Advanced Academic Programs

This is an interdisciplinary core. What is the nature of the self? For Plato, the self is a sleeping giant; for Buddha, it is an illusion; for Freud, it is instinctual hunger; for Schopenhauer, irrational will; for B. F. Skinner, it is a machine; for Buckminster Fuller, it is a verb; for Sartre, it is a useless passion. Thinkers throughout the ages have probed the riddle of our human identity, and today, the dimensions of this age-old quest have been expanded to include the formative roles of gender, class, race and culture. From ‘selves in the making’ to ‘selves under siege,’ from the lonely, existential self to the transpersonal, communal self, in this class we explore questions of selfhood from the perspectives of literature and psychology –two key disciplines devoted to understanding the perplexities of human nature.  We consider the approaches of Freudian, Jungian, feminist, Buddhist, Marxist, and existential psychologists, and we read literary selections by Thomas Mann, Kafka, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood. Our interdisciplinary focus will enable us to see the ways in which psychology and literature illuminate and enrich each other—and also where they are in conflict, both in their methodologies and in their basic assumptions about the “knowability” of human nature and behavior.

Interdisciplinary Core  - This course provides a survey of Science Fiction Film from the early part of the 20^th century through 2001. We will look at influential filmmakers including George Melies, Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg and will analyze the basic components of the genre through science fiction “classics” like A Trip to the Moon,  Metropolis,  The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, Star Wars,  Blade Runner, and The Matrix among many others. The goal is to develop critical analytical skills in understanding the role of science fiction within culture. What is the “science” that drives the science fiction and what does it mean to be human? What is the view of the future, of technology? How are cultural and social concerns expressed through genre? The films and filmmakers are placed within a larger historical, cultural, and social context as we explore film as an industry, as a technology, as a form of communication, and as an artifact of culture.

Interdisciplinary Core - From man's earliest artistic expressions on the walls of caves, animals have figured centrally in the human imagination. One can argue, in fact, that much of early art and literature does not differentiate fully between the human and the animal, that human self-awareness evolved, in part, through interactions with animals, and through the imaginative fusion of human and animal forms. This seminar will study the representation of animals, and human/animal hybrids, in cave painting, in Sumerian art, in Egyptian mythology, in classical mythology (Crete and the Minotaur, tales from The Odyssey, tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses), in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, in a selection from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and in the monstrous creatures that decorate the margins of medieval manuscripts in the Christian West. The seminar will use a blog for the posting of texts and images, and will require a research paper.

Interdisciplinary Core - In this interdisciplinary course we will explore the transformations marking the cultural history of New York City from its beginnings through the ‘Roaring Twenties.’ Starting out as “Mannahatta,” a bountiful Native American hunting, fishing and camping ground, the island at the mouth of the Hudson River has gone from the small commercial venture of Dutch New Amsterdam to the rough and tumble politics of British colonial New York, and its brief role as federal capital of the United States, to its more enduring role as capital of "The Empire State" and the “the capital of capitalism.” We'll look closely at Five Points and "The Gangs of New York," the Draft Riots, the era of Ellis Island and immigration, the culture of Irish New York, Yiddish New York, and Italian New York, at Greenwich Village when it really was bohemian, Black Harlem when it really was in vogue. We'll focus on the artists, writers, musicians and architects who have given shape and expression to the city, spending time with such figures as Edith Wharton, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, and E. L. Doctorow. Two overnight field trips to New York City will be programmed into the course.

The actual weekends will be posted soon for the overnight field trips.

What does the culture of mass-energy, space-time, the big bang and black holes have to say to the culture of myth, ritual, contemplation and prayer? And vice-versa? In this course, students are introduced to the profoundly strange realities unveiled by modern physics, and they explore the impact of quantum theory and relativity on our understanding of questions which have traditionally been the province of the world’s great spiritual traditions: What is the origin of the cosmos and where, if anywhere, is it headed? Does the universe have meaning? What is the relation between time and eternity, between mind and matter? Who are we and how did we get here? In exploring these questions, students examine the problems and possibilities of finding common ground where modern science and the world’s time-honored spiritual traditions can meet. This course is team-taught by a physicist and a religious studies scholar.

This course explores constants and changes in leadership over time through a selection of readings that ranges from ancient philosophy to 20th-century fiction, including works by Confucius, Plato, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Hannah Arendt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Anne Tyler, and others. Through directed reading and discussion, students gain valuable insights into how leaders can foster creative initiatives and responses to change.A historical perspective enables students to understand and appreciate the challenge of leadership in the 21st-century multicultural world. They can then develop a framework for interpreting and evaluating responses to that challenge.

This course explores the history, doctrines and practices of the Religions of the East. The eight religions of the East that will be studied are: Hinduism (Vedic and Classical), Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Daoism, Confucianism and Shinto. Primarily through narrated power-point slides and secondarily through directed reading and online discussion, students gain valuable insights into how these eight religions emerged, evolved and endured over the millennia to be the principal sources of creed and conduct for the peoples of South Asia and East Asia.

This course focuses on the relationship between people, disease, and the practice of medicine. Through a selection of 19th and 20th century literary texts, our readings chronicle the complexities of lives disrupted by illness and offer cross-cultural perspectives on suffering, healing, and the human condition. Through readings in medical and social history, students explore the ways in which illness is represented in literatures from different cultures, how the practice of medicine reflects cultural beliefs, and how these beliefs have changed over time. Since illness is a “call for stories,” we pay special attention to the ways in which story uncovers the personal, familial, and social dimensions of illness –and even participates in the rituals of recovery.

This course will explore the roots of the American Revolution, comparing the perspectives of England with the colonies on the causes, comparing the positions of Loyalists and Patriots within the colonies, exploring the role of diplomacy during the revolutionary years, reviewing the war years, studying the legacy of the revolutionary experience on the social, religious, economic and political fabric of the new nation and the resulting Constitution for the United States.

This course will explore the spectacular historical, cultural, and artistic spaces that comprise the Vatican in Rome, in particular St. Peter’s Piazza and Basilica, the Papal Palace, and the Vatican Library and Museum.  Our central concern will be to examine the material culture of the Vatican—meaning its physical and visual manifestation through architecture, sculpture, painting, decorative arts, books, manuscripts, &c—and to explore this unique effort to manifest the most heavenly and spiritual spaces on earth.  While greatest emphasis will be placed on the Renaissance and Baroque periods, ca. 1475-1650, this course will also include an overview of the history of the Christianity (and, by extension, the history of the papacy) from its early Christian origins in ancient Rome, through the Protestant Reformation, and onwards to the foundation of the Vatican Museum during the Enlightenment.  This is also very much a hands-on course as well, and will therefore involve regular interaction with medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment-era rare books and manuscripts directly related to the Vatican in the collections of the Sheridan Libraries (in the newly built Brody Learning Commons on the Homewood Campus), in addition to a special visit to the Walters Art Museum.
 

