Division of Continual Learning
MALS Program - Summer 2008 Courses
Each seminar carries three academic credit hours.
First Summer Session: May 21 - June 24
Age of Revolutions
ONLINE COURSE
MLS 610
CRN 50572
Stephen Ruzicka, Ph.D.
May 21 - June 24
Click here for tentative syllabus (timeline will be adjusted for 5 week format).
Film and the American Dream
MLS 620A
CRN 50579
Mondays & Thursdays, 5:45 - 9:30 pm
Chris Poulos, Ph.D.
May 22 - June 23
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive, Greensboro
Click here for tentative booklist.
The Contemporary World
ONLINE COURSE
MLS 610
CRN 50573
Jeff Jones, Ph.D.
May 22 - June 23
Click here for syllabus (timeline will be adjusted for 5 week format).
The Moral Leader
MLS 610
CRN 50687
Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:45-9:30 pm
John J. Young, Ph.D.
May 21 - June 23
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
Click here for booklist.
Simple Living in a Complex Age
MLS 620
CRN 50581
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:45-9:30 pm
Charlie Headington, Ph.D.
May 22 - June 24
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive, Greensboro
Click here for syllabus.
Second Summer Session: June 30 - July 30
Creating Family Stories
MLS 610
CRN 50575
Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:45-9:30pm
Tony Fragola
June 30 - July 30
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive, Greensboro
Click here for booklist.
Creativity for all Occasions
MLS 610A
CRN 50576
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:45-9:30pm
Larry Lavender
June 26 - July 31
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive, Greensboro
Click here for tentative syllabus
Creative Expression
ONLINE COURSE
MLS 610Z
CRN 50578 (in state)
Mark Smith-Soto, Ph.D.
June 26 - July 31
Click here for syllabus
Modern Problems of Belief
ONLINE COURSE
MLS 610
CRN 50577
Ben Ramsey, Ph.D.
June 26 - July 31
The following online courses are 10 weeks in length, covering both summer sessions.
The Islamic World: Perceptions and Realities
ONLINE COURSE
MLS 610
CRN 50574
Jeff Jones, Ph.D.
May 21 - July 31
Click here for syllabus (timeline will be adjusted for 10 week format).
Biorhythms
ONLINE COURSE
MLS 630
CRN 50582
John J. Lepri, Ph.D.
May 21 - July 31
Click here for booklist
Age of Revolutions
Changes in the Western world over the last 600 years have been so profound as to constitute a series of revolutions. This course examines this “Age of Revolutions,” and figures out how each one, from the Commercial Revolution to the Sexual Revolution, helped shape the modern age. In each revolutionary episode, we will look at the institutions, practices, and ideas that were overthrown or radically altered by new developments; examine the individuals and texts that played a critical role; and trace the impact the new institutions, practices, and ideas had on the revolution brought forth.
Stephen Ruzicka (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Associate Professor of History. His interests as a classical historian focus on periods of cultural change. He is the recipient of the 2000 Alumni Teaching Excellence Award.
Film and the American Dream
Ah, the American Dream! We live by it. We seek it. But ...what is it? What are the premises—conscious and unconscious—of this cultural ideal? How has this ideal shaped our culture? How has it evolved over the years? What has Hollywood done with it? In this seminar, we will focus on a collection of films that can be understood as reflecting on the evolution of the “American Dream” as it developed through (roughly) the latter half of the twentieth century and into our current century. We will focus our attention on the evolution of this guiding myth of American culture by critically watching and discussing several important films that offer us a glimpse into our culture’s changing self-conception. Along the way, we will explore the cinema as a powerful cultural medium that both reflects and re-shapes our collective imagination and the trajectory of our shared cultural history. We will also read scholarly attempts to make sense of the complex medium of cinema and its relationship to American ideology, especially as they relate our understanding of cinematic texts to matters of social class, economic “progress,” and achievement. Finally, we will strive to increase our collective cinematic literacy.
Chris Poulos (Ph.D., University of Denver) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at UNCG. An ethnographer and philosopher of communication, he teaches courses in relational communication, dialogue, rhetoric, and film studies. His writing has appeared in Communication Theory, Qualitative Inquiry, American Communication Journal, Southern Communication Journal, Cultural Studies: A Research Volume, and in several books. His forthcoming book is entitled Accidental Ethnography: An Inquiry into Family Secrecy.
The Moral Leader
“The world is looking for a few good leaders”
Many people would agree with this claim (adapted from an old Marine Corps recruiting poster). Whether making money or saving souls, waging war or brokering peace, raising crops or raising family, good leaders are always welcome. Politics, government, business, the military, education, religion and community life all want effective leaders. They also need “moral leaders.” This course addresses the questions: What is moral leadership? What does it look like? And what distinguishes it from leadership in general, including effective leadership?
