Courses

• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: French Literary Masterpieces - Robert Barsky

In this course we'll survey great French literary texts, translated into English, from the Middle Ages right up to the present day. Along the way, we'll explore a variety of fascinating literary themes and meet all kinds of amazing authors and characters:

• • Chivalrous knights engaged in courtly love (e.g., Lancelot)
  • Smitten characters in the throws of passion (e.g. Madame Bovary)
  • Magical beings using supernatural powers (e.g. Gargantua)
  • Monsters (e.g. Beauty and the Beast)
  • Enlightenment-driven revolutionaries (e.g. Marquis de Sade)
  • Extraordinary women (e.g. Nana)
  • Absurd worlds (Godot)
  • Modern writers akin to mad scientists (Rimbaud)

This is a survey, like a buffet that introduces students to delicious morsels in preparation for future feasts. Many of the texts have been turned into films that can serve to supplement or stand-in for the excerpts we'll be exploring. (Literature and Creative Writing, Fine and Creative Arts)

• MLAS 6600: Seminar in Social Science: Sex & Gender in Everyday Life - Stacy Simplican
  • Sex & Gender in Everyday Life challenges us to see the world differently. We will discover how gender shapes everything from our computer screens to global supply chains—through the lens of transformative feminist thinkers. We’ll consider hidden patterns in family structures, workplaces, legal systems, medicine, and prisons. Why do certain jobs pay less? How do laws regulate bodies? What makes some spaces feel natural and others restrictive? Whether examining gender through a local or transnational lens, we will question and consider critically what we've taken for granted—and imagine what could change. (Social Science)
• MLAS 6700: Interdisciplinary Methods Seminar: American Journeys - Mario Rewers
  • From the 16th century to the present, using feet, hooves, and wheels, driven by curiosity, fear, and desire, men and women have traveled across North America while documenting their experiences in text, image, music, and film. Discussing Spanish explorers and French philosophers, 18th-century scientists and modern-day hoboes, this course examines what accounts of travel and movement reveal about American nature, culture, and politics. (Core Course, History, Social Science)

• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Introduction to Creative Writing - Major Jackson
  • Designed to develop creativity and fluency in identifying and writing in three genres: poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Students are expected to engage in a search for artistic excellence, which through plenty of writing and rewriting, is obtainable in a course of this magnitude. Such a noble goal includes reading and talking and debating and listening, and exchanging ideas about what constitutes a perceptive and evocative work of literary art. Further, it is expected that each participant will acquire the artistic discipline and a professional attitude requisite to creating new works of literary merit. The course is offered as a series of workshops and craft lectures. Our course work will include group discussions and critiques of work produced in the course and that of established, contemporary and canonized writers. Most of all, we will be moved by each other’s stories and poems while also delighting in having fun as a community of writer. (Literature and Creative Writing, Fine and Creative Arts)
• MLAS 6600: Seminar in Social Science: The President, the Courts, and the Constitution - Carrie Russell
  • This course examines the dynamic—and often contentious—relationships among the presidency, the federal courts, and the Constitution, with special attention to moments of constitutional stress and crisis. Through focused readings, guided discussion, and analysis of current and recent “hot button” controversies, students will explore executive power, judicial review, separation of powers, and the rule of law in real time. Emphasizing critical thinking over rote doctrine, the class invites students to grapple with how constitutional principles are tested, stretched, and sometimes redefined during periods of political polarization, national emergency, and institutional conflict. (Social Science, History)

• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Social Justice and Global Literary Studies  - Michelle Murray
  • This course explores literature as a tool to examine social issues across the globe. Moving from Africa to Asia, Europe, and the Americas, we read novels that confront colonialism, migration, gender, class, and trauma (texts will include Things Fall Apart, Season of Migration to the North, Lost Children Archive, The Reader) alongside theorists whose viewpoints inform and complicate our readings (theorists will include Fanon, Spivak, Said, hooks, and Nussbaum). Through discussion, close reading, and research, students will situate texts within global histories, grapple with questions of justice and representation, and develop their own frameworks for engaging world literature today. (Literature and Creative Writing, Social Science)
• MLAS 6600: Seminar in Social Science: Human flourishing: A life well lived - Michael Bess
  • In this course we explore what it means to live a good life. The topic will be divided into four thematic levels–personal/psychological, spiritual, national, and global. The personal/psychological part of the course will explore two millennia of writings about what constitutes a life well lived and seek practical ways to apply these ideas to our own lives in the present. The second phase of the course focuses on the question of transcendence–the powerful relationship that many people find (or at least seek) between their individual selfhood and a greater sense of purpose or meaning. For many this quest finds fruition through organized religion, while for others it assumes more informal or secular forms. We’ll survey the history of this quest for transcendence among the people of many cultures, exploring how their experiences might be relevant to our own lives today. Next, we’ll look at the national and community level, analyzing the socioeconomic systems of the Scandinavian countries, and comparing them point by point with the American system – assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses on either side. Finally, we’ll turn to what it means to be a good global citizen, and how much impact a single individual can make. Surveying the major planet-level challenges facing humankind over the coming century, we’ll study the solutions that have been tried, why they have fallen short thus far, and various possible pathways toward a safer, more democratic future. (Social Science, History)
• MLAS 7340: Interdisciplinary Capstone Workshop - Robert Barsky and Michael Bess

• MLAS 6600: Seminar in Social Science: Food, Culture, and Identity - Norbert Ross
  • Eating and food are less about nutrition than about identity, politics, production and profit. While eating together provides a strong bond (our companions are the ones we break bread with) any community is also marked by exclusions - who doesn’t get to sit at the table. Hence in this course we explore issues of gender, race, and class and how they relate to food and eating. As part of the course we will explore our own habits as well as the Nashville food scene. (Social Science)
• MLAS 6200: Seminar in Fine and Creative Arts: The Italian High and Late Renaissance: Florence, Milan, Rome, Venice - Sheri Shaneyfelt
  • This course focuses on the art and architecture of High Renaissance Italy from ca. 1480-1600. We will study primarily works of painting and sculpture, but also architecture and the graphic arts. Major masters will include Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael Santi, and Donato Bramante working in Northern and Central Italy, namely Milan, Florence, and Rome. We will also consider Sofonisba Anguissola as well as Giorgione and Titian who were active chiefly in Venice and the Veneto. We will approach our material with an emphasis upon stylistic progression, iconographic interpretation and meaning, the role of patronage and audience, and original physical, cultural, societal, and historical context. (Fine and Creative Arts, History)
• MLAS 6700: Interdisciplinary Methods Seminar (Core Seminar): Ethics - Robert Talisse
  • What if you could prevent a murder by telling a lie? What if you could save a life by stealing a car? What if you could save five lives by committing one murder? What if you knew you could get away with that murder by telling a well-constructed lie? Would it be wrong to commit the murder? Would it matter if the five you save were close friends, and the one murdered were a cranky stranger? What kind of person would you be were you to murder one to save five others? Can a bad person be happy? Attempts to give coherent and systematic answers to questions like\ the ones above have resulted in rival theories of morality, each offering different views of what is morally good, worthwhile, permissible, obligatory, and praiseworthy. In this course, we will critically examine the most influential of these theories. Through careful study of key primary texts supplemented with contemporary articles, students will explore the landscape of philosophical theorizing about morality, develop critical thinking and dialectical skills, and evaluate their own moral commitments. (Core Seminar, Social Science)

