Division of Continual Learning
MALS Program - Fall 2008 Courses
Fall 2008
Each seminar carries three academic credit hours.
Global Arts: Windows into the HeARTS of Other Cultures
MLS 610
ONLINE COURSE
August 25 - December 8
Click here for syllabus.
Passion of the Western Mind
MLS 610
Mondays, 6:00 - 8:50pm
August 25 - December 8
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
Click here for booklist.
Clue: Detective and Mystery Fiction
MLS 610-12D
ONLINE COURSE
September 8 - November 14
Click here for booklist.
London's Fictions: A Cultural History from Defoe to Dickens
MLS 610
ONLINE COURSE
September 8 - November 14 (10 weeks)
Click here for syllabus.
History, Myth and the Novel
MLS 610D
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 8:50pm
August 26 - December 3
Click here for syllabus.
Literature and the Religious Imagination
MLS 610
Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50pm
August 27 - December 3
Click here for booklist.
The Global Economy
MLS 620
ONLINE COURSE
August 25 - December 8
Click here for syllabus.
Global Human Rights
MLS 620
ONLINE COURSE
September 8 - November 14
Click here for syllabus.
Sustainable Life on a Tuscan Farm
MLS 620
ONLINE & TRAVEL ABROAD COURSE
September 8 - November 16
Travel Abroad: September 29 - October 7
The Birth of the Atomic Age
MLS 630
Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 pm
August 27 - December 3
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
Click here for booklist.
Global Arts: Windows into the HeARTS of Other Cultures
MLS 610
ONLINE COURSE
August 25 - December 8
Can we appreciate the arts of cultures foreign to us? Is a translation process necessary? Does a culture’s sense of time and space affect its artistic expressions? Study of global arts provides a helpful window into the hearts of other cultures. In this course we will expand our understanding of our ways of thinking/sensing/feeling to prepare for a comparative exploration of the arts of four different cultural contexts beyond our own. We will survey the past and present arts of these countries in search of clues to common themes and ideas while attempting to discover the distinct world views represented.
Larry Lavenderis 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.
Passion of the Western Mind
MLS 610
Mondays, 6:00 - 8:50pm
August 25 - December 8
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
This course looks at the “big” questions—what is the mind? what is the purpose of life? what does it mean to be human?—and at the characteristic, often conflicting answers, which successive ages from the ancient to the modern world have given. At the same time the course considers how models of liberal education have been shaped by the different answers to these “big” questions. Guided by a modern narrative account (The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas), we will examine the question-and-answer saga of the Western mind through works of representative “big thinkers:” Plato, Augustine, Dante, Descartes, Wordsworth, Dewey and Sartre.
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.
Clue: Dective and Mystery Fiction
MLS 610
ONLINE COURSE
September 8 - November 14 (10 weeks)
Who done it, how, and why? Those are the questions that pull us into the mystery. In Clue: Detective and Mystery Fiction, you’ll have a chance to answer those questions about mystery fiction itself. How does the mystery writer draw us in and capture us as readers? And as you investigate the hows and whys of the genre, you’ll have a chance to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with the greatest detectives—Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot—and some of the most intriguing mysteries in fiction, including Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, Conan Doyle’s Silver Blaze, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Dorothy Sayer’s Oxford classic, Gaudy Night. Along the way, you will investigate crimes that have horrified the public (Jack the Ripper) and learn about forensic techniques as well. Come join us online for this “ripping good time” in literary investigation.
Joseph Rosenblum (Ph.D., Duke University) grew up in Connecticut in a family where the greatest sin was raising one’s voice, though buying retail ran a close second. Since 1980, he has taught at UNCG. Among his books are “Shakespeare: An Annotated Bibliography” (1992) and “A Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare” (1998). In 1990, he won second prize in the Oxford University Press English Detective Fiction contest with a story about a thief who leaves Shakespearean quotations in lieu of the objects he steals. .
London's Fictions: A Cultural History from Defoe to Dickens
MLS 610
ONLINE COURSE
September 18 - November 14 (10 weeks)
From the Restoration until the death of Queen Victoria the development of London as a metropolis, a national capital, and a center of empire made it the first truly modern European city. Writers in two “new” literary forms – the novel and manners comedy – described vividly the pleasures, perils, and problems of London life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This course will look at London’s growth, as interpreted in Roy Porter’s London: A Social History, in relation to its fictional representations by novelists (Defoe, Burney, Dickens, Stevenson) and dramatists (Wilde, Sheridan, Wycherley). These authors’ images of wealth and crime, entertainment and alienation, spectacle and terror shaped our sense of what it means to inhabit a city.
