MLS COURSES FOR SUMMER 2013
LBST D601: Graduate Project Proposal Seminar (3 cr.)
5:45 - 8:45pm T May 7 - July 23 - Finkel
Working as a group and independently, students will research and develop a thesis proposal. Students will complete the literature review, develop their methodology, identify their thesis committee, and develop knowledge of the relevant research ethics. At the end of the semester students will be prepared to submit their thesis proposal to their thesis committee.
LBST D502: Social Sciences Seminar (3 cr.)
Recent U.S. Social Movements
5:30 - 8:30pm TR Summer session 1 - Hare
Social movements and related forms of collective action -- protests, riots, revolts, and revolutions -- occur when people get together to gain power they otherwise lack to try to change the world. By definition, social movements are extraordinary events, because they occur when people break from their ordinary, everyday lives and sacrifice their personal concerns to realize broad social changes. Virtually all human rights (including those that have been and those that have not yet been politically realized) were initially addressed and advocated by movement activists. This course will focus on major social movements in American society over the last fifty years but we will also look at current international social movements as well. We will start with the civil rights movement, and cover the second wave of the women’s movement, the gay/lesbian movement, the environmental movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the new right movement, the animal rights movement, as well as the slow food movement.
MLS COURSES FOR FALL 2013
LBST D510: Intro to Grad Liberal Studies (4 cr.)
6:00 - 7:50pm MW - Finkel
The course provides a comprehensive introduction to graduate liberal studies, as well as preparing students to participate successfully in all facets of the MLS program. The course will examine principles of intellectual inquiry in the three fields represented in the MLS program: Arts & Letters, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. These methods will be applied to the Common Experience topic for the year.
LBST D501: Humanities Seminar (4 cr.)
Society Must be Defended
5:30 - 8:30pm T - Barry
This course will take up the question of the modern state as a device for the protection of society and property, as well as the management of its members. Thomas Hobbes is one of the first to propose this new security conscious state. His Leviathan text argues that individuals will only find peace if the artificial structure of the state is properly constructed. However, Hobbes’ compelling account of this machine-like state does not find fulfilment until the 19th century, in the rise of the nation-state as a system for population management. Foucault’s lecture texts, Society Must Be Defended and Security, Territory, Population offer a detailed historical account of how this Hobbesian dream becomes reality. When read in combination with Hannah Arendt’s account of the normalizing project of modern mass society in The Human Condition, we gain considerable insight into the concrete principles of security that define the modern nation-state and the society that it serves.
LBST D502: Social Sciences Seminar (3 cr.)
Telling About Society: Sociology of Representation and Representations of Sociology
4:15 - 5:30pm MW - Kordsmeier
Our lives are filled with different depictions of society. We watch the news, go to the movies, watch sitcoms, read works in the social sciences, go to plays, look at photographs, and read novels and short stories, each presenting a view of our society or societies in different times and places. None of these representations, however, can give us the whole picture of a society - each is the result of a system of production that necessarily reduces the amount of information that we have about a particular society and that is created in collaboration by a large number of people. This class is divided into two parts that try to get at the question of representations of society in two ways. In the first part of the class, we will use readings from the sociology of art and the sociology of science to get at the question of how individuals create representations. The second part of class will examine how society is portrayed in several different forms - self-help books, movies, sociological writing, photography, and plays
LBST D503: Natural Sciences Seminar (3 cr.)
The Science of Sound
5:30 - 8:00pm R - Forinash
The course will start with a scientific description of vibrations, the source of all sound. A close examination of wave behavior (wave speed, the relation between wavelength and frequency, wave amplitude, reflection, refraction, etc.) follows with sound waves as the paradigm. Next we will begin an examination of the many aspects of sound perception such as pitch, loudness and timbre. Once we have a basic understanding of the physical principles involved in sound and perception we will apply them to understand how various acoustical instruments such as guitars, trumpets and drums work. This study is broken into three sections; stringed instruments, instruments made of tubes and percussion instruments. The same tools can be applied on a slightly more sophisticated level to understand the human voice as a musical instrument. We will look briefly at the structure of musical scales and then move to the science of acoustics. In the final part of the course we will complete a short review of a few key principles of electricity and magnetism and apply these principles in order to understand the basic concepts behind the electronics used in musical sound reproduction (microphones, speakers, amplifiers). This will include sections comparing how vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs and computer hard drives store music. A few of the details involved in ‘ripping’ an mp3 recording will also be explained.
MLS COURSES FOR SPRING 2014
LBST D501: Humanities Seminar (3 cr.)
Contemporary Rhetoric - Abernethy
5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. W
The last sixty years have seen remarkable changes in the ways in which messages are conveyed. The development of radio, television, and the internet has made it easier than ever for those with a message to communicate to their constituents. However, the negative aspect of these developments is that people are bombarded with more messages than ever. This course is designed to look at those communicators and messages which have made an impact in the last sixty years, specifically in the areas of politics and social reform.
LBST D502: Social Sciences Seminar (4 cr.)
Body Adornment as Identity - Allen
5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. M
Body adornment/modification (tattoo, scarification, piercing, etc.) and its role in the construction of individual and group identity will be investigated from the perspective of a number of different disciplines: psychology, sociology, cultural studies, art history, and aesthetics. In addition to the approaches and methodologies taken in each field, and emphasis will be placed on how these areas intersect to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the significance of these arts for the individual and their larger communities.
LBST D503: Natural Sciences Seminar (3 cr.)
Social Networks, Crowds, Markets - Kimmer
7:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. R
The course focuses on networks--both their structure and how they change over time. The term network does not necessarily imply a computer network such as the Internet. Instead it refers to a more abstract concept where pairs of nodes are linked by a relationship, represented as a line linking the nodes. In a social network, the nodes represent people and the relationship between the people may indicate that they are Facebook friends, two people that work on a project together in an office, etc. depending on the particular network being constructed. Following dynamics of such networks leads to insights about how videos become viral, how news spreads online, or how businesses can use social networks for increased sales and profits. The dynamics even sheds light on revolutions as when Facebook and Twitter were used in the Arab Spring uprisings to coordinate protests or disseminate information to the world at large.
LBST D5591: Graduate Workshop on Teaching (2 cr.)
Finkel
6:00 p.m. – 7:40 p.m. T
Working together and independently, students will develop a basic understanding of the pedagogical issues and mechanics of teaching at the college level. Each student will select a particular course (e.g., Intro Psych) to “build” during the semester. Throughout the course, students will begin the process of building a teaching portfolio.
