Download MALS Seminars, Spring 2013: Women and Madness

MALS Seminars, Spring 2013:
Women and Madness
MLS 501-001
Dr. Leila May
Tuesdays, 6:00-8:45
Tompkins G110
Our reading assignments for this course will involve a number of well-known women writers who
deal with the ways in which gender, race, sexuality and class intersect and function in the construction of
identity, and, in particular, female identity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the production of
identity was often chronicled by writers of fiction who showed that it was haunted by the threat of what
was seen by many individuals in power (scientists, social theorists, physicians, politicians, husbands) as
an innate disposition toward madness--a propensity that, according to them, posed a menace to the very
fabric of civil society. We will see in the chronicles of our fictional and non-fictional texts how this "female
malady" was as often imaginary as it was real, and when real, was often imposed upon women by its very
diagnosticians. Primary readings will include, among other works, Charlotte Brontë, Jean Rhys, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Marge Piercy, and Toni Morrison. Secondary readings will
be in part determined by the interests of the class as a whole, and will be drawn from a range of
disciplines, including psychology, history, philosophy, sociology, and feminist and contemporary literary
theory.
For further information contact Dr. Leila May: [email protected]
Global Sustainable Human Development
MLS 501-002
Dr. Bob Patterson
Wednesdays, 6:00-8:45 pm
2405 Williams Hall
How do individuals, communities, and nations partner to achieve increased freedom of choice—
the freedom to choose one’s preferred path to achieving one’s hopes and dreams? What is required for
sustainable human development to occur, both in more- and less-industrialized societies? How can we
know when we are “partnering-in-development” in a sufficiently healthy way so that increased freedom
of choice is happening for all partners? Our premise is that poverty and hunger are not inevitable, but can
be overcome only through a process of sensible, local, community-centered, and transparent
development. We propose that ownership of the development strategies being planned, funded,
implemented, and evaluated at the most local level is the only viable approach to sustainable human
development. Our time will be invested in identifying the strategies most likely to lead to elevated
freedom of choice for all partners seeking to break the poverty-hunger cycle so endemic in much of our
world.
Readings from: Dead Aid, The Aid Trap, Where Our Food Comes From, Enough, State of the World2012, Twelve Myths, and Feeding a World of Ten Billion People.
For further information contact Dr. Bob Patterson: [email protected]