This course offers a study of five contemporary American playwrights whose works further the tradition of 19th century realism while at the same time employing the experimental forms of 20th century absurdist theater. In the spirit of Ibsen, Shaw, and Brecht, these playwrights stage the social problems of our time—racism, homophobia, sexual politics, violence, and the culture wars—and offer us fresh perspectives on these pressing issues.  The featured playwrights are August Wilson, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Wendy Wasserstein, and Tony Kushner.  

Saturday intensive: 10:00-2:30,  June 8th to July 27th (no class Saturday, July 6th) This course also includes one day (July 13th) at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where students will attend plays and meet with the CATF directors and actors. This is a required field trip for this class and students will be required to pay a $50 activity fee to cover the cost of seeing three plays. Please note that we are getting a special JHU student rate.
 

This course draws upon key concepts in philosophical analysis, particularly ethical theory, to address the myriad of complex moral issues that arise in the biomedical field. Assigned reading includes relevant works in philosophy by Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, as well as those by contemporary bioethicists. In this context students discuss such issues as death and dying, in vitro fertilization, human cloning, physician-assisted suicide, and experimentation with humans and animals.

What was happening before the Big Bang? Does the universe have a bound, and if so, what lies beyond? Objects are made of atoms, which in turn are made of elementary particles, but what exactly is an elementary particle? That is, what is it made of? In this course, which has no textbook, we answer the above questions. For us to arrive at answers that mean anything requires the use of some mathematics—luckily, only high school algebra and geometry. (Don’t worry if you only half-remember your high school math; the needed facts will be explained clearly in class.) We will follow the progress of human understanding from Copernicus through Einstein’s theory of relativity to the most important human intellectual discovery ever, quantum mechanics. Remarkably, we will discover that some ancient Greek philosophers understood the nature of reality better than many professional scientists do today.

This course examines the idea of being "American" within the context of the fifties when "un-American" activities and associations clearly placed individuals and groups on the outside of the mainstream. American national identity is considered through the dynamic that emerges between national security and civil rights and liberties; between conformity and conflict.; between inside and outside. Through the significant and enduring cultural shifts that took place in American life between 1945 and 1960 basic images and ideas closely associated with the '50s are challenged as the course considers a variety of topics from Ike to Elvis to McCarthy, the Beats, the Korean War, the Montgomery bus boycott and the Nation of Islam, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, advertising, the Kinsey Report, the promise of technology and the concern over its affects on the culture, the Cold War, the changing role of scientists, and the rise of the suburbs.

The clichéd era of effete poetry by dead white males read by little old ladies in sewing circles has long passed.  The current U.S. poet laureate is Natasha Trethewey, an African-American woman from Mississippi.  Barack Obama’s 2013 presidential Inauguration featured a poem by Richard Blanco, the son of Cuban exiles and an openly gay, former engineer.   Four years earlier, President Obama asked Elizabeth Alexander, an African-American professor from Yale University, to read her “Praise Song for the Day.”  Bill Clinton’s presidential inaugural poets were Maya Angelou (1993) and Miller Williams (1997).  As diverse as these poets are, they nevertheless follow artistic forms established by one of the early founders of modern American poetry, Robert Frost, selected in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy as the first U.S. Inaugural poet.  This course will explore American 20th- and 21st-century poetry from early modernist luminaries like William Carlos Williams and Elizabeth Bishop through U.S. poet laureates still writing today, such as Rita Dove and Philip Levine.  

How do historians evaluate evidence and draw conclusions about the past? How persuasive is the thesis of Simon Schama’s Dead Certainties that “the asking of questions and the relating of narratives need not…be mutually exclusive forms of historical representation," and that history ultimately must be “a work of the imagination"? After probing these and other issues, and writing their own “histories" based upon the document packets, students focus on Allen Weinstein’s Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case to discuss whether historians can ever determine “the truth" no matter how rich the evidence. This course is intended to be an introduction to the resources and tools for history available on the Internet and the World Wide Web, as well as a reflective exercise on the meaning of history.

From the end of Reconstruction (1877) to the beginning of the Great Depression (1929), American society was characterized by major paradoxes like the emergence of a powerful national identity beset by searing conflicts of race, gender, and class. This course explores the development of such cornerstones of modern political culture as industrial corporations, state and Federal bureaucracies, overseas imperialism, widespread migration and immigration, the labor movement, women's suffrage, and civil rights movements. Students review several films (e.g., Birth of a Nation and Hester Street) and discuss both secondary and primary documents, including works by Theodore Roosevelt, Chief Joseph, Booker T. Washington, Julia Ward Howe, John Dewey, and George Santayana.

Food is central to our daily lives, yet few of us consider the political implications of what we eat. In fact, numerous political struggles take place over the production and consumption of food. These range from global conflicts over agricultural subsidies or genetically modified foods to more local concerns about food safety or the rising incidence of obesity among children and adults. Over the course of the semester, we will address these debates with two goals in mind. On the one hand, we will consider what is special or unique about food and agriculture as a distinct area of policy. On the other hand, we will attempt to draw larger lessons from the politics of food about the character and operation of political institutions and the public policy process.

A photograph can tell many stories: one the photographer aims to communicate, one through the lens of culture and one through the eyes of the viewer as influenced by his or her own personal history. Students will learn the basics of photographic criticism as they address the ethics, aesthetics and politics of image-making. Class discussions will consider images as varied as Sandy Skogland’s bathroom fill with eggs, nudes and snakes to Barbara Krugers provocative advertising inspired image and text, to the symbolic nature of photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Students will have the opportunity to discuss the artistic process with visiting guest artists who will display their work. They will also view and discuss several films: La Jette by Chris Marker, a science fiction story told in still photographs, Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson and El Dia Que Me Quieras: (The Day You'll Love Me) a meditation on the death photograph of Che Guevara. Through informed discourse, students will interpret, evaluate and theorize about photographs culminating in a semester-long research presentation on a photo-related subject of their choice.

