Division of Continual Learning
BLS Degree Program Courses
Fall 2008
First 8 Week Session: August 25 - October 15, 2008
- Communication in Contemporary Society - Patricia Fairfield-Artman, M.A.
- Self, Society and Salvation - Steven Ruzicka, Ph.D.
- Art of Life - Ann Millett, Ph.D.
- Women, War and Terror - Carrie Levesque, Ph.D.
- Contemporary Asian Literature - Lee C. Baker, Ph.D.
- Shakespeare Off the Page - Mark Williams, M.F.A.
- Ethics and Technology - Wade Maki, M.A.
- The New South- Susannah Link, M.A.
- Mystics in America - Matthew McKinnon, Ph.D.
Second Week Session: October 22 - December 12, 2008
- Communication in Contemporary Society - Donata Nelson, M.A.
- Reading the Human Experience - Joseph Rosenblum, Ph.D.
- Photography: Context and Illusion - Ann Millett, Ph.D.
- Big Plays, Big Ideas - Marc Williams, M.F.A.
- Painting on the Page - Marc Williams, M.F.A.
- Life, Death and Meaning - Wade Maki, M.A.
- The Sixties - Susannah Link, M.A.
- Senior Seminar in Humanities - Matthew McKinnon, Ph.D.
- Religious Resistance to Power - Carrie Levesque, Ph.D.
Self, Society and Salvation (BLS 300)
This course serves as an introduction to an enormous variety of ideas regarding the self, society, the state, and the Sacred. In simple terms, it is a survey of some important questions and answers. It is based on the premise that the history of ideas is largely the history of prescriptions for “salvation,” that is, to use the Webster’s definition, “preservation from destruction, disintegrating failure or other evil” or “final deliverance from dangers, difficulties, deficiencies or the like.” To put it another way: many important ideas originated as proposed solutions to perceived problems. These “problems” are the basic human concerns, shared by people everywhere, and may be grouped under four headings: 1) how to achieve individual well-being, 2) how to organize a society, 3) how to exercise authority, 4) how to find and connect with transcendent reality. If these are different kinds of problems, then we may think of proposed solutions as different kinds of “salvation” – individual, social, political, and religious. The course is consequently divided into these four topic areas, each representing what might be called a different form of “salvation” or “fix”: 1) Fixing the Self, 2) Fixing Society, 3) Fixing the State, 4) Fixing the Cosmos.
Visions of the Creation (BLS 300)
What does it mean to be human? An essential part of being human entails discovering the answers to that question, and while there are many ways to approach it, it is addressed most directly in our stories of creation. They are the foundation stories upon which the other stories that constitute cultures have evolved. This class examines creation stories from cultures around the world and through time, in search of how humans have approached that most fundamental of questions. As you move through the course, you will encounter many different stories that will offer many different answers. You will keep one eye on the differences and the other eye on the similarities as you consider whether they're really different stories or just variations of the same story. The course will conclude by using the insights gained along the way to consider whether a consensus can be reached concerning what it means to be human.
Reading the Human Experience (BLS 320)
John Keats described this world as a “vale of Soul-making.” One way in which souls get shaped is through experience. And one of the greatest experiences can be reading. In this course we will read various 19th and 20th century authors who explore what it means to be human. We shall observe transitions from innocence to experience, explore conflicts between conformity and rebellion, and ponder the mysteries of love and hate. You will write two essays drawing on your reading and other life experiences covering issues raised in the course and addressing what being human really means.
American Romanticism (BLS 320)
The Romantic era in the United States was rife with ironic contrasts: a self-culture movement that advised its collective followers how to become individuals, manifested most famously by Henry David Thoreau, who urged his followers to follow the beat of their own drummers; a literary culture that mourned the death of the Indian and used this grief to fuel some of its most enduring literary tropes—even as Native Americans struggled to become citizens, rather than icons; and a political culture that prized individual freedom, even as it enslaved millions of African Americans and treated women as children, unable to vote, own property, or enter into contracts.
