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Master of Liberal Arts Program
941 Anderson Hall
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Jayne K. Drake
MLA Program Director
jayne.drake@temple.edu
215-204-4699 - Phone
215-204-3731 - Fax
Catherine Staples
MLA Administrative Assistant
catherine.staples@temple.edu
215-204-1644 - Phone
215-204-3731 - Fax
MLA courses are usually offered in small seminar settings (7 to 12 students) which provide opportunities for lively engagement and exchange of ideas among the students and the professor. As with most graduate courses, students are often expected to give oral presentations and to submit written assignments.
Most MLA courses are offered during the evening at Temple University’s Center City campus at 1515 Market Street. A typical course meets once a week, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. A number of other graduate courses across the College of Liberal Arts and the University are offered on the Main Campus during the day or early evening.
For Matriculated Students:
You may begin registering for the Summer session courses on Monday, March 17th
You may begin registering for Fall semester courses on Monday, March 24th
For Non-Matriculated Students:
You may begin registering for the Summer session courses on Monday, March 21st
You may begin registering for Fall semester courses on Friday, April 4th
MLA 8110 The Arts and American Culture: Through the Eye of the Lens
Mondays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Section 401
Gayle Rosenwald Smith
As the hookah-smoking Caterpillar in Alice In Wonderland asked "Who are you?", this course will examine the question in light of theater, novels, and non-fiction. Students will see Our Town by Thornton Wilder produced by The Arden Theater. In The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder questioned: "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?" This novel and perhaps one other Wilder work will be required reading. Possibly a screening of Wilder's screenplay of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.
A House Divided will be viewed at InterAct Theater. This will be springboard for a segment on the Israeli/Palestinian question. Also, one acts including Rachel Corrie will be required at InterAct. Some texts will also be required.
Les Miserables will be the starting point of a discussion on the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
Through these materials the class will examine “Who are you?”
Gayle Rosenwald Smith is a Philadelphia Barrymore judge. In addition, Ms. Smith is a practicing attorney, a published author of two non-fiction books, essays, and opinion pieces, which have appeared in such periodicals as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine,
The Chicago Tribune, and on-line publications. She appears on television and radio. Smith has always been passionate about theater, film, literature, and the arts and enjoys teaching.
MLA 8150 Topics in Gender Studies: Mothers and Daughters in Literature
Wednesdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Section 401
Gabriella Ibieta
Writing truthfully about motherhood and daughterhood, especially in relation to the self, is no easy enterprise. Whether we write as daughters or as daughter-mothers, many women preserve, develop, and re-create the self through writing about the relationships and connections between motherhood and daughterhood. This kind of writing is contextualized not only by gender, but also by race and ethnicity, economic class, and social and cultural pressures and traditions.
Our seminar will explore how the experience of being a mother and/or a daughter—both gendered identities—is rendered in the fiction, memoirs and essays of representative, contemporary American women writers. Selected readings in women’s studies, sociology and cultural studies will provide the critical framework for our discussion of literary texts.
Gabriella Ibieta received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and has been teaching for many years. She is editor of a collection of Latin American stories and has published several essays in academic journals. Her research interests include the literature of exile and displacement, female identities, memoir and documentary film, and American ethnic literature.
MLA 8120 Topics in Cultural Studies: The Arts and American Culture in the
Progressive Age 1900-1919
Wednesdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Section 401
Patricia Bradley
How does culture happen? Does it bubble up from a collective unconsciousness and, like Old Faithful, force its way through a crusty surface, proof of an impulse that cannot be denied? Is it yet another tool of governance, constructing themes useful for a stable society? Is it simply content for business interests? In such a scenario, how much do audiences have in influencing the culture under which they live? Do arts and culture serve as signifiers of class lines? Alternatively, can we say arts and culture result from a cluster of influences arriving at an historic moment, none more emblematic than the first decades of the 20th century?