Documentary photographs inform, entertain, and enlighten us on subjects as diverse as civil war battlefields, Alabama sharecroppers, and outer space. We will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photo-journalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. We will look at the relationship of image and text in the works of Walker Evans and James Agee. "Let us Now Praise Famous Men" and "Minimata" by Alieen and Eugene Smith. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice.

This course begins with an investigation into the origins and growth of language. It then proceeds to systematically look at the fifteen major ethno-linguistic families of the world such as the Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Hamito-Semitic, Ural-Altaic, Niger-Congo and others in terms of their origins and as to how the various languages of the world are classified under them. It will then make a comprehensive survey of at least one language in each family. It also looks into the distinction between language and dialect. The linguistic theories of certain important scholars will also be enunciated. The course will then proceed to look at the Indo-European family in particular to which belong languages like English, Spanish, German, Greek, Russian and Sanskrit among others. It will explore the origins of the English language and look into the structure of its vocabulary from Greek, Latin, Norman French, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic. It will then look at the various types of English spoken around the world created by the British Empire. The course will comparatively look at some interesting grammatical facts in several Indo-European languages. Students will attempt to learn the scripts of several languages, both ancient and modern, and then try to read and write elementary words and passages in these languages. It will also look at certain esoteric meanings of the alphabets in certain languages.

The Sixties. A collage of events, people, sights, sounds, and ideas immediately come to mind. These powerful visual representations in many ways define the history of the ’60s. In this course we will consider the images, memories, history, and legacy of the ’60s through an interdisciplinary exploration using literature, art, history, politics, music, and film. Cultural identity located within defining events provide the focus. Black, white, Vietnamese, astronaut, protestor, gay, journalist, soldier, woman, man, young, old. How do people see themselves within the context of larger cultural events and changes that many have labeled revolutionary? We will examine the major themes through a focus on some of the major social dramas of the period and the cultural rhetoric employed to articulate meaning including: landing on the moon, the assassination of Malcolm X, the Tet Offensive and My Lai, Woodstock, and the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

Paintings, prints, and sculptures represent the world as their makers see it. Some artists depict a world that is harmonious and beautiful; some depict a chaotic world; and some show a world that seems unrecognizable. No matter how the world is shown, every artist is attempting to convey complex messages. For millennia, artists communicated using the artistic vocabulary of realism. Then, a little over a hundred years ago, realism was replaced by a plethora of new artistic vocabularies and Modern Art was born. Understanding Modern Art is not a simple process. In the first place, the word “modern” doesn’t mean contemporary. In fact, Modern Art ended in the last decades of the 20th century, when the art world entered the Post-Modern period. In addition, not all artists working in the Modern period created Modern Art (which by definition must be characterized by innovation and social comment). Some artists moved in and out of modernist phases in their work. For example, the paradigmatic 20th century artist, Pablo Picasso, worked in five distinctly different styles, only some of which are modernist. A final complication is that Modern Art encompasses a series of distinct art movements which seem to have little in common with one another. This course surveys the phenomenon of Modern Art, beginning with its immediate 19th century precursors and ending with a quick look at what followed the Modern period. Among the movements to be studied are Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Super-realism, and Post-modernism.

This  course  surveys  the  11  traditional  historical  religions  of  the  world  [Hinduism,  Zoroastrianism,  Jainism,  Buddhism,  Sikhism,  Taoism,  Confucianism,  Shinto,  Judaism,  Christianity  and  Islam]  in  terms  of  history,  doctrine  and  practice. The  course  begins  with  the  classification  of  the  religions  of  the  world  into  certain  families  and  looks  into  the  ethno-linguistic  composition  of  the  world.

For many of us, politics seem especially polarized at present.  But in the half century between 1870 and 1920, socialism, anarchism, and communism were real presences in American life, not just smear words.  On the right, racism was open and openly defended, respectable figures argued that there was too much democracy and that the "unfit" (including many of our ancestors) shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. This course will examine political extremism in this extraordinary period with an eye toward understanding the causes and consequences of a political culture of extremism.

This course will first address the issue of Geography, which more than history dominated the thinking of the Eurasian Steppe, a centrifugal plain which caused the people to adopt centripetal institutions; it will include study of the region of Siberia--the land of the Shaman east of the sun; the constant stream of foreign invasions throughout Russian history and their indelible marks on the character and culture of the people; the periodization of important leaders (Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, etc) of Russian History;the enormous contribution of its 19th century literature (Pushkin, Dosteovsky, Tolstoy, Chekov, etc); the spiritual influence of the Russian Orthodox Church; the causes and effects of the Russian Revolution in 1917--and arguably the most important world event in the 20th Century; Stalin, Khrushchev and the age of the Cold War; and the Post-Communist search for identity (Gorbachev, Yeltsen, Putin, and Dimitry Medvedev).

This would deal with conflicting ideas about justice, as they have come down to us in political philosophy, often as influenced by religious thought. We will focus on ideas of what philosophers call distributive justice, that is, ideas as to what ways of distributing wealth and other advantages in society are just (e.g., can it be just for society to allow there to be sizable inequalities among its members?). Connected with this are ideas as to property rights, and as to the nature of rights in general. In discussing these matters it would be important to notice the differing ways in which thinkers have tried to argue for the views they advocate, and to ask whether there is a correct way of arguing about such views. Readings could be from Plato, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Rousseau, Smith, Mill, Rawls, Nozick, and others.

This course provides an introduction to underwater archaeology at the graduate level. Students will learn the history of the sub-discipline and a basic understanding of the steps involved in researching, locating, recording, interpreting and conserving artifacts, and protecting submerged cultural remains. No diving is required for this class. There will be a field trip to the USS Constellation in Baltimore's Inner Harbor to learn more about ship.

We all have places we call home, places we love, places we fear. In this course, we explore the human experience of "place" in contemporary world literature. Drawing on contemporary theories of  place relations, we look at the ingredients that give a place its identity -the intersections of geography and culture, the ties of memory and desire, the deep-rooted claims of community. We examine the ways writers inscribe 'place' as a shaping force of character, situation, and personal vision. Finally, we examine the psychic landscape of "placelessness" in narratives of dislocation and war. Writers include Barbara Kingsolver, Jean Rhys, Bobbie Ann Mason, James Agee,  Wole Soyinka, Manil Suri, Carlos Fuentes, Louise Erdrich, Tim O'Brien, Cormac McCarthy.

As former “third world” nations rise in global importance, it is important to understand their religious traditions. This course explores the Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist and Islamic traditions “at their best,” probing the essential spirit of each tradition—key insights into what is of ultimate importance, what the highest human good is, and how human persons should set the basic direction of their lives.

