University Honors Program Blog
Intellectual Omnivores Unite
This semester, Professor Jordan took her HONR 1034 students to the National Museum of Health & Medicine in Silver Spring, MD. There they had an interactive tour that include an Empathy Belly Pregnancy Simulation demo, and viewed a collection of preserved fetuses and reproductive organs. See photos below!
The UHP will be hosting a viewings of German films on the Foggy Bottom Campus over the course of the next month. Snacks will be provided!
(2/19): Trace of Stones, Ames B101, 6:30 PM
(3/26): The Lives of Others, Monroe Hall 352, 7 PM
(4/2): Barbara, Rome 350, 7 PM
(4/11): Goodbye, Lenin!, Monroe Hall 353, 7 PM
Already getting sick of the city life? Eager to explore beyond E and K streets? Love the smell of the Shenandoah river in the morning? Hike with the Honors Program!
On Sunday, April 7th, the Honors Program is hosting a $7 hike with the honors community and certified TRAiLS guides. We’re going to Old Rag. The Old Rag hike is a trademark favorite for DC hikers and features challenging rock scrambles and stunning views of the Shenandoah valley. Located in the heart of Shenandoah National Park the mountain trail has a fun 2 mile section of scrambling and sliding through and around granite boulders on the way to the summit.
We will be meeting at 8:30AM at the Honors townhouse and breakfast will provided before we get on the bus. We will hike the 9 mile loop that extends around Old Rag which features narrow passageways, rock scrambles, and gorgeous views of the Shenandoah valley. Lunch will be provided. After completing the 9 mile circuit we will drive back to campus arriving approximately at 6:00 PM.
| Love Your Neighbor: Jews, Christians, and the Meaning of a Very Elusive Commandment Thursday, March 285:00-7:00 pm Marvin Center, 301 Description: The biblical mandate to “love your neighbor as yourself” is frequently held up in Jewish sources as “the great principle of the Torah.” Yet its meaning is elusive: just what is the verse asking for? Does “love” refer to emotion, action, or some combination of the two? If the Bible has emotion in mind, what kind of emotion are we talking about? Surely people aren’t called to love their neighbor in the same way they love their spouse or their children, so what kind of love *does* the Bible ask for? We’ll explore the ways an array of traditional Jewish thinkers and modern biblical scholars has wrestled with these questions. We’ll also probe the very different ways Jews and Christians have often heard the Bible’s charge, and we’ll ask what we might learn about these two religious traditions and the relationship between them from their contrasting approaches to this all-important verse. Speaker Bio: Rabbi Shai Held–theologian, scholar, and educator–is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at Hadar. Previously, he served for six years as Scholar-in-Residence at Kehilat Hadar in New York City, and taught both theology and Jewish law at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He also served as a campus rabbi at Harvard University. A 2011 recipient of the prestigious Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education, Rabbi Held has been named multiple times to Newsweek’s list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America and to the Forward’s list of the 50 most influential Jews in the world. He holds a doctorate in religion from Harvard; his main academic interests are in modern Jewish and Christian thought, in biblical theology, and in the history of Zionism. Rabbi Held’s first book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, was published by Indiana University Press in 2013; The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes, was published by JPS in 2017. He is currently at work on a book about the centrality of love in Jewish theology, spirituality, and ethics, to be published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. |
Welcome back!
Spring break is over and the finish line is in sight! Now it’s time for one last round of first-year small group advising sessions.
For this round, we’ll be prepping for fall 2019 registration, talking through your upper-level Honors requirements, walking through the major declaration process, and more.
All first year Honors students are expected to attend a session so make sure to sign up soon to get your preferred time slot! Meetings start Monday, March 25th and will be held in District House. RSVP for spring small groups here.
Come celebrate Presidents’ Day weekend in the UHP Townhouse at 11am on Saturday, February 16. We’ll have breakfast sandwiches, bring yourself and your friends!
RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/282545999080940/
The end of the semester is rapidly approaching- papers, exams, presentations- yikes! Fortunately, for us UHPers, semester’s end also marks the arrival of the always-anticipated Student Faculty Dinner. Join us on Friday, December 7th from 5pm to 7pm at Chalin’s Chinese to gorge on Crab Rangoons and other delectable treats.
