• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Geography
• Instructor: Leila Carvalho
• Instructor Email: leila@eri.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 1:00-2:50 in HSSB 1227
• Enroll Code: 60152

Course Description:  This seminar explores the key processes related to wildfires in California, divided into two comprehensive parts.

Part 1 delves into the physical aspects of wildfires and fire behavior, examining common fire weather conditions and the wind systems linked to California's most destructive wildfires. Students will learn about phenomena such as fire tornadoes and pyrocumulus clouds, their significance in fire behavior, methods for fire detection, and fire behavior forecasting models.

Part 2 focuses on strategies for mitigating wildfire-related issues, providing students with practical measures to address and reduce the impact of wildfires.

Bio:  Bio: Leila Carvalho is a Professor in the Department of Geography UCSB. She has  B.S., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Meteorology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research interests are in climate variability and change in monsoon regions, tropical-extratropical interactions, extreme precipitation and temperature, mountain weather and climate, wildfires and regional modeling. One focus of her research interest is downslope windstorms in Southern California (as, for example, Sundowners and Santa Ana winds), circulation and precipitation in mountain regions, and atmospheric rivers

• 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 1224
• Enroll Code: 60145

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. We’ll investigate how these individual women, with each week focusing on two artists, 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 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her current scholarship focuses on Iberian feminisms, Latin American music, and the work of Galician women photographers..

She teaches courses on modern and contemporary Spanish literary and cultural history, popular music studies, feminist studies, and poetic discourses.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: College of Creative Studies or Writing Program
• Instructor: Kara Mae Brown
• Instructor Email: kmbrown@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 1:00-2:50 in HSSB 1233
• Enroll Code: 62091

Course Description:  Deep mapping is a literary technique used by travel and environmental writers to create a multilayered portrait of a place, including not only a description of the place, but also its natural and cultural history, as well as the writer's personal experience with and in that place. In this seminar, we will read excerpts from the foundational deep map in literature, William Least Heat-Moon's "Prairyerth," as well as examples by other contemporary authors. Mostly, we will work on writing our own deep maps, first by visiting sites in and around UCSB campus and then by creating multimodal representations of those places using ArcGIS StoryMaps. Students will leave this seminar with an understanding of the literature, theory, and practice of deep mapping, as well as a closer relationship with the UCSB campus and its environs.

Bio:  I am an Associate Teaching Professor in the College of Creative Studies and the Writing Program. I teach many different kinds of writing, including academic writing, creative writing, and writing for the web. Most recently, I've been obsessed with writing about nature and place. No matter what I’m teaching, I’m interested in creating equitable, inclusive, and just learning environments and curricula, whether online or in-person. Of course, I also practice what I teach: I write short fiction and nonfiction and am currently working on a memoir about grief and the nature of time.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: History
• Instructor: Juan Cobo Betancourt
• Instructor Email: jcobo@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Friday 10:00-11:50 in GIRV 2320 *This seminar has a field trip
• Enroll Code: 62059

Course Description:  This course is a critical introduction to archives, with a focus on Latin America. More than the raw materials of historical research, archives are sites for imagining the past, the present, and the future — but they are also sites of inequality that shape whose stories can be told and whose are silenced. Through readings, discussions, guest lectures, and field trips, students will examine practices and theories of archiving and social memory, participate in field trips to traditional and non-traditional archives — from traditional collections of papers to non-traditional living and digital archives — and gain practical experience working with tools designed to digitize and preserve archival materials. Together we will think about what archives are and can be, how different communities use them here and in Latin America, and how we can work towards a more egalitarian engagement with them.

Bio:  Prof. Cobo is a historian of Latin America. One focus of his research is how Indigenous peoples in the region that is now Colombia interacted with Spanish colonialism and Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries. The other is how to better preserve, activate, and engage with historical archives today, and especially how to make them useful and accessible to communities and groups beyond academia.

