Master of Arts
in Liberal Studies
Graduate Seminars
2007-08 Evening and Summer Graduate Courses
The following courses are offered through the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program for the 2007-08 academic year. All MALS courses must enroll a minimum of five students to be offered. Most enroll between six and twelve students and all are capped at 15 students. The MALS degree paper, MALS 670, is a one-unit, one-semester course, and may be written any term.
Fall 2007
LIBERAL STUDIES 563
The Bloomsbury Group
This course examines the writings, works and general impact of the Bloomsbury set, the loose collection of writers, artists, biographers, and thinkers that had an enormous impact on British culture in the first half of the twentieth century. The course will stress the group's intellectual debts to the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore, who emphasized the pleasures of human friendship and aesthetic appreciation, and also will examine closely the Bloomsberries' rejection of what they saw as the artistic, social, and sexual restrictions of Victorian society. The course will give much attention to the writings of Virginia Woolf, the group's pre-eminent figure, but we also will look at the fiction of E. M. Forster; the cultural and social critical writings of Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, and Roger Fry; the art and design work of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and the Omega Workshops; and the biographical writings of Lytton Strachey. We will conclude the course by examining the great revival of interest in the group (and the subsequent cottage industry centered upon it) starting in the late 1960s. Conference. Download syllabus (pdf).
Jay Dickson, Associate Professor of English and Humanities.
Tuesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
HISTORY 570
The Incas
Drawing on recent work in history and archaeology, as well as 16th-century accounts by Spanish chroniclers, this course will examine the Incas from their origins as a tribal power, through their extraordinary creation of a pan-Andean empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the collapse of Inca hegemony in the face of Spanish conquest and the construction of a colonial society. Particular attention will be given to the political and economic organization of the empire; Inca ideology; and the development of the Inca core around Cusco with the enormous variation in provincial societies. Methodologically, the class will address the challenges and limits of studying non-literate civilizations through the archaeological record and postfactum accounts by Spaniards. The class will end by studying post-conquest society, addressing cultural continuity and syncretism, identity formation, and the organization and ideology of Spanish colonialism. Conference. Download syllabus (pdf).
David Garrett, Associate Professor of History and Humanities.
Wednesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
MATHEMATICS 537
The Copernican Revolution
This course will provide an introduction to Classical Astronomy, with particular attention to the Copernican Revolution. It will consist of three parts. The first part will study the problem of Plato, who required explanation of the anomalous motions of the planets in terms of circular motion at constant speed. Computer graphics programs will be applied to implement the basic geocentric constructions put forward by Eudoxos and by Hipparchus (c200b) as solutions to the problem. The latter construction, refined ad libitum by Ptolemy (c200a) and later by Arab mathematicians, will be of central interest, because the move to supplant it by a corresponding heliocentric version constitutes what in retrospect we have come to call the Copernican Revolution. The second part of the course will study excerpts from the basic work of Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543a). The objective will be to explain the criticisms by Copernicus of the current form of Ptolemaic astronomy, to describe the revisions which he proposed, but then to show that Copernican astronomy improved upon the Ptolemaic neither in clarity of structure nor in predictive force but only in an aesthetic sense imperceptible to all but a few. Given the authority of Aristotelean physics, which loomed in conflict with the proposals of Copernicus, one must ask why the new astronomy did in time prevail. This question will be the focus of the third, the most refined part of the course. Excerpts from the relevant works of Kepler, of Galileo, and of the Jesuits will be introduced to show the gradual accumulation of observational evidence in favor of the new astronomy. The significance of the telescope will be emphasized. The celebrated Trial of Galileo (1633a), in context of Counter Reformation politics, will set one focus for discussion. The course will conclude by considering, briefly, excerpts from the definitive work of Newton: The Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687a). This great treatise marked unequivocally the end of the old and the beginning of the new world order. Computer graphics programs will be applied to describe Kepler’s (empirical) laws of planetary motion and the development of these laws from the general principles of motion by Newton.
Thomas Wieting, professor of mathematics.
Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Spring 2008
LIBERAL STUDIES 547
Ancient and Modern Praise Poetry: Ted Hughes and Pindar
Praise poetry—poetry intended to glorify patrons and produced at their request—is not at present a popular genre. It seems impure, tainted by its association with money and power, yet it is precisely this association that makes this poetry so interesting, and it is the goal of this course to explore the rich dynamics of poetry produced in these circumstances. The course will study two praise poets in order to gain a better appreciation of the productions of each: the Classical Greek poet Pindar and the modern poet Ted Hughes, who, although better known for his other poetry and his marriage to Sylvia Plath, as British Poet Laureate wrote poems to commemorate royal births, weddings and anniversaries from 1982 until his death in 1998. Reading Pindar alongside Hughes will reveal the classical tropes through which Hughes constructs his praise—especially his detours into mythical history—as well as the way in which his poems work to make specific ideologies seem natural or self-evident. Reading Hughes alongside Pindar will reveal how far the success of the praise is underwritten by both an unpleasant public persona and an ironic poetic persona. Conference.
