Honors 159J is a seminar consisting of the following interrelated parts: readings/viewings, class/online discussions, short assignments, class participation, conferences, projects/presentations, and final portfolio.

A seminar is a collaborative enterprise. In a seminar, students take important responsibility for producing stimulating discussions and presenting the results of their research and thinking. For most of the semester, we will discuss a common set of readings and viewings in order to build our understanding of suburbia and its historical and contemporary relationships to American culture. These readings/viewings should also provide each student with a good background of knowledge to support his or her projects.

Honors 159J contains a strong high-tech component. Students will learn to navigate the information superhighway and create their own pages on the World Wide Web. Each project will be presented in the form of a virtual exhibition mounted on the Web. By the end of the semester, students should be well on their way to becoming webmasters!

Attendance: In a seminar, we can't do without you. Attendance is mandatory.

Readings/Viewings: These form the heart of a seminar: they are our common ground. The success (and everyone's enjoyment) of the course will depend on your willingness to complete the reading and viewing assignments on time. Read actively, record your impressions, jot down notes, mark interesting or irritating passages; engage with the authors and come to class ready to contribute your thoughts about their work and the issues they raise. Class/Online Discussions: We are committed to enhancing the quality of our classroom time together. During class we will be learning skills needed to complete a particular assignment, presenting course material, reporting the results of projects, discussing readings/viewings, and trying to formulate questions and answers that will help us understand better the American suburban culture in its many dimensions. HONR 159J is an active learning class, so students play a large role in shaping the quality of our class time. Nearly everyone has some familiarity with suburbia or suburban culture. Consider your background, experiences, and knowledge a cache of resources from which we can all draw and learn.

Some of our discussions will take place in a traditional classroom and some will occur in cyberspace. The instructors will provide training for participating in all high-tech activities in the course. Students will need to practice these skills regularly in order to master and retain them.

Resource Persons: For each starred (*) session on the course calendar, a student will serve as the resource person for that day's discussion. Resource persons are required to meet with one of the instructors at least two days prior to the class session in which they will serve. If you are resource person for the day, your duties will include leading discussion, answering questions when everyone else is stumped, serving as expert for that day's topic or planner/coordinator of that day's activities.

Conferences: You are encouraged to schedule at least two office hour conferences with the instructors during the course of the semester. We invite you to drop in early on in the semester to let us get to know you. We can better serve your needs and interests if you tell us what they are.

Short Assignments: There will be several short assignments over the course of the semester in addition to the projects. Some of these may be "quizlets" or short writing opportunities designed to assist you in digesting material and formulating positions on issues. Some will be homework assignments designed to get you to practice skills exploring and using the Web. Try to be a good sport about these; we're just trying to teach you.

Research Projects/Presentations: HONR 159J features three projects devised to provide opportunities for more intense thought and research on particular aspects of suburbia, present or past. All three projects involve techniques for analyzing American culture and society characteristic of scholarship in American Studies.

The first project requires analysis of a suburban artifact or group of related artifacts for what it can tell us about American suburbia. Students will learn to describe and evaluate the history, form, materials, construction, and function(s) of artifacts, and to study them in their original and contemporary contexts for what they reveal about the suburbanites who used them then and now.

For the second project, students will choose a literary work, or a film(s) or television show(s) dealing with suburbia and analyze it for the information and imagery presented concerning issues of race, class, age, sex, and/or gender.

Project III will engage students in research on some aspect of the history or material culture or built environment of a nearby suburban community, Greenbelt, Maryland. Greenbelt is an internationally famous federally-planned community. HONR 159J will work with the Greenbelt Museum and the rich resources of the Rexford Tugwell room at the Greenbelt Public Library developing individual research projects which will then be hyperlinked together to create a virtual exhibition on this historic suburban community. Those wishing will have the opportunity to contribute to Virtual Greenbelt, a permanent web site operated by the Greenbelt Museum and the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland.

Rather than submitting written papers, students will present their work in the form of pages and exhibitions mounted on the World Wide Web for the whole class to read and respond to. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present the fruits of their research orally and online on the days when projects are due. Failure to proofread and spellcheck projects will cause the instructors to have apoplexy.

Examination: In lieu of a final examination, students will develop a portfolio of the semester's work and mount it on the web. The portfolio should include revised, expanded, and improved versions of the projects, new and appropriate hyperlinks, and a summary page that provides a digest of your best "epiphanettes" and insights about suburbia, gained over the course of the semester. The portfolio will be due at the date and time of the final examination.