Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

News and Conferences

GLS Symposium
AGLSP Annual Conference
News

West Coast Graduate Liberal Studies Symposium

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Reed MALS presenters and director 2017 UWTacoma Symposium

Read more about the 2017 GLS Symposium and the four Reed students who presented papers!

This annual, interdisciplinary symposium provides an opportunity for students and alumni from west coast graduate liberal studies programs to come together to share their work and experiences, and to foster the intellectual community that is at the core of our programs. Approximately 45 students are selected to present papers from one of their GLS classes to an audience of their peers. The schools with GLS programs who participate include: Dominican University of California, Maastricht University (The Netherlands), Mount St. Mary's College, Reed College, San Diego State University, St. John's College Sante Fe, Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Twelfth Annual GLS Symposium
June 22-1248, 2018
Hosted by Stanford University

Eleventh Annual GLS Symposium
June 16-18, 2017
Hosted by University of Washington, Tacoma

Reed MALS students and alumnus presented the following papers:

  • Derek Finn, Plato, Protagoras, and the Problem with Democracy
  • Elizabeth O'Neil, Who Can Change the World?: Gendered Citizenship and Non-Resistance in American Abolitionism
  • Neil Ramiller, Inventorying 'Ithaca': Things, Identity, and Character in James Joyce's Ulysses
  • Lynette Yetter, Virgin Mary/Pachamama Syncretism: Exploring filial ayni relationship with the Divine Feminine in early-colonial Copacabana, Bolivia

Tenth Annual GLS Symposium
June 17-19, 2016
Hosted by Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC

Reed MALS students and alumna presented the following papers:

  • Derek Finn, Charles Coughlin: American Catholic
  • Margaret Grove Nelson, Read Wiser and Better: The Role of Pausanius' Speech in The Symposium
  • Claire Michie, Big Fish in a Small Pond: The role of Cappaert v. US in Western Water Law
  • Neil Ramiller, Galileo and the Church: Institutional Entrepreneurship and Competing Institutional Logics
  • Maylorie Townsend, Motivation in Academia—Theory, Application and Outcomes
  • Lynette Yetter, The Transformative Force of Dona Felipa in Arguedas' Novel Deep Rivers: Distillation & Diaspora
GLS Symposium
Reed MALS presenters and director at the 2016 Simon Fraser Symposium

Ninth Annual GLS Symposium
June 19-21, 2015
Hosted by Reed College MALS
Information and registration: www.reed.edu/gls

Reed MALS students and alumna presented the following papers:

  • Julie Felix, Helen's Autopsy: A Forensic Approach to Myth in Herodotus's Histories
  • Claire Michie, The Role of Practice Babies in Home Economics Education during the Great Depression
  • Neil Ramiller, Representation of Technology and Place in Leslie Ragan's New 20th Century Limited

AGLSP Annual Conference

The Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs is the professional organization of academic programs providing graduate interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences for working adults. The Association provides a forum for the exchange of information and ideas among the administrators of programs granting degrees such as Master of Liberal Arts, Master of Liberal Studies and Master of Arts in Liberal Studies and to programs with related curricula and goals. The AGLSP promotes the core concepts and goals of Graduate Liberal Studies, fosters high standards in GLS programs, provides guidance for institutions considering initiating and improving such programs, and promotes public awareness of the programs. The annual conference brings together faculty, administrators, students and alumni of graduate liberal studies programs across the U.S. and Canada for a long weekend each October.

2016 Conference, Tradition and Transformation
Hosted by The University of Oklahoma college of liberal studies
October 20-22, Oklahoma City

2012 Conference, The Crisis of the Book: Worlds of Opportunity, Worlds of Change
Hosted by the Reed College MALS program
October 18-20, Portland, OR

From scroll to codex, printing press to computer screen, revolutions in technology have changed the way we receive and process information, and even the way we think about ideas. This interdisciplinary conference will place the transformation in print culture in a historical framework, and will reflect upon the changing nature of text delivery and the experience of reading.

How is knowledge produced? What role does the book play as cultural, material, and sacred object? What is the place of the modern library in the electronic age? How does the field of new media studies reflect evolving social contexts? How do we “see” graphic novels or navigate through hypertext fiction? What questions concerning copyright and intellectual property does the digital age raise?

Reading is at the heart of what we do in the academy, both personally and professionally. What is the future of your practice of reading?

Keynote Speakers:
"...as long as there are readers there will be scrolls"
Molly Raphael, 2011-12 president, American Library Association; former director of the Multnomah Country Library and District of Columbia Public Library systems.

"The Future is Medieval" Some Lessons about Books, Reading, and Information from the Dark Ages"
William J. Diebold, Jane Neuberger Goodsell Professor of Art History and Humanities, Reed College

Complete 2012 Conference Program available as a pdf file.