2021 -2022 Curriculum

The first quarter of the Foundations sequence will range from the early second millennium BCE to the early first millennium CE. Among the major topics covered will be the Classical Ideal of Greece and Rome as illustrated in the art, literature, and philosophy of the period, and the central tenets of the world's most influential ethical and metaphysical traditions: Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam.

Thematically, this course will focus on the historical, literary, artistic, and philosophical issues raised during The Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1914). Practically, it will concentrate on the skills and the information students will need to pursue MLA graduate work at Stanford: writing a critical, argumentative graduate paper; conducting library research; presenting a concise oral summary of work accomplished; actively participating in a seminar. Readings and assignments will include Austen, Mozart, Wordsworth, Schubert, Balzac, Kierkegaard, Mann, Marx, Dickens, Darwin, Freud, and Woolf, as well as selected poetry and critical writings. The course will culminate in a research paper and a presentation of each students' findings.

The tiny, remote islands of Galápagos have played a big, central role in the study of evolution.  Not surprisingly, they have also been important to the study of conservation. The fascinating adaptations of organisms to the isolated ecosystems of the islands have left them particularly vulnerable as the outside world has come crashing in to the archipelago. Drawing on lessons learned from Darwin’s time to the present, this seminar explores evolution, conservation, and their connection among the organisms of this remote Pacific outpost. Using case-study material on finches, iguanas, tortoises, boobies, cacti, Scalesia plants and more, we will explore current theory and debate about adaptation, sexual selection, speciation, adaptive radiation, and other topics in evolution. Similarly, we will explore the special challenges Galápagos poses today for conservation, owing to both its unusual biota and the increasing human impact on the archipelago.

What does it feel like to live on the edge, facing an expanse between you and the next place? Who has lived on the Western fringes of Britain and America? Who has named, formed, and been inspired by that land? Whose voices are silenced in the (re)making of a place? Shaping the landscape through the words we use or the features we build and imagine is as old as recorded time. In this course, we’ll investigate how the land is conceived, defined, settled, and delimited through history and literature, with particular reference to Wales and California. We'll focus on specific elements in the landscape—Water, Hill, Tree, Stone, and Border—looking at a sequence of locations through historical, archaeological, placename, literary, and artistic analyses. Students will produce close readings of literary descriptions of landscape, and will read indigenous writers' work alongside those of settlers and colonisers. Among the authors studied will be John Muir, John Steinbeck, Beth Piatote, Linda Noel, Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas and Gwyneth Lewis.

Students who have an approved prospectus should enroll in MLA 398: Thesis-in-Progress. Students who are working on their theses are part of this class and meet regularly to provide peer critiques, motivation, and advice under the direction of the Associate Dean.

The second quarter of the Foundations sequence will move from the early Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Topics to be discussed will range from the origins of the Christian west, the barbarian invasions of the 5th century, the advent of Islam, the flowering of medieval culture from the 12th to the 14th centuries, Renaissance theater and art, the scientific revolutions of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

This course is designed to provide each MLA participant a close familiarity with James Joyce’s Ulysses. It will focus on those features of the book that give it coherence and will study the technical devices that Joyce employed to open the minds of its three main characters to the attention of the readers of the book.The seminar will ask each participant to assume, along with the instructor, responsibility for either one of the 18 episodes comprising the book or one of its major aspects.The instructor assumes no prior study on the part of the students of the book, but it can be helpful if students have read both Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before the course begins.Each student will write three essays, one of 1250 words, one of 1750 words, and one of 2500 words. The nature of these essays will gain definition as the course progresses.

This course interrogates what people mean when they talk about security. Security justifies inconveniences like passwords that are nearly impossible to memorize, and metal detectors to enter sporting events, political talks, and airports. Security is said to be central to processes leading to war: the pursuit of security by one state may imperil the security of another, leading to a spiral of conflict that international relations scholars call “the security dilemma.” Sometimes we are asked to ignore impolite, nasty, or thoughtless behavior because someone suffers from the absence of security. Yet despite its importance and centrality in social and political life, security suffers from vagueness and imprecision. It can connote freedom from fear, or freedom from threat. Security’s modifiers are abundant and suggest a wealth of objects to be secured; a non-exhaustive list includes human, social, national, international, nuclear, cyber, food, economic, energy, and homeland.  In this course we will investigate how the meanings of security have shifted throughout history. We will ask why security becomes a societal preoccupation at different times in history. We will ask whether our current preoccupation with security will be permanent. 

Students who have an approved prospectus should enroll in MLA 398: Thesis-in-Progress. Students who are working on their theses are part of this class and meet regularly to provide peer critiques, motivation, and advice under the direction of the Associate Dean.

