Introduction to Graduate Liberal Studies (MALS601)
A
gateway experience for incoming MALS students. Students learn the
conventions and expectations of graduate-level reading, writing,
research, and critical analysis and explore the concept of
interdisciplinarity. Topics include documentation of sources,
formulation and development of independent research projects, research
methods, use of online databases. The content will be interdisciplinary
and/or intercultural, and the course methodology will include lecture,
discussion, independent research, and varied forms of academic writing.
Click here for a sample syllabus: MALS 601 Syllabus F19.pdf
Nature and Human Nature (MALS600)
Addresses
the development, status, and understanding of humanity within a larger
context, e.g., how writers in various disciplines have defined humanity,
nature, and the relationship between the two, or the interaction
between humans.
Nature and Human Nature: Oil and Water: Elements of Global EcoFiction (MALS600)
In his
provocative 2004 essay “Reflections on Water & Oil,” David Orr
declares that “Water makes life possible, while oil is toxic to most life.
Water in its pure state is clear; oil is dark.” He even makes the extremely
provocative claim that “Oil and water have had contrary effects on our minds”:
water inspires and heals; oil deadens the imagination and made us “dumber.”
Is Orr on to something? Is he way off base? This course invites you to engage
with these questions by thinking broadly and deeply about different ways of
imagining and experiencing each of these substances. What might thinking
with/through oil and water help us to see? What might such thinking
occlude? How might thinking in terms of oil and water enrich and enliven
our ideas about environmentalism and sustainability? Where are writers
and artists leading us in terms of imagining or reconfiguring this relationship
to make it more sustainable? These are broad opening questions for a
course that is very much interested in exploration and discovery.
Why “elements”?
Because
the term connotes essentials, building blocks, basics, things out of which we
build more complex things, like societies, and ways of life. Both oil and water
are essential ingredients in our day-to-day experience. In very real
senses, our experience is built out of those materials. This course asks you to
pay more attention to these ubiquitous, essential, mysterious, and often hidden
elements that make up so much of our lives and worlds.
Also
because, as the editors of the volume Elemental Ecocriticism note, the
term “elements” evokes ancient conceptions of a vibrant, vividly animate
non-human world with which humans are in dynamic relation. Several of the
texts we read this term lead us to conceive of oil, water, and their
interactions in these terms. Such conceptions have consequences. We will
explore what those are.
Force, Conflict and Change--From Turning Points to Myths: How History Gets Presented (MALS610)
Historians, confronting
the confusion and strangeness of the past, try to make it more comprehensible
by organizing their narratives around a significant event or personality.
Hence the fascination with "decisive battles", "turning points"
and "key figures". The shapers of popular culture--poets,
painters novelists and, in our time, film makers and television producers--take
this narrative convenience and spin myths around it. The end result is
that what happened and why becomes obscured and what is believed to have
happened is often a literary or cinematic construct.
In this seminar, we will look at three case
studies of this phenomenon.
Click here for a draft syllabus: MALS610 draft syllabus summer 2019.pdf
Force, Conflict, and Change: Empires--Good Thing or Bad Thing? (MALS610)
The
image of empire has been largely shaped not by historians but by
Hollywood: marching Roman legionnaires or pith helmeted Britons ordering
Asians or Africans about. (The image of empire might well include the
American "winning of the West" but, for some reason, seldom does.) But
empire is a much more complex business than cinematic spectacle and
worthy of very serious attention. After all, much more of human history
has been shaped by empires than by nation states and parliamentary
democracies--both quite recent arrivals on the scene and by no means
guaranteed to dominate the future. Empires of various sorts are still
with us--and also aspire to write that future. We will look
comparatively at several long lived and influential empires and seek at
least a tentative answer to the question posed by the course title.
The
basic reading for the seminar will be Krishan Kumar's "Visions of
Empire" (Princeton, 2017). A paper edition is available. Further
readings will grow out of the discussions in the seminar and the paper
topic chosen.
Every student will be expected to do a paper of
roughly 15 pp on a topic developed out of the reading and seminar
discussions. A one page proposal will be handed in at the end of the
first month of the course. Once approved, the full paper will be due at
the last class meeting. Details (footnote form, etc.) will be
discussed in class.