A familiar but puzzling phenomenon of American popular culture is the secular "canonization" of Elvis Presley. This seminar will explore the belief, ritual, and art associated with all those people, places, and things that have been revered as holy, from the earliest centuries of Christianity. And from this historical probing will be extracted a religious/anthropological "model" by which to deconstruct Elvis and Elvis-like examples of secular "sanctification" in contemporary life. Students will come to understand the significance of pilgrimage, relics, votives, sacred souvenirs, miraculous healing, and supernatural apparitions, as well as devotional images (icons), sacred time, and the literary genre of the "Saint's Life." After drawing this all together in the lives and sacred places of the early saints of the Church, and then seeing many of its essential elements replicated in Elvis and at Graceland, students will be challenged to extend their new-found understanding and analytical skills to other "holy" people and places of our times, from Princess Diana to Ground Zero.

This course will commence by looking at the religious atmosphere in India prior to the advent of Buddhism in the 6th century BCE. It will particularly look at Vedic Hinduism which has Indo-European connections, and then look at Jainism, a non-theistic religious tradition deeply committed to the ethics of nonviolence closely akin to Buddhism. After this, the course will study the advent and the evolution of Buddhism in India, its spread into Southeast Asia, and then its further dissemination into the nations of Northeast Asia. Then, it will look at the metaphysical traditions of post-Buddhistic Classical Hinduism in terms of their doctrines of knowledge, reality, God, Universe, Man and Salvation. The next segment of the course will focus on Taoism and Confucianism, the native religions of China. It will look at both the religious as well as the philosophical side of these traditions. On the religious side, the course will layout the structure of the Taoist cosmos, the types of Taoism, the rituals and sects within the tradition etc. It will also look at certain aspects and concepts of the philosophies of Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu. The course will then proceed to investigate Confucianism first in its religious aspect and then move on to look at the three main stages of development of Confucian philosophy, i.e. vintage, classical and Neo-Confucianism. The last segment of the course will look at Shinto, the native religion of Japan both in its pre-Buddhist and post-Buddhist phases. The course will look at important aspects of Shinto mythology, Shinto scriptures, structure of the Shinto clergy, and conclude with the survey of the various types of Shintoism such as State Shinto, Shrine Shinto, Sectarian Shinto etc.

This course is an introduction to the study of the presidency.  Part one of the course examines how the office of  the presidency became the central focus of the American political system and how the presidency developed various resources beyond the formal constitutional powers of the office such as party leadership, control of the executive, and relations with the public.  Part two explores how presidents engage the broader political system and its relations with Congress, the press, the broader public, and the bureaucracy.  Part three questions the sources of successful presidential leadership and examines whether presidential leadership hinges on personal skill, particular electoral or political circumstances, or an incumbent's position within a larger partisan context of American politics.  The class concludes with a consideration of presidential "greatness" and asks whether such a goal is attainable (or desirable) given the complex environment of contemporary American politics.

Paintings, prints and sculptures represent the world as their makers see it.  Some artists depict a world that is harmonious and beautiful;  some depict a chaotic world; and some show a world that seems unrecognizable.  But no matter how the world is shown, every artist is attempting to convey complex messages.  For millennia, artists communicated using the artistic vocabulary of realism.  Then, a little over a hundred years ago, realism was replaced by a plethora of new artistic vocabularies and Modern Art was born. When we consider the art of the hundred years, we tend to concentrate on painting.  Painters were the first modernists, after all, and led most of the innovations in subsequent art styles.  But sculpture slowly became equally as important, and over the past 20 years it has surpassed painting as the most innovative medium.

In this course, we’ll trace the development of sculpture over the past century, from the last years of the 19th century the beginning of the 21st. We’ll look at works from the Expressionist, Cubist, Dadaist and Surrealist, Abstract Expressionist, Pop Art, Super-realist, Conceptualist, and Public Art movements.  So that you learn to recognize the various movements visually, we’ll look at lots of sculptures, but we’ll concentrate most of our time in class on a few important examples of each movement.  Although it is not a prerequisite, the course will elaborate on ideas discussed in Introduction to Modern Art.

The subject of Greek art is Greek mythology.  Images of Achilles and Athena, Herakles and Aphrodite, amazons and centaurs are common in vase painting, mosaics and sculpture.  None of these figures was obscure to the ancient Greeks: everyone knew the stories that made up their astonishingly complex body of myths. In one sense Greek myths had the same cultural function as the books of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible.  They described the creation of the universe and the establishment of the Olympian pantheon, explained how humans came to exist and how various groups were related to one another, and addressed moral issues such as honesty, pride and jealousy.

But there is one significant difference.  In the Judeo-Christian world, artistic depictions of Bible stories (when allowed) reinforce spiritual and ethical concepts. When the Greeks illustrated their myths, however, they were communicating social and political norms. 

When Classical Greeks visited great monuments they “read” messages in the choice and placement of the sculpture on the buildings.  Similarly, when a Greek man chose a decorated wine cup, he was intentionally communicating more than a simple appreciation of the painting. 

In this course we’ll explore the multifaceted purposes and meanings of Greek myth in Classical Greek society.  Students will read and discuss the major Greek myths and legends, and will study selected works of art that illustrate them.

The period between 1828 and 1865 was one of the most tumultuous eras in American history. At the center of this turmoil were slavery, a new, more militant antislavery movement, and an extraordinary amount of violence that each generated. This course looks at that violence-and at alternatives to it—in order to examine a number of questions of contemporary, as well as historical, significance. Some of them are: When and why do men and women resort to violence to achieve group goals? What are the consequences, intended and unintended, of using violent means to achieve a group’s ends? What alternative to violence were there at particular historical moments? Who condemned or supported violence, and for what reasons?

An important current of thought in mid-20th-century European and American culture focused not on abstract ideas but on actual living in the world with others. Human existence was the proper subject of thought—in all its messiness and in all its beauty. The proper method of thought required the personal engagement, in contrast with the “objectivity” of rationalism. Unfettered by conventional philosophic structures, Existentialism expressed itself in novel and drama as well as philosophic essay. Free from system or orthodoxy, Existentialism ranged from religious to atheistic and reached insights as deep as any in the history of philosophy. This course is not a survey. Rather it encounters selected 20th-century Existentialist writings, inviting participants not only to gain knowledge but also to experience a powerful mode of thought. Writers studied include Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Eugene Ionesco, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and others.