This course explores these contradictions in the history of romanticism in the United States. We'll explore romanticism as an aesthetic and ideological category that will enable us to examine literary responses to such fraught issues as individualism, slavery, westward expansion, Indian removal, and women's rights.Art of Life (BLS 340)
This course analyzes the uses and abuses of photography in science, art, commercial culture, documentary, journalism and the other media, and personal collections to examine how photography inevitably crosses, merges, and confuses genres of visual culture. The course will examine intersections of photography with social constructions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability and investigate how photography reflects and creates human experiences, identity, and notions of self and other. Course activities will include critical readings, exchanges with classmates in online forums, displaying and discussing photographs with discussion groups, essay exams, and a final photography project.
Photography: Context and Illusion (BLS 340)
This course analyzes the uses and abuses of photography in science, art, commercial culture, documentary, journalism and the other media, and personal collections to examine how photography inevitably crosses, merges, and confuses genres of visual culture. The course will examine intersections of photography with social constructions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability and investigate how photography reflects and creates human experience, identity, and notions of self and other. Course activities will include critical readings, exchanges with classmates in online forums, displaying and discussing photographs with discussion groups, essay exams, and a final photography project.
Divided We Stand (BLS 360)
This course is an attempt to understand the relationship between religion and democracy in America. Several themes will occupy our thought: the place of religion in the founding of our republic; the notion of America as a secular state and what this means for the practice of religion; the phenomenon of religious pluralism that characterizes our present context; the idea of "privatizing" religion; the role of religion in public discourse; and lastly, the religious threat to politics and the political threat to religion.
Religious Resistance (BLS )
Throughout history, religion has frequently provided a rallying point around which peoples have organized to oppose an invading people, culture or ideology. Through a variety of overt and underground tactics, people often draw on the spiritual and material resources of faith communities to survive and often fight back against occupation by an outside entity or oppression at the hands of their own government.
In this course, we will examine the ways in which different religious groups, through peaceful means or violent, through a cooptation of or radical assault on state structures, confronted the invasion of a common foe: the Communist Soviet Union, with all its attendant values and repressive structures. We will analyze a range of sources from the writings of workers and intellectuals, scholars native and Western.
The New South (BLS 380)
This course will examine the changing—and unchanging—nature of the American South since the Civil War. We will examine various topics wrapped up in some essential questions: What makes a Southerner a Southerner? How different is the South as compared to the rest of the United States? In what ways has a southern distinctiveness shaped American society, culture, and folkways? Our examination of the New South will begin with the Civil War and its heritage; we will proceed to the effects of war and reform in the twentieth century; and we will conclude by examining the recent post-1945 transformation of Southern life. We will examine the impact that the Civil War had on Southern society; in particular, we will attempt to understand the process by which several million African Americans realized freedom through wartime emancipation and Reconstruction. We will also try to understand the sources of sweeping change affecting the South after the late 19th century; the impact of the industrial revolution, changes affecting the plantation system, and widespread urbanization. We will look, as well, at the consequences of Southerners who left the South in great numbers during the 20th century, how the South and its culture—its music, food, and way of life—moved into the national mainstream. The nature of change will also include an examination of the civil rights revoltion and its impact on Southern life after the 1950s.
The Real You: An Introduction to the Sociology of Individual Experience (BLS 300)
How much are you “you,” and how much are you the product of the culture and society around you? In this course we look at how human beings construct their social reality, from defining what is real to establishing a cultural identity to defining the “rules” for race and gender – and what happens when those rules are violated. You will learn how people define who they are, what emotions are and how to express them, and even learn how society teaches us to think about our faces and our bodies. Finally, we will look at the way narrative, either written or internal, helps us establish our sense of individual identity in the postmodern world.
The Russian Novel of Conscience (BLS 320)
Russian literature has long served as something more than mere entertainment. For the Russian reading public, the expectation was for literature to raise social issues and express hard truths. The works of literature for our course tackle a variety of issues encountered in the human experience. These novels will take us from the wild mountain ranges of the Caucasus to an unidentified future-world or from a young girl's life among the provincial gentry to the cold city streets of St. Petersburg in Stalin's time. While they vary greatly in style, plot, and historical setting, all of them share a focus on the individual's search for truth and purpose, rejecting conventional (happy) endings and asking readers instead to ponder, indeed to reach, their own conclusions.