Click here for a draft syllabus: MALS610 Syllabus Summer 2020.pdf
Force, Conflict and Change: World War II (MALS610)
This
seminar will provide an overview of the causes, course and outcome of
World War II and the general impact it had on world history until the
fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The seminar will use an extensive
collection of oral interviews of World War II veterans (American, other
Allied and Axis, both men and women from all theaters of the war)
personally conducted by the instructor to illustrate the conflict.
The Arts in Context: Drama in Performance (MALS617)
This course proceeds from the premise that drama is designed to be performed, not just read. To that end, we will focus on productions by UD's Resident Ensemble Players, and several members of that group will be visiting our class. Other visitors will include directors, designers, and reviewers. In addition, we'll look for opportunities to attend plays off campus, including optional trips to Wilmington and Philadelphia. The course will also include a unit on film adaptation, and each student can choose one work by a major playwright (such as Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, or August Wilson) to see ways that a movie reworks a dramatic text. "Drama in Performance" will not require acting talent (as the professor himself will illustrate), but each class meeting will include brief, unrehearsed readings from the plays being discussed.
Interpreting the Past: The Dream of Empire (MALS622)
There
have always been empires. Their number far exceeds the number of
democracies of any sort that have ever existed. Why is this so? How
are empires born? How to they grow and flourish? Why do they die?
Most important of all: what do they do to and for those they rule and
what do they leave behind when they vanish? All these questions will be
explored through history and literature. This course will be based and
reading and class discussion and a course essay will be required.
Interpreting the Past: The Rise of Modern Technology--Industrialization, Culture, and Ideology (MALS622)
"Modernity" is the outcome of revolutionary
technological change - from the steam engine to the computer. How did
this arise? What have been the effects? The past two centuries were
littered with broken bodies and spirits as technology transformed war
and reshaped society. A great divergence arose between the
industrialized West and the rest. We have experienced rapid advances in
living standards and life spans, increasing separation from the natural
world, and release from grinding physical labor. Capitalism shaped the
industrial revolution, while at the same time siring mass democracy,
fascism, communism, imperialism, nationalism, globalism, environmental
catastrophe, and the means to extinguish human life on the planet. Art,
literature, and history give us tools to analyze the paradoxes of
technological "progress."
Click here for a sample syllabus: MALS622 Rise of Modern Technology syllabus 2018.pdf
Interpreting the Past: What Actually Happened in 1940--And Other Historical Legends (MALS622)
"When
the legend becomes Fact, print the Legend." This line, from John Ford's
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," has come to characterize the way
history reaches many people--perhaps the majority. Popular accounts,
memoirs, novels, films, TV series shape perceptions of "how it was" and
those perceptions, in turn, shape responses to current issues. We will
look at one of the great examples of history into legend, with side
trips into other such episodes (why did we win the Revolutionary
War--really?). Among the books we will read are Robin Prior's When
Britain Saved the West and Piers Mackesy's The War
for America.
Studies in Contemporary Culture: Composing Identities (MALS626)
Who
we are and where we come from impacts all facets of our lives from our
families to our professions to our social media presence. This course
considers how culture and language shape our racial, ethnic, gender,
sexual, and socioeconomic identities and how we represent them online.
We will spend the semester considering how we "write" ourselves and our
communities and how we are "written" by technologies and media around
us. We will investigate the use of visual, audio, and cultural
conventions within certain technological communities (Facebook,
LinkedIn, Match) in creating individual and group identities. We will
also discuss the importance of identification through association (with
one another, with media, with brands, etc.) and how this necessitates
critical awareness of the technologies we use.
Click here for a sample syllabus: MALS620 Composing Identity.pdf
Studies in Contemporary Culture: American Nightmares (MALS626)
There is a tension in our culture between our aspirations idealized by the notion of the American Dream, and our fears that things are--or are on the verge of getting worse. We might call these fears American Nightmares. This seminar will explore some of these contemporary concerns about inequality, injustice, conspiracies, and the like.
Click here for a draft syllabus: MALS626 American Nightmares Draft Syllabus.pdf
Studies in Contemporary Culture: Punishment and Society (MALS626)
This
course examines punishment as a social institution, understood through
(1) social inequality and solidarity, (2) law and society and (3)
culture and morality, including contemporary popular culture. We draw
upon a rich theoretical toolkit which includes foundational readings in
Western Sociology and penality, derived from Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx,
Max Weber, Norbert Elias, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, and Pierre
Bourdieu, as well as from critical, feminist and intersectional
approaches. We use these conceptual resources to examine imprisonment as
the preeminent form of punishment in modern society and to probe the
social causes, functions, and consequences of the turn to
hyperincarceration made by the United States and subsequently exported
worldwide. Students will compare and contrast how punishment works in
Delaware with other contexts, tailored to their interests.
