Fall 2014 hnrs 190 Seminars: Instructor Biographies & Course Descriptions

Seminar Assistant: Ashley Farris

 

Instructor Biography:

Dr. Perry Alexander is the AT&T Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center at The University of Kansas. His research interests include system-level modeling, design languages, heterogeneous specification, language semantics, and trusted computing. He received the BSEE and BSCS in 1986, the MSEE in 1988, and the PhD in 1992 all from The University of Kansas. Dr. Alexander has lead numerous projects funded by DARPA, AFRL, NSF, NASA, NavAir, Battelle, and US Department of Defense. He currently leads the ACHILLES, ArmoredSoftware, and Verified vTPM projects at ITTC. Dr. Alexander has published over 100 refereed research papers. He has won 22 teaching awards and was named a Kemper Teaching Fellow and the ASEE's Midwest Region Teacher of the Year in 2003, and received the Sharp Teaching Professorship in 2009. He is a member of Sigma Xi and a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE.

In the great pop song, I.G.Y., Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame dreams of "a just machine to make big decisions, programmed by fella's with compassion and vision" as a part of his perfect, utopian future. The great mathematician David Hilbert dreamed the same dream in 1900 and changed the world as we know it. Hilbert's dream proposed a systematic mechanism for reasoning about languages that would systematize argument. The search for Hilbert's "just machine" gave rise to the industrialization of knowledge and more specifically computers and programs. This tutorial presents the emergence of computing examining the work of David Hilbert, Kurt Goedel, and Alan Turing looking at their discoveries, their often unusual and inconsistent lives, the limits of what can be computed, and connections to music and art. No math or computing background required!

(Instructor listed as Dotter, Anne)

Seminar Assistant: Paul Thomas

Brad Allen is the Executive Director of the Lawrence Public Library. He is a native Kansan and a proud KU Honors Program alum. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in American Studies and Psychology from the University of Kansas, a Master’s Degree in Library and Information

Science from the University of Illinois, and a Master’s Degree in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin.
Course Description: Do You Like Good Music? Discussing the Merits of Pop, Rock, & Etc.

We are taking a freewheeling approach to the art of discussing music. Students will read classic essays about music, listen to music, probably watch some videos, and definitely talk about music. The objective of the class is to dig a little bit deeper into why we like what we like, hate what we hate, or remain passively indifferent. Be prepared to discuss music and what it means (or doesn't mean) to you.

Seminar Assistant: Elizabeth Cox

Santa Arias is associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas. Her current teaching and research highlights the critical importance of the spatiality of colonialism, historical textualities, religion and empire, and more recently, geographical thinking in eighteenth-century Spanish America. Besides the publication of numerous essays in academic journals, she has published the monograph Retórica, historia y polémica: Bartolomé de las Casas y la tradición intelectual renacentista (2001); and four co-edited volumes: Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture and Experience (2002), Approaches to Teaching the Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (2008), and The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2008); and forthcoming Coloniality, Religion, and the Law in the Early Iberian World.  She is completing the book project Transatlantic Reconfigurations of the Americas: Geo-narratives of Empire, Nature, and Identity during the Enlightenment. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the CIES/Fulbright Scholar Program.

Seminar Assistant: Samantha Brunker

 

Instructor Biography:

Prof. Philip Baringer is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and an Honors Faculty Fellow. His area of research is experimental particle physics and he is currently working on the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

 

Course Description: Seeing the Invisible: Inferring Particle Physics

No one has ever seen an electron or a quark, but it is quite useful to assume they exist. In this seminar we’ll explore the experimental foundations of subatomic physics and how theories interact with observations. How, for example, did people come to believe in the existence of neutrinos – invisible particles that rarely interact with matter? What makes us think that dark matter, which has never been directly observed, makes up 90% of the matter in the universe?

Seminar Assistant: Anna Wenner

Barbara Barnett, Ph.D., is an associate professor and associate dean in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. At KU, she teaches Journalism 101, Media and Society. She also teaches courses in reporting, research methods, media and diversity, and media and popular culture. She does research on media and gender. Prof. Barnett received her master’s degree from Duke University and her doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She previously worked in health communications and in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She also worked as a print journalist for The Charlotte News and The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina.