Our course objective will be to examine these works within the framework of their historical context and to extract from them our own interpretations of the truths expressed there. We will discuss social barriers to personal happiness, various types of conflicts with authority, censorship, and changing ideas about gender roles as explored in this body of literature. While the Russian historical and cultural context is central to our understanding of these texts, we will also discuss how these works illustrate a more universal context, the human quest for happiness and purpose in life.
Communication in Contemporary Society (BLS 300)
How do we become more discerning consumers of messages? How do we shape consensus and agreement? What is the link between democracy and persuasion? How does persuasion serve as a vehicle for change? How do ethics and values play into persuasion? These are some of the questions we will explore together in this course.
Today more than ever, as creators and receivers of messages, we must become responsible and critically aware of how the myriad messages coming to us from advertisers, politicians, friends and colleagues influence our daily lives. The course provides an overview of historical and contemporary theories, philosophy and practice of persuasive communication in personal, group and mass media. We will analyze and apply theories of persuasion and rhetorical patterns in messages and inquire into evaluative and ethical issues that can affect our judgment and the way we communicate.
Old Europe/New Europe: A Cultural History (BLS 380)
This course introduces key figures, movements, and developments from the French Revolution to the end of the Cold War and the formation of a new Europe. As western nations and societies are increasingly intertwined and interdependent, this online course traces the continent’s cultural evolution from its old imperial roots to its integration within the new European Union. The course emphasizes core themes and issues that explore a wide range of perspectives presented through Internet exhibits, online lectures, readings, and multi-media files. Course lectures, group discussions, student presentations and writing assignments center on engaging textbook collections of primary sources and reading selections. The study materials include memoirs of individuals who witnessed important social and political events; excerpts from popular works of fiction; writings of influential thinkers and theorists; and key cultural and historical documents that provide critical and interdisciplinary perspectives.
Contemporary Short Stories (BLS 320)
This is a course about the interpretation and craft of short fiction. We will analyze contemporary short stories, not only focusing on the meaning of the stories, but also on the choices available to the writer as he considers how to connect to his reader. We will hear writers themselves talk about their craft and listen to them read from their own works.
Students' written requirements will include participation in weekly discussion forums as we cover topics such as character, point of view, and conflict in fiction. The student will also experiment with creative exercises to understand and enjoy some components of fiction writing more fully. There will be a midterm and a final paper.
The contemporary short story reflects attention to the particular rather than the general, to real lives rather than stereotypes. A study of contemporary short fiction will cross over into the appreciation and practice of effective writing of any kind.
Painting on the Page (BLS 340)
Welcome to Painting on the Page, an opportunity to consider in depth some of the outstanding masterpieces in Western art while reading narratives, essays, poems, and plays inspired by them. You may already be familiar with some of the painters: Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Jan Vermeer, Diego de Velazquez, Francisco de Goya. By the end of this course you will be talking knowledgeably about these and other painters and writers, the historical and cultural contexts in which they worked, the relationship between visual images and literary imagery, notions of truth and beauty, and the principles of aesthetics. No particular background in art and literature is expected or required, but curiosity and a willingness to look, to think, to analyze, and to appreciate are essential.
The course emphasizes online class discussion, critical reading of original literature (rather than textbooks), and practice in writing and argument. Students must interact with each other as well as with the instructor. Lecture material will appear in text and image; additional activities will include exploration of links, puzzles, self-tests, and written responses. Through a series of assignments, students will create online journals and then critique them, challenging and encouraging each other on the discussion board. Three tests and a final exam will evaluate student progress through the topical units. Students should participate fully in all activities to assess their own progress and mastery of the material.
Eye Appeal: Spectacle on Stage and in Life (BLS 340)
From ancient times to the present, “spectacle” (the visual aspects of human performance – architecture, scenery, costumes, makeup, lighting, special effects, and staging) has been used to expressively embody and evoke meaning in rituals, ceremonies and artistic performances. This course will examine the use of spectacle as an expressive mode of communication in human performance from antiquity to the present. Students will study the elements of spectacle that have been employed throughout history in the performing arts (theatre, dance, music) and in life-performances such as rituals, ceremonies and rites. Students will explore the iconography of the performing arts and consider how this visual evidence has been interpreted by scholars. By the end of the course students should have an appreciation for the power and impact of spectacle on stage and in life.