This class involves close and careful reading of selected tragedies and plays about English history by the world's greatest playwright. We'll also look at source documents from which Shakespeare drew his plots to learn something about the magic of creativity. Moreover, we'll examine selected contemporary accounts of the English or Roman history and sample the current criticism of this body of work. The goal is to understand why people consider Shakespeare the greatest playwright ever – what is it that makes Shakespeare Shakespeare. A related goal is to reflect on the many ways in which these plays, written as the sixteenth century turned into the seventeenth, resonate in our culture as we struggle to get a handle on the twenty-first century. To do this, we'll discuss film adaptations of Shakespeare's work, and students will have an opportunity to write about a film version of a play of their choice. Assignments include reading about ten plays, weekly blogging, a final exam, a brief paper on film, and a research-based analysis. The most important thing, however, is close reading and reflective conversation. Works considered include: Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV (part one), Henry V, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

Drawing upon the world famous collection of illustrated manuscripts at The Walters Art Museum, Curators Amy Landau and William Noel will discuss the manuscript book from Paris to Persia.  For one thousand years the manuscript was the principle vehicle for the dissemination of ideas and artistic tastes throughout Europe and Asia.  In this class, accessing original works of art, students will discover how books were made, used, and valued in their respective cultures. Topics to be addressed include: the materials and methods of book production; the significance and development of the book in religious and non-religious contexts; styles of scripts and illustration; as well as later responses to the manuscript, including the re-visitation of codices, circulation of books as commodities and diplomatic gifts, and the manuscript book’s preservation and adoration in public and private collections. Discussing such topics, we shall explore both similarities and differences in approaches to the manuscript book in the western and Islamic traditions. This class offers students the unique opportunity to study manuscripts first hand.

Are there correct answers to ethical questions about what behavior is right and what is wrong? Or is no one’s opinion about ethics any more correct than anyone else’s? In other words, are ethical judgments capable of being true, or are we being deceived by an illusion if we suppose so? Here is a basic and vexed problem, which has concerned many thinkers. Philosophers, ancient and moderns, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche have put forward treatments of this problem, and theologians, psychologists, anthropologists, and political theorists also have written about it. A variety of these viewpoints will be considered and appraised, in search of a resolution to the problem.

This course explores the development of the book from its inception in the Late Roman Empire (the fourth and fifth centuries) to the dawn of printing with Gutenberg’s invention of movable type at Mainz in 1450. Students consider the book as a product of “new" technologies (e.g., the invention of movable type), changing economic and social conditions (e.g., the rise of vernacular texts for a literate nobility), and religious and secular practices (e.g., books for monasteries, universities, and private houses).Through this course, students gain an appreciation of objects that are both key historical documents and very often, consummate works of art. Note: Since this course draws upon the resources of the Department of Manuscripts at The Walters Art Museum, some class sessions are held at the museum.

This course offers an intensive study of two authors acknowledged to be among the world’s greatest novelists.  Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are not only literary giants, but also existential thinkers and spiritual seekers who wrestled in their private lives and in their fictions with the mystery of what it means to be fully human. We will combine a close reading of selected texts with a cultural exploration of the powerful cross-currents of 19th century Russian thought, and we will also pay attention to the dramatic life stories that helped to shape these authors’ passionate but unconventional religious beliefs. Readings by Dostoevsky are: The Brothers Karamazov and two short classics “The Double,“and “Notes from Underground.” Readings by Tolstoy are Anna Karenina and two short classics “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Master and Man.”

Using the museums of the Washington/Baltimore area as classroom, this course traces a dual path through the history of art (particularly Renaissance to Modern painting) and the history of art collecting in the United States. The National Gallery will provide an overview of art history and the Corcoran, Clarke, Phillips, Freer, Hirshhorn, Walters and Cone collections will provide case studies. Issues of taste, who and what influence it, and the impact of private collections and the art museums that became their legacy on the development of American culture will be addressed. Particular attention will be paid to the choices made by individual collectors exploring the meaning and relevance of the works of art they selected to their own lives and also to the larger picture of American history during their lifetimes.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was one of the most fascinating individuals in history. He was the creator of what are arguably the world's two most famous paintings: the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. He was also a brilliant scientist and engineer; for example, he made dozens of original anatomical discoveries, and he invented hundreds of devices. He was well known as a musician, court entertainer, and even as a practical joker. Who was Leonardo? What do we know of his personal life, including his thoughts on religion, sexuality, or politics? What does it mean to be creative, or to be a genius? This course explores his thousands of pages of manuscripts; his paintings and other artistic projects; his scientific projects (including anatomy, physiology, botany, and geology); and his civil and military engineering projects.

Variously described as the "Dark Ages." The "Age of Faith," and the "Age of Cathedrals," the so-called Middle Ages have inspired the curiosity of students, scholars, and laypeople for centuries. This seminar explores the development of Medieval art and architecture in Western Europe from the turn of the first millennium to the full flowering of the Renaissance in the 15th century, against a backdrop of changing social, political, and cultural history. Topics include: relics, the cult of saints, pilgrimage, cathedrals, the crusades, and various artistic media and techniques. Special emphasis will be given to art of the Romanesque, Gothic, "International Style," and Late Gothic periods in the North. Using a combination of lectures, discussions, and gallery visits, this course will be taught at the Walters Art Museum, and will draw from the Walters renowned collection of Medieval art and artifacts.

What does the culture of mass-energy, space-time, the big bang and black holes have to say to the culture of myth, ritual, contemplation and prayer? And vice-versa? In this course, students are introduced to the profoundly strange realities unveiled by modern physics, and they explore the impact of quantum theory and relativity on our understanding of questions which have traditionally been the province of the world’s great spiritual traditions: What is the origin of the cosmos and where, if anywhere, is it headed? Does the universe have meaning? What is the relation between time and eternity, between mind and matter? Who are we and how did we get here? In exploring these questions, students examine the problems and possibilities of finding common ground where modern science and the world’s time-honored spiritual traditions can meet. This course is team-taught by a physicist and a religious studies scholar.

Free-flowing rivers, bountiful wildlife, and sublime vistas of distant mountains? Or unlimited energy, tidy neighborhoods, and economic prosperity? Unrestricted in what we can do with our own land or inhibited by regulations designed to protect the common good? This course examines American cultural attitudes toward wilderness and nature as they have evolved through history and are expressed today in social and political decision making.

