Graduate Seminars: Academic Year 2023-24
Graduate Seminar, Fall 2023
Mondays, 7:00 to 9:50 p.m.
September 11, 2023 — December 11, 2023
MLS 514 Public Policy and the Environment
This seminar assesses how governments seek to manage the natural environment. Such assessment includes consideration of the history of environmental regulation, alternative conceptions of the relationship between humankind and the natural world, and the policy tradeoffs between environmental preservation and other goals such as economic growth. This course focuses specifically on the policy challenges caused by climate change – a series of disruptive trends that many scientists consider the existential crisis of our time. In so doing, the seminar analyzes how governments and their citizens have responded to three central issues related to climate change: its causes, consequences, and possible solutions.
Taught by W. Rand Smith, (Professor of Politics, Emeritus) joined by faculty colleagues from other disciplines to teach select classes.
This course is offered in person with remote access available.
Graduate Seminar, Spring 2024
Mondays, 7:00 to 9:50 p.m.
January 22, 2024 - April 29, 2024
MLS 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 texts and figures, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and works by Schiller, Keats, Burke, and Beethoven.
Taught by Robert Archambeau, (Professor of English) joined by faculty colleagues from other disciplines to teach select classes.
This course is offered in person, with remote access available.
Previous Graduate Seminars: 2022-23
Graduate Seminar, Fall 2022
Mondays, 7:00 to 9:50 p.m.
September 12, 2022 — December 5, 2022
MLS 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 science, literature, philosophy, and the arts.
Professor Siobhan Moroney (Politics), joined by faculty colleagues from other disciplines in teaching select classes.
Graduate Seminar, Spring 2023
Mondays, 7:00 to 9:50 p.m.
January 23, 2023 - May 1, 2023
MLS 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 religion? How does it interact with other facets of our psychological, sociological, and cultural life? What was its role in different societies? What is its future? We shall look at religion from the perspectives of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and social scientist, and literature and the arts.
Professor Ahmad Sadri (Sociology), joined by faculty colleagues from other disciplines to teach select classes.
Previous Graduate Seminar: Spring 2022
Graduate Seminar, Spring 2022
Monday, 7:00 - 9:50 p.m.
January 17, 2022 – April 25, 2022
MLS 556 Existentialism and Its Discontents (taught remotely)
Existentialism was one of the most popular philosophical trends in the twentieth century, attracting philosophers and artists who sought to wrestle with the most personal and ultimate questions of meaning in the face of rising rationalism and scientific positivism. In part, Existentialism was rooted in the view that philosophy should be a way of life, practical and engaged, rather than mere abstract theorizing by elite intellectuals. Consequently, some of the deepest expressions of this philosophy have been in popular literature and film, which will be the focus of our seminar. This course will explore the artistic and ideological roots of the Existentialist movement in the 19th century with writers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky. It will examine the explosion of Existentialist thinking in the 20th century, especially in France through the literature of Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. And, finally, it will consider more recent critiques of Existentialism from the vantage of philosopher-novelists like Iris Murdoch. Emphasis will be on the artistic expressions of Existentialism, particularly the novel as a form of philosophical exploration. Other Existentialist artists and philosophers to be considered may include De Unamuno, Bergman, Frankl, and Buber.
Professor Carla Arnell (English), joined by faculty colleagues from other disciplines to teach select classes.