Questions of cultural formation and purposes have been addressed by such classic thinkers as Weber, Horkeimer, Adorno; Marx, Fiske and Williams, and they continue to be addressed by today’s scholars from alignments in the fields of sociology, anthropology and communication studies. We will be drawing on examples from all these fields as we examine “reception studies”-- what role audiences play in their own culture-- and a “production of culture” approach that examines a few of the myriad levers that control cultural products. We’ll examine how these approaches affected areas of American cultural products in first part of the 20th century as we develop, not so incidental for a Master of Liberal Arts program, an appreciation of the artifacts themselves, not only as “products” but works of art that enrich lives in ways that may not so easy to quantify.
The influences on the culture at the turn of the century were numerous--the demands and cultures of new immigrants, the changing role of women, and the emergence of black Americans as a national cultural force. In addition, we will look at the Progressive agenda; the rise of public relations and advertising; a capitalist society and the entrepreneurial opportunities offered by new technologies; the uses of nationalism and myth, the role of corporate control and the pull and push of the status quo. Amidst this tangle, ongoing questions will be how much genius and talent can override other aspects; the tensions between social pressures and individual agency; the pressures from “high” and “low” cultures; and, finally, despite changing times and technologies, how the template persists today.
Dr. Patricia Bradley has published three books on social history: Slavery, Propaganda and the American Revolution; Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975; and The Struggle for Equality Women and the Press. She is currently working on a new book based on research for this class.
MLA 8021 Foundations of Modern Thought, I: American Empire: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Troubled World
Dr. Craig Eisendrath
Tuesdays, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Section 401
TUCC
American Empire will take up important topics in our foreign policy: our relations in the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iraq, Iran, and Palestine and Israel; nuclear disarmament and the weaponization of outer space; relations with Russia, China, and the European Union; and our handling of world poverty.
The course will emphasize independent thinking. Students will be expected to be informed and ready to talk in class. Each student will make a class presentation on a foreign policy topic and write a paper on the topic.
Readings will include Blood and Oil by Michael T. Klare and The End of Poverty by Jeffrey D. Sachs; Bomb Scare by Joseph Cirincione; Bush League Diplomacy by Craig Eisendrath and Melvin A. Goodman; War in Heaven by Helen Caldicott and Craig Eisendrath; maybe Making Globalization Work by Joseph Stiglitz and The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson.
Craig Eisendrath, a former diplomat with the Department of State, was instrumental in writing the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard University, founded an experimental college, directed the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and co-founded the National Constitution Center. He is presently Chairman of the Project for Nuclear Awareness and an adjunct professor at Temple University. He is the author of National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War; The Phantom Defense: America’s Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion; Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives Are Putting the World at Risk; and War in Heaven : The Arms Race in Outer Space, as well as several novels and plays, most recently To Enter Jerusalem, to be released in April.
MLA 8031 Foundations of Modern Thought II: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory
Dr. Michael Szekely
Mondays, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Section 401
TUCC
This course will explore the cultural, historical, technological, industrial, artistic, and political (did I leave something out?) attributes of popular music. In doing so, we might first need to grapple with our sense of what exactly we mean by “popular.” In music, for instance, is “popular” the same as “pop”? If not, what’s the difference?
And does that difference matter? In a broader sense, we will also explore the role of theory in the context of popular music (e.g. as part of what in academia is called “popular music studies”), not to mention in the context of music in general. That is, what are some of the possibilities and limitations of theorizing something like music, which is, at once, so ubiquitous and yet so context-specific? Should we just leave folks to their stereos, iPods, and downloads? Or can/should popular music also be transformative in the socio-political sphere? Not surprisingly, we will also be listening to a fair share of music, as well as viewing some films/documentaries about music/musicians.
Michael Szekely received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Temple University. His primary research and teaching interests are in Cultural and Critical Theory, Aesthetics (especially the philosophy of music), and Contemporary Continental Philosophy, with more particular interests in French poststructuralism (especially Gilles Deleuze and Roland Barthes) and the Frankfurt School (especially Walter Benjamin). Michael is also a practicing musician and composer, with particular interests in collective improvisation and pop music.
