MAIS COMPLETION WORKSHOP ~
WHAT IS BEAUTY? This seminar focuses on the conception of beauty as translated into music and visual art of the Renaissance period (1300-1600) of Western history. Beauty is a variable ideal, first articulated for western culture by the ancient Greeks, and reaching a fever pitch of theoretical and creative manifestation in the Renaissance age. This course will examine both the theoretical underpinnings of artistic beauty and the creative results of those ideas in the major canons of western musical and artistic compositions.
MOTIVATION IN EDUCATION ~ In this course, students will explore theories of motivation and relate them to educational settings. We will explore what it means to be motivated on a day to day basis as well as during life in general. Strategies for increasing motivation will also be evaluated. High and low motivation will be explored and the aspects of educational settings that increase and decrease motivation will be considered.
LEADERSHIP & MOTIVATION ~ This course offers a broad framework for understanding leadership in a variety of contexts. Evolutionary, biological, and social perspectives on leadership, what it means to be an effective leader, and how motivation plays a role in leadership will be explored. Contemporary issues and perspectives as well as classic theory will be examined in relation to theories of motivation and how these intersect with leadership styles.
POSITIVE LEADERSHIP ~ This course explores the nature of effective leadership within the modern organizational context. The central questions to be addressed include: What is “Positive Leadership”? How does it differ from traditional approaches to leadership? What is the relationship between “Positive Leadership” and the emerging field of “Positive Psychology”? Why is such an approach needed? What, exactly, is involved in the practice of “Positive Leadership”? This course is primarily directed at those MAIS students and upper division management majors who wish to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to function as “Positive Leaders” in professional and personal contexts.
THE AMERICAN COLD WAR ~ This seminar will explore historians’ evolving understanding of the United States’ involvement in the Cold War. Readings will examine the Cold War in both its domestic and international contexts. The class will place a particular emphasis on how historians have analyzed the connections between domestic social relations and international developments, how the Cold War allowed key social categories to be simultaneously understood locally and globally. Through close examination of recent historical works on the Cold War, students will develop both an understanding of important transformations during this critical era and an appreciation for the ways historians work. We will pay attention to how historians have exposed new archives to contextual analysis in order to change historical narratives about the Cold War.
COLD WAR HISTORIOGRAPHY ~ In this course, we will be learning how historians use historical method (historiography) and evaluate evidence (primary and secondary sources) in their own scholarship. This class will begin by examining the Tokyo International Tribunal in the aftermath of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the conclusion of the Second World War. Then we will move to examine the United Nations military government installations in Japan and Korea and study this interim government’s role in two wars: the Korean War and the Vietnam War. We will study the United Nations military orders to “stamp out” communism and other political insurgencies, how or why these purges were conducted with impunity despite the existence and evolution of genocide prevention laws from the 1950s onward. In this historiography, we will critically evaluate primary sources from 1945 to the 1970s (such as archived speeches, military correspondences, legal testimonies, op-eds), conduct a literature review of historical essays and create an annotated bibliography in order to understand the complicated landscape of human rights and international security during the Cold War era.
SEIZING THE MOMENT: GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON SUCCESS AND LEADERSHIP IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY US ~ This interdisciplinary course analyzes two special “moments” in the past that appeared uniquely poised to offer special opportunities to one gender. The first occurred in the early 19th century, the era of the “self-made man” mythology, when the new United States was experiencing unprecedented expansion and development. The second “moment,” during and following WWII, saw women taking on so-called male roles as builders, doers, and providers. Each “moment” resulted from a unique convergence of economic, political, and social conditions, and beckoned the most ambitious to step forward and claim participation and leadership roles in it. The themes of success and leadership inform our examination of these two unique situations. The disciplines of history and organizational behavior provide the framework to help determine what individuals, organizations, and society deemed successes and failures within organizational or institutional settings, including the idea of home and housewifery considered a career for women. Through the lenses of history and organizational behavior disciplines, leadership theory and concepts of historical context, gender, culture and organizational behavior will be analyzed.
"What is man born for," asked Ralph Waldo Emerson, "but to be a Reformer?" The urge to remake society, to perfect democracy and humanity, has inspired people to take action throughout U.S. history. This course will examine the ideas, the efforts, and the social impact of various reform movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will explore the conditions and problems that gave rise to each movement as well as the reformers' strategies for change. Students will also examine what made these reform movements more or less effective, and what impact these movements had on the wider society. The reform movements will include antislavery, women's rights, labor and socialism, and religious fundamentalism.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ~ What is happiness? Is it something which can actually be "pursued"? If so, how? What are the factors which contribute to human happiness? Inhibit it? What can we do, as a practical matter, to increase happiness (both our own and others')? Isn't the topic just trendy and frivolous? An increasing cadre of scholars from a variety of disciplines, not to mention the "founding fathers" of the United States don't/didn't think so. (e.g. "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"). This course will explore these and related issues.
LEADERSHIP THEORY ~ This course will examine various leadership theories which were developed from one of two major research approaches which tend to be psychologically driven-measuring, for example, traits and behavior-or- sociocultural driven-measuring power, gender, and social relations influence. Students will examine and discuss as well as compare and contrast the leadership theories strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness. Students will be encouraged to research leadership in education, non-profit, and private sectors. Discussions on this research will focus on the differences and similarities of leaders in each of these sectors.
