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MALS,
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Wake
Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC 27109 |
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Spring 2008 Courses
MLS 705 Myths of Creation
Where did it all come from; when did it all begin? This course explores a variety of ancient and “primitive” mythological texts concerned with the origins of the cosmos, the gods, and humanity. Selections from Hindu, Buddhist, Native American, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Persian, and Norse mythology are examined within their respective cultures as well as in comparative context. Attention is given to various anthropological and psychological theories of myth and literary methods of myth analysis. We also explore the creative reinterpretations of the Biblical images of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The course concludes with a consideration of the survival of myth in the postmodern world and the relationship of the mythological imagination to scientific explanations of universal origins.
MLS 803 Citizenship and Global Justice
Should citizens of rich countries pay a tax redistributing much of their wealth to poor countries? This course explores the extent to which the moral duties we have towards each other as fellow citizens are different from the ones we have to each other as fellow human beings anywhere in the world. This vital problem has implications for many practical issues, including the proper scope of our concern for justice. The first part of the course deals with some general philosophical questions, including whether US citizens have stronger moral obligations to help needy fellow citizens over people suffering elsewhere in the world. We will also consider whether the fact that different cultures hold different moral values means that morality is fundamentally relative. The remaining three parts of the course deal with specific global moral issues of great contemporary concern – issues such as humanitarian intervention in international crises, just war doctrine, global distributive justice across national boundaries, global famine and poverty, global environmentalism, and international human rights, especially pertaining to female circumcision and AIDS. Much has been written by moral and political philosophers on these issues in recent years. Readings for the course will be drawn from writers such as John Rawls, Samuel Scheffler, Will Kymlicka, Joseph Raz, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and Peter Singer. A formal background in philosophy is not necessary for this course.
MLS 808 Honor and Revenge in Drama and Film
Revenge drama releases violence and passion while raising questions about justice, free will, and the impulses of one person or a collective opposing the status quo. Examining revenge in literature and film, we’ll consider the tension created among duty and passion and punishment and pity in classical and succeeding traditions as we consider the plays’ economies of injury, compensation, and catharsis. Our first readings will focus on ancient tragic theory and Greek and Latin tragedy as a backdrop for treatments of revenge in subsequent texts and film. After reading from Aristotle’s Poetics,we’ll examine Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Seneca’s, Thyestes; Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Othello; and Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna and Punishment without Revenge. We’ll also read Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Oxbow Incident, and Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden. We’ll examine film treatments of The Oxbow Incident (1943) and Death and the Maiden (Roman Polanski dir.); in addition, we’ll view Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, dir.) and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Tarantino) or Munich(Spielberg).
MLS 824 Commemoratives of the Middle Passage
Next year, the world commemorates the bicentennial when the British parliament and the American congress both simultaneously abolished the international slave trade on January 1, 1808. This course will examine the historical memory of the slave trade which forcibly removed more than 10 million Africans from their homes. The Middle Passage has been memorialized in films, novels, poetry, the plastic arts, exhibits, and historical monuments, especially the slave castles along the West African coast. Major themes that will be explored are the sensatory and experiential expressions, cultural diversity, internal population dynamics, gendered relations of power, and sexual difference. The social reproduction of cultural mores with the removal of “saltwater” Africans to the Americas and the absorption of new sources of slaves in Africa will also be examined.
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