$5 tickets will be on sale beginning THIS Wednesday, 11/28, in the UHP Townhouse. That’s cheaper than Chipotle, even without the guac. For less than the cost of a burrito, you can enjoy mountains of Chinese food and stimulating conversation with your favorite students, faculty and staff of the UHP. It’s really a win-win situation. Tickets will be on sale until 4 PM on Friday, 12/7 – after that, you can purchase your ticket at the door at the event. We’ll see you there!
Are you interested in learning about the American presidents that came before George Washington? Do you want to see the infamous Room(s) Where It Happened? Do you dare to tread on the turf of Demon Cat and the ghosts of numerous political heavyweights? Would you like to learn the artistic techniques that give the Rotunda Frieze its striking three-dimensional effect? Do you wish to see the original draft of the Fourteenth Amendment with your own eyes? Then believe me when I tell you that you want to sign up for the upcoming Capitol tour with the UHP! Join Peer Advisor Kyla for a tour of the US Capitol on Friday, November 30!
We’ll be meeting at the Capitol Visitor Center at 12:45 PM. Make sure to arrive with time to pass through security.
The Philosophy Club is returning to GW and we want YOU to join us for discussions and events! The club meets every Monday at 8:00 PM in the Philosophy Department Seminar Room on the 5th floor of Rome Hall to discuss an article or relevant show or really anything that sparks your interest. If you enjoy discussing thought-provoking topics, then this is the place for you. While we will not be meeting this coming Monday, November 19th because of the Thanksgiving Holiday, we will be hosting a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove the week after on November 26th. We hope you will join us at this and future events, and feel free to talk with Professor Trullinger or contact me at bulla_j@gwu.edu if you have any questions!
Our next Food for Thought of the semester will be Friday, 11/16 from 12:30-1:30PM in the Club Room. Professor Harvey, on of this year’s Faculty Fellows, will be giving a talk titled “But It’s Only A Story” over a catered lunch. Make sure to RSVP to reserved your seat and your sandwich!
Read more about Professor Harvey’s research below:
My current research focuses on using modified theatrical methods in two related ways: First, as a means of both exploring and understanding the cultural attitudes that underpin political attitude in order to further enrich the Drama for Conflict Resolution (DCT) literature, and second; as a new type of qualitative research method for use in politically flammable and/or socially loaded situations. I often work in multi-media contexts, using social media and digital storytelling and/or role-playing platforms in pursuit of these activities.
This new type of “ethnographic theatre” intersects with my own “alter ego” as a working playwright and screenwriter, in that often I must either generate an original piece of theatre from the information collected during the research phase of the work, and/or guide members of the research population as they develop their own theatrical experiences. This fusion of cultural discovery and dramatic expression brings together two different aspects of my professional life, in ways that suggest exciting new ways of furthering empathy and understanding within and across conflicted groups.
The course I’m currently teaching As a Faculty Fellow in the University Honors program is based on this notion of melding media-based techniques with in-person cultural discovery, but focused specifically on the living legacy of Washington, D.C.’s unique relationship with human slavery. As the course syllabus describes it: “Digital Storytelling and D.C. Slavery” is an experientially-based Honors class that gives students a chance to conduct original research on race, identity, and cultural legacy while simultaneously exploring salient issues of past and present as they intersect in two places: Today’s national headlines and the surviving built environment of the neighborhood surrounding G.W.’s Mount Vernon campus. Specifically, this class offers Honors students the opportunity to investigate D.C.’s complex relationship with human slavery by unraveling historical information that has been coded into the very streets of the city, and by then taking to those streets in pursuit of new cultural and political data on the topic.
In doing this, the course addresses a set of timely and flammable issues related to race, politics, and deep-seated tensions in the American cultural biography that continue to echo with palpable urgency in today’s political discourse. Mount Vernon residents live in an area of particular resonance, since during its existence the Georgetown area has experienced especially numerous transformations in the racial composition and citizenship status of its population. The course will also examine the unique relationship with local Native American groups with whom self- emancipated slaves sometimes found refuge, acceptance, and status…or further enslavement.