MLA 8110 The Arts and American Culture: Stars and Stardom
Dr. Gabriel Wettach
Wednesdays, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Section 401
TUCC
This MLA seminar will be devoted to an intensive study of stardom as a byproduct of film. The main goal of this seminar is to examine the shift from the “star” (a product of a bygone studio system who could only emerge from film) to the “celebrity” (a famous person who can emerge from within any number of media). While doing this, we will give critical attention to the wider theoretical imperatives stardom raises, such as corporeality and Hollywood labor, spectatorship, the female and male body in film and culture, cult fan formations, and sexual, racial, and class constructions. The chosen texts are intended to provide seminar members with the fundamentals of star studies and a theoretical framework for analyzing the complicated and complicating ways in which stars reflect, shape, and contest cultural values.
Gabriel (Gabe) Wettach received his Ph.D. in theory and cultural studies from Purdue University. He is currently the director of Undergraduate English at Temple University and teaches courses in film studies, stardom, and popular culture. His primary research and teaching interests include film and television stardom and cultural criticism.
MLA 8180 Ways of Seeing: Philosophical Problems of Literature
Mr. Carlin Romano
Thursdays, 6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Section 401
TUCC
In what sense do literary characters exist? Is it ethical to write the so-called roman a clef, the "novel by key" about real people, while changing facts to make them better or worse? What makes one kind of narrative "literature" and another kind "journalism" or "oral history"? Does a novel make claims about the world that can persuade people, or are refutable?
Literature abounds with philosophical questions that don't undermine its human impact, but, arguably, strengthens it. In this seminar, reading both literature (poetry and novels) and philosophy, we'll explore how the two fields intersect, also weighing whether philosophy itself can rise (stoop?) to a form of literature.
Carlin Romano is Literary Critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Critic-at-Large of The Chronicle of Higher Education, and an ongoing Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches media theory and philosophy. He was a full time Visiting Associate Professor in the Temple Philosophy Department from 2000-2002 on a Dean's Appointment. In addition to his other activities, he is active in professional philosophy: In November, he'll be one of UNESCO's invited speakers from the U.S.to its "World Philosophy Day" symposia in Istanbul, and he'll be attending and giving talks this year at conferences sponsored by the Yale Philosophy Department, University of Texas/Austin Philosophy Department, APA Pacific, and elsewhere.
MLA 8210 Studies in Political Culture: The Winds of Political Change: The Politicians, the Power, and the Press
Dr. Gayle Smith
Thursdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Section 401
TUCC
This class will delve into the political process and answer questions --- What is the media's role in the political process? Does the media report the news or make the news? What is the psychology behind the electoral process? By analyzing movies such as Wag the Dog, plays, books, and newspapers, the class will answer the question, "How does a president or other political official get elected?" Once in power, what are the responsibilities to the electorate? How are critical decisions made?
The course will take advantage of current events to fully view the political process.
Gayle Rosenwald Smith is a Philadelphia Barrymore judge. In addition, Ms. Smith is a practicing attorney, a published author of two non-fiction books, essays, and opinion pieces, which have appeared in such periodicals as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and on-line publications. She appears on television and radio. Smith has always been passionate about theater, film, literature, and the arts and enjoys teaching.
MLA 8300 Special Topics: "Off With Their Heads!": A Study of Fairy Tales, Their Hidden Meanings and Their Relevance in the Modern World.
Dr. Bobby Kimbel
Wednesdays, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Section 401
When we turn, as adults, to the reading of fairy tales, - having at the very least an awareness of their impact on and pervasiveness in Western Culture (see, for example, the many Disney and other full-length cartoon adaptations) - we can easily be stunned at the brutality and violence in nearly every one. Monstrous behavior abounds: murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, incest, all of them graphically depicted. Why, then, we are led to ask, have children and their parents been so captivated by this form for over two hundred years? This course will explore answers (there are many: sociological, anthropological, psychoanalytic, linguistic, feminist) to this question and will examine both the transition of the literary fairy tale from its origins in folk tale and myth to its permutations in our contemporary culture.
