Master of Arts
in Liberal Studies
Graduate Seminars
2009-10 Evening and Summer Graduate Courses
The following courses are offered through the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program for the 2009-10 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 2009
BIOLOGY 534
Fitness and Food
This course addresses the biological foundations of exercise and nutrition. Both topics receive a great deal of attention in popular media, yet typically in a prescriptive rather than an explanatory context. This course will be directed at exploring physiological explanations of exercise and nutrition, and their relationship; i.e., the mechanics and biochemistry of health. Class sessions will begin with a general discussion of nutrition or fitness items from the popular media—where do the findings come from, what do they mean, and how do they relate to our course material? Conference.
Stephen Arch, Laurens N. Ruben Professor of Biology.
Tuesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
PHILOSOPHY 562
Religion and Modernity
This course is keyed to philosopher Charles Taylor’s new book, A Secular Age. Taylor is the author of many well known and distinguished works; now in his late 70s, the new book promises to be Taylor’s final magnum opus. It concerns the place of religion in the modern world, and takes issue with the well-known line that modern thought, based on science, excludes religion. Taylor shares the concern about the domination of modern life by science and technology characteristic of humanistic philosophers, and is not eager to write off a traditionally central part of human culture. His book mainly tells the story of secularization, following the lead of the master historical social theorist Max Weber’s classic work, The Protestant Ethic. The reading for this course will select from the first and last parts of Taylor’s new book, along with Weber and a handful of other works on which Taylor relies—works not so much of theology or philosophy of religion as of cultural history and theory. Conference.
William Peck, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Emeritus.
Wednesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
LIBERAL STUDIES 516
Layered Memories of Japanese Colonialism
This course explores major issues in the recent historiography on Japanese imperialism and colonialism and the complex communities who designed, managed and/or experienced Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan and Korea (Japan's major colonies), without overlooking Japanese "informal" rule in China. Major topics will include: colonial typologies, 'semi-colonialism' and 'colonial modernity'; continuity and divergence in Dutch, Manchu and Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan; colonizers' representations of colonial landscapes; the rule of colonial difference and colonial identity formations; narratives of subaltern resistance; colonial literary movements; colonial anthropology; total war and total empire; sex slaves and their clients; and the complexity of post-colonial problems/problematic postcolonialisms. Conference.
Douglas Fix, Professor of History and Humanities.
Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Spring 2010
ENGLISH 521
The Art of the African American Short Story
This course will survey African American short fiction from the late 19th century into the 20th century. We will look at the work in its historical and political context. We will begin in the 1890s with the work of Charles Chesnutt that interrogates the time immediately after slavery and signals the beginning of African American modernism. We also will cover the periods of The Harlem Renaissance, African American Naturalism, The Civil Rights Movement, The Black Arts Movement, and beyond. In addition to Chesnutt, authors will include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Paule Marshall, Ernest J. Gaines, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Amiri Baraka, Toni Cade Bambara, and Edward P. Jones. Conference.
Pancho Savery, Professor of English and Humanities.
Tuesdays, 5:30–7 p.m.
PHYSICS 579
Great Ideas in Twentieth-Century Physics
The purpose of this course will be to introduce and explore the conceptual bases of four great revolutions in contemporary physics: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Elementary Particles, and Cosmology. We will begin with Einstein’s postulates for special relativity and discuss their implications (the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, Lorentz contraction, and relativistic energy). Next we will consider the foundations of quantum mechanics (including the statistical interpretation, the uncertainly principle, indeterminacy, and nonlocality), followed by a qualitative description of elementary particle physics (the “Standard Model” of quarks, leptons, mediators, and their interactions). Finally, we will investigate the current theory of the origins of the universe: the “Big Bang” and its immediate aftermath, expansion, and nucleosynthesis. The emphasis will be on ideas—ideas that are profound, important, surprising (indeed in some cases paradoxical), and yet reasonably accessible without a substantial background in classical physics and mathematics. There will be short readings from a variety of sources, frequent quantitative assignments, and a term paper on a book, individual, or subject relevant to the course material. Prerequisite: high school algebra. Conference.
David Griffiths, Professor of Physics, Emeritus.
Wednesdays, 5:30—7:00 p.m.
LIBERAL STUDIES 557
Literature at the Margins of the Roman Empire
In this course we will read Latin and Greek literature (in translation) from the first through the fifth centuries of the common era. To make sense of this unusual span, beginning from the height of Augustus’ rule and ending with a fragmented empire, we will concentrate on the authors that best represent Rome’s cosmopolitanism—writers from various regions of the empire who both embrace and resist Romanization. For the most part they are imperial subjects of high intellectual achievement who spent most (or all) of their careers outside the city of Rome itself. Paradoxically, perhaps, the city will be central to many of the texts we read. Among the questions we will attempt to answer through the semester are the following: what is the relationship between the city and the empire? In the later empire, how do writers construct Rome and relate it to their own cities? What is Romanitas? How do new and modified literary practices (such as rhetoric, allusion, archaism) reflect the changing empire? How do writers assimilate Roman traditions, and how do they resist them? What are the salient features of the empire’s cosmopolitanism? How do the citizens of empire determine their identity, and in particular, how does Christianity fit in? Conference.
Sonia Sabnis, Assistant Professor of Classics and Humanities.
Wednesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.
Summer 2010
LIBERAL STUDIES 507
Middle Eastern Visions
This courses addresses U.S. representations of the Middle East during the early national period. We will look at the image of Algerians, Turks, Barbary Pirates, and Middle Eastern Jews during America’s First and Second Barbary Wars (1801–1805, 1815). We will pay close attention to the depiction of spies, slavery, terrorism, captivity, harems, moriscos, conversos, the Holy Land, and Islam during this era. Each week we will pair an early American text with a specific type of material culture that was influenced by America’s obsession with the Middle East such as clothing, wall paintings, sculpture, and the like. The course will emphasize close reading of the texts and material culture, and there will be frequent writing assignments. Conference.
Laura Leibman, Professor of English and Humanities.
Mondays-Thursdays, 2 hours/day for 6 weeks, starting in June
LITERATURE 535
The Metropolitan Experience as Spatiality
Since the advent of the twentieth century, the metropolitan city has occasioned a rethinking of the trajectories of time and space as it emerged as a new network of signification. We will explore the transcription of the city as a novel site of knowledge in experimental literary and theoretical narratives. The course takes as its point of departure the prevailing current interest in urban space in the humanities and social sciences. This cross-disciplinary engagement in spatiality, called ‘the spatial turn,’ explores human experiences on the individual and social scale by way of spatializing them, instead of employing primarily historical methods of inquiry. We will examine the narratives of the city through texts from such diverse disciplines as urban studies, literature and literary criticism, sociology, and anthropology. Our aim is to investigate the aesthetic and critical premises of spatial thinking and map out the vocabularies through which space is represented. The connections between spatiality and temporality; city space and identity; city and the body; cities and utopias; and urban enclaves as sites of difference will be addressed. The postcolonial and the global city constitute a further thematic cluster. Texts include early twentieth-century readings of the city in the Central European context (Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Lauridds Brigge, Benjamin Berlin Chronicle and Arcades Project, essays by Simmel and Krakauer), twentieth-century theories of social space (Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Foucault, selected essays); contemporary studies of space in European and North American scholarship (Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Huyssen, Present Pasts, Jameson, Postmodernism); and postcolonial fiction. Conference.
Ülker Gökberk, Professor of German and Humanities.
Meets one evening/week for 3 hours for 7 weeks, starting in June
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