Spring 2012 Course Descriptions

MLA 500.001 - The Human Condition

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 11206

Instructor: John McClain, Ph.D. (Humanities)

Mondays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

New Hall 111

An introduction to interdisciplinary studies at the graduate level. This gateway seminar for the Master of Liberal Arts Program offers an opportunity to examine topics that address our fundamental human nature from a multitude of perspectives—intimate and immediate as well as analytical and more removed. Students will develop scholarly research, writing, and analytical thinking skills. Must be taken as part of the first 9 hours of coursework in the MLA program.

This semester of MLA 500 will focus on the "nature" of the human condition: Exploring human nature with American literary classics. An interdisciplinary focus with essays, novels, short novels, plays, poetry, and film adaptations. The works’ historical contexts would be emphasized, showing how “popular” culture can be “critical“ culture, too. Preliminary reading list: Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays; Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Henry James, The Bostonians; Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop; Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes; Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider; James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain; Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night; Truman Capote, In Cold Blood.

Instructor John McClain: PH.D, UNC Chapel Hill, 1993; M.A. UNC Chapel Hill 1986; BA UNC Asheville 1984.

Fields: political theory and the history of political thought; political culture, the "art" of selling political ideas in painting, architecture, literature -- and including propaganda.

ENG 520.001 – Fiction Writing Workshop for the MLA Student

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 10215

Instructor: Tommy Hays, MFA (MLA Core Faculty)

Tuesdays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

New Hall 132

This class will provide structure, support and constructive criticism for students interested in writing fiction. The main thrust of the class will be the writing itself. Each student will be required to submit short stories or novel excerpts during the semester, which I will respond to at length in writing, and which we as a class will then discuss. We will read an assigned textbook on the various aspects of fiction, and along with the textbook readings, I will assign short stories that illustrate the particular aspect of craft being discussed. With each of these assigned readings, I will require students write an annotation, a brief writerly response, that connects the reading in the textbook with the assigned short story. The class will also look at various ways to generate stories, using in-class exercises.

Instructor Tommy Hays: Tommy Hays’ latest novel, The Pleasure Was Mine, was chosen for the 2008 One City, One Book community-read in Greensboro, NC and was also chosen for the Amazing Read – Greenville, SC’s first community-wide reading of a single book. The Pleasure Was Mine was read on National Public Radio’s “Radio Reader” hosted by Dick Estell and South Carolina ETV-Radio’s “Southern Read”. It was also a Finalist for the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) 2006 Fiction Award. Tommy has written two other novels -- Sam’s Crossing and In the Family Way, a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. He is Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program and a Lecturer in the Master of Liberal Arts Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he received his BA in English from Furman University and graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and two children.

MLA 520.001 – Seminar on the Human Experience: The Experience of War

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 11153

Instructor: Ted Uldricks, Ph.D (History)

Tuesdays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

New Hall 111

Using the Second World War as a case study, this seminar will examine the impact of war on the lives of soldiers, factory workers, children, women, ethnic minorities, resistance fighters, collaborators, perpetrators, victims, and many others. Readings will include: R.A.C. Parker, Struggle for Survival, Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War, E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed, Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War, Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz, and Hubakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima.

Instructor Ted Uldricks: Education: A.B. Univ. of Calif., Berkeley; Ph.D. Indiana University; Research specialty: Soviet foreign policy; founding director of the MLA program.

MLA 540.001 – Consumerism and the Environment

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 10218

Instructor: Gerard Voos, Ph.D. (MLA Core Faculty)

Thursdays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

Karpen Hall 033

“How much is enough?” That is the title of a book by Alan Durning and the overarching theme of this course. The class will be taught in a seminar format, requiring participation from each student. The first half of each class will include instructor and student-led discussions on subjects ranging from the clamor for constant world-wide economic growth to the impacts of our increasing consumption of natural resources to the belief that the more material goods we possess, the happier (as a society and individually) we will be. These discussions will incorporate information from daily, weekly and monthly periodicals as well as internet-based sources. Four books, written on the above-mentioned and additional themes, will be assigned at the start of the semester. From these, a weekly reading will be selected and discussed during the second half of each class. Course grading will be based on class participation, a multimedia presentation by each student, and two written assignments. Books that we will read and discuss during the semester include:

• The bridge at the edge of the world by James G. Speth

• Affluenza by De Graaf, Wann, and Naylor

• Common wealth: economics for a crowded planet by Jeffrey Sachs

Instructor Gerard Voos: Dr. Gerard Voos is the Director of the Office of Graduate Studies, Continuing Education, and Sponsored Programs at UNC Asheville. He received his doctorate in soil ecology from the University of Rhode Island, a Master of Science degree in soil science from Colorado State University, and his BS in agronomy from the University of Kentucky. He also received a post-doctoral fellowship in biogeochemistry at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, SC. At UNC Asheville, he has taught Climate and Culture, A Sustainable Culture, and Environmental Literature & Media in the MLA program; and Environmental Literature, and Energy and Society to undergraduates in the Environmental Studies Department. Dr. Voos is professionally and personally interested in sustainability issues. In addition to publishing and presenting research findings, he also has published general interest articles in web, trade and regional publications on subjects ranging from wine, fox hunting, golf, and the Vietnam War.