• MLAS 6100: Seminar in Humanities: Jewish American History through Literature and Film, 1905-1975 - Adam Meyer
  • This course will describe the chronology of Jewish American life, particularly the experiences of Eastern European immigrants and their families, through the dual lenses of Jewish American literature and film. We will begin with the immigrant generation and move through the tumultuous years of World War II and into the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Authors to be read include Abraham Cahan, Laura Z. Hobson, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth, and Chaim Potok; films to be screened include Hester Street, The Front, The Pawnbroker, and Driving Miss Daisy. (Fine and Creative Arts, History, Literature and Creative Writing, Social Science)
• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Playwriting and Screenwriting - Judy Klass
  • These two kinds of scriptwriting are very different. Playwriting emphasizes dialogue and character development, with scenes that unfold slowly and reveal layers of people and changes in their relationships. Writing for the movies means telling a story visually, usually with much quicker scenes, some with no dialogue, and employing cinematic techniques (match-cuts, montages, inter-cutting, frames within frames) when they enhance a script. We'll read famous stage plays and screenplays, and scenes from others, and watch some works on screen in class. Students will write monologues for the stage, scenes for two characters, then more characters...and then short, silent screenplays, "music videos" (writing out visuals to go with a favorite song), and short screenplays with synch sound. We'll discuss Hollywood three-act structure, "road movies," "buddy movies," adapting a script originally written for the stage and "opening it up" so that it works on screen. We'll look at options and choices for both kinds of writers. Ambitious students are welcome to plot and complete full-length plays and full-length screenplays along the way. (Fine and Creative Arts, Literature and Creative Writing)

• MLAS 6200: Seminar in Fine and Creative Arts: The History of Fashion: Theory and Practice - Alexandra Sargent Capps
  • Survey of fashion history, ancient to modern, with an emphasis on fashion as it relates to art and architecture, and how it reflects women's roles and lifestyle. We will explore hands-on sewing techniques to learn about the characteristics of a variety of textiles and their application to fashion design and production. (Fine and Creative Arts, History, Social Science)
• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Don Quijote and the Development of the Novel - Andrés Zamora
  • This course will focus on a close reading and analysis of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote, so prevalent in many bucket lists of those aspiring to graduate in intellectual literacy and accrue cultural capital. In Don Quijote the main character suffers from a literature-induced malady not altogether different from the current fake news affliction or some effects of the contemporary computer games pervasiveness: he is not able to distinguish between reality and fiction, he thinks that everything printed must be true, and he acts on that belief by deciding to willfully turn himself into a knight errant with all the necessary accoutrements. Don Quijote, accompanied by his somewhat reluctant squire Sancho Panza, has the best of intentions, if not the most successful results. In addition, the very act of narrating his quests, adventures, and misadventures becomes a fundamental part of the text, thus, becoming a metatext, a self-referential narrative in which ultimately the character shares the stage with the author himself, who undertakes explorations of his own. Spanish society is on display, but so are the literary forms of the day, to be acknowledged and often satirized. Don Quijote is, therefore, a novel and a theory of the novel, brilliantly comic but profound and oftentimes somber, as well. It serves as a type of template for future novels and, accordingly, for future literary experiments, as texts engage and challenge tradition. Don Quijote will be the centerpiece of the seminar, along with examples of experimental fiction from the twentieth century and a Netflix mini-series of the new millennium. (Literature and Creative Writing, History, Social Science)
• MLAS 7340: Interdisciplinary Selected Topics - Capstone Workshop - Robert Barsky and Mark John Sanchez

• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Shakespeare and the Invention of Character - Lynn Enterline
  • “That’s he that was Othello: here I am.” This is but one of many moments where Shakespeare represents a character in crisis. In this course, we will investigate why the inner worlds and motives of his characters have attracted so much interest and speculation from audiences, actors, and critics. Considering soliloquies as well as dialogues, rhetorical questions, and literary allusions that convey the sense of a textured and tantalizingly mysterious interior life, we will survey all genres of Shakespeare’s work(dramatic as well as lyric and narrative poetry) by taking the question of “character” to be one that requires close literary, rhetorical, and historical analysis. Our study of each of his works will revolve around a number of interrelated topics important in Shakespeare’s life and habits of invention: the myths that dominated what 16th- century writers dubbed “the renaissance” or cultural “rebirth” from the classical past; the Tudor educational revolution and its transmission of European “humanism”; the practices of the commercial theater in Shakespeare’s London; and the close connection between the stage and the burgeoning legal profession. Studying Shakespeare’s emotional characters and literary representations of personal interiority will allow us to think about 16th- century experiences of social distinction—i.e. socially marked and contested differences between genders, classes, and races. Overall, this course will allow students several ways to approach an impossible question: How did Shakespeare become “Shakespeare?” (Literature and Creative Writing)
• MLAS 6600: Seminar in Social Science: Psychology of Politics and Policy - Ashleigh Maxcey
  • This timely course delves into the interplay between political ideologies, behavior, identity, and decision-making, exploring how perceptions, attitudes, and actions drive policy formation and systemic structures, while integrating cognitive, social, clinical, and neuroscience perspectives to address real-world challenges. By the end of this course, students will be able to: Understand key psychological theories and concepts relevant to politics; analyze the psychological motivations behind political decisions and affiliations; examine the role of group dynamics, biases, and emotions in political perceptions and actions; evaluate the psychological tools and strategies used in political campaigns and messaging; and discuss the implications of psychological factors in shaping public policy and societal outcomes. (Social Science)
• MLAS 6700 Interdisciplinary Seminar: The Dilemmas of Modern American Foreign policy in Historical Perspective - Thomas Alan Schwartz
  • Ukraine, the Middle East, Iran, China, North Korea, and Haiti. The headlines tell the stories of dramatic foreign policy crises throughout the world and the efforts of the American Presidents and policymakers to cope with these myriad challenges. Why have these crises erupted now and how best can they be addressed? This course will explore the historical background to the most important international issues of today, the policies and actions of previous American leaders, and what lessons history might afford about such crises and their resolution. (Core Course or History)

• MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Seeking Adventure, Treasure, or Protection: Great Literary Quests from Homer to Toni Morrison - Robert Barsky
  • World literature is rife with characters who have set out in search of new horizons or fresh starts, either because they are bored, desperate, or in need of enlightenment. In this course we’ll accompany some of the most memorable literary characters ever created, from Odysseus and Don Quixote to Scrooge and Frankenstein’s monster, focusing upon what led them to embark upon their quest. Following in the footsteps of these remarkable literary creations will lead us into vast realms of inquiry and will (re)kindle the excitement and the perils of seeking adventure, or protection. (Literature and Creative Writing, Social Science)

• MLAS 6300: Seminar in History: The War in Iraq - Katherine Blue Carroll
  • The subject matter of this course was diverse, covering Iraqi history, U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. military, counterinsurgency, Iraqi politics, international relations, Iraqi society and culture, and U.S. military policies and culture. However, the course primarily addresses puzzles of democracy building after military intervention and of U.S. military tactics and strategy in the Iraqi environment. (History, Social Science)
• MLAS 6500: Seminar in Natural Science: The Science of French Cuisine and Wine - Susan Verberne-Sutton
  • From sauce emulsions to wine aromas, discover the science behind those unique products that make French culture famous. In the land where the first European humans were founded, we begin with the art and diet of the cave-painting and foraging Cro-Magnon man and transition through the Roman influence of cultivating wine grapes and pottery art, ending with modern greats like Louis Pasteur, Claude Monet, and Alain Passard. The grandeur of French heritage will prompt this journey of cultural evolution through the lens of science. (History, Social Science)
• MLAS 6600: Seminar in Social Science: Unity, Democracy, and American Culture - Mario Rewers
  • Offered in cooperation with the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American
    Democracy, this course explores the narratives and metaphors that have
    shaped American political culture, from the "city on a hill" in the
    seventeenth century to "American carnage" today. (History, Social Science)
• MLAS 7340: Interdisciplinary Selected Topics - Capstone Workshop - Kate Daniels