MLAS Course Roster


* Classes from September 3rd —December 21st

Fall 2007 Courses

 

MLAS 260-65

Ethical Issues in Everyday Life-Contemporary Moral Problems

Prof. John Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy
Tuesday, 7:00-9:30
Furman Hall, Room 209
First Class: September 4th

Course Description: Human life has always been replete with moral problems.  But developments in technology and the pressures of an increasingly crowded world are now making these moral problems unavoidable.  In this course, we will discuss some of the most difficult and most urgent moral problems facing us.  We will read about and discuss problems of medical treatment and futility, corporate responsibility, and social justice, among others.  Assigned readings should generate spirited class discussions.

This course is the third course in the MLAS Certificate in Ethics series.  Enrollment priority will be given to those continuing students in the ethics certificate program, with others allowed into the course contingent upon available space.

Course Instructor: John Lachs (Ph.D., Yale) is a Centennial Professor of Philosophy and has been a key member of Vanderbilt’s philosophy department for 40 years. Among his many publications are:  The Relevance of Philosophy to Life, A Community of Individuals, and In Love with Life, to name a few.  His philosophical interests center on the study of human nature, leading him into metaphysics, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and ethics. He has continuing research interests in American philosophy and in German Idealism, along with research and teaching interests in medical and business ethics.  An issue of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy was devoted to his essay "Both Better Off and Better: Moral Progress Amid Continuing Carnage," with responses from numerous philosophers, 2001. He also chaired of the American Philosophical Association's Centennial Committee, charged with celebrating the private value and social usefulness of philosophy.

BACK TO TOP

 

MLAS 270-26

Political Islam

Prof. Katherine Blue Carroll, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Monday, 5:30-8:00
Calhoun Hall, Room 103
First Class: September 3rd

Enrollment limited to 15 students


Course Description: The past 30 years have witnessed the rise, across the globe, of groups with Islamic identities and political goals, a phenomenon that has both surprised and frightened many in the West.  Indeed, events from the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 to the attacks of September 11 have led some to conclude that America is on a collision course with Islam, the religion of one-fifth of the world’s population. The class will study several of these groups (Hizbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and others) in depth, and will also analyze the body of theory that attempts to explain the rise of political Islam.  In doing so we will touch on many key questions: Does political Islam represent an inflexible rejection of the West and/or modernity?  Are Islam and democracy incompatible?  Why are some Islamic political groups more violent than others?

Course Instructor: Katherine Carroll is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. She has also served as an Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Science.   She has a Ph.D. from Virginia and authored Business as Usual? Economic Reform in Jordan.

BACK TO TOP

 

 

MLAS 270-27

Religion and Politics in America

Prof. W. James Booth, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy
Tuesday, 7:00-9:30
Calhoun Hall, Room 103
First Class: September 4th

Enrollment limited to 15 students

Course Description: This course is intended to provide an occasion to reflect on and discuss key issues concerning the place of religion in democratic societies, and especially in the United States.  Debates over such issues as abortion, gay marriage, faith-based initiatives and the Pledge of Allegiance, to say nothing of the past presidential election and the recent Supreme Court nominations suggest that these concerns are very much alive in America.  For some faith is central to American life and to its history: to its founders, to many in its abolitionist and civil rights struggles, and to its moral character today.  For others, its active presence in politics is hostile to the separation of church and state and is divisive and sectarian, the enemy of tolerance and pluralism.  Comparable debates are to be found in other democracies, but our focus will be on faith and politics in the U.S. Key questions for us will include: (1) What role, if any, can faith have in our public square? (2) If it is to have a place, how do we handle the diversity of faiths and commitments at work in America? (3) Can there be faith-based policy arguments that speak to all citizens equally?

The readings in this course are broadly speaking political and philosophical and are concerned with general issues such as religion and equality, citizenship and diversity.  They are divided into three areas: in the first section, we will look at some of the major historical works which set the terms of these debates in the American founding period.  We will then turn to some wide-ranging discussions of the contemporary situation.  The final set of readings will discuss the current debate over faith in America. 

Requirements: This course is a seminar, and so keeping abreast of the readings and regular participation in class discussion are expected.  For the written assignment, you can choose between two 7-10 page essays (the first due on October 12; the second due on the last day of class) or one major essay of 14-20 pages due the last day of class.  I will give you suggested topics for all these papers, but you are free to develop a topic of your own, in consultation with me.