Foundations III explores how men and women attempted to locate themselves in the modern world through different rational, mental, humanistic, artistic, and conceptual ways. The course begins at the moment of the French Revolution and moves through to our contemporary global present. Along the way we will address capitalism and its critiques, liberalism, evolution and anthropology, world wars, the rise and fall of colonialism, struggles for equality, modernism, and the impact of modern science on the human condition.

"Separation of church and state" is as much a legal construct as a cultural one.  And as firmly grounded as it has become in the minds of US Americans, it has not always been this way.  Questions about the purpose of public schooling blends quickly into conversations about moral education or civic education.  Meanwhile, questions about religious education invites inquiries into method, evidence, and what to do with religion in a largely secular society.  This course will explore the historical trajectory of these questions and others, tracing a trajectory from the inauguration of compulsory public schooling to contemporary debates about prayer and "school choice."  The course will highlight important legal cases as signposts for a larger, more multifaceted conversation about how it is that American schooling can help us understand the relationships between social and spiritual concerns, between science and religion, between church and state.

Animals have always appealed to the human imagination. This course provides basic a rubric for analyzing a variety of animal poems in order (1) to make you better readers of poetry and (2) to examine some of the most pressing philosophical questions that have been raised in the growing field of animal studies. The animals that concern us here are not allegorical—the serpent as evil, the fox as cunning, the dove as a figure for love. Rather, they are creatures that, in their stubborn animality, provoke the imagination of the poet.

On the theoretical side of things, we will examine: the concept of the autobiographical animal defined here as a creature that provides the poet with an opportunity for self-reflection; the ontology of nonhuman animals that remain “other” and opaque to the questioning, curious human; the nature of animal aesthetics that emerge in creaturely poems; the nature of pathos and sympathy in the relation between humans and nonhuman animals; the ethics of animality; the “rights of brutes” (animal rights), and transhumanism. Our goals will be: (1) To become a better reader of poetry; (2) to develop a critical skill set regarding the representation of animals; (3) to enjoy engaging in dynamic group discussion about ethic, aesthetic, and philosophical questions and issues.

Students who have an approved prospectus should enroll in MLA 398: Thesis-in-Progress. Students who are working on their theses are part of this class and meet regularly to provide peer critiques, motivation, and advice under the direction of the Associate Dean.

This seminar aims to introduce students to the complexities of the primary source in its broadest sense, focusing principally on the written word, on images, and on material remains from 1000CE to the present day. We shall investigate how meaning is formed by text in its various physical and historical contexts. Among the major themes that we shall analyse is textual mouvance or variance (how texts change over time at the hands of successive users, whether annotators, readers, performers, editors, translators, or copyists); how paratextual features, such as illustration, typography, codicology and layout both affect and effect our interpretation; and the ways in which meaning can be said to derive from combinations of textual production, reception, and ideological or performative interactions. This course will involve hands-on experience with original sources, and will examine key scholarly approaches to material history.

July 25-August 16
Monday, July 25   6:30-9pm
Wednesday, July 27   6:30-9pm
Monday, August 1   6:30-9pm
Wednesday, August 3   6:30-9pm
Monday, August 8   6:30-9pm
Wednesday, August 10   Library session on own
Monday, August 15   6:30-9pm
Wednesday, August 17   6:30-9pm
Monday, August 22   6:30-9pm
Wednesday, August 24   6:30-9pm 

This is a service based, field oriented, Integrative Learning course.   California supported the greatest population density of Native people in all of North America, and was one of the world’s most diverse linguistic regions.  This class will review the history of California Indian scholarship, the ways in which anthropological and archaeological theory impacted native communities in California, the early exploration and history of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the struggle for sovereignty by Bay Area and other California native communities. The course will involve examination of primary historical documents located in archives in the San Francisco Bay Area, visits to local museums, working with descendent communities, and involvement with local archaeological sites and materials. Depending upon the size the class this course will have a heavy component of field trips, and field work. One of the primary goals of the class is to expose students to the methods materials and techniques that anthropologists, historians and archaeologists use to understand contemporary Indian communities. We will be working with Muwekma leaders to accomplish collaborative and service-oriented projects.

Lab and field trip days: This course is intended to be a hands-on, experiential learning experience. We will complete the requirements for the course in a short two- week period. The most important attendance will be on weekends- Saturday and Sunday at a site in the foothills above Stanford, on Midpeninsula open space lands. This means that you will need to have transportation to the field site and engage in archaeological survey and excavation. These are outside- outdoors fieldwork days. It will require some degree of physical activity but we have opportunities for otherly-able bodied people.

Wednesday, June 15 5:30-8pm
Friday, June 17 5:30-8pm
Saturday, June 18 8:30am-4pm
Sunday, June 19 8:30am-4pm
Monday, June 20 5:30-8pm
Wednesday, June 22 5:30-8pm
Saturday, June 25 8:30am-4pm
Sunday, June 26 8:30am-4pm
Monday, June 27 5:30-7pm