Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

Graduate Courses

MALS courses are proposed by current Reed faculty members and selected by the Committee in Graduate Studies. Therefore, past MALS courses are not necessarily offered again in future terms.

Arts

  • Art 502: French Painting from 1750 to 1914
  • Art 508: Renaissance Space
  • Art 517: Archaeology and Early Chinese Society
  • Art 522: Early Modern Things
  • Art 525: Approaches to Media Studies
  • Art 530: Art & Life in Renaissance Florence
  • Art 541: Picasso's Cubism
  • Art 544: Video, Media, Politics (1968-Present)
  • Art 551: Theories of Visuality 
  • Dance 533: The Rites of Spring
  • Dance 551: Dancing Identity on the Global Stage
  • Dance 560: Gender, Form, and Identity in Contemporary Dance 
  • Literature/Music 545: The Romantic Lied: German Lyric Poetry and Its Music
  • Music 560: Music and the Black Freedom Struggle
  • Music 565: Music and Cold War America
  • Theatre 519: The Birth of Modernism in the Theatre
  • Theatre 521: "The Mirror Up to Nature": Reading Theatre History
  • Theatre 540: Race in American Theatre
  • Theatre 560: Translation and Adaptation in Modern Theatre
  • Theatre 570: Experiments in Intercultural Theatre
  • Theatre 590: Performance Studies: Performativity & Performance in Everyday Life

History and Social Sciences

  • Ancient Mediterranean Studies 501: Pseudo-Archaeology
  • Anthropology 520: Race, Labor, and the Immigrant Experience
  • Anthropology 541: Global Health: Critical Perspectives
  • Economics 567: Financial Crises, Market Crashes, and Economic Depressions
  • History 510: Family History in the 20th-Century U.S.
  • History 516: The Power of American Things: The United States and its Stuff in the 20th Century World
  • History 544: The Psychoanalytic Tradition
  • History 545: The Vietnam War
  • History 553: The French Revolution, 1770–1800
  • History 565: Animals: An Intellectual and Cultural History
  • History 570: The Incas
  • Political Science 530: Systems Disasters 
  • Political Science 544: Theories of the Ideal: Utopia and Dystopia
  • Political Science 553: American Climate Change Politics

Liberal Studies

  • LBST 501: Ethnopoetics (Summer 2021)
  • LBST 502: Environmental Humanities and the World of Ancient Rome (Spring 2022)
  • LBST 503: Introduction to Literary Theory (Spring 2023)
  • LBST 505: Transformation and Identity in Roman Empire (Spring 2016)
  • LBST 506: Ancient Greek Philosophy (Summer 2024)
  • LBST 507: Jewish Atlantic World (Summer 2010)
  • LBST 508: Literature of Reconstruction (Fall 2022)
  • LBST 509: Religious Reformations & Social Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Fall 2017)
  • LBST 510: The Fifties in America (Summer 2013)
  • LBST 511: Horror and the Sublime in Russian Culture (Spring 2014)
  • LBST 512: The Black Radical Tradition (Spring 2007)
  • LBST 516: Layered Memories of Japanese Colonialism (Fall 2009)
  • LBST 517: Ethnic American Poetry in its Cultural Context (Summer 2000)
  • LBST 518: Shakespeare and Film (Summer 2008)
  • LBST 520: Turn-of-the-Century Vienna and Prague (Fall 2015)
  • LBST 522: Ancient Epics (Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid) (Summer 2009)
  • LBST 523: Dante's Divine Comedy (Summer 2013)
  • LBST 524: American Dead and Undead (Summer 2015)
  • LBST 525: Hindu Religious Traditions (Summer 2017)
  • LBST 526: Chaucer and the Medieval World (Summer 2013)
  • LBST 527: Sex, Gender & Political Theory (Spring 2013)
  • LBST 528: Body Politics (Fall 2023)
  • LBST 530: Dream in Human Societies (Fall 2004)
  • LBST 531: Socrates and Plato (Spring 2005)
  • LBST 532: Statistics and Public Policy: Uses and Abuses (Spring 2002)
  • LBST 534: The Politics of Genre (Fall 2016)
  • LBST 535: Biblical Narrative: Literature, Art, and History (Fall 1998)
  • LBST 536: Economic Success and Failure (Summer 2004)
  • LBST 537: Women in the Ancient World (Summer 2014)
  • LBST 538: The Immigrant as Protagonist (Fall 2018)
  • LBST 539: Russian Culture Under Putin (Spring 2019)
  • LBST 541: The James Family (Summer 2002)
  • LBST 542: Revolution and Reform in Chinese Agriculture (Fall 2020)
  • LBST 543: The Age of Augustus (Fall 1999)
  • LBST 544: Law & Justice in Europe & its Empires, 1200–1800 (Spring 2021)
  • LBST 545: Holocaust Remembrance: Memory and Place (Fall 2001)
  • LBST 546: Politics & Policy in America: Does the Government We Want Give Us the Policy We Need? (Summer 2020)
  • LBST 547: Ancient and Modern Praise Poetry (Spring 2008)
  • LBST 548: Sports and Social Life (Spring 2011)
  • LBST 551: Chicago and the Urban Modern (Fall 2021)
  • LBST 553: Literary and Visual Culture in 18th-Century Britain (Spring 2012)
  • LBST 554: Media, Persons & Publics in a Globalized World (Spring 2018)
  • LBST 555: Emergence, Evolution, and Life (Spring 2000)
  • LBST 556: Race and the Immigrant Experience (Fall 2013)
  • LBST 557: Literature at the Margins of the Roman Empire (Spring 2010)
  • LBST 558: Islam in the Modern World (Spring 2015)
  • LBST 559: Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Spring 2009)
  • LBST 560: The Twenties in America (Spring 2004)
  • LBST 561: The Soviet Experience (Fall 2005)
  • LBST 562: The Victorian Fin de siécle (Summer 2005)
  • LBST 563: The Bloomsbury Group (Summer 2012)
  • LBST 564: The Modern Middle East: History, Culture, Politics (Spring 2017)
  • LBST 566: Romanticism and Religion (Summer 2002)
  • LBST 569: The History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality: The Late Twentieth Century United States (Summer 1999)
  • LBST 570: The Theory and Practice of Globalization (Fall 2012)
  • LBST 571: The American Civil War in History and Memory (Fall 2011)
  • LBST 572: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde (Spring 2020)
  • LBST 575: The Art of Speech (Summer 2018)
  • LBST 578: Politics, Culture, and the Great Depression (Fall 2014)
  • LBST 579: Colonizing Africa: Conrad and the Congo (Spring 2001)
  • LBST 582: Truth and Representation in Early Modern Europe (Summer 2011)
  • LBST 583: Engendering History: Historiography of Masculinity and Femininity (Summer 2007)
  • LBST 587: Plagues and their Meanings (Fall 2008)
  • LBST 588: Railways and Modernity (Spring 2006)
  • LBST 591: Contemporary and Classical Literary Theory (Fall 2010)
  • LBST 592: Jews and Others: Jewish-American Literature, Culture, and Identity, 1700–2000 (Summer 2003)
  • LBST 593: Faulkner and Morrison (Fall 2003)

