The Virtus Learning Community Seek virtue through examining heroes and villains, past and present.

What is Virtus? In Latin, Virtus means “excellence, goodness, worth, virtue. ” In the Virtus Learning Community, we will be investigating what is considered heroic and admirable across human societies from an interdisciplinary perspective. We will be exploring different heroes and villains to help us understand what it means to be exceptional and to determine who is considered exceptional.

Some Questions We’ll Consider Who is a hero? Why are they a hero? Who is a villain? Why are they a villain? How do different cultures and societies define the concepts of hero and villain? What are the consequences for the individual to be defined as either a “hero” or a “villain”?

Virtus Courses Fall 2014 UCOR 030: Research and Information Skills UCOR 101: Thinking & Writing Across the Curriculum CLSX 105: Ancient Heroes SOCI 103: Introduction to Criminal Justice Spring 2015 ENGL 204: Bad Boys Faculty from left to right: Dr. Ann Marie Popp, Prof. Jolene McIlwain, and Dr. Danielle St. Hilaire

UCOR 030: Research and Information Skills The goal of this course is to provide you with the basic skills required to perform academic research. These skills are necessary for success at Duquesne University, and while they will be further developed throughout your academic career, this course provides a foundation of information literacy skills, including defining your information needs, conducting research effectively, and evaluating your research results. You will also learn about ethical issues relevant to using sources in projects and papers, including academic integrity, copyright, and citation. 5

UCOR 101: Thinking and Writing Across the Curriculum Creating and Challenging the Definitions of Heroes and Villains Students will define specific shared characteristics of the hero and the villain in our popular culture based on research of historical, cultural, biblical, & mythical heroes as well as their own personal life experiences in school, family, & the community. Students will read several award-winning essays and will analyze how the authors have presented their arguments in such a way as to manipulate their audiences with modern-day villains and heroes. Students will deconstruct and analyze film and TV shows based on their definitions of heroes and villains. Students will be looking closely at the role of the main protagonist in each film/TV show as well as secondary characters, analyzing whether or not they would be considered a hero or villain as well as how the community/setting affects this definition.

Classics 105: Ancient Heroes The concepts of “hero” and “heroism” conjure all manner of imagined characteristics and qualities from a modern audience. Yet we must wonder whether our ideas of heroes and the heroic are universal in space and time. We will grapple with the fundamental nature of heroism, asking questions by now familiar. Who can be a hero? What roles, if any, do free will and fate play in heroism? What is the relationship of a hero to the divine? What is the relationship of an individual hero to their community and its customs? We will expand our inquiry to consider figures who may appear less than “heroic.” What can these individuals tell us about the cultures that celebrated them? In addition, we will begin to appreciate the existence of multiple portraits of various heroes. How exactly do they compare and how do we account for any differences among them?

SOC 103: Introduction to Criminal Justice In this course, we will explore how behaviors become defined as “criminal.” We will consider why some behaviors are defined as crimes while similar behaviors are legal. We will also explore how the media shapes our perceptions of who are criminals and who are victims. Using crime statistics, we will evaluate whether the media portrayal of the “typical” criminal and victim is accurate. Finally, we will explore the Criminal Justice Funnel Hypothesis. This hypothesis suggest that many people engage in criminal behavior but very few are selected to be processed through the Criminal Justice system. We will examine who is selected for processing and why.

ENGL 204: Bad Boys We’re all familiar with the typical story of a hero who must rise up through hardship to achieve great things, a character we’re supposed to identify with and wish we could be; but what happens when the character at the center of the story isn’t so loveable? Or, worse—when the character is loveable, but nevertheless quite bad? In this class, we’ll be looking at works of literature from the British and American traditions that, instead of giving us a hero to look up to, put the bad guy at the center of the story. From Shakespeare’s Richard III, to Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, to John Milton’s formidable Satan, our purpose will be to examine what happens to the story, and to us as readers, when the main character is a villain.

Service Learning and Other Activities 1) Tentatively, our service learning project will be volunteering at the Carnegie Public Library and reading to children. We will consider how children’s literature illustrates how our society defines who is the hero and who is the villain. 2) We will be going to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to see the “Race: Are we so different?” to explore whether race and/or ethnicity could be incorporated into a cultural definition of hero/villain. 3) We will also be going to a Pittsburgh Pirates game to explore why athletes are heroes in American culture.