Current Students

Welcome!  This page serves as the home for all current undergraduates on track to earn Albion College Honors or Departmental Honors .  In this area, you will find information regarding events and requirements that specifically address your needs.

   FALL 2008 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS - Click Here

           SPRING 2008 Course Descriptions - Click Here
           FALL 2007 Course Descriptions - CLICK HERE
           SPRING 2007 Course Descriptions - CLICK HERE
           FALL 2006 Course Descriptions - Click Here
           SPRING 2006 Course Descriptions - Click Here
           FALL 2005 Course Descriptions - Click Here
           SPRING 2005 Course Descriptions - Click Here

Take a look at what some of your fellow Honors students are up to - Click Here
 

Hiaasen's website: http://www.carlhiaasen.com/

New: ** Fall 2007 Prentiss M. Brown Distinguished Lecture**

This year, the Prentiss M. Brown Distinguished lecturer is Kwame Anthony Appiah.  Professor Appiah is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University.

Professor Appiah is the Chair of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies and also the President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.

He will speak in Towsley Hall, on September 20th, on topics related to his 2007 book: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of  Strangers.

A description of some of professor Appiah's remarkable range of accomplishments may be found at his website: http://www.appiah.net/.  We expect the evening with him to be a truly remarkable one.

Traveling Seminar: Last fall, a group of PMB students traveled to Nova Scotia with Associate Director Dean McCurdy, to learn first hand about his extensive field research on mudflat animals and endangered turtles. The group met with renowned scientists who study whales. Students also discussed Canada-US environmental policy with these experts.
Click here for more information about the trip.
 

** Prentiss M. Brown Honors Spring 2007 Common Reading **

The Brown Honors Common Reading for Spring 2007 was "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker.  Pinker was on Campus, Thursday, April 26 for a lecture in Goodrich Chapel at 7:00pm.

Steven Pinker "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature" 7:00 pm, Thursday, April 26, 2007 Goodrich Chapel This year, the Elkin Isaac Research Symposium Joseph S. Calvaruso Keynote Address will be presented by noted scholar and author Steven Pinker. In choosing him as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People, in 2004, TIME magazine postulated that “every half-century . . . an eminent Harvard psychologist crystallizes an intellectual era. . . . [Steven Pinker] seems poised to keep its tradition alive.” One of the world’s leading experts on language and the mind, and a founding scholar in the field of evolutionary psychology, Steven Pinker asks audacious questions about the true nature of our humanity, and then boldly sets out to answer them. Pinker simultaneously enlightens and confounds academia and the public alike with his revolutionary understanding of the interconnectedness of language, instinct, consciousness, emotions, and neurology.

  Prentiss M. Brown Honors Fall Common Listening 2006

The honors common experience for the fall of 2006  featured two recordings and visits by two of the most innovative and in demand drummers and composers on the jazz scene today Gerald Cleaver's Adjust (Fresh Sounds-New Talent) and Matt Wilson's Going Once, Going Twice (Palmetto Records). Led by next year's Prentiss M. Brown Distinguished Honors Professor, Dr. Andrew Bishop, the two recordings were examined through compare and contrast methods to exhibit the wide array of technical and expressive qualities available in today's jazz idiom. Both Cleaver and Wilson currently reside in New York City but have ties to the upper Midwest and will visit the Albion campus for a lecture demonstration in the fall.  These two artists will be here on the Albion College campus to perform on Monday, September 11th and on Wednesday, October 11th in Norris 101 at 7:00p.m.

Gerald Cleaver is a versatile drummer and composer originally from Detroit, Michigan and now based in Brooklyn, New York. His recording Adjust (Fresh Sound New Talent)—featuring Andrew Bishop, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Ben Monder, and Reid Anderson—received a “debut record of the year” nomination from the Jazz Journalists’ Association. He has performed with Muhal Richard Abrams, David Berkman, Tim Berne, Kenny Burrell, Marilyn Crispell, Marty Ehrlich, Ellery Eskelin, Tommy Flanagan, Charles Gayle, Mark Helias, Hank Jones, John Lindberg, Kevin Mahogany, Roscoe Mitchell, Andrea Parkins, Jacky Terrasson, Henry Threadgill, Mark Turner, Mathew Shipp, Rodney Whitaker, Reggie Workman, and many others.
  

Prentiss M. Brown Honors Fall Common Reading 2005

Our Brown Honors Common Reading this fall was "The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time" by John Kelly.  Kelly was here on Campus, Thursday, September 22 for a lecture in Goodrich Chapel at 7:00pm.

So begins, in almost fairy-tale fashion, a contemporary account of the worst natural disaster in European History - what we call the Black Death, and what the generation who lived through it called la moria grandissima: "the great mortality."

The Great Mortality is John Kelly's compelling narrative account of the medieval plague, from its beginnings on the desolate, windswept steppes of Central Asia to its journey through the teeming cities of Europe.

The Great Mortality also looks at new theories about the cause of the plague and takes into account why some scientists and historians believe that the Black Death was an outbreak not of bubonic plague, but of another infectious illness - perhaps anthrax of a disease like Ebola.

John Kelly, who holds a graduate degree in European history, is the author and coauthor of ten books on science, medicine, and human behavior, including Three on the Edge, which Publishers Weekly called the work of "an expert storyteller." He lives in New York city.

Copies of The Great Mortality will be available for purchase in the book store.

John Kelly Poster, Picture, Book Cover, and quotes

www.thegreatmortality.com

Prentiss M. Brown Honors Spring Common Reading
In spring 2005 our Brown Honors Common Reading was "On Human Nature"  by E. O. Wilson - 1988.  Wilson was here on campus on April 21, 2005 for a lecture in Goodrich Chapel.  

About the book itself he says: "To address human behavior systematically is to make a potential topic of every corridor in the labyrinth of the human mind, and hence to consider not just the social sciences but the humanities, including philosophy and the process of scientific discovery itself. Consequently, 'On Human Nature' is not a work of science; it is a work about science, and about how far natural sciences can penetrate into human behavior before they will be transformed into something new." "On Human Nature" covers aggression, sex, altruism and religion as well as heredity, development and emergent behavior brilliantly.

 "Great Issues in Honors": Student Created Newsletter

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