Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
Graduate Seminars
2010-11 Evening and Summer Graduate Courses
The following courses are offered through the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program for the 2010-11 academic year. They have been approved by the graduate studies committee and await final approval from the Reed faculty in fall, 2009. 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 2010
LIBERAL STUDIES 591
Contemporary and Classical Literary Theory
An introduction to literary theory, from a classicist's perspective, that draws on the disciplines of literature, philosophy, history and anthropology. The aim is to develop an understanding of the various sorts of questions that can be asked about a work of literature. Contemporary readings will be drawn from New Criticism, Structuralism and Semiotics, Marxist literary theory, and New Historicism. We also will compare these concerns with those of three great classical literary theorists: Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus. Three or four short papers will require analysis of the different approaches or their application of them to specific works of literature. There will be two classical texts in the course for this purpose (a short “novel” and a couple of Pindaric odes), but students will also be encouraged to write on works of literature that they have a particular interest in pursuing. Conference.
Nigel Nicholson. Tuesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
BIOLOGY 520
Pacific Northwest Forests
This course explores the major features of forests in the Pacific Northwest, which include the largest temperate rain forests as well as the most diverse coniferous forests in the world. Topics to be covered include the structure and basic ecological features of communities, adaptation of organisms to their abiotic and biotic environments, symbiotic relationships, succession, endemism, and biogeography. These concepts will be developed to address current environmental problems such as resource extraction, climate change, invasive species, pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Students will read extensively in the primary literature in forest science and discuss the current state of scientific knowledge and the potential for this knowledge to drive policy issues. Class will consist of a mixture of lecture, discussion, and student presentations. There will be a one-day field trip to an Old Growth forest near Mt. St. Helens, with students having the option of an overnight extension to explore additional sites. Conference and Lecture.
David Dalton. Wednesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
HISTORY 535
American Abolitionism
Slavery was an established institution in every one of Britain’s American colonies in 1776; by 1865, the United States finally resolved a civil war that brought slavery to an end. This course explores the culture and politics of the various antislavery movements that emerged in the United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War. What made it possible for people to believe that slavery should be eradicated? What motivated abolitionists’ decisions to join the antislavery cause? What strategies did they use to advance their agendas, and what were the boundaries of their abolitionist visions? We will seek to connect abolitionism to major historical transformations of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the political revolutions of the Atlantic world, the development of market capitalism, and the rise of evangelical Protestantism. We will also consider the relationship between abolitionism and other social reform movements, both within and beyond the United States. Finally, we will assess the divisions among antislavery activists, with particular attention to the ways in which race and gender shaped different abolitionists’ responses to the problem of slavery. Using American abolitionism as a case study, this course invites students to think in a critical and historically rigorous way about the ironies and complexities of social change. Readings will include a wide variety of primary sources (including a novel, personal narratives, newspapers, political essays, and visual and material culture), as well as recent scholarship by historians and literary scholars. Conference.
Margot Minardi. Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Spring 2011
PSYCHOLOGY 550
Psychological Perspectives on Art
Concepts derived from psychological science have much to contribute to an understanding of the perception, appreciation, and production of artistic works. There exists a history of cross-talk between perceptual psychology and the study of art and music, but recent investigations of brain function, emotions, attention, categorization, learning, and theory of mind also provide important perspectives on art. The primary goal of this course will be to consider the relevance of currently prominent psychological concepts to the arts, with a focus on examples from the visual arts, music, and literature. Along the way, we’ll consider the methods psychological scientists use to develop and test these concepts. Conference.Dell Rhodes. Tuesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
LIBERAL STUDIES 548
Sports and Social Life
Sports are a central aspect of ritual form and everyday life in a large number of societies across the globe. This course approaches sports play as a fundamental practice of modern social formation and social reproduction. Through case studies of situated sports practices (notably football/soccer, cricket/baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, and skateboarding/parkour) in a variety of societies (US, Europe, Caribbean, South America, Africa, and South Asia), it examines key issues in the cultural study of modernity: gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, class/stratification, violence, (post-)colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. The course introduces students to phenomenological approaches to social life, approaching culture as an embodied mode of practice rather than a cognitive field of knowledge. Conference.
Paul Silverstein. Wednesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
LITERATURE 532
Leo Tolstoy
A century after his death, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) remains one of the world’s most read and admired fiction writers as well as an important voice in moral, political, and aesthetic philosophy. Scheduled to coincide with a series of Tolstoy events at Reed, this course surveys Tolstoy’s lifework, including a major novel (Anna Karenina), short fiction (The Sebastopol Stories, “ The Kreutzer Sonata,” “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” “Khadzhi Murat”) as well as his moral, religious, aesthetic, and autobiographical writings (“I Cannot Be Silent,” “A Letter to a Hindu,” “A Confession, “ and others). From the perspective of intellectual history, we will explore such central themes in Tolstoy’s thought as selfhood, logic of history, sexuality, death, war, politics of non-violence, and ethics of non-participation in evil. As we consider Tolstoy’s evolution that eventually led him to become a social activist and religious reformer, we also will analyze his poetics in the context of Russian and European realism and modernism. Conference.
Evgenii Bershtein Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Summer 2011
ECONOMICS 567
Financial Crises, Market Crashes, and Economic Depressions
This course examines the current/recent economic crisis in historical perspective. Three interrelated elements contributed to the economic events that began in 2007: a crisis in the financial sector, a fall or crash in asset prices, and a recession or depression in the level of overall economic activity. These three kinds of events have often occurred together, strikingly during the Great Depression that began in 1929. There are also recent and historical examples of each that were not accompanied by the others, such as the stock-market crash of 1987 and the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s, neither of which triggered a general economic downturn. The course will develop some basic background theories of macroeconomics and the financial system, then proceed to utilize those theoretical tools to analyze economic crises under the gold standard, the economic history of the inter-war period including the Great Depression, crises in developing and developed countries since 1970 (including the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the economic woes of Japan since 1990). We will finish with a detailed analysis of the origins and propagation of the crisis of 2008, including a discussion of the policy response from the Federal Reserve and the Obama Administration. Conference.
Jeff Parker. TBA, Mondays through Thursdays, 2 hours per day, for six weeks starting in June.
LBST 582
Truth and Representation in Early Modern Europe
In this course, we will examine the early modern philosophic and literary preoccupation with the problem of representation. Through a comparative study of works in England, France, and Spain, we will look at how writers express considerable anxiety (or enthusiasm, depending on the case) about the potentially misleading nature of images. They fear the implications, both moral and metaphysical, of a world where no image can be trusted, social climbers practice dissimulation to advance their own causes, and dreams cannot be distinguished from reality. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, there was a decided increase in works that questioned the truth of representation. We will begin by reading works from this period by Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Calderon de la Barca and Corneille that depict the dangers of untrustworthy representations in the form of such things as dreams, tricks, statues, and, in the case of Don Quixote, literature-induced delusion. We will then contrast the literary depiction of the problem of representation with the philosophical promise of a solution through a reading of works by Francis Bacon and René Descartes. Through method, for Bacon, and radical doubt, for Descartes, both philosophers offer a means to escape the deceitful nature of representation. We will ask, however, what is gained and what is lost when representation can no longer beguile us. Conference.
Ann Delehanty. TBA, meets for 3 hours weekly in the evening for 7 weeks, starting in June.