Courses Offered
LIBS 560 FOUNDATIONS IN LIBERAL STUDIES
This course is mandatory for students entering the MALS program. It will introduce students to the understanding of advanced liberal studies, to critical thinking skills, and to graduate level interdisciplinary skills and methodologies. This course is repeatable once with a different instructor.
Prerequisite: Admission to the MALS Program
LIBS 536 MEMOIR AND TRAVEL WRITING
A course in narrative nonfiction that focuses on memoir and travel writing. Reading involves several books as well as classic essay-length examples. Assignments include both short analytical papers and the writing and revising of three original articles, based on research, interviews, memory, and observation, and drawing on literary techniques. In addition to these assignments, graduate students must prepare a substantial critical analysis focusing on a particular writer or theme, and present their work to the class as well as in writing.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 561 SELF AND SOCIETY
This seminar examines various facets of autobiography and memoir within the context of historical and contemporary cultures. Drawing on texts from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, the seminar analyzes the purpose of self-narrative and explores the cultural patterning of individual experience and literary discourse.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 562 POSTMODERNISM AND TRUTH
Examines the development in the last 10 years of the emergence of "postmodern" scholarship in a number of fields in the natural and social sciences, humanities, and popular culture; considers how in each case these approaches seem to challenge the authority of single explanations and absolute truth. Addresses issues such as diversity in cultures; why cultural pressures produce new forms of relativism; the dynamics of race and gender in intercultural clashes; and the interplay of strongly held values and toleration. Course requires close reading of texts and analyses of them in class discussion.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 563 NEW WORLD CULTURE
Focuses on crosscultural encounters from the advent of the Atlantic slave trade to the emancipation of slaves in the western hemisphere. Course will stress interdisciplinary approaches to the topic, including economics, history, and anthropology.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 564 LITERATURE AND SCIENCE STUDIES
An introduction to the humanistic study of science using works of literature and the techniques of literary analysis. The course examines the relationship between literature and science in Western culture since 1800 while investigating recent approaches to science in history, philosophy, sociology, rhetoric, cultural studies, and literary studies.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 566 INVESTIGATING ACADEMIC LITERACY
Intensive investigation of, and practice with, writing and research skills required for graduate-level work. Through regular assignments, guided reading of a variety of texts, and intensive work with instructor/s and one another, students will explore what it means to produce academic discourse, learn its conventions, and develop skills in written analysis.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 567 THE SELF IN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
This course will utilize both philosophical and literary texts to examine the nature of the self. We will explore the self's inwardness, its relation to others, its capacity for self-knowledge and self deception, its connection to gender, its desire to disown itself and finally its relation to death. The philosophical texts will provide theoretical structures within which to both experience and discuss the literary texts.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 568 RELIGION AND SOCIETY
The course will focus upon how social scientists examine the role of religion in public life. It will examine several religious organizations or communities or religious-based ideologies. The format of the class will be to read primary source materials or research studies and discuss them.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 569 THE TEXTURE OF MEMORY
This seminar will examine theories of individual, collective, and cultural memory and their practical application. In addition, we will read three major novels in which the authors explore memory in its various forms. We will begin the semester by examining the ways in which clinical social constructive sociologists and psychologists have viewed memory. In our examination, we will try to find some points of intersection between the two groups. This will provide the framework for further explorations of memory and the study of constructions of memory and their uses and abuses. We will focus on the ways in which memory has been conceptualized in the disciplines of art history, history, literary criticism, Holocaust studies, sociology, and psychology, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 570 HISTORY OF WARFARE DURING THE AGE OF GUNPOWDER, 1500-2000
A History of Warfare during the Age of Gunpowder offers a summary of human strife from approximately 1500 to the present. Drawing on a series of diverse sources--including analytical assessments by eminent contemporary historians, eye-witness accounts by combatants, and cinematic representations of warfare--this course seeks to explore the origins of human conflict, its evolution during the past 500 years, and its future, if any.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 571 THE SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF EMOTIONS
This course will examine how past philosophers and psychologists analyzed emotions to set the stage for an examination of more recent work on emotions being produced in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. The course will use these analyses to explore some of the following topics: the relationship of emotions to reason, memory, and morality, and the overall role of emotions in our relationship to ourselves and to others.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 572: Migrations of the Holy: Writing the Sacred in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
This course will probe the dynamic shifts in religious subjectivity that mark the years ranging from the early Christian centuries (first and second centuries AD) to the end of the Middle Ages (1500 AD). It will attend mainly to the evidence to be found in the literary record of these two sequential periods, and will be concerned with examining a wide variety of topics, such as the formation of orthodox belief, the challenges posed by apostate and heretical sects, competing modes of ascetic life and practices, the power struggles between secular and ecclesiastical authority, and the rise of mysticism and affective piety. The course will demand close analysis and comparison of texts in class discussion as well as in written assignments.