Foundational
questions include: what is the relationship between punishment and
society? What are its causes, consequences and future trends? What are
the functions served by incarceration today? What effects does
incarceration have on penal workers, incarcerated people, their
families, and on their communities?
NOTE: If you have an interest in the Graduate Community Engagement Scholars Certificate,
this class will have an optional component that will fulfill a
three-credit course requirment for the certificate. Please contact the
MALS director for further information: twkee@udel.edu or 302-831-4130.
Click here for a draft syllabus: Punishment and Society
Studies in Contemporary Culture: Encountering 'the Other' in Tourism and Travel (MALS626)
International tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world, and has produced one of the largest population movements in the history of humanity. In this course, we will discuss tourism and travel as cultural practices as well as globalization phenomena. We will pay particular attention to tourism as an encounter in search for authenticity and otherness. The course will examine topics such as tourism and modernity, sexual and romantic tourism, ecotourism and environmental tourism.
How to Read an Election (MALS629)
How do people really make important decisions, like how to vote in an election? Why are lies so often effective, even when they're transparent? How is it possible for two apparently rational individuals to draw the opposite conclusions from the same evidence? How to Read an Election moves beyond partisan politics to delve into psychology, literature, and film for insights into these and other questions that inevitably arise during an election season. We'll read recent best-sellers, such as Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (excerpts), in which he summarizes his Nobel-prize-winning research on how humans make and manipulate decisions; The Secret Life of Pronouns, in which psychologist James Pennebaker offers hints on how to read between the lines to understand what people are really saying; and Weaponized Lies, a primer of critical thinking by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. We'll also discuss relevant literary works, such as Arthur Miller's The Crucible and George Orwell's 1984; and films like Dr. Strangelove and Wag the Dog. A course website will provide links to lectures and interviews by many of these authors. In addition to the reading, the course will involve two response papers, a personal essay, and a take-home final exam.
Click here for a sample reading list: How to Read an Election reading list
Death and Dying (MALS635)
This
course will consider a number of responses to the "problem" of death
and dying. Our premise is that there is such a thing as a good death,
that many traditions consider the good life as the one that ends in a
good death, and thus the highest practice in life prepares one for a
good death. We will not address the question of an afterlife per se, but
rather we will focus on the meaning of death and the meaning of a life
that ends in death. We will look at representatives of Tibetan Buddhist
tradition, Western philosophical and psychological traditions, and
religious viewpoints. Students are invited to form their own conclusions
and seek their own coherence.
Click here for a draft syllabus: MALS 635 D and D syllabus 21S.pdf
Black Bodies on Display: Race in Museums (MALS645)
The complex and performative nature of museums vis-a-vis race, remembrance and reconciliation with a focus on Black American and African Diasporic history and culture. What role[s] do objects, history, and culture perform under such curatorial and museum mandates and visions? How do changing socio-political and cultural landscapes and challenges to representational politics shape museum practices? Considered here are black cultural institutions, their formation and foundation as well as exhibition histories of black visual art and culture. (Cross-listed with Africana Studies).
Environmental Ethics (MALS648)
Ethical
problems associated with environmental protection, local, national, and
international. Relations to social and political movements. Seminar
format. Cross-listed with Philosophy and Urban Affairs & Public
Policy.
Click here for a sample syllabus: MALS 648 Environmental Ethics Syllabus_draft.pdf
On Becoming Human (MALS660)
This
course will deal with the biological and cultural evolution of humans
and will focus on how we are similar to and different from our closest
primate relatives. We proceed from the understanding that being human
both structurally and behaviorally is the outcome of processes that have
occurred in nature. We will deal with areas of important behavioral
changes which have taken place over the last five million years of our
evolution, specifically, the development of: tool use, hunting, food
sharing, division of labor by sex, language, symbolic thought, art, our
mode of childbirth, our mode of locomotion, and cooperative childcare.
In these areas, biology and culture have interacted with one another in
an evolutionary process which made us become human beings.