• Seminar Type: Honors

• Department: Black Studies
• Instructor: Roberto Strongman
• Instructor Email: rstrongman@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 2:00-3:50 in Rob Gym 1410
• Enroll Code: 26195

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 certified as a massage therapist by the state of California and as a yoga instructor at the 500-hour level (the highest recognizable credential in the field).

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Department of Earth Science
• Instructor: Alex Simms
• Instructor Email: asimms@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Thursdays at 4:00-4:50 pm in GIRV 2135  *this seminar has a weekend overnight field trip 
• Enroll Code: 26203

Course Description:  In this seminar we will discuss how the beautiful California Coast developed, what it tells about California's geologic history, and how to interpret the geology present along it.  This course will include an overnight camping fieldtrip along the coast of California.

Bio:  Growing up in Oklahoma, Professor Simms first studied coasts in Texas as part of his PhD work at Rice University.  After starting his academic career at his alma matter at Oklahoma State University, Prof. Simms moved to UCSB in 2010.  He has studied the geologic history of coastlines from Texas to Antarctica and Scotland to California.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Physics
• Instructor: Paul Hansma
• Instructor Email: phansma@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 10:00-11:50 in ILP 4107
• Enroll Code: 26237

Course Description:  Chronic pain, which is defined by pain persisting for at least three months, affects one in five American adults. It is the most costly health problem – more costly than cancer and heart disease combined. The goal of this class is to not only learn more about the different facets of chronic pain, but also to become more familiar with literature reviews, scientific articles, and giving research presentations. Over the course of the quarter, guest lecturers who are experts in their field will present on the topics of pain neuroscience and evidence-based chronic pain recovery. For every guest lecturer, you will be assigned a reading associated with their work, and you are expected to come prepared with questions or discussion points. You will also get experience in making small group presentations to the class that are based on reading original research articles and literature reviews. This seminar aims to prepare you for the world of clinical and non-clinical research – you will be exposed to terminology and techniques that you may not have been familiar with in the past, so attend each class with an open mind and be ready to learn.

Bio:  Paul Hansma, PhD, is a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a researcher in the Neuroscience Research Institute. His current research focuses on a mathematical model for chronic pain and chronic pain recovery studies based on that model. He is also involved in fundamental research in neurobiology and activity of human brain organoids as revealed by multi-electrode arrays. He has over 390 publications, with over 50,000 citations and an H factor of 117. His most recent publications are primarily in neuroscience and chronic pain. His website is https://hansmalab.physics.ucsb.edu/

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• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Computer Science
• Instructor: Maryam Majedi
• Instructor Email: majedi@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 4:00-5:50 in GIRV 2124
• Enroll Code: 26245

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: EALCS
• Instructor: Sabine Frühstück
• Instructor Email: fruhstuc@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 2:00-3:50 in HSSB 1211
• Enroll Code: 60160

Course Description:  This seminar will consider instances of resistance to all forms of oppression in modern and contemporary East Asia in their historical, cultural, and global contexts, based on texts, images, art, and film.

Bio:  https://www.sabinefruhstuck.com/

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: College of Creative Studies 
• Instructor: Michelle Petty
• Instructor Email: mnpetty@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Wednesday 10:00-11:50 in CRST 136
• Enroll Code: 60178

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 UCSB, teaching in the Writing Program and the College of Creative Studies. Her interdisciplinary research in Education and Writing draws on Black feminist, digital and African American rhetorics, and critical race/anti-racist education theories to investigate diversity issues in academia. Her current research project is a digital and rhetorical analysis of Instagram-hosted, community-formed digital archives about people of color. She publishes academically, most recently in College Composition and Communication, and creatively, appearing in Bust Magazine, Elevation Review and Anacapa Review.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Earth Science
• Instructor: Syee Weldeab
• Instructor Email: sweldeab@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Friday 2:00-3:50 in GIRV 1108
• Enroll Code: 26294

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:  see https://weldeab.geol.ucsb.edu/

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Communication
• Instructor: Daniel Linz
• Instructor Email: linz@comm.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Wednesday 12:00-1:50 in HSSB 1236
• Enroll Code: 27235

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 3:00-4:50 in HSSB 5024
• Enroll Code: 56762

Course Description:  This seminar examines instances where American citizens have disobeyed American law, often to defend and to protect people of color.