Satire is an important part of American media. Since Colonial times, journalists have used satire to make points about democracy and the U.S. political system. More recently, satire has taken the form of fake news programs, which lampoon public officials but also the news media. This one-hour freshman seminar explores fake news programs, including SNL's Weekend Update, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Onion News Network, to examine what these programs tell us about politics, popular culture, and journalism.

Seminar Assistant: Kat Youtsey

Frank Baron (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley) has served as director of the Max Kade Center for German-American Studies, and in that capacity conducted research on immigration. One result was the book Abraham Lincoln and the German Immigrants. In the course of that research he discovered the topic “James H. Lane and the History of the Kansas Jayhawk,” which appeared in Kansas History. Professor Frank Baron’s research projects have often involved the challenge of reconstructing neglected facts behind significant literary personalities or historical events. His publications include books on the origins of the Faust legend, the Auschwitz Report, and the Munich years of the American artist Albert Bloch.

The popular association of the mythic Jayhawk with the University of Kansas and its sports teams only skims the surface. Few are aware that the familiar friendly image had its origins in the violent conflicts between early immigrant groups that settled in Kansas. The hostile parties were divided on the issue of slavery. During the first phase of this conflict, General James H. Lane urged his fighters to attack and destroy the proslavery enemy, doing this with the violence of the Jayhawk, an aggressive bird that was said to exist in Ireland. In 1859, a serialized novel, The Jayhawker. A Tale of Southern Kansas, appeared in Lawrence’s Herald of Freedom. It showed the Jayhawk from a new perspective. This forgotten text draws attention to two diametrically opposing positions about the need for continued warfare. The challenge to the participants of this seminar will be to identify the historical background of the fictional names, such as Kane for Lane and Rook for John Brown, and to reconstruct the events associated with two hostile camps of the Jayhawk controversy. The investigation of the crisis involving the so-called “apostles of the Jayhawk” and their opponents will shed light on the goals and conflicts that led the nation to the brink of the Civil War.

Seminar Assistant: Ryan Limbocker

One of the far-reaching scientific achievements of the past century was the birth of what we today call Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology as a field involves two distinct yet synergistic branches: nanoscale materials and molecular nanotechnology. Technology of nanoscale materials involves preparation and applications of materials with particle sizes below 100 nanometers. Molecular Nanotechnology involves “bottom-up” design and assembly of functional materials from individual molecules. In this Honors seminar, the students will consider the critical role of Chemistry in the nanotechnological progress through focused discussions of several state-of-the-art examples illustrating how scientific data evolved into Knowledge. These discussions will be supported by carefully chosen reading assignments that will involve a combination of primary scientific, review, and popular literature. The students will debate and critique different predictions regarding the future of molecular nanotechnology expressed by past and contemporary prominent scientists. In addition, they will reflect not only on the new fundamental scientific horizons, but also on any likely societal and ethical implications of the changes to be brought about by the emerging transformative discoveries. Introduction of various majors relevant to chemistry careers, particularly in an interdisciplinary environment, will be integrated in the course as well.

Seminar Assistant: Molly Kaup

Dave Besson has a background in particle physics, and has been at KU since 1993. He received his advanced degree in 1986 from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

We like to believe that we are living in an enlightened Age of Reason. Nevertheless, there are numerous cases, spanning many cultures, where popular sentiment on some topic clearly runs counter to the overwhelming weight of scientific data and evidence. We will consider case studies, as well as the propaganda machines that are often amassed to sway popular opinion.

Seminar Assistant: Gabby Murnan

Dr. Timothy Caboni serves as vice chancellor at the University of Kansas where he leads the university’s public affairs strategy and oversees the communications, marketing and advocacy efforts of the university in addition to acting as KU’s principal spokesperson. In this role, he represents the University of Kansas to a wide range of constituencies and works to connect KU with local, regional, national and global audiences. He also coordinates the university’s legislative agenda at the local, state and federal levels on issues that include research funding, higher education policy and health care.