Bobby. Kimbel, a frequent award winner for her outstanding teaching, is also a scholar of note, having published several works of critical commentary on both fiction (mainly the short story) and the works of Eugene O’Neill. She has led many discussions at national meetings in the areas of her special interests and has given a number of public lectures. She has recently returned to Temple (where she received her Ph.D.) after many years as a tenured professor at Penn State, where she was the recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award across all disciplines on the campus. She is a popular instructor with both undergraduates and returning students, all of whom remark about her communication skills and her passion for the subjects she teaches.
MLA 8011, 8021, 8031, and 8041 form the core of the MLA degree and provide a foundation for the students individualized course of study. Generally students take at least two of these courses fairly early in their program of study.
MLA 8011 Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies
This course introduces students to interdisciplinary graduate studies and to cultural analysis by looking at the kinds of questions that can best be answered through an interdisciplinary approach and with various available methodologies. Taking American culture as its primary focus, students read texts in areas such as Visual Culture, American Studies, Women's Studies, and the Arts and Society. Topics include, for example: cultural representations of gender and sexualities, and of race and "whiteness"; the social construction of space and place; technology and its construction of identity; boundaries of culture and consumption (high, low, middlebrow); museums and cultural memory.
MLA 8021 Foundations of Modern Thought, I
This course explores the foundations of modern thought by examining the essential elements of the intellectual and literary traditions of world cultures, from ancient times to the Enlightenment. Representative readings will be drawn from literature, philosophy, and psychology, from Western traditions (e.g., Greeks, Hebrews, and Romans) as well as non-Western. Sample topics include: The Old Testament world view; the classical ideal of the hero; the Platonic ideal; the medieval religious synthesis; the Renaissance and statecraft; Cartesian method; the morality of the Enlightenment; the beginnings of alienation. Sample texts: The Book of Job; Psalms, Homer, The Iliad; the Koran; the Sundiata; Gilgamesh; African Folktales; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Plato, The Dialogues; Ovid, The Metamorphosis; Augustine, Confessions; Dante, The Divine Comedy; Machiavelli, The Prince; Descartes, Discourse on Method; Moliere, Tartuffe; Voltaire, Candide.
MLA 8031 Foundations of Modern Thought, II
This course examines the foundations of contemporary thought, moving from the Romantic and Victorian world views to Modernism and Postmodernism. Students explore the new paradigms which have come about from breakthroughs in science and social thought, and from the traumatic events of the twentieth century. Readings are drawn from literature, history, science, and philosophy. Sample topics include: Evolution and its impact on social thought; Communism; the Freudian Revolution; Einstein and the new Physics; the Modernist Revolution; Existentialism; Structuralism and Post-Structuralism; Cybertechnology and the Digital Age. Sample authors include: Marx; Darwin; Einstein; Whitehead; Nietzsche; Freud; Woolf; Beckett; Joyce; Le Corbusier; W. Benjamin; Sartre; Ellul; Baudrillard; Barthes; Viktor Frankl; Norbert Wiener; Pynchon; Marquez; Kuhn; Foucault.
MLA 8041 Foundations of American Culture
This course looks at the foundations and traditions of American thought and culture, from the Protestant foundation to America's place in global culture and cyberculture. An effort is made to connect intellectual traditions with historical events, including the American Revolution, the rise of feminism and abolitionism in the nineteenth century, and the emerging industrial and technological world of the twentieth century. American traditions are placed in the contexts of European thought and the broader model of globalization. Readings are drawn from a variety of writers, from seventeenth-century Puritan ministers and eighteenth-century statesmen to Emerson and Frederick Douglass and then to William James, John Rawls, Cornel West, Kwame Appiah. Sample topics include: Protestant Foundation; American Enlightenment; Transcendentalism; Realism and Naturalism; Pragmatism; Technology; Feminism; Race and Ethnicity; the symbol of America in modern thought; globalization and its consequences.