Bio:  John Park has been a Professor of Asian American Studies at UCSB since 2002.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Spanish and Portuguese
• Instructor: Juan Pablo Lupi
• Instructor Email: juan.lupi@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 9:00-10:50 in HSSB 1233
• Enroll Code: 62893

Course Description:  An exploration of cinema and revolutionary movements in Latin America. We will study a selection of films belonging to different genres (drama, comedy, documentary, experimental film), countries (Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico) and historical periods (1910s - present) and analyze how cinema has been mobilized as a medium for militancy, propaganda and critique. We will also inquire into the legacy of revolutionary projects of the past century, what they mean in the present and what lessons can the US learn from Latin American history and politics today.

Bio:  Prof. Lupi teaches Latin American literature and culture. His areas of research include political theory, history of ideas, theories of media and technology, poetry and poetics, and Venezuelan Studies. He’s currently writing a book on theories of politics and media in 19th century South America.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Physics
• Instructor: Tengiz Bibilashvili
• Instructor Email: tbib@physics.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Wednesday 5:00-6:50 in PHELP 1445 *Open to Physics, Math, Statistics, Chemistry, and COE students. If you are not in one of these majors and still have interest in the class, please use this link: https://forms.gle/918WC4bbpduviRSU7
• Enroll Code: 63420

tion:  The goal of the seminar is to teach Special Relativity (SR) using Einstein Notation (EN). The class is designed for enthusiastic students with no or little background in SR. Prerequisite Physics 21, or at least concurrent enrollment in Physics 21. First we will see how EN is used in non-relativistic physics. Then we will learn SR using EN. At the end we will explore how relativistic kinematics is used in High Energy Experiments (HEX) in colliders (like LHC). Good grasp of EN will prepare students to better understand General Covariance of Physics laws like Maxwell’s equations in Electromagnetism.

Bio:  Tengiz Bibilashvili is a Physics professor and academic director of the US Physics Team at the International Physics Olympiad. He teaches lower- and upper-division courses, including classical and quantum mechanics, and electromagnetism.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: BLST
• Instructor: Roberto Strongman
• Instructor Email: rstrongman@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 12:00-1:50 in SH 3635
• Enroll Code: 64196

Course Description:  Do we really need authority to have organized and productive collective lives? This course provides a space in which students can think critically about anarchist philosophy and trace the histories of voluntarist, non-hierarchical, decentralized communities. We will consider what alternatives these libertarian histories present to our current world in which large scale corporations and supra-national entities are diminishing the power of the nation-state. What role will anarchist thought and practice play in 21st Century?

Bio:  Roberto Strongman is Associate Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego in 2003. Dr. Strongman's interdisciplinary approach encompasses the fields of Religion, History, and Sexuality in order to further his main area of research and teaching: Comparative Caribbean Cultural Studies.Dr. Strongman’s first book Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería and Vodou (Duke 2019) is a Lambda Literary LGBTQ Studies Award finalist. He is currently working on a second book project on Afroamerican religion on the Caribbean coast of Panama.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Black Studies
• Instructor: Roberto Strongman
• Instructor Email: rstrongman@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Tuesday 3:00-4:50 in HSSB 1237
• Enroll Code: 27250

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 certified as a massage therapist by the state of California and as a yoga instructor at the 500-hour level (the highest recognizable credential in the field).