This seminar will explore current issues in higher education with an eye toward both institutional leadership and public policy. Students will gain an understanding of the major postsecondary policy challenges facing colleges and universities in the United States and the range of institutional responses to these challenges. Broad topics to be explored will include: access, accountability, affordability, governance (faculty and institutional), diversity, quality, funding, and rankings. Course meeting will include visits with university leaders in addition to discussions focused on current events in higher education, all of which will be informed by readings and research literature.

Seminar Assistant: Liesel Reussner

Kyle Camarda's research focuses mainly on the use of high-performance computers to solve optimization problems in product design, process design and bioinformatics. In the search for new pharmaceuticals, polymers, or fuel additives, the traditional trial-and-error approach is being supplanted by a new technique which uses computers to suggest compounds which are promising before any synthesis or testing is performed. Using this method, called Computational Molecular Design, researchers in this group first aim to predict important properties of novel molecules. Once properties can be predicted, optimization problems are formulated and solved which result in candidate molecules which are likely to have all of the physical property values desired for the new product. Computational molecular design is being applied to the search for new pharmaceutical drug formulations, novel catalytic materials, polymer adhesives, and many other molecular systems. The group is also interested in applying novel optimization techniques, including Tabu search and genetic algorithms, to the flux analysis of metabolic networks, and in parallel computing applied to chemical engineering optimization problems.

This seminar will examine recent events in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and will consider how the current balance of power amongst major nations compares to the situation at the height of the cold war.

Seminar Assistant: Kassandra Knoff

James B. Carothers is a Professor in the Department of English, where he has taught modern American fiction since coming to KU in 1970. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Missouri (Columbia) and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His research and teaching have centered on Faulkner and Hemingway, the Modern American novel, and the American Short Story. He has published two books on Faulkner’s short fiction.

The seminar will focus on William Faulkner's challenging 1932 novel Light in August and related Faulkner short stories, through current methods in the digital humanities for organizing and interpreting literary texts. The instructors are currently collaborating with the University of Virginia’s Digital Media Lab, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and SHANTI, to create a database and visual resources from the 15 novels and 48 stories Faulkner set in his mythical Mississippi county of Yoknapatawpha. Students can expect to learn about one of the most significant and influential authors and novels of the 20th century and about innovative and exciting uses of technology in the field of literary studies.

Seminar Assistant: Kelsey Consolver

Dr. Michele Casavant earned her Ph.D. with honors in American Studies at the University of Kansas in 2003 and published her dissertation, Where No Other Has Gone Before: Race and Gender in Star Trek, in 2009. Her research and interests concentrate on inequalities in the U.S., multicultural education, and representations of race and gender in popular culture.

She currently serves as Director of Advising at the School of Education, where she guides the center to best serve the needs of undergraduate students. She is also Director of the Multicultural Scholars Program for the School of Education, a program that recruits and retains diverse students within the School of Education.
Course Description: Elves and Mr. Spock: The “other” in Science Fiction and Fantasy

This course is structured to help you become more critically aware of the society and culture in which you live. Through analyzing popular culture, such as film, TV, and short novels, you will gain a better understanding of certain ideologies and beliefs that are experienced and expressed by many Americans. We will also explore different types of cultural theory, which will aid in our analysis and our critical approach to culture. In addition, this course will help you understand how our American identities are dependent on many interconnecting forces, such as race, gender, class, histories, sexuality, and others. Finally, we will scrutinize science fiction and fantasy and examine how these cultural texts reflect current ideologies and beliefs.

Seminar Assistant: Kelly Song

 

Instructor Biography:

Dr. Chauvin is an associate professor in the Finance, Economics and Decisions Sciences Area of the School of Business.  His research has focused the use incentives, compensation and other organizational practices to align the interest of owners, executives and other employees.  He teaches managerial and organizational economics at the School of Business. Dr. Chauvin has also taught in numerous executive education programs, the Brookings Institute’s Economics for Judges program, and currently teaches in the U.S. Army’s program in strategic leadership for Brigade Commanders. Dr. Chauvin received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and has taught at the University of Kansas since 1988.