned a Master of Science degree in High-Performance Scientific Computing from the University of New Brunswick. Dr. Majedi also completed a fellowship in Medical Innovation at Western University.

Dr. Majedi's research primarily revolves around Embedded Ethics and Data Privacy. She explores the intersection of computer science and ethical considerations, aiming to develop modules that facilitate the integration of ethics and data privacy principles into computer science education.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: College of Creative Studies
• Instructor: Michelle Petty
• Instructor Email: mnpetty@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 2:00-3:50 in ILP 4107
• Enroll Code: 26542

Course Description:  In times where morality and ethics are hotly contested in arenas stretching from technology to climate, engaging in the study of monsters can help us discern our own moral code, which can help us stand straight in an increasingly crooked house. In this honors seminar, students will read and watch stories that help us explore together what makes someone or something monstrous, and ways in which people are taking on the monster as an identity to take up space and agency in a world that might render them monstrous.

Drawing on multidisciplinary monster studies, from horror to rhetoric, we will look at popular culture and literature as our source material. We'll explore the questions posed to children ("What makes a monster and what makes a man?" - Hunchback of Notre Dame) and to adults (What is scary, and to whom?), but we'll also look at how declarations like "I'm the monster, it's me" (Taylor Swift) have become rallying cries to activists in marginalized communities.

This will be a discussion-based course where student writing is designed to support that discussion and their own self-reflection. At the end of the course, students will write a short paper about how studying monstrosity has helped them refine their personal morals, ethics, and values.

Bio:  Michelle Petty is an assistant teaching professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She researches higher education pedagogy and writing studies through the lenses of intersectionality and critical digital literacies. She has previously published in multiple academic journals on Black language and literature in the college classroom, in addition to several poems and a short story in literary journals.

.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Spanish and Portuguese
• Instructor: Silvia Bermúdez
• Instructor Email: bermudez@spanport.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 2:00-3:50 IN HSSB 3202
• Enroll Code: 61572

Course Description:  Our Honors Seminar offers a unique exploration of a lesser-known aspect of Spanish art and culture: the significant contributions of women artists. Within their historical, political, and artistic contexts, we will delve into the imaginative work of well-recognized personalities such as María Blanchard (1881-1932), Maruja Mallo (1902-1995), Remedios Varo (1908-1963), Roser Bru (1923-2021), Lucinda Urrusti (1929-2023), Marta Palau (1934-2022), Sofía Gandarias (1957-2016), and a Mar Caldas (1964).

Bio:  Silvia Bermúdez is Professor of literature and Iberian Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her current scholarship focuses on Iberian feminisms, Latin American music, and the work of Galician women photographers.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Earth Science
• Instructor: Syee Weldeab
• Instructor Email: sweldeab@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Wednesday 2:00-3:50 in HSSB 1211
• Enroll Code: 57182

Course Description:  The focus of this seminar is to unravel and discuss the manifestation of ongoing climate changes in various parts of the eco-system. The seminar informs how our understanding of past climate changes improve and refine the impact and feedback mechanism of current and future climate changes.

Bio:  I am  Earth Scientist and study Earth's climate, For more see my website: https://weldeab.geol.ucsb.edu/