POL 3094 was a new Honors Seminar offered during the Spring 2021 semester. This course was officially named "Fascism: Violence, Power, and Hatred in the Past and Present," and aimed to teach about the fascist ideology and how fascism can rise to power. I chose to take this class because in high school, my Latin teacher always loved to mention the connection between a Roman concept of the fasces and how this inspired the fascist ideology many years later. I wanted to learn more about fascism: what it is, the damage it can cause, and how it still rears its ugly head in our world today. This class was 100% online, and was my first ever Political Science-esque college course. I was a bit nervous going in because I am definitely not a Political Science major and know next to nothing about government systems, politics, and how to have discussions about them. Though many of my classmates were Political Science majors, my nerves were quickly calmed when I saw some Neuroscience, Chemical Engineering, and Communication Design majors in the class too. The class alternated between lectures from the professor, discussions of our previous readings, and student-led presentations. Overall, I ended up doing a case study presentation, wrote two film reviews, and researched a 12 page paper and gave a presentation along with it. My favorite part of the class was getting to spend some of my homework time just reading. I hadn't taken a college course that only really had reading assignments for homework, and it was a nice change of pace from doing Organic Chemistry problem sets or translating 50 lines of a Greek text. 

Overall, I got so much out of this class. As I mentioned before, I had a pretty niche interest in fascism that tied back to my Classics major roots. Through excellent course planning, my professor found a way to delve into these interests for all of the projects I did. I was fascinated by the connection of the fasces to fascism, and wanted to explore why that was. Aside from this, I also learned about how fascism manifests itself in modern governments and how to recognize neo-fascist tendencies in hate groups across the world. I had set a goal for myself last year that I wanted to become more aware of my own political opinions and educate myself more on the concept of governments in general. I definitely was able to accomplish this goal in this class, and I am definitely walking away with a better understanding of how dangerous fascism was and still is even now. 
 

I have chosen to showcase the final paper I wrote for this class, which explores the topic of the fasces and what it has come to mean throughout its many centuries of use. This paper has been a topic that I have wanted to dive deeply into since high school, and I am extremely proud of what I was able to write about from my knowledge in this class. As a visual aid, I have also chosen to showcase my case study presentation, which is a bit broader than my paper. It focuses on the classical inspirations that Benito Mussolini used to build his Fascist Italy in the 1920s. This presentation is what started it all for me in this class, and really showed me that I was passionate about the fasces and its reception throughout history. Both of these projects were a great experience for me and taught me a lot about my own opinions on classical icons in our present day and age.