Writers of all literary genres in Western culture have been fascinated by evil—its definitions, motives, and consequences, as well as artistic strategies for handling it. To pre-modern portraits of evil (e.g., Medea and Moby-Dick), our own age has added distinctive themes and techniques. This course begins with literary works that concern institutionalized forms of evil—Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, and Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. Students then discuss “domestic” evil in Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour, Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary, and short stories by Shirley Jackson and Josephine Jacobsen. Finally they explore the allegorical treatment of evil in Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, Par Lagerkvist’s novel The Dwarf, and Franz Kafka’s parable “In the Penal Colony.”

William Faulkner is justly praised as the foremost chronicler of the American South, particularly with regard to his portrayal of the racial, sexual, socio-economic, and familial conflicts underlying the stereotypic facade of gracious hospitality.  The legacy of this 1949 winner of the Nobel prize for literature extends, however, beyond the South, for Faulkner has been cited as the most important American writer of the twentieth century and ranked with Conrad, Joyce, even Shakespeare. This course explores the development of Faulkner's psychological themes and innovative techniques in representative short stories, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Hamlet, and Go Down, Moses. During Spring Break, students will have the option of visiting Oxford and other areas of Mississippi that served as sources for many of Faulkner's fictional settings.

The distinguished tradition of the American short story has continued into the twenty-first century with recent collections by two alumni of Johns Hopkins University—John Barth (also professor emeritus from its School of Arts and Sciences) and Louise Erdrich (a descendent of the Chippewa Indians about whom she often writes). After discussing representative fiction by founders of the genre—Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe—students explore stories by a diverse group of writers including Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Updike (whose sixty-year writing career ended with his death in 2009).

Is it true that there still is—or ever was—a distinctive literature by Southerners? Even more pertinent to this course: How—if at all—do Southern women poets, playwrights, and fiction writers differ from their male counterparts in terms of themes and techniques of setting, characterization, style, and point of view? Such issues will be explored with regard to all three literary genres, beginning with representative poems by two black women, Margaret Walker of Alabama and Nikki Giovanni of Tennessee, and two white women with Baltimore roots, Josephine Jacobsen and Adrienne Rich. Students then examine Lillian Hellman's play Another Part of the Forest, set in 1880s Alabama, Carson McCullers' own dramatic adaptation of her novel The Member of the Wedding about a mid-20th-century family in Georgia, and Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart, a contemporary play about three Mississippi sisters, which was revived on Broadway in 2008. Finally, we discuss stories by women born in Georgia, Texas, and Mississippi, respectively, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty.

After centuries of agreement about which texts constituted the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, modern archaeological discoveries have rekindled the profound ancient controversies about which books should be considered sacred and authoritative. The Dead Sea scrolls, for example, predate the time when the limits of the Hebrew Bible were set, and the Gnostic writings found at Nag Hammadi include forgotten gospels that once rivaled those preserved in the New Testament. In this seminar students compare the processes of inclusion and exclusion that produced the Jewish and Christian Bibles — giving special attention to the light shed by recent manuscript discoveries. Special Topic for Fall 2011: The Lost Books of the New Testament, giving special attention to The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) and the recently discovered Gospel of Judas.

This course will survey the Pre-Columbian Maya cultures of Mexico and Central America, in light of ongoing archaeological excavation work and the current project of glyph decipherment that has now established that the Maya of the Classic era (third to ninth centuries, CE) were a fully literate Native American civilization. Slide lectures on such important sites as Copán, Tikal, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen Itzá will explore basic urban layout, the design of ceremonial centers, and the symbolism and iconography of Maya art and architecture, and what these can tell us about the social, political and religious life of the ancient Maya. The course moves on to study the period of European contact, of prolonged struggle, and of colonial and national hegemony, along with continued Maya strategies of cultural survival through accommodation and resistance. Topics will include the crises of the Caste Wars in the Yucatan; the neo-liberal "reforms" of the late nineteenth century that appropriated indigenous communal lands; and the genocidal repression of the 1980's in Guatemala. Special attention will be devoted to the subject of religious "syncretism," the blending of Maya traditionalism with distinctively Maya forms of Catholicism, and other religious practices.

The musical legacy of this quartet of composers is, simply put, the notion that Americans can and have produced an art music competitive with that of their European counterparts. Classes first focus on the coming of age of the American composer and, afterward, study the art of four individuals whose contribution to music in America is as yet unmeasured. Although students examine the historical context of the music of Ives, Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein, primary emphasis is on their melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, contrapuntal, and formal aspects.

This seminar will examine the novels of Erdrich and Morrison in terms of their depictions of the experiences of Native Americans and of black Americans, respectively. In each novel, we will consider oppression, first, from a social and historical perspective; and second, in terms of the tensions among individual characters. Novels will include Erdrich’s Love Medicine and Tracks, and Morrison’s Beloved, Mercy, and Tar Baby.  The seminar will feature weekly discussions on a class blog; several short in-class writings on assigned research topics; and a research paper, accompanied by a short oral presentation. If possible, there will be a class excursion to the National Musuem of the American Indian in Washington, DC.

This course will address the history of cultural objects and artifacts in early modern Europe—from the close of the Middle Ages to the height of the Renaissance in Italy, northern Europe, and the British Isles—and their transformative, even revolutionary, impact on European culture and the history of ideas.   We will interrogate and assess, in an inherently interdisciplinary way, each of the major technological and artistic innovations, socio-economic transformations, and cultural revolutions that fundamentally distinguished the Renaissance from former eras.

Major themes will include: the invention of printing by moveable type; the advent and progress of Renaissance humanism; the emergence of the new commercial and professional classes; the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the Scientific Revolution; the production and circulation of literary texts; patronage of the arts; revolutions in the graphic arts; collectors and collecting books and objets d’art; literacy and evidence of historical reading practices; popular culture; riot, ritual, and rebellion in the Renaissance; the rise and consolidation of centralized states; underground printing, book smuggling, and the culture of dissidents and minorities; and arts and press censorship.

This course deals with Indian Philosophy in its three major phases, i.e. the Vedic Period [3000-500 BCE], the Heterodox Period [500 BCE to 500 CE] and the Orthodox Period [100-1400 CE]. In the Vedic Period phase, the course looks at the origins of philosophy in the Indian context and its peculiarities in that cultural setting. It will delve in great detail into the doctrines of Karma, Reincarnation [punarjanma] and Salvation [moksha].

In the Heterodox Period phase, the course delves into the two great religio-philosophical traditions of Jainism and Buddhism. In the case of Buddhism, the course traces the origins of the tradition from the life of the Buddha [563-483 BCE], to expounding the core teachings of Buddhism such as the three signata of existence, the twelve-fold wheel of causality, the four noble truths and the noble
eightfold path to its historical spread in India and eventually to all of the lands of both Southeast Asia [Sri-Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam] as well as Northeast Asia [China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia]. The course will also rigorously look into the various schools of philosophical Buddhism.