Nigel Nicholson, Walter Mintz Associate Professor of Classics.
Tuesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
PSYCHOLOGY 531
Emotions
Affects and emotions color our subjective experience, influence what we remember and how we make decisions, and predispose us to select certain actions. They influence our interactions with significant others and our mental and physical health, and they provide channels for the transmission of social and cultural values. The study of affect and emotions engages not only psychologists, but also anthropologists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and neuroscientists, among others. This course will emphasize understandings supported by empirical studies, but with due attention to questions raised across disciplines. Sample topics include: whether there are discrete emotional states corresponding to “natural kind,” the influence of nonconscious affects on decision-making, the broaden-and-build theory of positive affects, empathy, self-regulation, and emotional intelligence. Primary readings will be overviews; occasional research articles will illustrate the translation of theory-based questions into empirical studies. Brief writing assignments will provide opportunities to go beyond the assigned reading and to integrate differing perspectives. Conference.
Dell Rhodes, Professor of Psychology, Emerita.
Wednesdays, 5:30—7:00 p.m.
RELIGION 552
History of Islam in America
This course will examine the history of Islam in America from the arrival of the first African Muslims as slaves to the aftermath of 9/11. Through analysis of select primary sources the course will contextualize the phenomenon of American Islam at the cross-section of both American religious history and modern Islamic history. By doing so, it will inquire into how the history of American Islam could enrich conventional understandings of religious pluralism in the United States and the relationship between Islam and modernity. Other topics to be discussed include the relationship between race, ethnicity and religion in the US; the influence of comparative theology and religious studies on American conceptions of religious diversity; the relationship between missions, colonialism, and industrialization in the late 19th century; the role of Islam in the civil rights movement in the US and anti-colonial movements in Muslim-majority societies; and, the rise of political Islam as a matter of global concern. Conference.
Kambiz GhaneaBasir, Assistant Professor of Religion and Humanities.
Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Summer 2008
LIBERAL STUDIES 518
Shakespeare and Film
This course will examine the way Shakespeare’s plays have been transferred to and transformed by the filmic medium. We will read five plays and study two films of each one in order to see how adaptation constitutes interpretation. The plays will include Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Henry V, and The Tempest. The directors will include such masters as Welles, Olivier, Kurosawa, Polanski, Greenaway, Branaugh, and Baz Luhrmann. The course has three goals: to introduce students to film theory, cinematography (including editing, sound, point of view, juxtaposition of images, and the use of the camera as a “narrator”), and a vocabulary for film analysis; to study Shakespearean criticism and interpretation; and to examine the problems of adaptation. We will study the strategies for going from page to celluloid, and the coincidence or collision between the spoken word and the depicted image. One of our subjects will be the way the films reflect the era in which they were made; hence the interest in how Olivier’s Henry V, made during WWII, differs dramatically from Branaugh’s Henry V, shot with the Vietnam war in mind. The interest in the course will be to see not only how the plays re-emerge as new objects for study and discourse, but also the kinds of problems directors encounter and solve when they go from a verbal to a visual medium. Finally, we will look at differing options for adaptation, from mainstream cinematic conventions producing relatively literal versions of Shakespeare, to more radical films which superimpose elements of the narrative upon one another, shift point of view, and avoid literal reproduction in favor of such techniques as the interweaving of Eastern and Western narrative forms. Conference.
Roger Porter, Professor of English and Humanities.
Mondays-Thursdays, 2 hours/day for 6 weeks, starting in June
RELIGION 574
Religion and Media
The newest and arguably the most dynamic new approach in religious studies has emerged from media theory and communications theory. Such theorists as Niklas Luhmann, Friedrich Kittler, and Vilem Flusser have, in the immediately preceding generation, laid the foundations for media theory proper, following on the limited advances of such pioneers as Marshall McLuhan. Cybernetics, cognitive science, and systems science each are contributing today to the third stage in the development of a media theory of religion. The first half of the course will be devoted to the theories of Marshall McLuhan, Niklas Luhmann, Friedrich Kittler and Vilem Flusser. In the second half we will look at the contemporary impact of media on religion evolution in the present age of rebelief. The operating assumption will be that the phenomena of so-called globalization and so-called fundamentalism are both functions of a primary media process, which is digitalization. Conference.
Steven Wasserstrom, Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and Humanities.
Meets one evening/week for 3 hours for 7 weeks, starting in June
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