Course Instructor: W. James Booth is a Professor of Political Science and Philosophy.  He has a M.A. from McGill University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.  His research interest lies in Political Philosophy.  One of his most known books is  Communities of Memory,  Cornell University Press (2001).  Among some of his recent articles are: "The Unforgotten. Memories of Justice," American Political Science Review. (2001); "Communities of Memory: On Identity, Memory and Debt," American Political Science Review (1999); and,   "Foreigners:  Insiders, Outsiders and the Ethics of Membership." Review of Politics (1991).

BACK TO TOP

 

MLAS 260-64

Music, Gender & Sexuality

Prof. Melanie Lowe, Associate Professor of Musicology, Blair School of Music
Thursday, 7:00-9:30
Blair 2133
First Class: September 6th

Enrollment limited to 15 students

Course Description: In this course, we will explore gender and sexuality in Western music, both art and vernacular traditions.  We will consider such topics as musical constructions of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, the performance of gender, feminist theory, feminist music criticism, issues of gender in music theory, queer theory, castrati, “deviant” sexualities in music, and music as sexual politics.  The course will be run as a seminar.  The main "work" will be our lively and richly textured discussions of weekly reading and listening assignments.  For each reading and listening assignment I will provide a set of questions/issues to consider in preparation for the in-class discussion.  For three of the reading assignments there will be an accompanying writing assignment in the form of a response essay.  Throughout the semester, students in this class will keep a weekly journal (one entry per week) of thoughts, reactions, ideas, questions etc. about issues, music, topics we discuss in class and/or anything else that’s related to the course in some (tangible) way.  Sometimes I'll set a specific question to think and write about; other times the entry will be free reflection.  There will also be one final project, to be presented to the class during the last class meeting. 

This course is one of the options for those students following the Creative Arts MLAS Certificate program.

Course Instructor: Melanie Lowe is Associate Professor of Musicology at the Blair School of Music.  She is also affiliated faculty in Vanderbilt's programs in American Studies and in Women's and Gender Studies. She earned her M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.  Prof. Lowe is the author of Pleasure and Meaning in the Classical Symphony and numerous journal articles on both classical and popular music.  Winner of many teaching awards, including the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Prof. Lowe teaches courses on American popular music, music and American politics, and gender and sexuality in music, along with core history courses on Western music in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Classic eras.

BACK TO TOP

 

MLAS 290- 01

Gilded Age Chicago: White City, Hog Butcher, Seat of Empire

Prof. Cecelia Tichi, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English
Monday, 7:00-9:30PM
Buttrick Hall, Room 201 First Class: September 3rd

Course Description: This Core Seminar is required of all newly admitted MLAS students.  Those students admitted for the 2007-2008 Academic Year will follow a 30 credit-hour degree requirement, which entails the Core Seminar as one of their initial courses and the Capstone Seminar as one the final courses in the program. Other MLAS students may enroll in this course contingent upon sufficient space.

The MLAS Core Seminar members will find opportunities for research in the multiple and diverse identities of a premier U. S. city with a global reach.  (For the sounds of Gilded Age Chicago, according to the novelist Frank Norris, became the sounds "of empire.")

Our work will pivot from the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition that drew hundreds of thousands of visitors to its dazzling, classical White City (and in recent years became the subject of a gripping, best-selling narrative, "The Devil in the White City," a title to be required reading for the course). The '93 world's fair both focused and masked a rich complex of topics roiling American culture and society in the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries and opening opportunities for this MLAS Core Seminar investigations.  From its devastating fire of 1871, through its phoenix-like rebirth as a city of skyscrapers, Chicago became a crucible of urban growth, business enterprise, machine politics, architectural innovation, social experimentation, class and ethnic struggle, labor agitation, and women's civic culture. Writings, photographs, maps and illustrations of the period show a vibrant city that beckoned immigrants from Europe and the Mediterranean even as it drew (or perhaps seduced) eager young American men and women from the rural farmlands to the dazzling Lake Michigan city of gaslight, electricity, department stores, street railways--and steel mills, meat packing plants, and factories, including the strike-riven Pullman rail car works.