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Earth Science
• Instructor: Alex Simms
• Instructor Email: asimms@geol.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Thursdays at 4:00-4:50 pm in GIRV 2135  *this seminar has a field trip
• Enroll Code: 27268

Course Description:  This seminar will introduce you to the geology of the California Coast including its tectonics, geomorphology, and future.  This introduction will include an overnight fieldtrip (camping required) to examine the geology of the central California Coast.

Bio:  Alex Simms grew up in Oklahoma and attended graduate school at Rice University in Houston, Texas.  After teaching at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, he joined the faculty at UCSB in 2010.  He has studied the geologic history of coasts across the world from Scotland to Antarctica and Texas to South Korea.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: History of Art & Architecture
• Instructor: Volker M. Welter
• Instructor Email: welter@arthistory.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Wednesday 8:00-9:50 in HSSB 1206
• Enroll Code: 64188

Course Description:  We recognize nature when we see it, yet trying to describe it leads to vexing questions.  What separates nature from artifacts?  Is nature always ‘good’ and ‘organic’ better?  What about humanity’s ingenuity in designing the ‘artificial’ (art, architecture, technology)?

This seminar will read and discuss historic and contemporary Western accounts of nature, the natural, and their opposites.

Bio:  Professor Volker M. Welter teaches modern architectural history and theory in the Dept. of the History of Art & Architecture.  One of his interests is the often strenuous relationship between architecture and the natural world, and how architecture and design manipulate the latter.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Computer Science
• Instructor: Maryam Majedi
• Instructor Email: majedi@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 4:00-5:50 in GIRV 2124
• Enroll Code: 63354

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.

Some possible topics include:

The Role of Ethics in Technology Development

Balancing Innovation with Moral Responsibility

Privacy, Security, and Ethical Dilemmas in the Digital Age

From 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: Linguistics -- English for Multilingual Students
• Instructor: Karyn Kessler
• Instructor Email: kkessler@linguistics.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Monday 11:00-12:50 in HSSB 2202
• Enroll Code: 63412

Course Description:  How do language, learning, and writing researchers design studies to explore concepts such as development, integration, process, and improvement? In this seminar, students will be introduced to the landscape of inquiry across multiple disciplinary fields, including applied linguistics, writing studies and education. Drawing on foundational understandings of epistemology and the ways in which disciplinary researchers come to conclusions and implications, students will work in small, interdisciplinary teams to identify and design their own research study in response to a genuine curiosity that is relevant to language, writing or education studies. Learning outcomes for this course include 1. an increased understanding of “the disciplinary lens” through which research is designed, 2. a demonstrated ability to identify and design an interdisciplinary research study, and 3. a deepened sense of collaborative learning and problem solving.

Bio:  Karyn E. Kessler, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Teaching and the Director of the English for Multilingual Students Program. As a teacher and scholar, she is particularly interested in the higher education concept of academic integrity, source-based writing across the disciplines and across languages, language program leadership, and genre studies. She works closely with TESOL minor students and teaches Second Language Acquisition as well as English Grammar for Teachers. Professor Kessler is a writer and editor as well as a linguistic consultant for the American Board of Family Medicine where she reviews medical board exam questions for potential racial, ethnic, gender, or linguistic bias. Dr. Kessler has given a TEDx talk on the subject of linguistic diversity. Beyond work, Karyn is a long-distance runner, organ donation advocate, returned Peace Corps Volunteer, and mom.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: College of Creative Studies
• Instructor: Michelle Petty
• Instructor Email: mnpetty@ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Thursday 10:00-11:50 in CRST 136
• Enroll Code: 56770

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 UCSB, teaching in the Writing Program and the College of Creative Studies. Her interdisciplinary research in Education and Writing draws on Black feminist, digital and African American rhetorics, and critical race/anti-racist education theories to investigate diversity issues in academia. Her current research project is a digital and rhetorical analysis of Instagram-hosted, community-formed digital archives about people of color. She publishes academically, most recently in College Composition and Communication, and creatively, appearing in Bust Magazine, Elevation Review and Anacapa Review.

