My Favorite Novels and Films

MLSC 554
Semester: Fall 2022
Credit Hours: 3

In this class we will carefully examine four great novels from different eras: Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Atonement, to see what makes them so successful. Then we will watch and discuss the great films made from them. In the case of Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations, we will view sections of more than one film of the same work.

J. Dennis Huston, Ph.D., began as a professor of English at Rice University in 1969. He has won a number of George R. Brown teaching awards, the Nicholas Salgo Teaching Prize and received the 1990 Professor of the Year award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation. In 1990, Houston Metropolitan magazine named him one of the Ninety Best Things About Houston. Over the past ten years at Rice he has taught humanities, drama, public speaking and Shakespeare on film, and he is the author of the book "Shakespeare’s Comedies of Play." Dr. Huston holds a PhD from Yale University.

Evolution and Society

MLSC 558
Semester: Fall 2022
Credit Hours: 3

The science of evolution has come a long way since Charles Darwin first proposed his theory for how species change through natural selection in 1859. This course will provide an overview of modern evolutionary biology, with a focus on its relevance for 21st-century society. This course provides an overview of the modern science of evolutionary biology, with a focus on the relevance of evolution for everyday life. Examples include the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the controversy surrounding teaching evolution in schools, and the relationship between evolution and religion. Preclass readings will provide background information for in-class discussions. Students will select one topic for further exploration, resulting in a written essay and an oral presentation to the class.

Scott Solomon, Ph.D., is a biologist and science writer based in Houston, TX. He received his doctorate in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from the University of Texas at Austin where his research examined the evolutionary basis of biological diversity in the Amazon Basin. He has worked as a visiting researcher with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Rio Claro, Brazil. Scott currently teaches ecology, evolutionary biology, and scientific communication as a Professor in the Practice at Rice University. He also speaks and writes about science for the general public. Scott’s writing and photography have appeared in publications such as Slate, Nautilus, Aeon, and Wired.com and his first book, Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution was published by Yale University Press in October 2016.

The Politics of World War Two in Europe

MLSC 564
Semester: Fall 2022
Credit Hours: 3

TThis course is an in-depth exploration of the Second World War in Europe, 1939-1945. Hitler's conquest of Europe elicited political, social, economic and demographic upheavals in all parts of the continent. While closely following the military chronology of the conflict, our course will examine the radical transformations brought about by Nazi rule in Western and Eastern Europe as well as the Balkans. Key topics include the ideological dimension of total war, the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union, the comparative experience of collaboration, accommodation and resistance, the road to the Final Solution and its implementation, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing in brderland societies, civil wars and strife, and the multifaceted experiences of "liberation" and war remembrance.

G. Daniel Cohen, Ph.D, is an associate professor of Modern European History at Rice University. His research focuses on forced displacement, human rights, and international law in the twentieth century. His recent book, ""In War's Wake: Europe's Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order"" (Oxford University Press, 2011), explores the history of European political refugees after World War II and the rise of international human rights. Dr. Cohen holds a PhD in History from New York University.

Shakespeare in Film

MLSC 505
Semester: Spring 2022
Credit Hours: 3

This course will examine several Shakespeare plays and their theatrical productions. The instructor will teach each play as a text (and a script) first, and then study the films of these plays in an effort to understand the choices the film-makers have made in adapting Shakespeare’s plays to the screen. In this course, then, we will be concerned with studying both Shakespeare’s plays and what happens to those plays in the hands of a creative film-maker.

Dr. Joseph Campana & Theodore Bale
Joseph Campana, Ph.D. is a poet, critic and scholar of Renaissance literature, with essays on Spenser, Shakespeare, Nashe, Defoe, Middleton, poetry and poetics, and the history of sexuality in PMLA, Modern Philology, Shakespeare, Prose Studies and elsewhere. He is the author of ""The Pain of Reformation: Spenser, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Masculinity,"" (Fordham UP, 2012), and two collections of poetry, ""The Book of Faces"" (Graywolf, 2005) and ""Natural Selections"" (2012), which received the Iowa Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Slate, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Conjunctions, Colorado Review and many other venues. He has received the Isabel MacCaffrey Essay Prize, the MLA’s Crompton-Noll Award for LGB studies, and grants from the NEA, the HAA and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Current projects include a study of children and sovereignty in the works of Shakespeare entitled ""The Child’s Two Bodies,"" an edited collection (with Scott Maisano) entitled ""Renaissance Posthumanism"" (forthcoming, Fordham UP) and a collection of poems entitled ""The Book of Life."" He is the Alan Dugald McKillop Chair and associate professor of English at Rice University. Dr. Campana holds a PhD in English from Cornell University.