In the Orthodox Period phase, the course looks into the Classical Hindu philosophical systems of the Nyaya-Vaiseshika, the Sankhya-Yoga, the Mimamsa and the three major schools of Vedanta of the philosophers Sankara [788-820 CE], Ramanuja [1017-1137 CE] and Madhva [1238-1317 CE] in a systematic way through the six-fold method of metaphysical analysis of epistemology [doctrine of Knowledge], ontology [doctrine of Reality], theology [doctrine of God], cosmology [doctrine of the Universe], psychology [doctrine of the soul] and soteriology [doctrine of Salvation].

The music known as jazz has been celebrated and performed by peoples throughout the world. This course will examine the music itself as well as the role that race has played in the creation of jazz, the perception of its history, and the perceived authenticity of present-day jazz. We will examine the music from a historical perspective through the study of the music and lives of its creators and practitioners beginning with precursors in ragtime and minstrelsy and continuing into the modern era. Students will learn to make aesthetic judgments, identify various jazz styles and discuss their relevance to their time and to the present. Classes are planned to include guest artists from the Baltimore jazz scene, examples in various media and live performances by the instructor.

Since the time of the Greeks, Western thinkers have been deeply concerned with the issue of whether human beings are merely cogs in an impersonal cosmic machine over which they have no influence, or whether they can control their individual destinies in some way. Students consider this perennial conflict between determinism and free will by examining philosophical, theological, literary, and psychological writings by such thinkers as Sophocles, Aristotle, Augustine, Luther, Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel, Gide, and Skinner.

The course will look in depth at one significant spy case (Alger Hiss vs. Whittaker Chambers)  and three famous Maryland Murder cases, Van Swearingen, Wharton, and Grammer (1820s, 1870s, 1950s.   The earliest murder case is about the death of a Sheriff's wife by the hand of the Sheriff, the second about the murder of a civil war officer by the widow of one of his soldiers, and the third is about the murder of the wife of a WWII special forces enlisted man by her husband, in whose defense a letter of commendation was introduced, signed by General Dwight David Eisenhower.  Only the woman got off.  The men were executed.  Except for the first murder case, there will site visits to the scene of the spying and the crimes.  Students will become modern day jurors for each case.  Papers will be written about the people associated with the trials, placing them in the historical context of their time and place.

After reviewing early evidence for King Arthur, students discuss “the Matter of Britain," the stories and legends surrounding Arthurian figures that appear in Welsh tradition and French romance. In addition to reading the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, students investigate the appropriation of the Arthurian story in subsequent literature, including works by Tennyson, T.H. White, and recent writers.

Even though it is common knowledge that the Allied generals and admirals won the Second World War on the battlefields and the high seas, it remains almost unknown and opaque to the general public as to how much information the espionage agents, the deciphering of the Axis codes, the resistance fighters, etc. were able to provide in contributing to the ultimate Allied victory over Nazi Germany and Militarist Japan. Texts for the course include: Spyglass: An Autobiography of a French Female Spy, Cast No Shadow: The Story of an American Female Spy, Agent Zigzag: The True Story of Nazi Espionage, Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring p\Prison Break of the Pacific War, and Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, among others.

Sometimes we see more deeply into our culture when we view it from the outside in, as through the eyes of those defined as deviant by American society or those profoundly alienated from it. Drawing upon history and literature, this course looks at such outsiders as "lunatics" in nineteenth-century America, Richard Wright growing up in segregated Mississippi, gay men in New York before World War II, an over-privileged prep school flunk out, and a schizophrenic young woman from a wildly dysfunctional family. To paraphrase the insight of one of our authors, the broken parts say a great deal about the machine itself.

Writers of all genres and periods have been fascinated by the motives and manifestations of evil, as well as individual strategies for combating it and artistic implications of expressing it. In reading representative works from Greek tragedies to Gothic tales, we will consider the definition, nature, and operation of evil; the causes or enabling factors of evil (personal and historical); the consequences of evil (e.g., suffering, revenge, personal growth); the strategies for characters—and readers—to handle evil and the implications of writing about evil for literary form (e.g., positive and negative effects on characterization, structure, and tone). Works for discussion include Euripides' Medea, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and short fiction by Poe, Hawthorne, and James.

How do historians evaluate evidence and draw conclusions about the past? How persuasive is the thesis of Simon Schama’s Dead Certainties that “the asking of questions and the relating of narratives need not…be mutually exclusive forms of historical representation," and that history ultimately must be “a work of the imagination"? After probing these and other issues, and writing their own “histories" based upon the document packets, students focus on Allen Weinstein’s Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case to discuss whether historians can ever determine “the truth" no matter how rich the evidence. This course is intended to be an introduction to the resources and tools for history available on the Internet and the World Wide Web, as well as a reflective exercise on the meaning of history.

One of the most celebrated and complex works of twentieth-century fiction, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus might be described most concisely as a novel about music—its expressive power, its role in shaping culture, its aesthetic values, and its potential dangers. In narrating the life of the fictional composer, Adrian Leverkühn, Mann invokes a vast network of musical references that enrich our understanding of Leverkühn’s creative personality and his place in music history. In the shadow of World War II, Leverkühn’s creative struggles run parallel to the disastrous moral collapse of the German nation in the 1930s and 40s. The touchstone work of German exile culture in America, Doctor Faustus provides unique insights into German cultural history while also commenting upon the condition of artists and intellectuals in times of crisis. In this course, we will supplement our study of Mann’s novel through a detailed examination of the many works of music mentioned in the text. In studying pieces of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Wagner, Schoenberg, and others, we will sketch out an historical and aesthetic context essential to an understanding of the book. The ability to read music, while certainly helpful, is not required. All course readings and discussion will be conducted in English.

Myths provide profound insight into the human condition because they contain the collective wisdom of many generations. Although most modern studies concur that myths are important, there is little agreement about the best way to explain their origin and sources of power. This course explores the many modern methods employed in the study of myths and applies these methods to stories selected from African, Biblical, Greek, Japanese, Mesopotamian, Native-American, Southeast-Asian, and other mythologies.

