Upcoming Roster

 

Summer 2025

The MLAS Summer 2025 term will run from Monday, June 2 through Thursday, August 7.

 

MLAS 6100:  Seminar in Humanities: Jewish American History through Literature and Film, 1905-1975
Prof. Adam S. Meyer
Course Description : 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.

 

MLAS 6400: Seminar in Literature and Creative Writing: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Prof. Judith A. Klass
Course Description: 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 -- and 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 -- "opening it up" so that it works on screen -- and 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. 

 

Fall 2025

The MLAS Fall 2025 term will run from Monday, August 25 through Thursday, December 7.

Complete fall course listings will be posted by March 15--please check back for updates!

 

MLAS 6300: Seminar In Social Science: Food, Culture, and Identity  
Prof. Norbert Ross 
Course Description : 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.

 

MLAS 6700: Interdisciplinary Methods Seminar (Core Course): Ethics
Prof. Robert Talisse
Course Description : 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.

 

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