Advanced Special Topics
CRISIS
This course offers a multidisciplinary exploration of strategies for navigating crises and protecting reputation, with a specialized focus on Arkansas. Students will learn directly from city and state leaders, industry professionals and business executives to examine real-world scenarios and regional case studies. Emphasis will be placed on communication planning, stakeholder engagement and media strategy during high-stakes situations. From natural disasters to operational disruptions and public-facing challenges, students will gain hands-on experience in crafting effective, localized responses that help maintain public trust and organizational credibility.
HNRS 341HV
Honors Arkansas
May 11-21
9:00 a.m. - 10:30 p.m. (for 1 hour); 9:00 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. (for 3 hour)
Virtual
No application required.
Astrobiology in Popular Culture
From enigmatic monoliths to hostile xenomorphs, from first contact to alien microbiomes, cinema has long served as the laboratory where humanity rehearses its hopes and fears about life beyond Earth. This seminar examines how popular culture imagines astrobiology—the scientific search for life in the universe—and how those visions influence public understanding of science.
Each week, we screen a major film—2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Solaris, Contact, The Thing, Arrival, District 9, and others—and use it as a springboard for discussion. What scientific questions does the film raise? Which misconceptions does it challenge or reinforce? How do concepts such as planetary habitability, extremophile life, or interspecies communication translate into narrative and image?
HNRS
Vincent Chevrier
Fall 2026
M 2-4:45 p.m.
GEAR 243
No application required.
Students engage with readings from astrobiology, planetary science, and film theory, building connections between scientific reasoning and cultural analysis. The course emphasizes conversation over lecture: after each screening, we unpack both the science and the storytelling to explore how imagination and evidence shape one another.
By semester’s end, students will understand how astrobiology operates not only in
laboratories and observatories but also in the collective imagination—where the search
for life becomes a mirror for our own.
(And yes, we promise: no Star Wars.)
Course Credits:
All Students:
- Honors Credit
Coming Soon
Vincent F. Chevrier is an associate research professor at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, where he investigates the physical and chemical processes that shape planetary surfaces and climates. His work centers on the stability of volatiles—brines, ices, and clathrates—and their role in the evolution and potential habitability of Mars, Titan, and other planetary bodies.
As principal investigator on multiple NASA-funded projects, Chevrier combines laboratory experiments with spacecraft observations to model how water and other volatiles interact with planetary minerals under extreme conditions. Beyond his technical research, he is interested in how scientific exploration intersects with questions of origins, environments, and the definition of life—bridging planetary science and astrobiology with a curiosity about how worlds, and ideas, evolve.
Languages of Neurodiversity
Language is one of the ways we create our reality. The term neurodiversity, for instance, is often mistakenly used as a synonym for autism or ADHD and assumed to stand in opposition to neurotypical. But what kinds of realities do these words—and their uses or misuses—produce? Whose perspectives do they reflect, and who benefits from them? This course explores these questions both through its materials and in the design of the seminar itself.
We begin by examining the rise of the concept of neurodiversity, understood as the full range of neurotypes within the human population, and the ways it has been used to construct binary categories of “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical.” We will study the language of neurotypicality and investigate how individuals who identify as neurodivergent articulate their experiences—while also questioning the usefulness and limitations of the terms neurodivergent and neurotypical themselves.
HNRS
Jennifer Hoyer
Fall 2026
TTH 3:30-4:45 p.m.
TBD
From here, we explore the many “languages” through which neurodiversity is expressed: linguistic, cultural, sensory, spatial, and temporal. How do different languages and cultures conceptualize neurodiversity? How do our perceptions of space and time shape communication? Perspectives considered in this course include autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, OCD, Tourette syndrome, epilepsy, depression, and neurotypicality, with sustained attention to how gender, race, and socioeconomic status reverberate through the neurodiversity paradigm.
The seminar is designed to embody the principles of the neurodiversity movement—all neurotypes are welcome.
Course Credits:
All Students:
- Honors Credit
Coming Soon
Dr. Jennifer Hoyer is an inaugural University of Arkansas Humanities Center Research Fellow for AY 2025–26, during which they will work on their book manuscript Lyrical Mathematics / Thinking Inconveniently.
Hoyer joined the University of Arkansas German Section in 2007 and founded the university’s Jewish Studies program in 2015, directing it through 2025. In 2021, they piloted the innovative Jewish Studies course “How Did the Holocaust Affect…?”, which features an accompanying online archive: https://howdidtheholocaustaffect.uark.edu/. In spring 2025, Hoyer introduced a new course on Languages of Neurodiversity. Their teaching portfolio also includes Introduction to Literature, German Civilization, European High Modernism, poetry, cinema, medieval and early modern German cultural production, and numerous independent studies in German and Jewish Studies.
Hoyer’s current research focuses on neurodivergence and the intersections of European lyric poetry with mathematics from the seventeenth century to the present. This work draws on Walker’s concept of neuroqueering, alongside the queer art of failure (Halberstam), queer phenomenology (Ahmed), and affirmative sabotage (Spivak), to explore what mathematics becomes in the hands of modern lyric poets. The project asks why we are encouraged to value poetry and mathematics differently, why these fields are often framed as oppositional despite their shared structures, and how their intersections can help disrupt dominant epistemologies of the global North.
In addition, Hoyer is engaged in several collaborative projects on neurodiversity and is helping to develop an international neurodiverse German Studies research group. Previous research has focused on poet Nelly Sachs, German Jewish writers, and playwright Silke Hassler.