Imperial Sunset: The Decline and Fall of European Empires in the 20th Century (MALS667)
In
1914 Europeans--and their overseas offshoots--ruled the world. In less
than 50 years these empires had all vanished, often leaving wreckage
and ongoing conflict behind. This half century of dramatic
transformation largely shaped our world. How and why it all happened
will be the focus of this course.
Beyond Sight: Rhetoric and Race in Contemporary Times (MALS667)
This course draws on approaches to rhetorical theory, critical race theory, visual culture, and new media technologies to explore relationships between words and images. Written discourse increasingly involves visual dimensions that are influenced (and sometime controlled) by writers, and this understanding is most concretely rendered in areas that depend on technology. In a real sense, technology has pushed us to see visual dimensions of meaning as falling under our influence as writers and scholars in the humanities. Visual rhetoric also places audience in the center of theories of the visual and the design process. We will be looking at images, magazine covers, pages and screens other people have designed, and figuring out why (or why not) they succeed in doing what they set out to do. Throughout the course, we will be working to answer questions like the following:
- What happens if we approach visual rhetoric only as reception (or interpretation) and not as production?
- How do we, as scholars, learn to see and come to understand ourselves as viewers?
- How are racialized subjects produced through practices of looking?
- How can writers, designers, and decision makers for businesses build responsible documents for specific and general audiences?
Outcomes for scholars in the course include:
- Identifying issues for visual rhetoric in writing studies and other disciplines
- Connecting theories of rhetoric, race, and visual culture
- Writing and producing a visual story by applying visual rhetoric and race in the service of the classroom or another community
Memory Speaks: The Craft of Contemporary Memoir (MALS667)
To
document, explore, commemorate, and ultimately to understand the
relationship of ones' life to history is no easy undertaking, but this
is the task of the memoirist. From the initial recollection of events
to the quest to bestow upon these events inward and outward meaning,
memoir is a public genre, and it requires the imagination of the
storyteller, the knowledge of the historian, and the discipline of the
editor: a delicate interplay of skill and talent that, with practice,
yields memorable literature. Creative, contemplative, and critical, Memory Speaks
is a disciplined exploration of the theory and practice of written
recollection, grounded in reading and discussion of influential
memoirists' work as well as workshop discussion of participant work.
Two Cultures: Four Epochs (MALS667)
This course will focus on iSTEAM (Interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics). We will address the classic division between STEM and the arts and humanities and how we might build a "Third Culture." We will couple four plays/movies with counterparts in science, technology, and society texts: Bertolt Brecht's Galileo with his notion of revolutionary theater with Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Jerome Lawrence's and Robert Edwin Lee's Inherit the Wind with Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species as an abolitionist anti-slavery, anti-racism thesis; Anna Ziegler's play Photograph 51 about Rosalind Franklin's role in the discovery of the structure of DNA with Anne Fausto Sterling's Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men on sexism in science; and Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race with Robert Moses and Charles Cobb's Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights.
Who, or What, Drives History? (MALS667)
Historians have long argued about what powers historical change. The dominant answer, until after World War II, was: great individuals (usually Great Men). Then historians began to widen their view: demographic changes, climate change, new technologies, the rise of new social groups (or the rediscovery of neglected ones), new ideas--all these seemed of greater import than any individual, no matter how dazzling (or horrifying). Focus on the individual became the province of biographers, with whom historians were often reluctant to claim kinship, or, worse yet, the playground of novelists, playwrights and film makers. The argument goes on, and we will join it in this seminar. We will look at a trio of great figures: Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill--and each student will fill out the trio with a person they choose to investigate.
Contemplation and Technological Change (MALS667)
- Instructors: Sujata Bhatia, Linda O'Hara, Michael Mackenzie
How
do innovations change the nature of humanity and life on earth? How
can individuals prepare themselves ethically to confront technological
issues as diverse as virtual reality, artificial intelligence,
cybersecurity, solar energy, carbon sequestration, clean water, and
nuclear terror? How can contemplative practices lead to better
technological policy decisions? “Contemplation and Technological
Change” will integrate mindfulness, psychology, behavioral science,
philosophy, and engineering to empower students to solve grand
challenges for innovation and society. The course is co-taught by three
faculty from three Colleges, bringing expertise in engineering,
entrepreneurship, and mindfulness. The intensive five-week format will
foster an interdisciplinary learning community.