LIBS 575 MAKING MODERN SCIENCE: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
This seminar will explore how science became a defining feature of modern life around the world in the last five centuries. We will study the so-called "Scientific Revolution" in a global context and in relation to other forms of belief, such as religion and magic, and to changes in human society at large. By critically studying theoretical texts, primary sources, and secondary materials tied to the emergence of the modern sciences, the seminar will challenge participants to examine their assumptions and presuppositions about what science "is," how science "was" in the past, how science has been done, and what its history should be. We will discover how people in different cultures made knowledge of the natural world in premodern times, and examine why some ways of making natural knowledge became more reliable and widespread than others in recent centuries.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 580 GENDER, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY
This is a course about how scholars analyze women, gender, and feminist theories. It introduces students to key questions about gender and the principal methods for studying them. It will serve as a forum for building and testing theories on the totality of women's experience.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 581 ASPECTS OF GREEK CULTURE
This seminar will consider each of the texts as signposts to Greek culture and values. What do the texts reveal about Greek values, social mores, social interaction-between men and women, men and men, children and adults, gods and men? If The Iliad is the "bible of the Greeks," as scholars often claim, what might that mean? What might such a statement reveal about a culture whose "bible" is a book about war? Can such works as Oedipus the King and the Oresteia really provide us significant insights into 5th century Athens? The answers to such questions are, of course, problematic at best, yet one assumes that some element of truth about the culture is buried in each of these popular works of literature. That they have endured for close to three thousand years testifies to something that touches people very deeply.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 582 EUROPEAN IDEAS IN AMERICAN CULTURE, 1800-PRESENT
This course will introduce students to key topics in modern western culture, with focus specifically on the role played by European ideas in the creation of American culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Organized around 3 case studies of European intellectual influences on America using the writings of John Locke, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 583 EARLY MODERN ERA IN NEW AND OLD WORLDS
This is a course on the history of the early modern West from multiple perspectives, with special emphasis on the role played by the Old and New World, together, in the creation of the modern.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 584 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES: CONCEPTS AND PHILOSOPHY
An extensive and intensive analysis of the roots of environmental studies. Environmental studies becomes meta-disciplinary as it makes connections between the traditional disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and technological sciences when dealing with current environmental issues. The students will examine and discuss the philosophical, scientific, social, and religious basis of the environmental movements through classical and contemporary readings. Possible topics will include: views of nature, sustainability, carrying capacity, management of commons, the environment of cities, and developing a sense of place.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 585 WATERSHED ANALYSIS
An interdisciplinary study of watersheds, the most commonly used bio-regional unit. The course will integrate the analysis of many factors which contribute to the character of watersheds, including bedrock and superficial geology, surface and groundwater hydrology, social history, land use history, water quality analysis, biological diversity, laws and regulations, management models, drinking water and wastewater systems, best management practices, and educational programs. The Rouge River Watershed will serve as the primary case study.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 586 ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS
A review of major theories and issues concerning the relationship between ecological and economic systems. Topics include these questions: What is the purpose of economic activity? How important is the preservation of the natural world compared to the production of economic goods? How do principles of social and inter-generational equity affect the use of resources and choice of goods to be produced? The course utilizes a transdisciplinary approach in the development of new models where conventional economics and ecology alone have been ineffective in addressing questions of sustainability and equity.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 587 WOMEN AND PUBLIC SPACES
