Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
Graduate Seminars
2012-13 Evening and Summer Graduate Courses
The following courses are offered through the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program for the 2012-13 academic year. They have been approved by the graduate studies committee and await final approval from the Reed faculty in fall, 2011. 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 2012
ART 530
Art and Life in Renaissance Florence
Giorgio Vasari describes in Lives of the Artists how “the arts were born anew” in Renaissance Florence. The city’s streets and piazzas, palaces and churches, paintings and sculptures give visual form to the cultural and social changes that impacted Florentine life. This course, in its study of artists such as Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Cellini, concentrates on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a period of innovation, both in terms of artistic theory and practice. Through an examination of Florence’s public and private spaces, we will consider how visual and material culture served as markers of civic identity and social distinction. Conference.
Half course for one semester.
Dana Katz, Assistant Professor of Art History and Humanities.
Tuesdays, 6:00–7:30 p.m.
LBST 570
The Theory and Practice of Globalization
This course is an introduction to recent theories and debates about the nature of "globalization.” What is "globalization?” Why has this term become so prevalent in social theory and popular discourse in the past 10 years? What competing worldviews and political economic visions does it encompass? Beginning with the influential "world systems theory" models in the 1970s, we move quickly to consider the criticisms and alternatives offered by a variety of social theorists since the late 1980s especially. Drawing on the spate of recent literature and anthologies on globalization and capitalism at both local and translocal levels, discussions and written assignments will address some of the most pressing and conflictual issues facing humankind today. What is the nature of capitalism in a so-called "postcolonial" age? How are new forms of economic development and exploitation connecting different regions of the world? What new forms of social and spatial mobility are emerging? What are the roles of both national states and transnational organizations and associations in these changes? How are forms of ethnic and gender difference constructed through these processes? What alternatives and resistances have been constructed, both locally and translocally? Conference.
Half course for one semester.
Charlene Makley, Associate Professor of Anthropology.
Thursdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
MATHEMATICS 537
The Trials of Galileo
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 Trials of Galileo (1633a), in context of Counter Reformation politics, will set the 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. Conference
Half course for one semester.
Thomas Wieting, Professor of Mathematics.
Thursdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Spring 2013
LITERATURE 541
Two Contemporary Dramatists
This course will develop a kind of literary conversation between two contemporary dramatists who are both, among other things, working on the problem of language and how people do or don't communicate with each other about a variety of issues. The playwrights are David Mamet and Suzan-Lori Parks. In addition to the issue of language, the focus of the course would be on gender (one man and one woman) and race (one white and one black). Texts for Mamet include American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Oleanna. Texts for Parks include The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, TopDog/Underdog, and Fucking A. Conference. Half course for one semester.
Pancho Savery. Professor of English and Humanities.
Wednesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
LBST 527
Sex, Gender and Political Theory
What do we see when we look at politics through the lenses of sex and gender? In the last forty years, scholars have produced a rich body of literature engaging this question. This research challenges and reconceptualizes not only traditional views of sex, gender and “gender relations,” but also fundamental notions of power and politics, public and private, human identity, agency, and subjectivity. In this course we examine some of these developments, their influence on political theory and use in analyzing politics.
Due to its breadth and influence, twentieth century, Western feminist scholarship is a dominant though not the sole theoretical lens of the course: at every turn, we engage sympathetic and not-so-sympathetic interlocutors of this literature. Over the course of the semester we focus on four contemporary approaches to understanding the nature, causes, and implications of sex, gender and related differences and inequalities, and a sampling of their primary philosophical and political concerns. We apply the theoretical insights and frameworks to a range of material: public policy, canonical text of Western political thought, popular culture and current political activity. Conference.
Half course for one semester.
Tamara Metz, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Humanities.
Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
MUSIC 565
Music and Cold War America
Post–World War II negotiations of anticommunism, national identity, and global membership reverberated throughout American musical culture in the 1950s. These sociopolitical developments impacted the careers of musicians as disparate as Paul Robeson, Aaron Copland, and Dizzy Gillespie; shaped the reception of repertories ranging from experimental music to the Broadway musical to rock and roll; and transformed the meanings of ethnic assimilation, the civil rights movement, and ideologies of modernism and populism. Through study of selected music examples, primary source materials, and relevant historical literature, this course will examine the performance, composition, and consumption of music in the United States during the early Cold War period, from roughly 1947–1961. Conference.
Half course for one semester.
Mark Burford, Assistant Professor of Music.
Thursdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Summer 2013
LBST 510
The Fifties in the U.S.
The course will use a range of secondary texts and primary documents to focus on key events and different disciplinary approaches to the study of this era. While the course will rely heavily on historical analyses, we will also use material from film studies, literary analysis, and sociology to understand this decade. The Fifties were shaped by the Great Depression and World War II and the authors we will read look back at those cataclysmic events. Policies and ideas shaped in the Fifties continue to influence the twenty-first century, and we will pay attention to those historical legacies. Topics include the baby boom and the ideology of the “traditional” American family; the Cold War, and its effects on domestic politics; civil rights battles in the legal and political arenas; medical and public health responses to polio; and the political and economic ramifications of post-war consumer culture. Conference.
Full course for one semester.
Jacqueline Dirks, Cornelia Marvin Pierce Professor of History and Humanities.
Mondays through Thursdays, 4:00-6 p.m., June 17—July 25.
LBST 523
Dante's Divine Comedy
In this course we will study Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century masterpiece The Divine Comedy, seeking to understand this ambitious poem both on its own merits and as an index of the major literary, artistic, and intellectual currents of European culture during the High Middle Ages. The Divine Comedy as a whole narrates Dante’s fictional journey through the afterlife, where he witnesses the eternal torments of the damned souls in Hell, the patient endurance of the restless Christian spirits in Purgatory, and the ineffable delights of the blessed in Paradise. As we follow Dante-pilgrim on his journey, we will look specifically at the poetic and narrative strategies that Dante-poet employs in thinking through the changing relationships between language and truth in the separate canticles of the poem, thinking about how an infernal poetics, for example, differs from a paradisiacal one. In light of ongoing debates in Dante studies, we will also focus on the extent to which Dante’s poem enjoins readers to a process of conversion and on the ways on which Dante establishes his own poetic and moral authority as a counterweight to the corruptions of the fourteenth-century Church.
This course will be writing-intensive, with frequent short position papers and a term paper. In addition to the Comedy in its entirety, we will also read select passages of Dante’s other works (especially the Vita Nuova), as well as excerpts from the writings of other medieval writers and thinkers: Aquinas, Bonaventure, Bernard of Clairvaux, the stilnovist poets, Guillaume de Lorris, etc. All readings will be in English translation; the Italian text of Dante’s poem will be on the facing page. Conference.
Half course for one semester.
Michael Faletra, Associate Professor of English and Humanities.
Mondays, 6:00-9 p.m., June 17—July 29.