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mals@wfu.edu |
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(336)
758-5232 |
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758-4669 |
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MALS,
PO 6103
Wake
Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27109 |
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Spring 2006 Courses
MLS 728 Prose Fiction Workshop
This workshop will take a self-conscious, practical, laboratory – or “hands-on” -approach to various techniques used in writing fiction. Students will do weekly exercises addressing choices and problems of narrative voice, dialogue and group conversation, description, and timing and present them to the class for discussion. The professor will be happy to edit the students’ work. Radiant and diverse examples of published fiction will be assigned for discussion each week to illustrate and to clarify the demands of the weekly exercise and to inculcate both ambition and humility. While style, subject matter, and syntax are a writer’s individual choices – as long as we may criticize how well they work – the goal of the course is to help students to develop control, to build a repertoire, and to be ready and able when inspiration strikes.
MLS 766 The Life, Teachings, and Method of Mohandas Gandhi
This seminar explores the life, teachings and method of nonviolent coercion (satyagraha) practiced by M.K. Gandhi. Seminar participants will define and implement group projects designed to promote change within the context of a Gandhian methodology. Students will also be assigned readings from Gandhi’s own voluminous writings found in the Autobiography and from secondary sources. Students will participate in on-going group projects, and will write a seminar paper dealing with an aspect of Gandhi’s life, political philosophy, and/or methods.
MLS 805 Isle of Saints & Sinners: Ireland’s Literature & Culture
An Irish saying runs: “Were all the Irish who left their country ever to return to Ireland, the island would sink under their weight!” The Irish traveled widely, and they brought with them a reservoir of customs and traditions. Even in North Carolina there are many examples of Celtic traditions and connections, which are evident, for instance, in the music, in the art of storytelling, and in the inflection of certain brogues. The experience of the Irish has a special significance for many ethnicities in this country because, being shaped by colonization, their struggle for independence compares to the American struggle for independence; their suffering and endurance compares to the African-American experience; and their exile compares to the plight of any newcomer and immigrant, present and past. No wonder such a small island has produced so many important writers who have sung of the bondage and liberation of a country divided by religious and political strife. Through the literature of Ireland, we are going to explore the many facets of its historical and cultural legacy as a key to understanding and appreciating the complexities and contradictions of its contemporary society. Starting concomitantly with the Wake Forest Irish Festival, which celebrates Irish culture around Saint Patrick’s Day, this course on Irish literature and culture (history, religion, music, film, and the fine arts) offers an appropriate vademecum, or set of guidelines, for the week-long trip to Ireland that we are going to take at the end of the semester.
MLS 806 A Delightful re(Past): A History of Food & Drink in Europe and the U.S.
Most of us give little thought to the meals we eat every day or the occasional beer we share with friends at a local bar. And we’re even more unlikely to think about what we eat and drink in historical terms. Yet, increasing numbers of historians have turned to the study of food and drink, with an understanding that what people consume reflects and in turn influences the economy, society and culture in which they live. In this course, we will consider the historical significance of a wide range of issues such as the spice trade and its consequences for the global economy and colonialism, religious practices and attitudes with respect to food and drink, and the creation of communities in restaurants, cafes and taverns. We will read and discuss a number of monographs relating to the history of food and drink, from antiquity to the present.
MLS 807 Mathematicians as People: Clearing the Myths
Recently there has been a surge of popular interest in mathematics: movies such as The Proof, Good Will Hunting and A Beautiful Mind, TV shows such as Numb3rs, and even a short opera, Fermat’s Last Tango. Are mathematicians really as eccentric as the popular caricature? Do they live in a different world from the rest of humanity? Is there actually such a thing as a “mathematical” type, or in the words of Karl Sabbagh, a “mathematical tribe”? Why have mathematical problems and their solutions been so fundamental for progress? These kinds of questions will be our focus as we explore the personalities and lives of a few famous mathematicians and the kinds of problems that drove their imaginations. This course is designed for even those who are math-averse, but are curious about this corner of the intellectual world and its hidden mysteries.
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