Despite old and persistent myths of a woman’s place being in the home, women in America have consistently maintained a presence in the nation’s public spaces. Their participation, however, was not unfettered. Laws, social mores, familial and religious restraints, etiquette, the threat of violence, lack of funds, and other factors influenced and restricted women’s behavior when in public and structured society’s reactions to their presence. This course will consider the development of these codes of behavior (formal and informal), how women of different ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, and classes experienced their effects, and the ways in which women sought to temper and undermine the system, particularly in the twentieth century. The course will provide an interdisciplinary approach to the historic, social, physical, economic, and cultural geographies through which women have traveled. Our readings will consider the scholarship generated by urban geographers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literary critics, economists, novelists, and journalists.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 588 CREATIVE CLASS / WORKING CLASS
In this course we will explore changing conceptions of work and its impact on urban redevelopment policies. This issue will be set within a larger theme: the relationship between work and creativity. We begin with a review of writings by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Karl Polyani, E.P. Thompson and others on the history of the concept of work as a specific form of productive human activity. We will then critically examine the nature of the shift from manufacturing to services and the emergence of a new, knowledge-based system of production. Specific policies aimed at recruiting members of the “creative class” to live and work in “cool cities” – Michigan’s cool cities initiative, for example - will be examined and critically evaluated.
LIBS 599 MALS INDEPENDENT STUDY
Provides opportunity for qualified graduate students, in the MALS program to pursue independent research under the direction of a graduate faculty member. Project must be defined in advance, in writing, and must be appropriate to the MALS program. It must be designed to produce a scholarly paper or papers which reflect significant results from the course.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560 and approval of the MALS Director.
LIBS 690 TOPICS IN LIBERAL STUDIES
Presents topics of current interest in graduate liberal studies. Topics vary from term to term.
Prerequisite: LIBS 560
LIBS 697 MALS CAPSTONE EXPERIENCE
This course is designed as a capstone experience for students in the MALS program who are interested in a non-thesis/non-project option. Its aim is to allow students to reflect and draw upon the knowledge they gained in MALS, and then apply this knowledge in class discussions, essays, and research projects on an interdisciplinary topic chosen from an agreed-upon list of topics that relate to the general MALS curriculum. In the first section of the course, students will reflect upon the interdisciplinary nature of their graduate training, drawing connections between the diverse courses they have taken, pinpointing applications to the outside world, and examining the ways that interdisciplinary work has transformed their thinking. The reminder of the class will be organized around an interdisciplinary exploration of one of the following interrelated topics: "Memory," "Identity," "Place," "Community," or "Ways of Knowing." Students will examine how different disciplines and scholars approach the topic. They will also consider the relevance of this broad theme for contemporary issues and debates. To register for the course, students should have completed at least 21 credits in the MALS program, with a minimum GPA of 3.0. This course may also be taken as a LIBS seminar by those choosing the thesis or project option.
LIBS 698 MALS MASTERS PROJECT
An alternative to the usual master's thesis for students who can present a feasible plan for a project using methods of intellectual exploration and analysis other than the document-based research typically used in preparing a thesis. This might include creative writing or other forms of artistic expression. To be carried out under the supervision of a member of the graduate faculty in CASL. Project plan must be approved by the principal project advisor and by the MALS Program Director before student registers for this course.
LIBS 699 MALS MASTERS THESIS
MALS students electing the Thesis option in the last stage of the program will work under the supervision of a member of the graduate faculty in CASL. A prospectus for the thesis must be approved by the principal thesis advisor and the MALS Program Director before the student registers for this course.