Theodore Bale obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Hartt School of Music, Theatre and Dance, where he majored in Piano, and a master’s degree from Northeastern University, where his studies focused on classical rhetoric. From 2000 to 2008 he was dance critic and columnist at the Boston Herald. His reviews and features have appeared in many newspapers in Massachusetts and Texas, and he was written extensively on dance for the Houston Chronicle, Dance International, Dance Magazine, CultureMap, and the blog Texas, a Concept on ArtsJournal. He has published “Dancing Out of the Whole Earth: Modalities of Globalization in The Rite of Spring” in Dance Chronicle and, with Joseph Campana, of “Pawning, Picking, Hoarding, Storing: Archiving America on Reality Television” in The Oddball Archive.

Human Identity & Origins

MLSC 513
Semester: Spring 2022
Credit Hours: 3

This course examines how DNA informs the structure and function of humans, and how humans have in turn used DNA as a source of information to solve mysteries and improve lives. We will introduce the structure of DNA and show how it influences physical traits and is passed on from parent to child. We will review the original goals of the Human Genome Project and discuss how the surprising results that emerged from it have altered the way we view the role of genes in human development. We will examine how breakthroughs in DNA technology have allowed us to answer questions about human origins, worldwide migrations and personal genealogy while aiding criminal investigations and medical treatment.

This course will also use the specifics of DNA investigation as examples of science in action. The study of DNA provides abundant examples of how science, as a social process, progresses to better approximations of reality through modeling, technological improvements, paradigm shifts and steady accumulation of knowledge. Fundamental to any core discussion of science is how objective knowledge emerges from the activities of humans who are often prejudiced, egotistical and even dishonest. The goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of both DNA and the methods of the scientists who study it.

The course will include critical reading and discussion of modern and contemporary essays specifically selected to demonstrate the breadth of the genre coupled with writing exercises and the respectful criticism of peer work in a workshop format. In addition, we will look at publishing creative nonfiction, including selecting the publication, understanding the process, and editing of their work. Students will turn in short essays to be read and critiqued by their peers throughout the semester and develop and turn in a portfolio as the final project for the course.

Alma Moon Novotny, Ph.D has lectured in the department of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University for the last seven years, where she has taught immunobiology, developmental biology, genetics and an interdisciplinary course with the anthropology department. She also serves as an associate at Will Rice College and as the faculty advisor for the Students for Organ Donation Awareness. Prior to coming to Rice, she taught a variety of plant, animal and philosophy of science courses in other Houston-area universities. Dr. Novotny holds a PhD in biological sciences from Purdue University.

Music and Medievalism

MLSC 562
Semester: Spring 2022
Credit Hours: 3

Why are we so obsessed with the medieval world? Since at least the late 18th Century, artists have been creating works of medievalist literature, music, drama, and film, abstracted and romanticized variations of the events, relics, and ideas that developed during this period (c. 400–1400). It has become one of the most compelling themes in Western aesthetics. This course examines the history and aesthetics of medievalist music in the context of literature, drama, and film. We consider the authentic models for medievalist works, establish the romanticizing methodology, and then observe how medievalism plays out in the concert hall, film, and other media. Students will learn to identify several major genres of Medieval, Renaissance, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary music and learn to recognize medievalist aesthetics, and particularly how composers forged connections between medieval and their medievalist works. Students will read critically and apply analytical methodology in the study of music, art, literature, and film and refine technique of writing expository prose.

Peter V. Loewen, Ph.D is Associate Professor of musicology specializing in Medieval and Renaissance music. His research interests concern vernacular song, religious drama, intellectual history, music and preaching, and the Franciscans. Professor Loewen is the author of Music in Early Franciscan Thought (Brill, 2013), and co-editor of Mary Magdalene in the Middle Ages: Conflicted Roles (Routledge, 2014 ). His articles have appeared in The English Province of the Franciscans (1224-c.1350) (Brill, 2016), the Oxford Bibliographies (2016), the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (2013), From the Margins 2: Women of the New Testament and their Afterlives (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009), Comparative Drama (Fall 2008), Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon (Brepols, 2004), Speculum (July 2007), co-authored with Robin Waugh, and Franciscan Studies (2002). His current research projects involve music in early Franciscan practice, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Franciscan Song in Pre-Reformation Europe, St. Bonaventure’s theology of music, and the English songs contained in the Commonplace Book of William Herebert OFM.

