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Master of Liberal Arts Program
811 Anderson Hall
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
215-204-1644 (phone)
215-204-9611 (fax)
Jayne K. Drake
Director, MLA Program
mla@temple.edu
215-204-7743 (phone)
Michael Szekely
Assistant Director, MLA Program
mszekely@temple.edu
215-204-6704 (phone)
Colleen Knapp
Administrator
colleen.knapp@temple.edu
215-204-1644 (phone)
Stephanie Morawski
Coordinator
morawski@temple.edu
215-204-1644 (phone)
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 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. Other courses--including online or "blended" courses with variable meeting times--may also be offered at the Ambler and Ft. Washington campuses.
In addition, a number of other graduate courses across the College of Liberal Arts and the University are offered on the Main Campus, typically during the day or early evening.
Registering for courses:
For general information regarding registration, please go to: http://www.temple.edu/registrar/students/registration/info.asp
If you are a NEW NON-MATRICULATED student (i.e. have not previously taken a graduate course at Temple), please do the following:
The Statistical Record Form will be signed by the MLA Director or Assistant Director and all documentation will be submitted to the CLA Office of Graduate Affairs, who will then register the student.
If a student chooses to not attend the course, it is the student’s responsibility to drop it within the first two weeks of class in order to receive a full tuition refund. If the student does not drop the course within this timeframe and withdraws later, the student will still be liable for all tuition costs. If the student does not drop or withdraw, s/he will receive an “F” for the course, and that grade will appear on the student’s transcript.
In general, every non-matriculated (whether new or not) student interested in taking an MLA class any given semester must register through the College of Liberal Arts (contact the MLA Advisor).
If you are a MATRICULATED student, the MLA program will register you during your first semester of enrollment. After the first semester, all matriculated students in the MLA program should be able to register on their own via Self-Service Banner in TUportal.
General questions or concerns? Contact Michael Szekely, Assistant Director/Advisor, at mszekely@temple.edu
MLA 8011 Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies: The Barnes Foundation
Ken Finkel
TUCC
Wednesdays, 6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
This course is designed to serve as an introduction to interdisciplinary studies in the MLA program. Its focus is the Barnes Foundation, a real-world example that enables a real-world and multi-faceted exploration of the role of the art institution in the regional and national cultural landscape. Through readings and site visits we will identify and debate concepts in the origin and future of this institution, its collections and its past and future role. Students in this course will become engaged readers and writers of the issues facing the art institution in American society, its policies, practices and evolving expectations.
Kenneth Finkel, Distinguished Lecturer in Temple University’s American Studies and Master of Liberal Arts Programs, has held various positions in Philadelphia’s cultural community: Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Program Officer at the William Penn Foundation and most recently Executive Director of Arts & Culture Service at WHYY. Publications include seven books and catalogues on 19th-century photography, graphics, and architecture with a focus on Philadelphia as a center of innovation. In addition to his first book, Nineteenth-Century Photography in Philadelphia, his other published worked include the early 19-th century sketchbooks of Joshua Rowley Watson and the Pennsylvania Railroad photographs of William H. Rau. Finkel revived the almanac in editions of the Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual for 1994 and 1995. He has served on the Board of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.
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MLA 8041 Foundations of American Culture: Jazz
Dr. Michael Szekely
Fort Washington
ARRANGED-Blended Online course with on-campus activities
Tentative schedule for classroom meetings: January 21, February 25, March 24, April 28 (all Saturdays), from 9-11:30, at Temple Fort Washington.
From the academic enclaves of higher education to its role in corporate culture in marketing anything from cars to cognac, jazz in the early 21st century seems to reside at extremes. Jazz occupies the curious position of experiencing, on the one hand, a precariousness to the extent that some would argue that it is actually a dying art form and, on the other hand, a resurgence in terms of its role in promoting certain cultural or commercial ideals (and here I am referring primarily to the U.S. culture with which I am most familiar), e.g. democracy, freedom, national pride, hipness, individualism.
This course will look at the cultural, historical, political, artistic, and philosophical attributes of jazz. We will may also chronicle the lives of different musicians, in search of the ways in which their work documents experiences, struggles, recollections, depictions, etc. and speaks to the role of music in shaping certain societal/cultural/political visions, goals, and dreams. To which events/issues were these musicians responding? How did their work reflect these events/issues? How did their work influence these events/issues? Not surprisingly, we will also be listening to a fair share of music, as well as possibly viewing some films/documentaries about music/musicians.
No technical facility with respect to playing a musical instrument or knowledge of music theory is required for this course.
Michael Szekely (Ph.D., Temple University; Philosophy). Dr. Szekely's 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). He has published articles in such journals as Jazz Perspectives, Social Semiotics, Textual Practice, Rhizomes, Contemporary Aesthetics, Popular Music and Society, and the Oxford Handbook on Music Education Philosophy (forthcoming), and is currently writing a book on Barthes and music. Dr. Szekely is also a practicing musician and composer, with particular interests in collective improvisation and popular music.
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MLA 8120 Topics in Cultural Studies: Literary, Artistic, and Intellectual Paris
Gayle Rosenwald Smith
TUCC
Mondays, 6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
This course will examine artistic and literary Paris and the Americans such as James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas who fled to France to escape discrimination in the United States.
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.
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MLA 8180 Ways of Seeing: News Media and National Campaigns
Gayle Rosenwald Smith
TUCC
Tuesdays, 6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Does the media report the news or make the news? In this campaign season, we will look at news coverage, especially around debates and the effect news coverage has on the end results.
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.
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MLA 8210 Topics in Political Culture: Government, Ideas, and the American Economy
Dr. Alix Howard
TUCC
Thursdays, 6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
This course explores the relationship between our political institutions, competing ideological perspectives on economic policy, and contemporary global capitalism. We will take a historical and comparative approach, tracing what was (and is) unique about the American State and exploring its place in global capitalism relative to other nations. We will grapple with the deep economic and ideational structures underpinning public policy, but, with an eye on the 2012 election, will also assess the claims and counter-claims of our political elites. The course will be in seminar form, with students expected to interrogate my proposed readings, but also to bring their own topical concerns and perspectives.
Alistair (Alix) Howard is an Assistant Professor (Instructional) in the Political Science Department. He has also taught at Temple's Fox School of Business, as well as teaching graduate courses in Public Administration at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Howard’s doctorate in politics is from George Washington University and he specializes in comparative & international political economy, and public policy in liberal market economies such as Britain and the US. His current research interests are the uses of international comparative argument in political discourse.
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MLA 9082 Independent Study
Click HERE for more information on the independent study option.
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 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 8160 Topics in Environmental Studies
This course explores a wide range of environmental issues and the various factors that define those issues, encompassing physical, economic, political, demographic, and ethical considerations. Possible topics include groundwater contamination, suburban sprawl, river basin management, environmental justice, and the greening of abandoned urban spaces. It may also include an examination of the cultural meaning of the environment and its representation in art and literature.
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 8190 Modernism
Modernism was not a single movement but a multiplicity of cultural changes involving issues of perception, identity, memory, culture, and the nature of modernity itself. This course explores the terrain of culture and the arts (e.g., film, art, literature, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism) within the context of historical and technological change.
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 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 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 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