Vested Interests: Identity,
Gender and Clothes in History (MALS667)
An examination of clothing and gender ambiguity
throughout history. The manipulation of
identity and gender roles as portrayed in plays, novels, memoirs, movies and
more will be used to examine the construction and changes in distinctions
rooted in dress from antiquity to the present. Click here for a sample syllabus: MALS gender syllabus draft.pdf
Black Bodies on Display: Race in Museums (MALS667)
The complex and performative nature of museums vis-a-vis race, remembrance and reconciliation with a focus on Black American and African Diasporic history and culture. What role[s] do objects, history, and culture perform under such curatorial and museum mandates and visions? How do changing socio-political and cultural landscapes and challenges to representational politics shape museum practices? Considered here are black cultural institutions, their formation and foundation as well as exhibition histories of black visual art and culture.
Creating Shakespeare (MALS667)
Today you can buy Shakespeare finger puppets and Shakespearean insult mugs. You can read a choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet and watch Shakespeare's plays reimagined in works like 10 Things I Hate about You and The Lion King.
You can even see the Bard's plays performed in a reconstructed Globe
Theatre, complete with the only thatched roof in modern-day London. But
how did Shakespeare become Shakespeare? How did this man transform from a
working actor and playwright to the "be-all and the end-all" (to quote
the man himself) of the English literary tradition? And what can
Shakespeare-mania, or "Bardolatry," teach us about the ways that we
construct a literary canon? To answer these questions, we will study
Shakespeare's changing reputation over the centuries. Beginning with the
late 17th century, when Samuel Pepys declared that Romeo and Juliet was
the "worst [play] that ever I heard in my life," we will study the ways
that writers "improved" Shakespeare by adding more music, dancing, and
(occasionally) flying witches. As we study these textual adaptations, we
will also work to reconstruct their performance histories, allowing us
to imagine what these plays would have been like to witness. We will
move through the 18th century, which saw the publication of new editions
of Shakespeare's plays and first biographies, as well as memorable
performances by celebrity actors like David Garrick. During this period,
Arthur Murphy declared that Shakespeare had become a "kind of
established religion in poetry." Over the course of the semester,
students will write papers and make oral presentations, analyzing texts
and other material objects that memorialize the playwright.
Consistency and Change in U.S. Foreign Policy (MALS667)
This
course will examine U.S. foreign policy, focusing on the period from
WWII to the present. It will reveal two essentially divergent paths in
American foreign policy, the first arguing that commercial and security
interests dominate (and should dominate) American foreign policy, the
second proposing that furthering democratic and human rights
institutions abroad helps to insure security at home while making the
world more democratic and less likely to wage war. Some political
scientists believe that these divergent impulses can be traced to
concepts of government first embraced and articulated by Alexander
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
The course will study specific
policies that have emerged over the decades and thus will attempt to
define some level of consistency in American foreign policy. The class
will also investigate significant changes in policies as demonstrated by
particular presidential administrations, including of course the
current one.
Students will read two textbooks related to the
course. Students will also be expected to keep abreast of current
international news, notably by looking at sources such as BBC World News
and CNN, and also by reading articles in prominent newspapers like The
New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. All of
these sources are available online.
The course will entail a
mid-term examination and a final research paper, both of which will be
described in detail in the course syllabus.
Click here for a draft syllabus: US Foreign Policy Draft Syllabus.pdf
East/West: Moving Beyond Our Cultural Differences (MALS667)
The
primary theme of this course is to use narratives that explore how
cross-cultural study can help us move beyond binary distinctions to
consider more nuanced scholarly analysis. So while we will begin with a
comparison of Aristotle's "excluded middle" to a Confucian conception of
both/and and the inseparability of opposites (yin/yang), an aspiration
of the course is to develop respect for multiple perspectives and the
power of evidence-based reasoning in the presence of uncertain,
ambiguous, incomplete, and conflicting information. We will compare and
contrast basic paradigms of Eastern and Western culture through
studying philosophy, poetry, food, art, architecture, sex/gender,
ecology, flower arrangements, binary versus multimodal logic,
plagiarism/forgery/facsimile, beauty, time, and literature.
NOTE: If you have an interest in the Graduate Community Engagement Scholars Certificate,
this class will have an optional component that will fulfill a
three-credit course requirment for the certificate. Please contact the
MALS director for further information: twkee@udel.edu or 302-831-4130.
Click here for a draft syllabus: East/West: Moving Beyond Our Cultural Differences