Sample Courses

For a representative sample of summer courses for teachers, please see our page about Summer Courses for Professional Educators.

Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies

MAIS 5100: What is Normal?

The opening course in Hiram's Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS), this team-taught seminar focuses on literature about physical disability, both from clinical perspectives and from stories of patients and their caregivers. It includes theories of disability and of "what's normal," ethical and legal issues, and narratives from several perspectives.  An underlying assumption is that looking at issues from different ways of understanding will broaden our appreciation of their complexities and enable us to make more informed and sensitive decisions.  We ask the question, "What is Normal?" from medical, legal, ethical, literary, and cultural perspectives.

The course also introduces methods of interdisciplinary study; skills for working in groups; and critical reading, research, writing, and discussion skills needed for the MAIS program.

MAIS 5140: What is Just War?

"Peace is not sought in order to provide war, but war is waged in order to attain peace." St. Augustine, 5th century CE.

Since the time of Saint Augustine in the early 5th century, theologians, philosophers, political and military leaders, social change activists and ordinary men and women have struggled to define if, when, and how war can be just. At the dawn of the 20th century, most Americans looked forward with optimism to what they believed would be a new era of progress and peace, ushered in by amazing new technologies. But the century that followed proved to be the most bloody and brutal in the history of the world, as those new technologies were used again and again for mass slaughter. We have seen the weapons of war grow more sophisticated over the past century, while the efforts to end war or to limit war or to wage war according to clear moral rules have been an ongoing struggle.

This course will engage students in a dialogue and in research on the question of what is just war, with a focus on the American war experience primarily in the 20th century. We will explore how people have sought to create justice in a world often shaped by war. We will examine the history of just war doctrine and of efforts by theologians and philosophers and politicians to set standards for waging war. We will explore the rise of new technologies and the application of those technologies to warfare over the past century, especially the creation and use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. We will consider efforts to limit warfare and halt genocide through treaties and efforts to punish “war crimes.” We will consider the viewpoints of pacifists and those who have opposed specific wars, such as World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. We will examine atrocities committed in war, such as the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. We will consider the responsibility of the United Nations and the world community in addressing war and seeking to limit war. We will explore situations when it might have been unjust to avoid war.  Finally, we will ask each participant in the class to consider his or her own views of just war and the morality of war.

MAIS 5210: Planting Good or Evil

Early humans relied mostly on their local flora for food, fiber, and fuel, and plants and their products remain the basis of modern civilization. Our food chain, like that of all animals, begins with the botanical world.  In addition, at least a quarter of our medicines come directly from plants, and we continue to explore the world to find new drugs for our modern illnesses. In this course, we will explore our dependence on the botanical world both for survival and pleasure, how some plants are essential in commerce and culture, even in our “modern” world, and how certain species changed history. We will begin with the transformation of humans from hunter/gatherers to agriculturalists, work toward an understanding of breeding and classical genetics, and then focus on the modern revolution in agricultural biotechnology, genetic engineering, and genetically modified organisms. We also will touch on sustainable agriculture. Additional topics to be considered are: risks and benefits of the new biotechnology, ethical and social aspects of this new agriculture, economically and energetically sustainable agriculture, “growing” pharmaceutical products in genetically modified organisms (i.e., bio-pharming), bio-prospecting among indigenous cultures for new medicine, and the intellectual property rights of these people for their traditional knowledge. We will learn as much about the science and technology as we must in order to discuss the ethical and social aspects of this brave new world.

Our time will be devoted to readings and discussions about a wide range of topics regarding plants used by people. Some of this will be directed by the instructor at the start of the term, but many later topics will grow out of the early readings and discussions and will be determined by the students participating in the course.  There will be several assignments to practice different forms of writing (e.g., journaling, position papers, and  a research paper) and to practice speaking to a group (e.g., formal and informal classroom discussions and a formal presentation).

MAIS 5245: “A Kingdom for a Stage:” Shakespeare, History, and the Audience

Shakespeare’s second sequence of English history plays has been called his greatest achievement as a playwright, suggesting a certain fixity of importance. But the significance of these plays shifts, not only over time, but with changes in the social context of performance. In this interdisciplinary investigation of Shakespeare’s histories, students will compare the plays to their historical sources in order to study how meaning arises for their several audiences: those interpreting in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and twenty-first centuries.

Using tools of theater history as well as of the historian and the literary scholar, we will address some perennial questions and coin new ones of our own. How do these plays engage their interpreters in terms of identity and moral/political development? How does the social and political predicament of Tudor London shape the retelling of medieval history in these plays, and how is this retelling reshaped further in present-day staged and filmed productions? How is Shakespeare’s mode of storytelling different in its demands on the audience made by earlier history or chronicle plays? Where does history interact with fiction in Shakespeare’s histories, and with what artistic consequences? How might present-day interpreters see their own world reflected in these early modern dramas?