This seminar examines the practices of medicine in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel, as well as classical Greece and Rome. The primary emphasis is on early ideas about health and disease. Students discuss such issues as the practice of surgery, methods of hygiene, knowledge of contagion, definitions of illness, and concepts of ritual purity. Readings include primary texts surviving from ancient Near Eastern documents (e.g., Egyptian papyri and Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets), as well as the Hippocratic treatises and other medical literature from the Greco-Roman World.

This course examines genocide through a study of the Holocaust, both as a paradigm of state-supported mass destruction and as a unique catastrophe that continues to generate prodigious amounts of literature in such fields as sociology, philosophy, psychology, fiction, and theology. To understand better a writerÂ’s dilemma in trying to communicate horrors that defy imagination and reason, students discuss WieselÂ’s Night, LeviÂ’s Survival in Auschwitz, FinkÂ’s A Scrap of Time, KosinskiÂ’s The Painted Bird, and other works. The class also analyzes films such as Imsdorf's Indelible Shadows and the video of the Wannsee Conference.

The recovery of a massive ancient library from caves near Khirbet Qumran in the Judaean Desert has been described as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in modern times. Seminar participants read the scrolls themselves in English translation to learn more about the Jewish apocalyptic in the Greco Roman period. Jewish apocalyptic is important not only as a lost chapter in the history of Judaism but also as the spiritual and intellectual context out of which Christianity emerged. Topics include the circumstances of the scrolls’ discovery, theories of their origins, their historical context, and the ongoing controversy over publication rights.

Born in defeat, despair, defiance and devastation, the post-Civil War South accomplished remarkable feats of physical and psychological rehabilitation. At once a distillation of America and yet also a thing apart, the "New South" embodied some of the best and worst of this nation, and spun off a vibrant cultural heritage. As we ask whether "the South" still really exists today, we will trace the regional past from Appomattox Court House to something called the Sun Belt. Readings, discussion, and a research paper.

The basic ideas of Cosmology -- the origin and structure of the Universe -- are many millennia old. Religion, literature, philosophy and empiricism have all had something to say. Which ideas have taken root and grown in time, shaped by cultural and intellectual forces, and how they have in turn influenced the same, is a story of epic proportion and universal scope. To some extent this story, like many, is one of progressively more detailed and accurate theories sweeping aside their archaic forebears. To some extent, this story is one of evolving mindsets and value systems, with healthy portions of happenstance, forgetfulness, brilliant insight, stubbornness, and human error caught up in the mix. Time marches on, and so does understanding… or so we hope!

As universal as our quest may be, tracing the path of discovery and error that has led to our modern view of the Universe -- its components, structure, history, and future -- is a task largely grounded in physical science, to wit, physics and astronomy. These disciplines share a common language (drum roll, please): mathematics. For our purposes, a willingness to appreciate the precision, value, and at times profundity of simple mathematical expressions should suffice. A modest amount of math will appear in lecture, but extensive calculations will not be required of students.

The course will feature regular readings from several sources including a standard astronomy text. Coursework will be a mixture of semi-regular assignments, a paper, one or two exams (possibly take-home), and class discussions. As circumstances permit, there may be some optional extracurricular activities, such as stargazing.

The American West has always exerted a profound influence on American life and thought. This course examines the importance of the frontier in 19th-century history, as well as Americans' changing perceptions of how the West was settled. Topics include the conflict between whites and native Americans, the role of women on the frontier, the development of "civilizing" institutions like churches and schools, law-and-order justice, and the timeless distinctiveness of the West. Readings include Frederick Jackson Turner's essay about the importance of the frontier, Julie Jeffrey's Frontier Women, Owen Wister's The Virginian, and Walter Van Tilburg Clark's Ox-Bow Incident.

No single intellectual or cultural movement has had more of an impact on the 20th century than existentialism, with its emphasis on angst, alienation, and absolute freedom. After exploring its philosophical basis in the works of Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir, and Heidegger, students discuss the following literature: Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Kafka’s The Trial, Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Camus’ The Stranger, Sartre’s No Exit, and Ellison’s The Invisible Man.

This interdisciplinary course begins with a look at what architect Rem Koolhaas has called “Delirious New York”: the competitive mania of the skyscraper wars, and the rambunctious and over the top worlds of Coney Island, Times Square and Broadway theater in the early 20th century. We then turn to the decisive turning point of the 1930’s when, in the face of the Great Depression, New York City witnessed some of its greatest building projects: the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and the monumental projects overseen by NYC’s controversial “Master Builder,” Robert Moses.

The New York World’s Fair of 1939 serves as a fitting symbol for what the Fair itself proclaimed as “The World of Tomorrow,” the world of middle class consumerism, the automobile, the highway and the suburb. A major focus of our study is the unfolding and increasingly controversial career of Robert Moses in attempting to implement this “World of Tomorrow,” and the gathering forces of opposition galvanized by the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities written by the Greenwich Village activist Jane Jacobs.

In the years following WW II, New York City became a world cultural capital with the “New York School” of art and poetry, personified in the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollack, the advent of the Beat writers, the “Black Arts” movement, the East Village phenomenon, and the multiple cross currents of New York jazz, rock and Latin music from the 1950’s to the present.

The course will survey how New York City has been represented in literature, photography and film over the last half century, and how New York City itself has responded to the changed economic, political and social realities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries – the new waves of immigration, the economic crisis of the ‘70’s, the tensions over gentrification, and in particular the catastrophic events of September 11th. The course concludes with an invitation to re-assess the cultural history -- and the cultural future -- of what historian Tom Bender has called “The Unfinished City.” 

To enhance our exploration, the course will include two overnight weekend visits to New York City: Oct 15 & 16 and Dec 10 & 11, 2011.
 

The Liberal Arts Portfolio is a non-credit option within the MLA Capstone. Students who select the Portfolio option will take 10 courses in the program. The portfolio will be completed within the same semester as the 10th course, and for students not selecting a graduate project or thesis, the portfolio is a degree requirement. The associate chair serves as the portfolio adviser. The portfolio consists of a sampling of the best papers and projects written over the course of the student's graduate career. It is not simply a collection of papers but designed to help students see the intellectual point of convergence in their studies. It is also provides a travel log chronicling the student's journey toward their own "way of knowing."

Most students enrolled in the Master of Liberal Arts program conclude their degree requirements by writing an independent project under the direction of a faculty sponsor. The graduate project is interdisciplinary in scope and reflects an emphasis or interest that the student has discovered in the MLA program. Before registering for the graduate project, a student must receive proposal approval from the faculty sponsor and the MLA Program Director.

The Internship is part of the MLA Capstone. For additional information about possible internships please contact the Program Director.