On-Campus Course Schedule for Summer 2022

Ethics, Society in Digital Age

The transformation of social and personal life by computing, internet, and information technologies is now pervasive, raising deep ethical challenges. Who, or what, is really in control? Social media is often anti-social, political speech gets more uncivil, private matters are promptly public, and web browsing lets programs survey and manipulate users' minds. Main topics include the ethics of digital technologies, Big Data and information privacy, freedom of speech and censorship, regulation of social media, disinformation and propaganda, 'ethical hacking' and cybercrime, intellectual property, defending cyberspace, and access for disadvantaged and disability groups.

Found of American Constitution

Note: For students in the Madison program only.

MALS Continuous Reg. (HT)

Note: This course is for MALS students who need an additional semester to complete their thesis and should only be taken after MALS Thesis Writing.

MALS Thesis Proposal

During the MALS Thesis Proposal course, students work directly with the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies faculty director to produce an annotated bibliography (including the state of the question and the 20 most important works on the topic) and thesis statement, which prepare students for thesis writing in the subsequent semester. Students are expected to attend all class sessions, meetings with the University librarians for research consultations and any additional meetings determined by the faculty director.

Note: This 3 credit course is required for all MALS students who matriculated in fall 2019 and after.

MALS Thesis Writing

The MALS Thesis Writing course must be taken upon completion of the MALS Thesis Proposal course (LSHV 800) in the subsequent fall or spring semester and is the final curricular requirement for the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree. In the MALS Thesis Writing course, students will work directly with their appointed thesis mentor to produce a master’s thesis and participate in a thesis defense. Students are expected to work directly with their thesis mentor and library representatives to actively write and produce the thesis argument. At the commencement of the thesis writing semester, students will develop milestones in consultation with the thesis mentor to ensure consistent progress.

Note: This 3 credit course is required for all MALS students who matriculated in fall 2019 and after.

MALS Thesis Writing (HT)

Note: This section is for students who are completing the old MALS curriculum thesis (0 credit thesis proposal, 3 credit thesis). Students can only register for this section after completing LSHV 981.

Utopia-Dystopia: Surveil/Cntrl

Variously imagined in works as disparate as Gilgamesh, Plato’s Republic, and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, utopias are ultimately political visions. Though formally introduced as a term in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1551), the vision of a society where “all is well” and yet is “no place” has been revisited, reimagined, and inverted in hundreds of works of literature and film. Through primary and secondary texts, this course examines the philosophical, religious, political, cultural/historical underpinnings of the utopian vision and, conversely, the dystopian revision. The course will engage works such as Plato’s Republic and Laws, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Andreae’s Christianopolis, Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (and the Hulu miniseries), and Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, among others. Dystopias feature surveillance and control of individuals through political, corporate, bureaucratic, technological, and sometimes philosophical or religious systems. Propelling the course are fundamental questions: What is the good society (and how to achieve it)? What accounts for the widespread popularity of dystopic literature, film, and television? How does a book like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four become embraced and weaponized today by conservatives and liberals alike? Where does social media fit on the utopian-dystopian scale? Whose facts? What facts? How does democracy survive in a world of “alternative facts”? In this class we will research such questions using interdisciplinary approaches that borrow from critical theory, philosophy, literature, and film, along with historical records and Internet data, among other sources.

Note: This online synchronous course meets weekly via Zoom.