Literature and Languages

  • Ancient Mediterranean Studies: Rome, City of Complaints
  • Chinese 527: Representations of the Cultural Revolution
  • Classics 527: Women in the Ancient World
  • Classics 531: Socrates and Plato
  • Classics 568: Greek Tragedy, Ancient and Modern Perspectives
  • English 521: The Art of the African American Short Story
  • English 530: Race and Region: Representing the American South
  • English 538: Cinema and the Senses
  • English 540: August Wilson's Twentieth Century Cycle
  • English 553: British Romanticism and Its Contexts
  • Literature 500: Introduction to Literary Theory
  • Literature 510: Modern Turkish Literature: East-West Trajectories
  • Literature 517: African American Women Writers
  • Literature 523: Church and State in Early Modern Spanish Culture
  • Literature 524 Red Sci-Fi: Science Fiction in Soviet Literature and Film
  • Literature 527: Drugs, Gangs, & Aliens
  • Literature 528: Late Tolstoy: From Anna Karenina to a Religious Teaching
  • Literature 537: James Joyce
  • Literature 547: The Literature of Love
  • Literature 549: Memory & Modernity in the Indian Ocean
  • Literature 550: The Unknown Holocaust Cinema
  • Literature 554: The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov: a Study
  • Literature 571: Critical Race Theory
  • Russian 528: Post-Communist Russia: Literature, Film, and Society since 1987
  • Russian 533: Russian Auteur Cinema
  • Spanish 583: From Los olvidados to Roma: Contemporary Mexican Cinema

Math and Natural Sciences

  • Biology 505: The Biological Legacy of Lewis and Clark
  • Biology 530: Science and Society: Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
  • Biology 534: Fitness and Food
  • Biology 540: Environmental Studies in the Pacific Northwest
  • Biology 550: Fire Ecology in the Pacific Northwest
  • Biology 560: Genetics and Evolution: Confronting the Complexities of Inheritance
  • Mathematics 525: Heavenly Circles and Spheres
  • Mathematics 532: Introduction to 20th-Century Cryptology
  • Mathematics 537: The Trials of Galileo
  • Mathematics 537: The Copernican Revolution
  • Mathematics 552: The Nature of Mathematics
  • Mathematics 555: The Geometry of Paradise: an introduction to Dante's Paradiso
  • Literature/Mathematics 563: Thomas Mann and the Discourse of Science in Early Twentieth Century
  • Mathematics 574: The Geometry of Light
  • Physics 524: Reflections on Light: Newton to the Quantum Theory
  • Physics 568: Here in the Universe
  • Physics 579: Great Ideas in Twentieth-Century Physics

Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, Linguistics

  • Linguistics 520: Research Approaches to Speech Sounds
  • Philosophy 515: Freedom and Moral Responsibility
  • Philosophy 535: Socrates, Christ, Nietzsche: Three Visions of the Moral Life
  • Philosophy 545: Iris Murdoch
  • Philosophy 548: Existentialism
  • Philosophy 555: Tragedy and Philosophy
  • Philosophy 562: Religion and Modernity
  • Philosophy 578: Therefore God Exists
  • Psychology 522: Stereotyping and Prejudice
  • Psychology 531: Affects and Emotions
  • Psychology 544: The Social Construction of Disability
  • Psychology 550: Psychological Perspectives on Art
  • Psychology/German 567: In the Name of Madness: Cultural In- and Exclusions as Divine Inspiration, Rational Expulsion, and Punishment in Literature from the Renaissance to the 20th-Century
  • Psychology 570: Sex, Evolution, and Human Behavior
  • Religion 517: Religious Ethics and Moral Issues
  • Religion 521: The Problem of Monotheism in the History of Religions
  • Religion 533: Hidden Divinity: In Search of Christian Mysticism
  • Religion 549: New Religious Movements
  • Religion 552: History of Islam in America
  • Religion 574: Religion and Media