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The content of these courses varies depending on the professor, so please be sure to check the course listings every semester. Students must take at least two courses from these listings.
MLA 8110 Topics in the Arts and American Culture
This course explores the relationship between the arts and American culture, with an emphasis on how music, literature, and visual arts have reflected social, political, and intellectual concerns. The levels of art, from high to middlebrow to popular, will also be considered, with attention to the cross influences from one to the other, and the question of audience.
MLA 8120 Topics in Cultural Studies
This course examines topics relating to popular culture, media, and advertising, with an emphasis on how cultural representations reflect social and political interests. The approach embraces various competing disciplines (e.g., literature, anthropology, philosophy) at the intersection of aesthetics and politics.
MLA 8130 Topics in Visual Culture
An exploration of photography, film, television, and other visual media, in terms of the ways they interpret the world. Some of the issues considered will be: What are the elements of the visual? How are race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality represented in the media? How do visual media interact with one another?
MLA 8140 Topics in Performance Studies
Performance Studies encompasses dance, theater, and mixed media theatrical presentations, from street theater to happenings to public ritual. The course targets specific topics ranging from historical studies to the contemporary.
MLA 8150 Topics in Gender Studies
The changing constructions of gender are the subject of this course which will explore such topics as representations of masculinity; feminist theory and the academy; the sexual revolution; society and homosexuality.
MLA 8171 Intellectual Heritage, MLA
This course may focus on a number of diverse topics depending on the instructor: e.g., the Greek foundations of modern thought; the religious texts that provide an important underpinning for Western Civilization; the Enlightenment commitment to reason, science, and the essential goodness and individuality of man; Romanticism and its emphasis on feelings and the imagination; great thinkers of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first centuries.
MLA 8180 Ways of Seeing
Our educational system tends to neglect the visual world, despite our growing dependence on pictorial and visual information. Using methods from anthropology, psychology, communications theory, and art history, this course will explore nonverbal communication, the built environment, photography, film, and television as culturally conditioned symbolic systems.
MLA 8210 Topics in Political Culture
Public policy has often emerged out of a combination of legal struggle, political negotiation, private wealth, and public interest groups. This course focuses on American political culture, including such topics as civil rights, the conservative right vs. the left, government by plutocracy, national health care, the rights of the poor, and the fate of the middle class.
MLA 8220 Topics in Urban Studies
This course explores the way cities have been formed and continue to be formed in relation to parks and neighborhoods, suburbs, and regions. The emphasis is on the way urban culture is shaped through the design of space, architectural form, and through urban planning.
MLA 8250 Topics in Science, Technology, and Culture
The impact of science and technology on culture has been pervasive and can be measured in terms of social life and habits, the environment, the arts, and politics. Emphasizing the last hundred years, this course examines some of the more significant changes in science and technology, from the automobile to computers, and explores the ways the individual and society have been redefined.
MLA 8230 Topics in International Studies
After World War II, with the independence of formerly colonial nations, a new world of independent nation states evolved, torn between the pressures of ethnic culture, global communications, and international economies. This course explores issues of cultural identity and cultural conflict, as they surface in literature and film, in global tourism, in efforts at global cooperation and global competition.
MLA 9082 Independent Study
Students who wish to enroll for Independent Study must submit a proposal written under the direction of a faculty member who will supervise the student's work. This proposal must be submitted the semester before the Independent Study is to take place. The proposal should describe the project, indicate a) works to be read, b) frequency of student-instructor meetings, c) student writing to be produced, and d) means of student evaluation.
"Through the professors, students, and material, the MLA teaches us about what it it means to be human by allowing us to engage in life in a more meaningful way."
Mark Rice, MLA student