MLA 560.001 – Number Sense: The Philosophy and Psychology of Mathematics

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 10219

Instructor: Patrick Bahls, Ph.D. (Mathematics)

Thursdays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

Carmichael Hall 102

Participants in this course will consider a number of issues related to numeracy and number sense: How do children learn to count, to perform arithmetic, and to reason with mathematical abstractions? How does one's culture affect the way in which one learns and masters mathematical reasoning? To what extent is mathematics as we know it a human activity, and how does our humanity inform the way we do math? Readings and discussions will focus attention on the history, psychology, and philosophy relevant to mathematical thought, with readings including Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Imre Lakatos, and Stanislaus Dehaene, among others. No knowledge of mathematics beyond the high school level will be expected.

Instructor Patrick Bahls: Patrick Bahls received his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Denver and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University. After holding a postdoctoral position at the University of Illinois, he joined the faculty of UNC Asheville in 2005. He has written nearly twenty articles and a textbook in the mathematical areas of group theory, graph theory, and combinatorics. During every summer since 2007 he has directed an undergraduate research program in mathematics which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. His interests also include linguistics, composition studies, and rhetoric, and he has recently completed a text on writing in the quantitative disciplines. He has served the university as Chair of the Subcommittee on Writing Intensive courses and as Chair of the ILS Oversight Committee. He has received multiple teaching awards, including UNC Asheville’s Award for Excellent Teaching by and Untenured Faculty Member (2009) and Award for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences (2011), and the Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning Faculty Member from the Southeast Section of the Mathematical Association of America (2009).

CCS 560.001 – Climate Change & Society: Communicating Science

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 10214

Instructor: Michael Neelon, Ph.D. (Psychology)

Wednesdays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

Carmichael Hall 208

This course will explore the psychological influences on communicating climate change information from the following perspectives:

1) What scientists say - A discussion of how to present scientific findings about climate change to people without formal science training.

2) What we hear - The psychological foundations of decision-making. What biases and heuristics (“rules of thumb”) influence how people make decisions and draw conclusions from information? What is the role of emotions in decision-making and the formation of beliefs?

3) What can be done - Application of topics covered in previous sections to analyze how information can be conveyed to constructively engage public debate, discussion, and decisions relevant to climate science, including climate change.

Instructor Michael Neelon: Michael Neelon, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UNC Asheville, received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in experimental psychology where he studied dynamic auditory perception and multimodal selective attention. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Wisconsin Hospital investigating the effects of selective attention on neural responses recorded directly from human auditory cortex. Since arriving at UNC Asheville, his teaching has focused on the relationship between brain and behavior.

MLA 670 – Scholarly Inquiry Seminar

Please note: there will be two sections of MLA 670 this semester. One section will meet on Monday evenings, the other on Wednesday evenings. Both will be taught by Holly Iglesias and will have the same content and structure. Please see below for CRNs for each section.

MLA 670.001

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 10220

Instructor: Holly Iglesias, Ph.D. (MLA Core Faculty)

Mondays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

Carmichael Hall 102

MLA 670.002

Registration Call Number: (CRN) 11155

Instructor: Holly Iglesias, Ph.D. (MLA Core Faculty)

Wednesdays, 6:00-8:30pm

3 graduate credit hours

Carmichael Hall 102

Prerequisite: Successful completion of 21 credit hours in the MLA Program

Grading: S/U

MLA 670 is the first of two capstone requirements for the Master of Liberal Arts degree, which together provide the basis for identification, development, and completion of a major scholarly/creative project. Each project must be developed through individual, independent research and through knowledge gained in previous interdisciplinary seminars.

In MLA 670 students will (1) hone an appropriate project topic; (2) survey techniques of critical inquiry; (3) successfully complete a prospectus and scholarly bibliography; and (4) select a project content advisor to oversee the work to be completed in MLA 680.

Instructor Holly Iglesias: Holly Iglesias earned a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Florida State University and an Master of Arts in History from the University of Miami. She is the author of "Souvenirs of a Shrunken World" (Kore Press, fall, 2008), a poetry collection, and "Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry" (Quale Press, 2004), a critical study. "Angles of Approach," another poetry collection, will be published by White Pine Press in the fall of 2010. She is a 2011 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry and has been the recipient of fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Her teaching interests include American studies, documentary studies and a creative/scholarly approach to history through poetry and to poetry through archival photographs and ephemera.