• Seminar Type: Honors
• Department: Writing Program
• Instructor: Paul Rogers
• Instructor Email: paulrogers@writing.ucsb.edu
• Day - Time - Room: Wednesday 11:00-12:50 in HSSB 4202
• Enroll Code: 63545

Course Description:  Social entrepreneurship has its origins in the work of a group of actors, social entrepreneurs, who introduce solutions to pressing social and environmental problems (e.g., poverty, human trafficking, climate change). The object of social entrepreneurs, broadly stated, is to improve the quality of life for people in practical ways. To make these improvements, social entrepreneurs use the tools of enterprise and business in combination with community engagement and the power of ordinary citizens to create novel solutions to what are typically localized problems. Examples of these innovative solutions include the development of micro-finance, community-sourced emergency preparedness social media platforms, greenscaping programs for heavily polluted urban areas, integrated systems to combat human trafficking, and much more. While individuals fitting the description of social entrepreneur have lived throughout history, it is only in the past 40 years that social entrepreneurship has been galvanized into a recognized field of activity. In this sense, social entrepreneurship represents a deliberate reframing and destabilization of the narrative related to what we commonly refer to as the nonprofit sector; in principle, social entrepreneurs are individuals who play by a different and somewhat hybrid set of rules than that of either business or traditional non-profits as they apply “the mindset, processes, tools, and techniques of business entrepreneurship to the pursuit of a social and/or environmental mission” (Kickul and Lyons, 2016, p.1).  Through discussion, projects, reflection, and guest lecturers, students will gain an appreciation for the work of social entrepreneurship and explore their own changemaker journey.

The course aims to cover four primary learning outcomes:

1. Develop Knowledge of Changemaking and Changemakers (Including social entrepreneurs)

2. Habits of Mind

3. Communicative Competence

4. Ways of Being

UNDERSTAND THE FIELD OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP - How it differs from traditional non-profit activity, social enterprise, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, and service projects.  Identify historical & contemporary examples of social entrepreneurs: the traits and qualities of social entrepreneurs and their organizations; the strategies and ideas they use to address local, national and global challenges; the nature of the organizations social entrepreneurs lead; the ways social entrepreneurs measure impact. Develop deep understanding of the competencies associated with social innovation and social entrepreneurship, especially empathy, teamwork and leadership, which have been identified as the foundational attributes for making change.

HABITS OF MIND Use systems thinking:  Possess the ability to analyze problems in context of systems, identify root causes of systemic failure, search for critical leverage points in leading systemic change.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE Gain experience in creating and communicating new, complex, and audience appropriate messages in a wide variety of genres and media aimed at furthering entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges. 

WAYS OF BEING  Understand oneself: Gain awareness of personal passions, motivations, aspirations, abilities, limitations, and a commitment to work on cultivating strengths and well-being over the course of one’s professional and personal life. Deepened sense of purpose: Develop greater awareness of the change one wants to see in the world and the self-permission to take risks to pursue it.

Bio:  Paul Rogers is an associate professor of Writing Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also earned his PhD in education (2008). He is a cofounder and former chair of the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research. Paul’s primary focus is on educational research and advancing transformation in policy and practice related to writing and literacy through data-informed decision making at all levels. Paul has served as a strategic advisor to Ashoka- the world's 5th ranked NGO and a leading sponsor of social entrepreneurs around the world. He has worked in a variety of capacities ito advance the vision of 'Everyone a Changemaker' in K-12 schooling and higher education. Paul is a recipient of AAC&U’s K. Patricia Cross Award for leadership in higher education, and NCTE’s Janet Emig Award for research in English education. He is the editor of eight coedited volumes, including the 2022 book International Models of Changemaker Education and numerous other publications. His favorite activities are spending time with his family (the Seven Hearts Tribe), surfing, hiking, playing basketball, and reading.