MLA 101A. Foundations I. 4 Units.
Required of and limited to first-year MLA students. First of three quarter foundation course. Introduction to the main political, philosophical, literary, and artistic trends that inform the liberal arts vision of the world and that underlie the MLA curriculum.
MLA 101B. Foundations II: the Middle Ages and Renaissance.. 4 Units.
Required of and limited to first-year MLA students. Second of three quarter foundation course. Introduction to the main political, philosophical, literary, and artistic trends that inform the liberal arts vision of the world and that underlie the MLA curriculum.
MLA 101C. Foundations III: the Enlightenment through Modernism. 4 Units.
Required of and limited to first-year MLA students. First of three quarter foundation course. Introduction to the main political, philosophical, literary, and artistic trends that inform the liberal arts vision of the world and that underlie the MLA curriculum.
MLA 102. An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Graduate Study. 4 Units.
Limited to and required of second-year MLA students. Historical, literary, artistic, medical, and theological issues are covered. Focus is on skills and information needed to pursue MLA graduate work at Stanford: writing a critical, argumentative graduate paper; conducting library research; expectations of seminar participation. Readings include Homer, Thucydides, Camus, Mann, Kushner, and sacred, scientific, and historical writings.
MLA 262. The Economics of Life and Death. 4 Units.
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MLA 295. The American Enlightenment. 4 Units.
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MLA 298. Heretics, Prostitutes, and Merchants: The Venetian Empire. 4 Units.
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MLA 300. Oxford Summer Programme. 2-4 Units.
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MLA 305. Russia Encounters the Enlightenment: The Art, Culture, and Politics. 4 Units.
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MLA 322. Coffee, Sugar, and Chocolate: Commodities and Consumption in World History. 120--1800. 4 Units.
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MLA 326. Nature through Photography. 4 Units.
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MLA 338. William Blake: A Literary and Visual Exploration of the Illuminated Poetry. 4 Units.
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MLA 339. The Human Predicament in Three Masterpieces. 4 Units.
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MLA 341. Aesthetics of Dissent in Contemporary Iran. 4 Units.
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MLA 342. The Human Story in the Archives. 4 Units.
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MLA 344. Making and Unmaking Apartheid: Topics in South African History. 4 Units.
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MLA 347. Rome: From Pilgrimage to the Grand Tour. 4 Units.
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MLA 348. Modern Iranian Politics Through Modern Iranian Art and Literature. 4 Units.
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MLA 350. From Literature to Opera. 4 Units.
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MLA 351. The Civil Rights Movement in History and Memory. 4 Units.
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MLA 352. Virus in the News. 4 Units.
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MLA 353. The Fourth R: Religion, Education and Schooling in America. 4 Units.
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MLA 354. Intimations of Mortality. 4 Units.
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MLA 355. Dante and the Poets. 4 Units.
Dante Alighieri has had a profound influence on literary tradition. Among his more active respondents were the poets. While the Romantic poets found inspiration in his blend of lyric and epic, of romance and dream vision, of allegorical pilgrimage and spiritual autobiography, pre-Raphaelite poets such as Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (named after the Italian national poet) explored his use of gender dynamics, poetic authority, and the obsessive nature of love poetry. T.S. Eliot was, as always, a mixed bag, and at the same time as he was critical of a poet like William Blake, who illustrated all of The Divine Comedy and who was in his illuminated poetry in the visionary Dantean tradition of world-making, used The Inferno as the basis for his own deep psychological explorations in poems like ¿The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.¿ Prophetic poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats found themselves turning to Dante in their own dying attempts at epic, those masterful fragments The Triumph of Life and The Fall of Hyperion, respectively. This course will explore the lasting legacy of Dante as a poet of melancholy, alienation, and redemption in the visual and verbal artwork he inspired.
MLA 356. Film Analysis. 4 Units.
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MLA 357. Historic Journeys to Sacred Places. 4 Units.
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MLA 358. The Intersection of Medicine, Science, Public Policy, and Ethics: Cancer as a Case Study. 4 Units.
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MLA 359. The Big Shift: Demographic and Social Change in America. 4 Units.
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MLA 360. The Impossibility of Love: Opera, Literature, and Culture. 4 Units.
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MLA 398. MLA Thesis in Progress. 0 Units.
Group meetings provide peer critiques, motivations, and advice under the direction of the Associate Dean.
MLA 399. MLA Thesis Final Quarter. 6 Units.
Students write a 75-100 page thesis that evolves out of work they pursued during their MLA studies.