AMERICAN WOMANHOOD: MARKET REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR ~ This course examines a variety of lived experiences (the social roles) of women in the United States from roughly 1820-1860. As a pre-market farm and subsistence economy gave way to a market economy, Americans saw the concurrent rise of a consumer culture and middle class, and a decline in family- or home-based work. The desirable role of women came under debate, with some insisting they should inhabit the “separate sphere” of home, where their superior qualities of virtue and nurturing could create a sanctuary for husbands now needing refuge from the harsh and competitive masculine world of work outside the home. Some Americans promoted the middle class premise that a female “cult of domesticity” was normative and should prevail in the largely feminine space of home. Many other women’s lives ran counter to that narrative, however, and this course also exposes students to a wide variety of those experiences by revealing the complications that class, race, region, ethnicity, or urban environments imposed. Topics examined include northern women’s role in the formation of the middle class (including their participation in revivals and reform), black and white women in the plantation South, working women in northern or southern urban environments (black and white), the “Lowell girls” in the New England textile mills (both from New England farm families and Irish immigrants), southern Native American women’s experience, and the choice to remain single in middle and upper class women of the Northeast.
INDEPENDENT STUDY~
PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT ~ In this course, the student will work with individual faculty advisors and with the course instructor to plan, research, and write the capstone proposal. The course instructor and fellow students will provide support, feedback and guidance to each student during the writing process. The capstone proposal must be submitted to and approved by the MAIS Oversight Council before the student will be allowed to register for the capstone course. The capstone proposal development course is taken on a Pass/No Credit basis. Students must have approval from the associate dean of academic affairs prior to enrolling in the capstone proposal development course. For further details, see the Capstone Guidelines.
CAPSTONE ~ Students whose capstone proposals have been approved by the MOC will register for the capstone course. In this course, the student will continue to work with individual faculty advisors and with the course instructor to research and write the capstone. The course instructor and fellow students will provide support, feedback and guidance to each student during the writing process. Students will also reflect on and assess their experiences with interdisciplinary inquiry and research. This course is taken pass/no credit. Students will use research and interdisciplinary integration in writing the complete capstone paper, reflect on the cognitive and affective experience of doing interdisciplinary work, and interpret individual experience in the MAIS Program holistically and as it relates to individual goals. For further details, see the Capstone Guidelines.
CAPSTONE II ~ Students in this course will continue to work on the MAIS capstone, providing feedback to each other on capstone drafts, and preparing a final draft for approval by faculty advisors and the outside reader. Students will continue to use research and interdisciplinary integration in writing the complete capstone paper, reflect on the cognitive and affective experience of doing interdisciplinary work, interpret individual experience in the MAIS Program holistically and as it relates to individual goals. Additionally, students will prepare for the oral presentation of the capstone to the community. For further details, see the Capstone Guidelines.
INTERDISCIPLINARY INQUIRY, THEORY, AND PRACTICE ~ This course explores the interdisciplinary research process and the theory that informs it. A portion of the course focuses on the intellectual essence of interdisciplinary and, in general, lays the foundation for the MAIS program. Also emphasized, however, is the step-based interdisciplinary research model which seeks to unify and balance disciplinary influences and create a more comprehensive understanding of complex problems. Familiarity with this research process fosters cognitive capacities useful in all interdisciplinary inquiry as well as methodological tools which are necessary for the successful completion of the integrative capstone project. Students will explain the meaning and significance of interdisciplinary inquiry, describe the process of interdisciplinary inquiry, evaluate examples of interdisciplinary scholarship, develop an appropriate interdisciplinary research question of significance, do a literature search in two disciplines on the research question, write a critical literature review of sources in the two disciplines on the research question, and write a paper answering the research question that integrates supporting scholarly evidence from two disciplines.
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ~ Students in this course will plan and complete a research project that requires the analysis of scholarship in two disciplines and the integration of insights from these two disciplines to answer a significant question. Pre-requisite: MAIS 57100 INTERDISCIPLINARY INQUIRY
Prerequisite: MAIS 57100
METHODS AND APPROACHES OF DISCIPLINES ~ This course will expose students to a particular discipline or related disciplines and explore the particular disciplinary perspective and insights that the disciplinary perspective tends to produce. Students will examine the various assumptions and theories of the discipline, phenomena the discipline generally engages, and methods for producing and evaluating discipline-related insights. Students will discern the assumptions of scholars in different disciplines, describe the methodologies used by scholars in different disciplines, compare and contrast the methodologies used by scholars in different disciplines, prepare a literature search in two disciplines on a question or topic of significance, prepare an annotated bibliography of sources in two disciplines on the question or topic chosen, and prepare a critical literature review of sources in two disciplines on the question or topic chosen.
LEADERSHIP STUDIES ~ This course will provide students with an overview of historic and contemporary leadership theories and encourage students to consider how those perspectives inform our understanding of what makes a good leader, especially in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary settings. The course will also include discussion of inclusion and diversity in leadership and what techniques or perspectives are most effective in embracing and sustaining diverse workplaces and environments. Students will reflect on their own experiences as a leader or in observing leadership and develop their own leadership philosophy.
CONTACT & CONFLICT: EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE (BEGINNINGS TO 1820) ~ American Literature, particularly before 1820, was a time of genesis--of contact (and subsequent conflict) between human beings sharing this space that we now call the United States. We will examine the historical, political, religious, and pre/post-societal implications that spurned the literature of this time period. With a 21st century lens, we will explore various forms of literary criticism of readings by authors such as Mary Rowlandson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and Olaudah Equiano.