American Dreams (BLS 360)
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired many Americans with his “I have a dream” vision of American identity. The question confronting this seminar is: Today, do we have an American Dream? During the past few decades, this question of American identity has emerged all around us in the series of debates about immigration, racial preference, education, family values, and the writing of American history. Are we citizens of the United States now, or have we ever been a nation? Multiculturalists have argued that American identity or nationhood is a repressive political myth. Opponents of multiculturalism have responded that Americanism is a timely or timeless set of ideals embodied in the principles at work in our federal republican democracy. Though they differ in their characterization of this issue, parties to it agree that both American cultural unity and diversity present us with both promises and problems. Readings will include historical, novelistic, and dramatic explorations of American identity.
Vice, Crime, and American Law (BLS 360)
Morality and law often overlap. When this intersection occurs, a class of law targeting "vice" is created. This course examines a variety of philosophical concepts and issues focused on the connection of morality to American law. Theoretical questions include: What is the relationship between law and morality? What is the nature, scope, and limits of the law? What is a vice? What constitutes a crime? These theoretical questions in turn aid a survey of issues in American law including: gambling, prostitution, drug use, hate speech, pornography and gay marriage. Each issue will involve a historical, legal, and ethical component. After considering these issues, we conclude the course by looking at society's justifications for punishment and the death penalty.
Big Plays, Big Ideas (BLS 340)
Throughout history theater has served as a site for the imaginative exploration of big ideas in dramatic stories. This course will examine fifteen big plays (comedies, tragedies and dramas) that grapple with significant issues and ideas. These are plays that have survived the ‘test-of-time' and through the power of words, characters and actions illuminate the human experience. They are plays that address fundamental questions that are central to the Humanities such as “Who am I”, “What is my purpose in life,” “What is the truth,” “Why is there suffering” and “How is happiness achieved?” The plays will be examined both as works of literature and ‘scores' intended for performance.The Sixties (BLS 380)
This course examines the origins, impact, and consequences of the social and political upheaval of the period in American history stretching from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. It will cover the civil rights movement, in many of its forms; the Vietnam War and the accompanying antiwar movement; and the origins of some of the other major and minor movements of the period—the feminist, environmental, and gay liberation movements. Other topics will include changes in popular culture, the rise and fall of the New Left, and the conservative reaction to these ideas and events. The course will conclude with a look at the legacy of this unique period and its continuing influence on contemporary America.
Telling Stories: The Art & Craaft of the Memoir (BLS 320)
A good memoir is shaped like a good story. If told well, with a sharp focus and a bit of self-effacing irony, events in the memoirist’s life draw us in and illuminate a wider world.
In this course we’ll read three contemporary book-length memoirs and a variety of personal memory essays. In addition, we’ll discuss some self-portrait paintings. At several points in the course, students will be asked to do some creative writing, conveying slices of their own pasts. There will be weekly discussion forums, small group exercises, and a final paper.
Religious Resistance to Power (BLS 380)
In this course, we will examine the ways in which different religious groups, through peaceful means or violent, through a cooptation of or radical assault on state structures, confronted the invasion of a common foe: the Communist Soviet Union, with all its attendant values and repressive structures. We will explore various forms of religious resistance to atheist Soviet doctrine in three contexts: within the Soviet Union itself, in Cold War Communist Poland and in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of 1979. In each unit we will examine how the dominant religion operated in each country (Russian Orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, Catholicism in Poland and Islam in Afghanistan) prior to the Soviet takeover and how these relationships between religion and society shaped how citizen actors responded to the occupation. We will look at examples of peaceful accommodation, cooperation and compromise along with examples of uncompromising, violent radical resistance. We will investigate how communism may have been seen or experienced by the occupied as a religion in itself and further explore the relationship between nationalism and religion. How, in one context, does faith work hand in hand with nationalism? How does it operate in another culture, where an idea of the "nation" has never existed? We will analyze a range of sources from the writings of workers and intellectuals, scholars native and Western.