Lack of leadership and poor leadership exact a heavy toll on individuals and the lives they live together. Good leadership is needed for strong, healthy institutions and societies. But good leadership requires a lot from anyone who steps into those shoes: energy, intelligence, commitment, vision and morality–which is the focus of this course. The course deals with leadership in the many forms it can take in our lives, not just a limited area such as business or political life.
Part I of the course examines some major kinds of moral challenge that leaders can encounter, how moral issues can arise in remarkably different ways. Part II examines some moral tools and perspectives that ethics can provide to help us understand both our own and others’ moral challenges. Part III addresses a number of real-life cases where people have tackled significant moral issues and provided moral leadership in strikingly different ways.
We will read classics of world literature, biography and history to examine these topics. The works selected portray the way humans respond in situations calling for moral leadership and the consequences of the choices they make. Sophocles, Conrad, Achibe and Machiavelli are among the authors included. Biographical accounts will also be used: Shackleton’s effort to survive in the Antarctic; Truman’s order to drop the atomic bomb; Katherine Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers; and workers at the World Trade Center in the aftermath of 9/11. Using this literature, related films and disciplined discussion, we will explore the mysterious realm of morality that leaders are forced to enter and the paths they choose to become “moral leaders.”
John J. Young (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy. He has studied also studied at the University of London and Yale. He is retired as the Dean of UNCG’s Division of Continual Learning and has served on the MALS Advisory Board since the program’s inception in 1987.
Simple Living in a Complex Age
With all our wealth, we want more. With all our timesaving devices, we’re out of time. With so many choices, we feel trapped. As long as the stock market rises, we’re secure; when it falls, the Dream fades. That’s how it is in a consumer society. And if it’s bad for us, what about the less affluent nations and the natural world? What happens to the rest of the world when their fates are wrapped around western tourism and multinationals. Voluntary simplicity, an ancient ideal, is built around the riddle that less is more. In our times it has new applications. It not only is a means to rein in our appetites and nurture inner contentment. It is a practical tool for adapting to change, deciphering societal ills, living within the carrying capacity of the earth, and rebuilding communities. We will read thoughtful books, discuss important issues, and write.
Charlie Headington (Ph.D., University of Virginia) teaches a variety of courses at UNCG and in the community. Most of them revolve around our relationship to the earth and living sustainably. He also is involved in school gardens and Slow Food. He likes to garden, cook, and go to Italy.
Creating Family Stories
Did your Grandpa Willy run a speakeasy during Prohibition? Did you or someone in your family experience a great loss? Do you remember a family event that changed your life? Are there family traditions and memories that you want to preserve? All of us have family tales we don’t want to lose, that would make a great story if we just wrote them down.
This seminar will give you the tools you need to turn these family histories and personal events into engaging fiction or memoir. You’ll start by reading fiction based on family histories, including Professor Tony Fragola’s Feast of the Dead, a collection of short stories that integrate family history, myths, dreams, and family accounts into a fictionalized narrative structure. Then you will gather photographs, artifacts, letters, mementos, memories, impressions, images, family interviews, and your own memories to create a story or memoir you and your family can treasure in the years to come.
Tony Fragola is Professor of Broadcasting /Cinema. He has written and directed short films and published scholarly articles on European directors. He has received several merit awards for teaching and has served as a faculty mentor for the North Carolina Teaching Fellows.
Creativity for all Occasions
We all want and need to be creative, especially in the arts, but also in other domains of work, and in our everyday lives. There are many ways to awaken, unleash and focus creative thought and action, and in our class we will seek to do just that. Through readings, discussions, and hands-on experiments with an array of creative tools we will strengthen our abilities to see things in new ways, to overcome perceived obstacles, and to generate and harvest new and useful ideas. We will exercise and strengthen our powers of logic, imagination, and feeling, and explore the role of luck and chance in creative work. Sometimes we will work independently and sometimes we will work in groups. Above all, we will have fun as we explore this mysterious force: creativity.
Larry Lavender is a Professor of Dance at UNCG. He holds an MFA in Choreography from UC Irvine and a Ph.D. in Dance Education from New York University. Prior to coming to UNCG in 2002, Larry was Head of Dance and Director of the Interdisciplinary Undergraduate degree program at the University of New Mexico.
Larry’s primary areas of teaching are dance criticism, choreography, writing about art, and creativity studies.
Modern Problems of Belief
How do you see the world? A hostile place, full of threat? A natural and complex machine? A place of wonder held in God’s hands? Philosophers and scientists agree that “the world” is a place both “out there” and “in here”—that our ideas about the world shape how we experience it.This course looks at modern western views of the world and at new ideas that are challenging the ways we traditionally view, understand, and indeed create the world. We will explore religious and philosophical models of nature and human nature, the self and its environment, the supernatural, psyche, and spirit. Readings include Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being, James Hillman’s Revisioning Psychology, Caroline Myss’s Anatomy of the Spirit, Ken Wilbur’s A Brief History of Everything, and others.
