MLAS Course Roster


Summer 2008 Courses

* Classes from June 9th through August 15th. See individual course descriptions for first class meeting date and place.

 

MLAS 270 08

Aztecs and Conquistadors

Professor William Fowler
Garland Hall 002A
Mondays, 6:30-9:30
First Class: June 9

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

The conquest of Mexico was a major watershed in the history of the world, not only because it meant the defeat of the Aztecs and the toppling of the Aztec empire by the Spaniards, but also because it set in motion a series of profound changes that would profoundly and permanently alter both cultures and, ultimately, have repercussions for the entire world. We approach the material on the Conquest as one of the most fully documented episodes of massive culture change in human history. When Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico in the early sixteenth century, they encountered a remarkably sophisticated civilization with very dense urban populations. This course examines the organization and structure of the Aztec empire on the eve of the Conquest; Aztec social, political, and economic organization; warfare and religion; the origins and expansion of the Spanish empire in the New World; the events and processes of the Conquest; and early Colonial period changes. Data and evidence are derived from a wide array of archaeological, historical, geographic, art historical, and ethnographic sources.

Course Instructor:

Professor William R. Fowler is an archaeologist and ethnohistorian with special interests in the Nahua (Aztec)-speaking cultures of Mexico and Central America and in sixteenth-century Spain.  He has conducted archaeological fieldwork for more than thirty years in Mexico and Central America, and documentary research in the archives of Spain, Mexico, and Guatemala.  His last major archaeological project was a ten-year investigation of a Spanish-conquest town in El Salvador.  He has published six books and more than fifty journal articles and book chapters.  He is editor of the international journal Ancient Mesoamerica, published by Cambridge University Press.  Professor Fowler has taught at Vanderbilt for twenty years.

GUEST LECTURER:
Pierre Robert Colas, M.A. from the University of Hamburg, Ph.D. from the University of Bonn. Interests in Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Writing and Iconography. Dissertation topic on significance of personal names in Classic Maya culture. Interest in Ethnography of Yucatec Maya of Belize. Two years of ethnographic field research among the Yucatec Maya. Several field seasons of archaeological research in caves in the Maya region in various projects. Currently he is working on two book projects, one on identity differences in the Classic Maya area, the other on influence of Pentecostalism on Yucatec indigenous people.

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MLAS 260 70

Found and Fabricated: Creativity & Object-Making

Professor Michael Aurbach
Ingram Studio Arts Building
Wednesdays, 6:30-9:30
First Class: June 11

This course is limited to 14 MLAS students. Enrollment priority will be given to those with seniority in the program and those pursuing the Creative Arts Certificate.

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course is designed to introduce students to object-making through additive processes. Historians of art often consider the use of found objects and assemblage to be modern approaches to making art but visual artists often find these methods to be closely tied to the creative efforts of the earliest humans.

People frequently associate sculpture with subtractive (carving) and modeling (clay) processes. The distinct advantage of approaching art through “addition” is that it is an incredibly effective vehicle for addressing matters related to innovation, form, and content. This is not a “how to” course though it includes instruction in some basic fabrication processes.

During the term two projects will be assigned. The first assignment is to create a lure for catching humans. Just what is it that attracts us to anything? Of course the class will be asked to avoid such obvious vices as sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, and money. The second project asks the student to create “personal baggage.” Regardless of our personal aspirations or station in life, we are always conditioned by our baggage or personal histories. The assignment requires that a student create or modify a container so that it serves as a reflection or statement about who they are. The container must be portable because personal baggage follows useverywhere. The course includes slide presentations, readings, and class critiques of the creative work.

Course Instructor:

Professor Michael Aurbach has taught courses in sculpture and drawing at Vanderbilt since 1986. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Southern Arts Federation, the Tennessee Arts Commission, Art Matters Inc., the Puffin Foundation Ltd., and Vanderbilt University are among the institutions that have provided support for his socially inspired work. In 1995, Aurbach was honored with the Southeastern College Art Conference Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement.

There have been more than sixty solo exhibitions of his work and he has been a visiting artist at more than two-hundred universities, museums, and cultural institutions throughout the United States. In 2001 Aurbach was honored with the inaugural exhibition of contemporary art at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville.

Aurbach is a past president of the College Art Association, the world’s largest non-profit organization of visual arts professionals. He has also served on the boards of the Southeastern College Art Conference, the Mid-America College Art Association, and the Tennessee Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

 

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MLAS 260 71

Medicine and Literature

Professor Holly Tucker
Wednesdays, 6:30-9:30
Furman 209
First Class: June 11

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

In Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge, Kathryn Montgomery Hunter argues forcefully that: “Medicine, for all of its reliance on esoteric knowledge and sophisticated technology, is not a science….Medicine is an interpretive activity, a learned inquiry that begins with the understanding of the patient and ends in therapeutic action on the patient’s behalf. Far from being objective, a matter of hard facts, medicine is grounded in subjective knowledge—not of the generalized body in textbooks, which is scientific enough—but the physician’s understanding of the particular patient” (xvii, xx).

This course explores tensions and intersections between logico-scientific reasoning and humanistic interpretative practices in both literary and medical contexts. Like literature, medicine engages stories and often takes into account the narrative frameworks through which information is communicated. We will study the contributions that narrative and close reading skills can bring to clinical and cultural understandings of illness and the body. Readings will include a variety literary texts (short stories, novels, plays, poems) that address issues of deep relevance to the practice of medicine (stories of illness, doctor-patient relationships, gendered and cultural dynamics of the clinical setting, bioethical dilemmas, etc.).

Course readings are available on OAK (online instructional resource). Students should also purchase the following required texts:

  • Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness
  • Richard Selzer, Letters to a Young Doctor
  • William Carlos Williams, The Doctor Stories

Recommended texts:

  • Richard Reynolds and John Stone, eds. On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays
  • Jerome Groopman. How Doctors Think

Evaluation:

  • Regular class attendance/participation
  • Short Papers: Students will write 3 short (3 page) reflection papers. These papers will provide an opportunity to question, explore, and engage more critically with specific topics presented in class. Paper grades will be based on: evidence of critical reflection, presentation of argument, and clarity of writing.
  • OAK Discussion Board: Students will be expected to participate actively on the OAK Discussion Board. Posts should be substantive in nature and foster intellectual inquiry. Differences of opinion should be definitely explored; however, it should always be in done in a respectful and community-building manner.
  • Final Paper: Students will submit a thesis-governed, final paper of 8-10 pages on a topic related to medicine and literature, to be selected from a number of possible subjects suggested by the professor. This assignment is process-based; we will be reading and critiquing each other’s work at various moments during the semester.

Course Instructor:

Holly Tucker (Ph.D. Wisconsin) is Associate Professor of French & Italian and Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.  Her research focuses on the intersections of early-modern medicine and literature. She has published extensively on the history of childbirth and embryology, birth defects before genetics, tensions between science and society during the Scientific Revolution, as well as articles of relevance to French literary studies. She is currently working on a cultural study of the shifting boundaries of the human in the wake of new early-modern medical technologies (botanical grafting, blood transfusion, xenotransplantation, and microscopy). She teaches courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on the history of early medicine, literary history, and narrative medicine.

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