James E. Evans (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) specializes in eighteenth-century British literature and offers seminars in fiction and drama. He is the author of Comedy: An Annotated Bibliography of Theory and Criticism, A Guide to Prose Fiction in the Tatler and the Spectator (with John Wall), and numerous essays on Restoration Comedies, fiction (by Fielding, Smollett, and Richardson), and early British periodicals. A contributor to Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama, he is at work on a study of gambling in late Stuart comedy and culture. A piece of that project appeared recently in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Evans was a winner of the 1999-2000 Teaching Competition of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
History, Myth and the Novel
MLS610
Tuesdays, 6:00-8:50pm
August 27 - December 3
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
The historical novel is beloved by many readers, but we do not always understand what we are getting. This course will look at five examples, loosely tied together by theme (the early days of Christianity/Judaism), but extraordinarily different in execution. The Red Tent, Rachel and Leah, Queenmaker, As a Driven Leaf, and The Memoirs of Hadrian range from bodice-ripper to literary classic. The authors include men and women, Christian and Jew, armchair historian to professional scholar, but all share a bifurcated motive: telling a tale about a past time to comment on their own.
Ann Saab (Ph.D., Harvard) is Professor Emeritus of History at UNCG. She has served as Associate Dean of the UNCG graduate school and head of the History department. A published historian and wanna-be historical novelist, her research interests focus on cross-cultural understanding and misunderstandings.
Literature and the Religious Imagination
MLS 610
Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 pm
August 27 - December 3
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
The time-honored but gnarly relationship between literature and spirituality is rich in metaphor and emotional complexity. Indeed, religious conflicts, moral dilemmas, and flights of spiritual imagination have fueled great literature around the world for millennia.
Through critical reflection and dialogue on contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry, we will develop a deeper understanding of the uneasy tension between religion and the post-modern world and its impact on politics, sexuality, ethics, and artistic expression. We will explore how writers express the basic human questions of identity, wholeness, community, ethical action, religious meaning, and spirituality.
While we expect to develop a critical understanding of why literature and spirituality form such an uneasy yet fruitful relationship, our primary task is to enjoy reading and talking about great literature and the uses of religious language in the literary imaginations of writers such as Edward Hirsch, John Patrick Shanley, Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Knox, Robertson Davies, and Margaret Atwood.
William Hamilton (Ph.D., Tulane University) is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program. Previously he taught at universities in Louisiana and Indiana. At Tulane University he specialized in Latin American history, human rights, and church-state relations. Dr. Hamilton has also served as the UNCG Presbyterian minister.
The Global Economy
MLS 620
ONLINE COURSE
August 25 - December 8
For the past decade or so, “globalization” has been the media buzzword used to describe changes in the U.S. and world economies, perhaps second in recent years only to “the New Economy” in frequency of use. For the most part, this discussion of globalization has focused on changes that seem apparent in contrast to the period following WWII. According to one popular version of this story, in the 1970s the barriers to cross-border trade and financial transactions began to come down. By the late 1990s, as one commentator put it, we lived on the cusp of a “borderless world” where people, information, equipment and ideas would flow freely. In this context, it was imagined, the world would prosper as never before.
During the post-war period, global cross-border trade and financial transactions were a fraction of what they are today. For many developed countries, the increased trade of the past few decades has meant a decline in the importance of manufacturing, as production of everything from cars to shoes has moved to places where labor was relatively cheap. For a few developing countries, this has meant increased investment from rich developed nations. But for many—especially countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, to say nothing of the ex-manufacturing sectors of the developed world—so called “globalization” has bought few, if any, of the beneficial effects once imagined. Or so it would seem.
This course begins where the theory of the global economy and its reality meet. In general, the course highlights the theory of free trade, since it is on the back of this theory that the promise of globalization—or we might say, economic liberalization—rests. As we will see the most recent episode of economic liberalization is but a small part of the whole story, although our recent experiences can tell us a good deal about how free trade might or might not work, and for whose benefit.
The course is divided into eight basic units, each exploring an important topic for understanding the global economy.
Jeffrey K. Sarbaum (Ph.D., SUNY Binghamton) is a Lecturer of Economics at UNCG. He specialized in experimental, labor international and urban economics and was an award-winning economics teacher at SUNY Binghamton.
Global Human Rights
MLS620
ONLINE COURSE
September 8 - November 14
The setting of this course is a grassroots, intensely focused, and highly respected international human rights organization. MALS students will join the organization as trainees to become human rights monitors (investigators). The highly interactive training program will require new monitors to learn by exploring human rights issues around the world. The research requires virtual travel to sites of current conflict to investigate allegations of genocide in Darfur, sex slavery in Thailand, detainee abuse in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and growing threats to civil liberties.