Ben Ramsey, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at UNCG. He holds an M.Div. and a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary in New York. His current research interests are in spirituality and politics. Ben is currently the Campus Coordinator for the Democracy Project, a four-year national project sponsored by the New York Times and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
Creative Expression
Poetry exists because the human spirit sometimes needs to speak in extraordinary ways. Essentially, this course will be a creative writing class, and as such, presents a contradiction in terms: how can creativity be taught? William Butler Yeats says of poetry in Sailing to Byzantium, “Nor is there singing school, but studying / monuments of its own magnificence.” We will take a cue from him and read/discuss/analyze/live with a selection of great pieces of lyrical writing in poetry and prose, focusing on their craftiness and craft, the fine points of their technique, their development of thematic implications and find how far they will take us as guides for our own personal explorations. Above all we will write, share and discuss our work in an atmosphere of empathy and respect as we engage in the challenge to give beautiful shape to our words.
Mark Smith-Soto (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) is Professor of Romance Languages and Director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts. He is the recipient of the 1997 Alumni Teaching Excellence Award. He has published scholarly books and articles on the modern Spanish-American lyric, and his own poetry has appeared in journals such as Kenyon Review, Nimrod, Poetry East and Literary Review. He has authored two prize-winning poetry chapbooks. His first full-length collection, Our Lives are Rivers, was published by University Press of Florida in 2003. His second poetry book, Any Second Now (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.) was completed with the assistance of a creative writing award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Contemporary World
This course will examine contemporary global issues with a focus on the post-World War II period, from the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, to the complex, high-tech, evolving world of today. We will, as much as possible, view changes in the postwar period from the point of view of those undergoing them, including students in this course. Everyone has an “historical consciousness,” an understanding of the way the world became what it is today. The main purpose of this course is to introduce students to alternative ways of interpreting history by weighing the merits of differing points of view. We will examine the world by regions with a number of themes in mind: the Cold War; the rise and fall of communism; nationalism; de-colonization/neo-colonialism; the international economy; racial, ethnic, and religious conflict; the rise of terrorism; gender; class; and environmental issues. You should take from the course the skills to critically appraise varying historical arguments and to clearly express your own interpretations.
Jeff Jones (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is an Assistant Professor of History. His specific area of research is Russian-Soviet history and he is interested in 20th century global history. Dr. Jones recently received the UCEA (University Continuing Education Association) Excellence in Teaching Award, which is presented to individuals who have provided outstanding teaching, course development, mentoring of students, and service to continuing education.
The Islamic World: Perceptions and Realities
September 11, 2001, obviously changed the world, and one of the ways this is apparent is with the increased interest of Americans in the Islamic world. This course seeks to place the modern Islamic world in an historical context, with an emphasis on how people in the West perceive Islam, as well as how Muslims see themselves. We will begin by tracing the roots of Islam to the era of the prophet Muhammad and charting the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, but our primary focus is the contemporary history of several countries within the Islamic realm. We will not focus on Islam as a religion. Themes for the course include the Islamic world’s relations with the West; the differences within Islam as well as within and between Islamic countries; gender relations within the Islamic world; the Arab-Israeli conflict and its significance to the broader Islamic world; and the rise of modern terrorism in the Middle East. We will finish the course by focusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict and its general significance for the Islamic world. Students will come away from the course with an understanding of the historical roots of Islam and of the contemporary Islamic world.
Jeff Jones (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is an Assistant Professor of History. His specific area of research is Russian-Soviet history and he is interested in 20th century global history. Dr. Jones recently received the UCEA (University Continuing Education Association) Excellence in Teaching Award, which is presented to individuals who have provided outstanding teaching, course development, mentoring of students, and service to continuing education.
Biorhythms
For most of us, our days are filled feverish activity, rushing from one appointment or task to the next with an urgent tempo. Remarkably, our chaotic and harried days are punctuated every 24 hours when we suddenly stop moving, close our eyes and seem perfectly content to do absolutely nothing for 5 to 10 hours at a stretch. Is this insanely alternating pattern something we choose? Or is it part of our biological heritage?
To explore this, participants in this web course will map their own biological rhythms as we survey and discuss a number of biological rhythms expressed by a wide variety of organisms, with a special interest in our own species.
John J. Lepri (Ph.D., North Carolina State University) is Head and Associate Professor in the department of Biology. He has conducted research on the chemosensory and endocrine coordination of mammalian reproduction at UNCG, the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, the Monell Chemical Senses Center and NCSU. In addition to his research on pheromones and hormones, he has taught a wide variety of courses in vertebrate and human physiology.
Questions? Call Julee Johnson, Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Coordinator, (336) 334-4597; or Kathleen Forbes, Director of Liberal Studies, at (336) 334-4599.
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is committed to equality of educational opportunity and does not descriminate against applicants, students, or employees, based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, age, or disability.