MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES at Hamline University, Graduate Shool of Liberal Studies

The Essay (Required Course)One of the most open and provocative of prose forms, the essay derives its name from the French word essai, to attempt. In this course, writing will be considered as a tool for inquiry, and students will read and write from the broad range of forms that comprise the critical and personal essay. The course will focus on critical essays based in research/analysis and cultural/literary criticism, as well as personal essay forms including the meditation and the persuasive essay. We will study structure and organization, research and citation methods, and aspects of style and voice appropriate for a scholarly, literary, or general audience. Readings will include classic and contemporary essays as well as selections from periodicals such as American Scholar, Harpers, and Orion.

Public Intellectual Practicum (Required Course)People who share or synthesize academic knowledge with the general public are often referred to as public intellectuals. Al Gore, Carl Sagan, Edward Said, Susan Sontag, Henry Louis Gates, and Camille Paglia are some examples of such thinkers, people who can communicate complex concepts and explore real-world issues for a non-specialist audience and do so with the nuanced understanding that such issues deserve. The public intellectual often explores diverse !elds of inquiry, seeking to draw connections and conclusions that allow for a multifaceted knowledge of the topic. Students in the practicum will choose a subject to investigate, apply interdisciplinary research methods and then create a public presentation of their work for a speci!c audience.

Creative Process (Required Course)A conscious working relationship with the creative process can enable the seeds of ideas we carry forward to reach fruition. This course is structured as an investigation. Each student will work to identify the elements of “right practice” for a productive, individual approach to the creative process. We'll listen to and read the testimonies of writers, visual artists and musicians, mathematicians and scientists, philosophers and thinkers and examine them for patterns and collective wisdom. We'll consider theories and models for the workings of the creative process across disciplines. In addition, each student will observe the workings of his/her own process through a series of exercises and creative projects.

The Heritage of Hope Hope crosses all boundaries, but is it primarily an interior resource, or is it an act of community? In this class students study the voices of theologians, environmentalists, survivors, and writers with a particular eye toward the spiritual, philosophical, and personal bases for hope. Authors may include Cornell West, Desmond Tutu, Kay Duff, Vaclav Havel, Lynn Olson, Audre Lorde, Scott Momaday, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Athol Fugard, and others.

Good Evil and Personal Responsibility: Historical, Philosophical and Psychiatric Perspectives This course presents an interdisciplinary overview and comparison of various models of individual responsibility. We begin with an overview of the theological frameworks of good and evil posed by biblical and Buddhist perspectives. We also analyze key ethical formulations by philosophers including Kant, Nietzsche, and Buber. The contributions of twentieth century psychiatry will be examined by way of Freud and Robert Jay Lifton. The issues posed by violence and war will be considered through the writings of Gandhi and others.

Real to Reel: The Elements of the Non!ction Film While large budget feature !lms continue to dominate the world of American entertainment, the small scale documentary !lm endures. Once the terrain of a few trained professionals, new technologies have made the documentary landscape more and more egalitarian, with an ever-increasing diversity of !lmmakers, subjects and styles. This course will explore the American documentary !lm from its birth at the turn of the 20th century to the present. From the historical to the contemporary and from Robert Flaherty to Michael Moore, we will consider the methods and context in which these !lms were produced, and the effects that technology and invention have had on them. We will discuss the interview process, interpretation, and objectivity as well as the use of the camera, research editing, audio and lighting.

Twelve Great Spiritual Texts of the Twentieth Century Given the great yearning in our time for spiritual depth and reach, and given the locus in the !rst years of a new millennium, it is a pertinent time to look back at texts that have shaped the twentieth century. Harold Bloom suggests that when you read a classic work for the !rst time you encounter “an uncanny startlement” that stays with you for a long time. Authors may include Martin Buber, William James, Annie Dillard, Shunryu Suzuki, Simone Weil, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Irving, Soren Kierkegaard, G. K. Chesterton, and others.

ApocalypsesDo you have your terrorist attack safety room ready? Do you worry about new diseases, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, asteroid strikes? How about crop circles, the biblical Revelation, aliens? Dirty bombs, anthrax, small pox? Global warming? Are you ready for it all to end? Maybe not? Well, some folks are ready for the world to end, or at least they're getting ready, and they are telling stories, spreading the word, imagining the world's !nal denouement—and what comes after. Others use these stories as a call to action. And writers use the end of all-of-it as a setting to explore issues of human meaning. In this class, we will explore both literal and metaphoric catastrophe in texts from believers, theorists, and writers. Our sources will include Annie Dillard, Umberto Eco, Stanislaw Lem, Daniel Quinn, Ken Wilber, Jean Baudrillard and his followers, a host of websites, and some !lms.

