Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

Art 537

History 546

Whole Earths, Globalizations, World Pictures

Hear the word "Earth" and the image likely to flash through the mind is the descendant of a photo commonly known as "Blue Marble" (1972), which reveals the disk of our terraqueous planet suspended alone in the void. It is reputed to be the most widely disseminated photograph in human history, and together with other views of the Earth from beyond has prompted a revolution in the global imagination. The aim of this seminar is to assess the plausibility of that claim, by situating these images in their diverse historical contexts.

These contexts include the history of humankind's imaginative self-projection into the beyond from ancient times to our day; how the "whole earth" image has been mobilized by environmental campaigns, political movements, and commercial enterprises; how the view of Earth has figured in economics ("globalization theory"), aesthetics (earth art, mapping and visualization techniques), philosophy (especially in the phenomenological tradition), and the natural sciences (the Gaia hypothesis, the Biosphere projects, earth systems science); and how this pictorial imaginary has become integrated into the unthought ways we inhabit our natural and human-built worlds—what has happened once its ubiquity meant that we ceased, in a fashion, to see it. Arrangements will be made to enable students to explore new media and research tools for analysis and presentation, should they wish to do so.

Liberal Studies 544

The Law and its Uses in Europe and its Empires, c. 1300–c. 1750

"The social world is fundamentally a human construct, and law furnishes one of the most powerful technologies of construction," the legal historian Christopher L. Tomlins observed. From the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, men and women across Europe and its colonies flocked to courts of law as plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses. Why did people from even modest social backgrounds increasingly turn to legal tribunals and the law-centered justice they offered in lieu of other well-established methods of resolving disputes and sanctioning wrongdoing? How did the pluralistic nature of premodern law shape the ways rulers and ruled thought about, and used, law and justice? Was the "rule of law" imposed by social elites and political authorities, or did it emerge from the manifold uses of legal resources to manage credit, defend reputations, air marital grievances, remedy injuries, and generally maintain social and familial order? What do the "uses of the law," in other words, reveal about the contested and negotiated nature of social relations and political authority in medieval and early modern Europe and its empires?

Anthropology 548

Sport and Social Life

Sports are a central aspect of ritual form and everyday life in a large number of societies across the globe. The course approaches sports play as a fundamental practice of modern social formation and social reproduction. Through case studies of situated sports practices (notably football/soccer, cricket/baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, and skateboarding/parkour) in a variety of societies (US, Europe, Caribbean, South America, Africa, and South Asia), it examines key issues in the cultural study of modernity: gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, class/stratification, violence, (post-)colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. The course introduces students to phenomenological approaches to social life, approaching culture as an embodied mode of practice rather than only or primarily a cognitive field of knowledge.

Liberal Studies 504

Liberal Studies 5--

An exploration of art, architecture, and visual culture created within the context of Muslim-majority or Muslim-ruled societies within Western Asia, North Africa, and Europe from the 7th to the 21st centuries. Covers sacred and secular architecture and architectural decoration, sculpture, painting, manuscripts, textiles, and metalwork, including internationally renowned museum collections (considering the politics and acquisition processes of these collections). The course also considers theoretical framings of the field, such as what is "Islamic" about Islamic art. We consider the circulation of Islamic art globally and the emergence of modern Islamic art, as well as the visual cultures of protest in contemporary Muslim-majority countries. Readings will include primary sources, exhibition catalogs, and scholarly articles; visit to a museum is possible, as well as use of Reed College's Special Collection of Qur'anic manuscripts.

Literature 524

Though working behind the Cold War "iron curtain," post-World War II Soviet and East European writers and filmmakers were preoccupied with the same ideas and questions as their Western and American counterparts, often working in parallel genres. One such genre was science fiction which became enormously popular in the Soviet Union starting in the mid-1950s. Relying on the rich tradition of the 1920s, the postwar writers and filmmakers used science fiction to reflect on urgent societal and philosophical issues. In the presence of state censorship and official ideology, science fiction became the venue for veiled and subversive critique of the regime. In this course, through reading and watching major works of Soviet and East European sci fi fiction and cinema, we will explore how they imagined artificial intelligence and time travel; space exploration and alien species and transformations of gender and race; the quest for immortality; and the nuclear apocalypse. We will situate these works in their immediate artistic and cultural contexts and the wider, primarily American, comparative context of postwar science fiction.