I took this class in the fall of 2016.
Unlike a majority of my general education courses, an honors course creates varying assignments to challenge the students to think in different ways and to use various tool sets. In this course, I was challenged to maintain an open-mind of other cultures and to think critically of historical arguments.
A majority of the semester focused on antiquity, and the medieval and Renaissance periods. The class read works such as the Cheese and the Worm, A World Full of Gods: The Strange Triumph of Christianity, and scholarly journal articles written by various historians.
The assignments based upon our readings always required critical thinking, and an application of tools historians use every day. For example, many historians have to create a story based upon the artifacts they have. I reflected this skill in my final exam paper. The professor had the class write fictional stories created using research of a specific time and place. A modern example of this would be James Michener’s The Source. My paper of the Tapestry of Bayeaux is attached below.