Master of Arts in Liberal Studies - MALS

MALS 2010 Spring Seminars

MLS 501 - 001: FOOD FOR THOUGHT: THE RISE OF GASTRONOMY IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

Instructor: Dr. Michael Garval, Associate Professor, Foreign Languages and Literature

Time: 6:00 – 8:45 p.m. Tuesdays

Place: 110 Withers Hall

Course Description:

The dramatic expansion of fine dining in post-revolutionary France, its evolution, refinement, and long-term, world-wide impact. Special emphasis on influential new ways of thinking about food. Broad interdisciplinary approach, including historical, sociological, anthropological, geographical, political, economic, and literary perspectives. Seminar readings and discussions integrated with films, guest lectures, field trips, and tastings.

MLS 501 – 002: US NATIONAL PARKS

Instructor: Dr. Jeffrey C. Reid, Adjunct Associate Professor, Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Time: 6:00 – 8:45 p.m. Wednesdays

Place: 111 1911 Building

Course Description:

This interdisciplinary course introduces students to U.S. National Park geology, provides a national history context, and highlights topographic features, plants and animals. Students will gain an appreciation of our nation’s national parks including geologic and historic origin, natural history and topographic features. The course combines lecture-discussion with Internet resources. Virtual park visits by web cam and Internet, different map types and other resources supplement lecture discussion. Geology provides a natural environment focus for selected national parks. Students will plan a one week trip to U.S. National Parks located outside North Carolina, and make an illustrated oral class presentation accompanied by a brief written summary. Active class participation is expected. There will be short quizzes or reports.

MLS 501 – 003: THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF SURINAME: THE ORIGINAL GLOBAL VILLAGE

Instructor: Dr. Jonathan Kramer

Time: 6:00 PM to 8:45 PM Mondays

Place: 111 1911 Building

Course Description:

Suriname, formerly Dutch Guyana, is about the size of the state of Wisconsin and has a population of around 520,000 people. Most of the population lives in a narrow strip of low-lying grassland along the Caribbean Coast, and in the capital Parimaribo situated on the west bank of the Suriname River. This and several other rivers have headwaters deep in the rainforest of the Amazon Basin that covers around eighty percent of the land, extending south to the Brazilian border. Because of a unique pattern of colonization, conquest, resistance, slavery, indentured servitude, and post-modern environmental predation, the country has one of the most diverse populations in the world. Carib, Trio, Waraka and Arawak Amerindians—descendants of the region's original inhabitants—live in villages along the coast and deep in the interior, and as an assimilated population in the multicultural capital, Paramaribo. The first European settlers were English farmers who moved down from the Caribbean island of Barbados, and Portuguese Jews who moved up from Brazil, escaping religious persecution. The first synagogue in the New World was built there. The English traded Suriname to the Dutch in 1667 in exchange for New Amsterdam, the modern site of New York City. The Dutch created a plantation economy, growing sugar cane and coffee, with imported African slaves providing the backbreaking labor. Suriname is home to the world's largest Maroon population, the descendants of 17th and 18th century slaves who escaped from the plantations and fled down river into the nearly impenetrable rainforest. From there, for two hundred years, they led daring raids against the planters and fought wars of resistance against the Dutch colonial army until treaties were finally signed in 1767, granting them territorial homelands in the interior. Their descendants live in villages along the rivers of the interior maintaining forms of social organization and cultural practices of their West African ancestors. When slavery ended in 1863, the plantation owners began importing Chinese, East Indian, and Javanese indentured workers to replace the emancipated slaves. Europeans, Creoles (the descendants of slaves who remained on the coastal plantations), and newly (and often illegally) arrived Brazilian gold miners complete the complex picture: a multicultural society before the term existed. While Dutch is the official language that all school children learn, most Surinamese speak the local Creole language, Sranan Tonga (Suriname Tongue), made up of elements from Portuguese, English, Dutch, and several African languages. Many Surinamese also speak the language of their ethnic communities: Hindi, Javanese, Hakka (a Chinese dialect), and Saramaccan (the language of the largest group of Maroons).

For students forest ecology, indigenous peoples, world religions, multicultural visual and performing arts, African and Asian diaspora studies, social and political dimensions of Third World countries, Suriname may be the most fascinating travel destination in the Western Hemisphere. Understanding the complex historical, sociological, economic, and cultural factors that shaped modern Suriname will shed significant light on the modern world as a whole, shaped as it is by many of the same dynamic forces.

Students will submit journal entries based on readings, and a final research project.