Moral Leadership in Economics

MLSC 560
Semester: Spring 2022
Credit Hours: 3

This course explores how we can be (or become) virtuous and successful leaders. This course helps students to develop personal and professional mission and values statements as aids in good leadership. On the path to developing mission and values statements, students will explore elements of moral psychology and philosophy, emotional intelligence, character development, the formation of communal and personal identities, the purpose and practice of commercial activities from the vantage point of five spiritual traditions, practical examples of institutions applying missions and values (both successfully and unsuccessfully), ideas regarding meaning-making, measuring our success in life, creating a life purpose, and giving voice to our values. The question at the center of the course is whether we can live professional and personal lives that do not conflict, but rather work in concert with the economic dimensions of institutions, especially if we find ourselves leading others in these organizations.

James Hackett

Environmental Literature

MLSC 570
Semester: Summer 2022
Credit Hours: 3

This course will focus on two branches of writing about the environment: 1) The poetic writing of the traditional American romantic writers and contemporary ecopoets, emphasizing how these writers view, use, and creatively describe the natural world; and 2) Nonfiction nature writing, which demonstrates the use of literary language to attempt to surface concerns about the environment and to transform the thoughts and behavior of society. We will explore the role of literature in the human relationship with our environment to understand both and we will read writers ranging from poets to scientific and literary essayists. Students will conduct literary analysis of the texts and be exposed to the major approaches to literature using ecocriticism. The readings will come mostly from contemporary nonfiction writers, such as Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Rebecca Solnit, Annie Dillard, Barbara Kingsolver, Wallace Stegner, and Terry Tempest Williams but also include classic writers, such as Emerson, Thoreau and selected ecopoets such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, and other contemporary poets.

Deborah Barrett, Ph.D., is a professor in the practice of writing and communication at Rice University where she teaches graduate courses in creative writing and literature. She was awarded the John Freeman Faculty Teaching Award in 2019 for her work in the GLS Program, which she joined as faculty in 2009. She served as the director of MBA communication at the Jones School and director of the Program for Communication Excellence for Rice undergraduates after joining the Rice faculty in 1998. She has a Ph.D. in English from Rice and has published scholarly articles on literature, communication, and leadership and a textbook, Leadership Communication (McGraw-Hill). She has participated in several major writing conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences for creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She has published several creative nonfiction essays as Deborah Burch-Lavis and published a chapbook of poetry, The Desert Speaks to the Dreamer (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Currently, she participates in poetry workshops with the Circle of Wise Women at Stanford University, and is working on publishing her novel. You can read some of her creative writing and see her photography at https://www.mydeborahbarrett.com and see some of her academic publications and presentations at https://scholarship.rice.edu.

Profiles from the Past III: Famous Figures in Western History

MLSC 640
Semester: Summer 2022
Credit Hours: 3

What has happened during the course of time, regarding culture and human experience that has been transmitted from the ancient to the modern world? What ideas and concepts concerning subjects such as politics, art, music, and philosophy have been our legacy from the western past? This course will survey the answers to these questions covering the time of the beginning of the French Revolution to the middle of the 20th century. In addition to the study of selected individuals such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Czar Alexander I, Cecil Rhodes, Gregor Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mohandas Gandhi, there will be examinations of Romanticism, Nationalism, Imperialism, and Fascism.

Newell Boyd, Ph.D is a semi-retired professor of history whose primary teaching field is Victorian Britain and the British Empire. He has presented papers at academic meetings and been published regularly in a variety of books and scholarly journals in the field of British history. He has recently published historical novels on the lives of John Ruskin and Joseph Chamberlain. He holds a PhD in history from Texas Tech University and has done post-doctoral research at the University of London, Birmingham University, the London School of Economics, Oxford University and the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Boyd has been a fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and is a member of England's Society of Authors and the Royal Historical Society.

The Awakening of Russia

MLSC 642
Semester: Summer 2022
Credit Hours: 3

In recent years western science and academia has had an increased interest in eastern philosophy and practices related to health and well-being. This course will examine this by exploring three of the major cultural traditions of Asia: India, China, and Tibet. As we explore each tradition's philosophical and religious principles, we will see how that influences their own understanding of well-being and thus, the medical system and methods they create accordingly-particularly mind-body conceptions and practices. We will thus examine the relationship between body and mind, illness, suffering, treatment, healing, and death. We will also learn (and question) how these traditions have influenced each other, and finally how they are finding a home in the West, in particular among western clinical interest and research applications with Asian healing therapies.

Newell Boyd, Ph.D is a semi-retired professor of history whose primary teaching field is Victorian Britain and the British Empire. He has presented papers at academic meetings and been published regularly in a variety of books and scholarly journals in the field of British history. He has recently published historical novels on the lives of John Ruskin and Joseph Chamberlain. He holds a PhD in history from Texas Tech University and has done post-doctoral research at the University of London, Birmingham University, the London School of Economics, Oxford University and the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Boyd has been a fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and is a member of England's Society of Authors and the Royal Historical Society.