Readings will include fiction, memoir, journalism and official documents.  From a literary standpoint, Gilded Age Chicago is featured in novels of Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris, whose "The Pit" is subtitled "A Story of Chicago." The seminar will also explore the journalism and narrative of expose in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," Lincoln Steffens's "muckraker" account of political corruption, and Jane Addams's "Twenty Years at Hull House," a chronicle of a pathbreaking center for what Addams called "social democracy" in America.  The course will include materials in Chicago history and video footage from the "Chicago" and "World's Columbian Exposition" Public Broadcating System documentary productions.  We will schedule three or four outside lectures in specialized subtopics, such as Chicago architecture in the Gilded Age.

Each member of the core seminar will be expected to develop and pursue a research project according to individual interests (e.g., literary, historical, artistic, political, business-related).  Individually tailored to one's interest, each project will be presented to the group so that all members have the opportunity to understand the "mosaic" of Gilded Age Chicago and its legacy in the twenty-first century.

Course Instructor: Cecelia Tichi is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She received her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1968. Before coming to Vanderbilt in 1987, she taught at Boston University. At Vanderbilt, she teaches classes in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, focusing on aspects of culture from consumerism and social critique to country music.

She is the author of six scholarly books as well as the editor of several others, including Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars, and Honky-Tonk Bars (1998). Her books include Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America (1987) and Electronic Heart: Creating an American Television Culture (1991). Her most recent book, Exposes and Excess: Muckraking in America 1900 / 2000 was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2003. Her articles on a variety of topics and authors have appeared in journals such as American Literature, American Literary History, and The Boston Review. She is also the author of three novels: Jealous Heart (1997), Cryin’ Time (1998), and Fall to Pieces (2000).

BACK TO TOP

 

MLAS 260 51

America on Film

Professor Sam B. Girgus                  
Wednesday, 7:00-9:30
Buttrick Hall, Room 015
First Class: September 5th

Enrollment limited to 15 students

Course Overview:The course studies American culture and character on film. It will consider film as a modern art form, a system of cultural production, and an expression of the diversity of the American experience. Beginning with a discussion of the structure and composition of film as an art form, the course also will consider the relationship of film to American studies, ethical philosophy, and culture. Thus, it will relate visual images and cinetext to cultural and philosophical contexts. We will examine how films treat basic American themes such as the individual and community; frontier and urban violence; race, ethnicity, and minorities; the representation and role of women; visual desire and sexual exploitation; the family and authority. We will study directors from the classic era of Hollywood, including Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Elia Kazan as well as the work of current filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, and Clint Eastwood.

As part of a thematic concern of the course with ethics and the American experience as seen in film, students also will be invited to participate in a new project called "Filming Nashville: Student Documentaries on People, Life, and Community." In addition to student documentaries of the life and culture of Nashville, the project involves visiting international scholars of ethics and American life; inter-action with Nashville schools; investigation of urban dynamics in the broader Nashville community. The project is supported by the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies.

This course is one of the options for those students following the Creative Arts MLAS (certificate program).

Course Instructor: Sam B. Girgus is professor of English at Vanderbilt University.  He is the author of America on Film: Modernism, Documentary, and a Changing America; Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan; The Films of Woody Allen (2nd ed.); Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature; The New Covenant: Jewish Writers and the American Idea; The Law of the Heart: Individualism and the Modern Self in American Literature. He also has edited several works, including The American Self: Myth, Ideology, and Popular Culture, and has written many essays and reviews, including articles on humor and Jewish writers and life. A recipient of a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship and other scholarly and teaching awards, he has lectured and taught extensively in universities throughout America and the world. His interdisciplinary teaching and scholarly areas of interest include film, modernism, and American literature, thought, and culture. He also taught a class that made In Loco Amicis: the New Vanderbilt Story, a 30-minute documentary about change at Vanderbilt University. The documentary was researched, written, filmed, and edited by students in a class listed as Documentary Vanderbilt. It was presented at the Nashville Film Festival on April 27, 2004.  During 2003-2004, he directed the development of a new Film Studies major at Vanderbilt. He is a contributor to Screen Decades: The 1930’s and is a member of the Teaching Committee of the SCMS.  He is currently director for  “Film at the Vanderbilt Commons” and a new project, “Filming Nashville: Student Documentaries on People, Life, and Community.” He is currently working on new book entitled, Body and Soul: Time, Ethics, and the Cinemas of Redemption and Desire.