In addition to reeading two textbooks on the philosophical and moral foundations of human rights, students will develop critical familiarity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its historical antecedents in the U.S. Bill of Rights and the French Rights of Man. Understanding the theoretical, cultural, and political foundations of human rights is critical. While many required readings will be available online, students will be expected to view documentaries and films as well as read additional materials that inform their human rights research. Students will become proficient in research methodologies that encourage investigative independence and creativity while maintaining academic rigor in order to understand complex issues and recommend achievable solutions in their reports to the agency director.William Hamilton (Ph.D., Tulane University) is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program. Previously he taught at universities in Louisiana and Indiana. At Tulane University he specialized in Latin American intellectual history, human rights, and church-state relations.
Sustainable Life on a Tuscan Farm
MLS 620
ONLINE & TRAVEL ABROAD COURSE
September 8 - November 16
Travel Abroad: September 29 - October 7
If you have dreamed of a rich, imbedded and diverse experience of Tuscan food, culture and countryside, this is your opportunity. Sign up for the second offering of this MLS course led by Dr. Charlie Headington.
La Tenuta di Spannocchia began as a medieval estate for a wealthy Sienese banking family and continues to this day under the Cinelli family, some of whom live and work on the farm. Many of the buildings are medieval in origin—the castle and the large farm residences—while others, mainly the family villa, come from the 16th century and later. You will occupy the same rooms that workers and family lived in for centuries in which windows overlook a Tuscan valley of great calm and beauty. For pictures and more information, look at: www.spannocchia.com
We will study diverse food production processes, visit farms, learn the history of a medieval farm-estate and the architecture of rural buildings, and have opportunity to explore and enjoy the rural life in Tuscany. Italians will introduce us to their language and customs, guide us through tastings of food—olive oil, cheese, wine, and salami, and show us the farm. One of Spannocchia’s former cooks will conduct a cooking class. She’ll show you how to make pasta or gnocchi, sauces, and Tuscan sweets. A long lunch will follow.
After a day of workshops, working on the farm, or field trips, we will sip the estate wine and then enjoy a four-course dinner of food grown, gathered or hunted on their land. Try some wild boar in a chocolate-wine sauce, a rabbit stew, or a meatloaf of venison. There is always a pasta dish or soup to begin the meal, farm-grown organic vegetables to compliment the meat, salad and a sweet for dessert. After each dinner we will meet for class discussion.
We will take trips to nearby towns, museums, farms and vineyards. Our field trips may include a cheese producing sheep farm, an apiary (honey is very important to Italians), or an ancient cloister. Classical and whimsical gardens are nearby. Spannocchia itself has 1200 acres with trails to ancient ruins, a castle, and a Roman bridge. There also will be time just to relax.
Charlie Headington (Ph.D., University of Chicago) teaches a variety of courses at UNCG and in the community. Most of them encourage people to examine themselves and society, and make constructive changes in how they think and live. He likes to garden, walk, cook, be with his family, and learn Italian.
The Birth of the Atomic Age
MLS 630
Wednesdays, 6:00 - 8:50 pm
August 27 - December 3
Triad Center, 7900 Triad Center Drive
In 1941 a meeting took place in Copenhagen between two of the major scientific figures in modern physics. This meeting is dramatized in the Tony award-winning play, “Copenahagen.” The play brings to life the complex scientific and moral issues behind the creation of the atomic bomb. We will begin the course by participating in a Reader’s Theatre of the production.
In order to introduce the class to some of the basic ideas in atomic and nuclear chemistry and physics, we will red what is perhaps the best account of the development of the atomic age. Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb describes the history, the people, the moral dilemmas, the science, the scientific problem and the solutions that arose in the manufacture of this fearsome weapon. Lectures and class discussions will emphasize the scientific ideas of each chapter, but the other dimensions of the story will not be ignored. Hopefully, we will develop some appreciation for the history of the development of this science and the people who were responsible for the achievement.
Robert Miller (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is Professor Emeritus of Physics. As Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences he was instrumental in the founding of the MALS program in 1985.
*To participate in any online course, students MUST have access to one of the following system set-ups:
MAC
Mac OS 9 or better
128 MB RAM
G3 processor or better
At least 56Kbps modem connection (although Broadband / fastaccess is preferred)
Internet Explorer 5 or better or Safari
PC
Windows 98 or better
128 MB RAM
Pentium III or better (or at least a processor running 333 Mhz or better)
At least 56Kbps modem connection (although Broadband / fast access is preferred)
Internet Explorer 5.5 or better
Questions? Call Julee Johnson, Liberal Studies Coordinator, (336) 315-7748; or Kathleen Forbes, Director of Liberal Studies, at (336) 315-7713.
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.