Women, War and Terror (BLS 320)
Nearly 70 years ago, on the eve of World War II, an invitation to join a peace society incited Virginia Woolf to respond with Three Guineas, an insightful and pathbreaking analysis of women's place in the political, economic and social structures that produce war. How might we change politics as usual, she wonders, if women were empowered to propose their own solutions to war, to find their own words and means for reasoning with the forces of fascism, at home and abroad? Throughout the twentieth century, women and their stories have not had a great deal of success in influencing the events that lead to war or terror, but thankfully they have continued to voice their opinions and document their experiences just the same. For some, it is a matter of survival; writing is sometimes the only thing that continues to give life meaning and make suffering bearable. Especially when a homeland has been lost or destroyed, oftentimes a memoir or other written text is all that remains with which to salvage and structure identity. For others, writing is a conscious act of resistance. Women write to challenge dominant discourses that rationalize irrational violence, to prove that they have not been broken, to show others the way to survive, to bear witness so that such suffering cannot be forgotten.
This course will examine women as victims and critics of war and terror, primarily through their autobiographical writings. We will examine women's autobiographical writings in the context of three different 20th century tragedies: Stalin's Terror in the Soviet Union (1930s), the Holocaust (1940s) and the war(s) in the Former Yugoslavia (1990s). Students will consider, in online discussions and written assignments, the different motivations behind this literature, as well as the relative effectiveness or appropriateness of the different forms and genres used by the authors. What role, if any, does gender (or one's ‘outsider' status) play in these creative decisions? We will explore and compare the specific political, historical and cultural contexts in which these works were written along with broader questions about women's place in history and the dynamics of language, power and resistance.
Mystery, Mayhem and Murder (BLS 320)
It was a dark night in the city that never sleeps. Almost anybody who reads this line would suspect that what they're reading is the beginning of a detective story. (And some alert readers will recognize that line as the opening to a case for detective Guy Noir, one of Garrison Keillor's characters on his radio show A Prairie Home Companion.) We're familiar with the genre from movies, television, books, even stories on the news. If we read because we love a good story, we read mystery and detective fiction because we love a good story that keeps us in the dark. This course explores the appeal of the mystery and detective story, as well as investigates the methods and approaches that writers use to make the genre work. The course is more generally about stories, about the way we make them and the way we come to understand and enjoy them.
Hip Hop Culture, Economics, and Politics (BLS 380)
Rap music has evolved from an east coast-based, urban underground musical art form to become one of the most dominating musical styles within the upper echelons of mainstream music. The impact of rap music and hip-hop culture has progressed beyond music, influencing all forms of society; culturally, economically, and politically. This course will address how rap music and hip-hop culture has became integrated into everyday mainstream society and what future role hip-hop culture and rap music will play in the future. Additionally, this course will review and analyze the negative and positive influences of rap music and hip-hop culture in broad terms of race, class, and gender.
The Russian Novel of Conscience (BLS 320)
Russian literature has long served as something more than mere entertainment. For the Russian reading public, the expectation was for literature to raise social issues and express hard truths. The works of literature for our course tackle a variety of issues encountered in the human experience. These novels will take us from the wild mountain ranges of the Caucasus to an unidentified future-world or from a young girl’s life among the provincial gentry to the cold city streets of St. Petersburg in Stalin’s time. While they vary greatly in style, plot, and historical setting, all of them share a focus on the individual’s search for truth and purpose, rejecting conventional (happy) endings and asking readers instead to ponder, indeed to reach, their own conclusions.
While Russian authors were held to a lofty and difficult task, they were also raised to the status of cultural hero and thus invested with great authority. This literary authority often brought authors into conflict with centralized power, be it Tsarist autocracy or Soviet dictatorship. This conflict necessitated that the author negotiate both official and self-imposed censorship (knowing when to keep quiet). Our course readings include works by well-known authors who successfully negotiated the issue of censorship and “Aesopic” speech and others that became known only after long periods of suppression.