Inspired by the VisualWriters throughout history and across national and cultural borders have been inspired by the work of visual artists. Writers responding with passion, erudition, grand leaps of imagination, and scholarship to works of visual art is our focus in this class. We consider still lifes, self-portraits, sculptures, paintings, murals, collage, installations, quilts and more as we explore and experiment with writing strategies that help us connect the written word to the world of visual art. Authors studied may include Charlie Simic, Sandra McPherson, Elizabeth Alexander, William Blake, John Berger, Mark Strand, Joyce Carol Oates, Guy Davenport, Frank O'Hara, Agnes Martin, Romare Bearden, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Marianne Wiggins, Patrick Trevor-Roper, Bruno Schulz, John Mack, Cecile Goding, Susan Stewart, W.J.T. Mitchell, Siri Hustvedt, Eleni Sikelianos, Lawrence Weschler, and others. All members of the class keep artist notebooks, have the option to submit work each week, write two brief essays about visual artists and writers whose work challenges them to new seeing and new thinking, and create and present a !nal project incorporating visual and literary ideas and visions.

Transitions: An Interdisciplinary CourseThis course looks at transitions through the lenses of landscape, gender, and religion. Books studied may include The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis, Family Romance by John Lanchester, Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson, Storming the Gates of Paradise by Rebecca Solnit, The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant, Asylum in the Grasslands by Diane Glancy, Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Sheeres, Falling Through The Earth by Danielle Trussoni, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison, James Tiptee Jr., The Future of Nature edited by Barry Lopez, and Trans by Hilda Raz. Through wide-ranging reading and

discussion students discern the topics they wish to address in their research and writing. How do we interpret change? Judge it? Welcome it? Reject it? What transitions globally, locally, and personally control us, guide us, amaze us?

Sensation and Ballyhoo in Contemporary Creative Non!ction This course considers the causes celebres of contemporary literary non!ction. Where do we stand, as readers and writers, amidst media cross!re over notorious books by James Frey and Augusten Burroughs? How do these hot potatoes compare—in form, content, and impact—to more complex, less-discussed debates on books by Lauren Slater, Rigoberta Menchu, or Binjamin Wilkomirski? Do books bene!ting from mainstream ballyhoo stand up artistically against less-interrogated works exploring volatile subjects such as race, immigration, and gender identity? This class will explore literary memoirs on bestseller lists, issue-focused non!ction used as college community texts, reportage bearing witness to personal or political trauma, hybrid works with links to mediums not commonly considered literary, popular histories melding research and novelistic storytelling, and books that have changed popular conceptions of the personal essay.

The Arts and Innovation: Crossing BarriersArtists have traditionally been leaders in innovation by calling into question basic assumptions and working against the current. Our central goal is to systematically examine advanced thinking in the arts in order to inspire students toward innovation in other areas of human experience. Using such sources as ARTSTOR for images, recordings, videos, !lms, and readings in modern art and music, we explore outstanding innovators in the arts from mid-20th century to the present and the thinking and social contexts that gave them permission. One of the de!ning purposes is to demonstrate that a successful innovation or advance can result in a chain reaction that has broad societal implications.

Iranian Culture in TranslationThis class will provide an introduction to modern Iranian culture through the eyes of Iranian writers, !lmmakers, musicians, and poets. Core texts will include novels, memoirs, short stories, classic and modern poetry. Films and documentaries will cover a range of genres and topics which illustrate the complexity of Iranian society. Materials will provide a foundation to explore changes in the social and economic lives of modern Iranians and assignments will encourage a cross-cultural comparison with American society.

Landscape and Memory This class is built around Simon Schama’s monumental work, Landscape and Memory. Together we read across genre lines: scholarly texts, novels, poems and essays. Texts may include A Very Long Engagement, Japrisot; The Colors of Nature, edited by Savoy and Deming; The World at Large, McMichael; I Lock The Door Upon Myself, Oates; books and articles by William Langewiesche, Elizabeth Kolbert, Joshua Hammer, Matthew Power, Peter Rogers, Lynne Cox, David Brooks, Kathleen Cambor, Kathryn Davis, , Julia Blackburn, Cornelia Dean, and Barry Lopez. We pursue the balancing act between landscapes and LANDSCAPE, between land and water, land and memory, water and memory. We think about urban, suburban, exurban and rural land and water held or repressed in memory. We consider landscape and memory, art and nature, what visions and ideas we have in common, which are held individually.