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Graduate Program in Liberal Studies > Course Descriptions

Seminars And Preceptorials

SEMINARS
Team-taught, interdisciplinary seminars are at the heart of the Graduate Program in Liberal Studies. Each semester one graduate seminar is offered. M/LS seminars are taught once a week in the evening, usually on Mondays, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. Below are course descriptions for the seminars currently in the M/LS curriculum.

510 Darwin: His Impact on His World and Ours
Darwin and Darwinism are studied from a variety of perspectives, including the ways thinkers used the prestige of scientific theory to justify contemporary business practices and social inequalities; the impact of Darwinism on literature; scientific developments since Darwin; the new sociobiology, the genetic and cultural evolutionary determination of human behavior.

514 Public Policy and the Environment
The seminar will examine: the historical background of current environmental issues; alternative ways of conceiving of the relationship of humankind and the natural world; the complex issues created by the need to reconcile environmental with other social goals such as economic growth; consideration of international law and organization as a means of protecting the ozone layer and preventing global warming; analysis of the consequences of population growth.

516 The Idea of Law
The idea of "law" can mean different things in different contexts and applications. This seminar considers such questions as whether the concept of law is used the same way in the natural and social sciences. How does "natural" law differ from "positive" law? While literature does enlarge our understanding of law in these several senses, how do letters, as well as the other arts, themselves reflect their own "rules"? And do new theories of literary criticism along with chaos theory challenge older assumptions of order and meaning?

518 Intellectual Revolutions of the Turn of the Century
In the unsettled years around 1900 new aesthetic visions emerged in the arts, while intellectuals and scientists developed radically new ways of thinking about the natural and social worlds. These intellectual revolutions permeated the general consciousness during the early decades of the twentieth century. This seminar examines the contributions of major thinkers such as Freud and Einstein and movements such as modernism that had a decisive influence on our worldview.

520 The Mind and the Brain
The brain has been called an "enchanted loom." Can our knowledge of the physical brain help us understand our thinking selves, our emotions, and other mental processes? Conversely, can a good understanding of the human mind (rational, spiritual, and creative) illuminate our study of the physiological brain? How do personality and intellect develop over one’s life? How does the brain develop, and how might consciousness have evolved? Do we have inborn "social instincts"?

522 The Eighteenth Century: Emergence of a New World View
The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century transformed the intellectual climate of European civilization. In the century that followed, many argued that the rational methods of natural science could be applied to philosophy, religion, politics, aesthetics, and society. The impulse to Enlightenment was challenged by a generation of writers and satirists who, while often introducing new styles of poetry and prose, defended traditional humanistic values. From this tension between old and new, continuity and change, emerged a modern world view. This seminar will explore eighteenth-century culture in a variety of its manifestations, including science, literature, the arts, religion, and politics.

524 Ways of Knowing
We know many different things but we also know in many different ways. The poet and the biologist know nature in distinctive manners. What is the basis for scientific knowledge? How can we know the past? What kinds of knowledge are the province of literature and the arts? The seminar will explore several of the ways in which we know, concentrating on the scientific, the historical, and the literary.

530 War and Peace: Conflict and Human Nature
The seminar will provide insights into our complex attitudes toward war and peace as we consider such topics as heroic warfare in the Classical Age; patriotism and the warrior king; World War I in literature, history, and film; gender and war; genocide; the "banality of evil"; the contemporary "humor of despair"; and theories of conflict resolution.

532 Sex and Gender in Nature and Society
An interdisciplinary exploration of sex and gender, with emphasis on the perspectives of biology, history, literature, and the other arts. We will examine the biological bases for differences between males and females and how evolution shapes sex roles in animal societies. We will consider the social and cultural differences between males and females and how gender and sex affect the social roles of men and women. How, if at all, have gender roles changed in the process of historical development? How does culture construct gender and in what ways can literature and art illuminate aspects of gender?

536 Meetings: East and West
Encounters between cultures play a significant role in world affairs. This course explores the complex and evolving inter-relationships among East Asian cultures and Western societies. It focuses on how both Eastern and Western traditions and discourses encounter, resist, assimilate, and transform each other in unpredictable ways. The course will involve history, politics, art, philosophy, film, literature, and music.

538 Ethics and Life
Selected topics dealing with the ethical dimension of human activities, institutions, and traditions. Topic for Fall 2005: International Relations. Considerations of the intersection between ethics and U.S. foreign policy, examining tensions and harmony between universal values and national interest. Examination of the extent ethics does, can, or should inform decisions about the U.S. role in international affairs.

540 Cinema and Society
Cinema exerts a powerful influence on society. It reflects, shapes and comments upon a variety of social and political concerns. Through careful analysis of films--classic as well as recent--and related texts, the seminar will explore varying representations of such themes as nation, gender, class, and race from literary, socio-scientific, and artistic perspectives.

542 Images of Human Nature
Our understandings of ourselves--what we are and perhaps what we wish to be--are defined, consciously or unconsciously, by particular images of human nature. Such images and perspectives are themselves shaped by a range of influences from long-time cultural traditions to new ways of thinking created by intellectual "revolutions." Among the various models or definitions of human nature to be examined are the heroic, the mechanistic, the animalistic, and the irrational.

544 Building Chicago
Chicago’s story can be traced by examining the unique relationship between its people and the city they built. In 1820, the site contained a fort, a few dwellings, a handful of people, and limited prospects. By 1900, Chicago was the home of the skyscraper and headquarters for many of the nation’s largest businesses, with a population close to 2 million at the vital center of the continent. Today the metropolitan area covers nearly 10,000 square miles, with a population close to 8 million and commercial interests that reach around the globe. By "reconstructing" Chicago and examining its unique architectural achievements, how the city expanded, and why it looks the way it does, the texture of the city’s history and culture is revealed.

546 Religion: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Religion has been a cultural universal in the past, and remains a constant in our current societies. Some of the questions that this cross-disciplinary seminar explores are as follows: What is religious experience? How does it interact with other facets of our psychological, sociological, economic, and cultural life? What was its role in traditional societies? What is its future? We shall look at religion from the perspectives of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and social scientists.

548 Romanticism: Self and Society
The Romantic era (ca. 1780-1830) was a period of revolutionary change in politics, literature, music, and the visual arts. This seminar examines the evolving relation of self and society through five transformational decades of modern European history. Discussions will focus on the works of a number of major figures, including Blake, Burke, Schiller, Wordsworth, Keats, Schubert, and Mary Shelley.

550 Latin America: Political Economy and Culture
An interdisciplinary study of the historical development of Latin American societies, highlighting the artistic achievements of Latin American writers and film directors and focusing on the links between political and economic change on the one hand and artistic production on the other. Literary texts and films will be treated as complex aesthetic objects whose language does not merely photograph socio-historical reality, but transfigures it.

PRECEPTORIALS

A Preceptorial is a small group tutorial focussing on a theme. Beginning in 2007, the Graduate Program in Liberal Studies will offer these special graduate classes, which will meet on Saturday mornings from 10:00 am to noon.

570 American Greats
The course will focus on great works from American literature, philosophy, and film. Works include those by Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, Twain, Wharton, and others from the 20th century.

Forthcoming Preceptorials:

574 European Greats

578 Asian Greats