Our course objective will be to examine these works within the framework of their historical context and to extract from them our own interpretations of the truths expressed there. We will discuss social barriers to personal happiness, various types of conflicts with authority, censorship, and changing ideas about gender roles as explored in this body of literature. While the Russian historical and cultural context is central to our understanding of these texts, we will also discuss how these works illustrate a more universal context, the human quest for happiness and purpose in life.
Ethics and Technology (BLS 360)
This course examines ethical problems posed by technology. Students will examine several areas of technology from a historical, social, legal, and ethical perspective. Reoccurring questions include: How has technology changed our lives? Is this change good? How might the law and ethics adapt to technological changes in the present and near future? Each topic in the course is based upon technologies currently in use or in development for use in the near future.
Senior Seminar (BLS 400)
BLS 400 is the capstone seminar for students pursuing the Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies (Humanities concentration). Students in this course will read current books that examine significant issues in the Humanities, actively participate in online discussions about the readings, write an extended essay that critically examines and evaluates the readings and compile a web portfolio of representative examples of work they have created for other online BLS courses. The course is designed to allow students to reflect on their work in the BLS program and showcase their achievements. It is intended exclusively for BLS majors who are finishing the program requirements.
Magic, Media and Popular Imagination (BLS 340)
This course will study the photographic image in its production and reproduction of popular myth and the ways our media experiences reconcile nature with the supernatural. Through this course, students will explore narrative form in visual storytelling, the human fascination with image, and the power of image to communicate ideas, chronicle emotion, and command myth.
Critics of popular media will be quick to argue that film and television are hardly deeply profound or philosophical. Yet, popular media provide audiences with an array of explanations for the human condition in an unsystematic study of being that assuredly contributes to our understanding of human nature and the nature of our reality. This discourse about our “being” comes delivered through technologies that expand human senses beyond their biological limits, providing experiences that are transpersonal. Media viewing places audiences out of the usual state of consciousness, allowing us to vicariously visit distant places and become sympathetically involved in the lives of people we cannot personally know. There are aspects of popular media that seem innately metaphysical, implying that our physical existence is not the only or most valid reality. Film and television present us with images in illusory motion, inviting us to become ghostly voyeurs of fabricated worlds.
Mystics in America (BLS 360)
Have you ever wanted to know more about the spiritual landscape of our postmodern culture? Well, here’s your chance to study some popular trends in contemporary spirituality and uncover the historical roots that (may or may not) lie behind them. We will read both contemporary accounts and historical texts to try and better understand the alien implants that cause psychic trauma, the Sefirot that mediate between God and creation, the differences between mindfulness and no-mind, and the details the Evangelists left out of their Passion accounts. We may even encounter a few Wiccans and Druids and Purpose-Drive People—Oh my!
Contemporary Asian Literature (BLS 320)
In the last half-century, China, Japan, and India have undergone enormous change and become world powers. Their relations with the West have been intimate and problematic, since all of them have experienced some degree of colonization or occupation by England or the United States. The U.S. continues to have a large and controversial military presence in Japan. This course examines the effect of those political and cultural influences on the peoples of those countries through novels by indigenous authors, novels that exhibit the difficulties and delights that Asian countries have experienced as their indigenous cultures meet the culture of the WestÑespecially those of Great Britain and the United States. The focus of this course is the way the novels show the authors' being caught between two worlds: the old, traditional culture, and the new, modern one.
Shakespeare Off the Page (BLS 340)
William Shakespeare's plays are among the most widely read, studied, analyzed, anthologized, and criticized works in all of literature. His plays have been performed on stages around the globe for four hundred years without going out of fashion. Why Shakespeare? This course will examine the universality of human behavior depicted in Shakespeare's stories, his understanding of the human psyche demonstrated by his complex characters, his contribution to modern language and rhetoric, the historical and cultural contexts in which each play was written, and the appeal of his works today.
Life, Death and Meaning(BLS 360)
What is the meaning of life? Is my life meaningful or meaningless? Should I fear death? Is immortality really worth seeking? Do humans have an obligation to perpetuate their species? This course examines these classic questions of existential philosophy through the broader view of the humanities. Students in this course will read how philosophers have tried to answer these questions and will touch on how plays, poems, films, art and literature have addressed them, in order to grasp the broad impact these questions have upon the human experience.