First-Year Colloquium

Honors Colloquium is a two-semester sequence of courses designed to introduce you to the Honors College and to modes of inquiry and expression at the University of Wyoming. The theme for the fall semester course is “dreams and reality,” a topic we will explore from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Together, we will investigate how our sense of reality depends upon dreams and how dreams, in turn, extend and complicate our understanding of what reality might be. In the process, we will explore how, through grappling with dreams and reality, people historically have found meaning in the world and continue to do so, which will lead into the spring semester where we will explore the question: "What does it mean to be a human being?"

In addition to investigating dreams and reality and the meaning of humanness, this class will help you refine your academic writing and communication skills and give you the opportunity to take advantage of many of the resources that enrich the University of Wyoming and the city of Laramie (resources like the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts and the UW Art Museum) through in-class, out-of-classroom, extra-curricular, and community-service activities.

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This Week in Colloquium Spotlight Series

Each week during the fall semester we will feature one section of Colloquium I or other exciting endeavors in the Colloquium community and the exciting and stimulating ideas they are exploring.

The Hub is a resource for Colloquium students to find support for success.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
DR. HOSANNA KRIENKE

This week in Colloquium, students from across all the sections were invited to attend a screening of the Oscar-winning film, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2021), hosted by the Honors Hub. We had over 50 students attend (and had to scramble just a bit to find to a room to fit us all). The film itself is an excellent introduction to our course theme of “Dreams and Reality,” as it explores both aspirational dreams and the complexity of locating “reality” given the likelihood of a multiverse. Our group audibly gasped during the scene where Michelle Yeoh’s character, Evelyn, brutally tells her husband that she saw herself in an alternate life without him and, “It was beautiful.” And even as the audience laughed at the absurdity of a hot-dog-finger universe, in this class we will soon come face to face with such powerful paradoxes as quantum superposition in physics, the philosophy of dharma in Hinduism, and the creative potential of the human brain in neuroscience. So, as it turns out, maybe this film isn’t so far-fetched at all?

Throughout the semester, the Hub will be helping our Colloquium students tackle each major assignment and addressing common academic questions, so check out honorshub.com to stay in the loop!  

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LIVING THE GITA
DR. MIMI FENTON

Bharti Qureshi, from Gugarat, India, now living in Travers City, Michigan, visited with Dr. Mimi Fenton's Colloquium class last week to discuss the Bhagavad Gita. Bharti is a practicing Hindu and talked of the metaphorical debate between Arjuna and Krishna, and about the many concepts in the Gita that influence daily life and spiritual practice for many Hindus. She especially clarified for students the notions of dharma, moksha, and the yogic practices.

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