Liberal Arts (LIBA)

How to Read Course Descriptions

LIBA 200C.     Culture and Expression: The Modern Period. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): LIBA 200A and LIBA 200B; Graduate Standing

General Education Area/Graduation Requirement: Writing Intensive Graduation Requirement (WI)

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Interdisciplinary seminar on cultural movements, figures, and art forms of the modern period from the Baroque to the present. Focus on the West with some global comparison. Emphasis on theoretical perspectives, methods, and research techniques germane to the liberal arts.

Note: Writing Intensive

LIBA 204.     Performance Of Culture. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Study of the relationship between discourses of culture, politics, aesthetics, and live performance. Critical theories drawn from new methodology and ideologies will be applied to theatrical representations, both classical and contemporary.

Cross Listed: THEA 204; only one may be counted for credit.

LIBA 208.     Politics in the Age of Antichrist: Prophecy and Society, 1500-1800. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Examination of the role of the Judeo-Christian apocalypse in the creation of modern realms of discourse, including political thought, modern science, and secular values generally.

LIBA 210.     Gender and Religion in Cross-Cultural Perspective. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Exploration of the relationships and roles of women and men in the context of religious life. May focus extensively on one or more particular religious traditions cross-culturally, or draw on a wider spectrum of examples. Special attention paid to the complementary nature of men's and women's roles in many religious traditions; and also the way that male perspectives have dominated many areas of formal religious discourse, noting the dissenting voices of women often hidden in more informal types of expression.

Cross Listed: HRS 210; only one may be counted for credit.

LIBA 211.     Psychological Issues in Films. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Examines the presentation of psychological themes in contemporary feature films. It will consider such topics as: Adolescence, Adulthood and Aging, Homosexuality, Drug Addiction, and Physical Disability as they are portrayed in films created for a mass market.

Cross Listed: PSYC 296M; only one may be counted for credit.

LIBA 215.     Images of America at Home and Abroad. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Study and analysis of uniquely American cultural patterns, social institutions, and core values, and how they are perceived both in America and abroad.

LIBA 226.     Wisdom and Apocalyptic Literature. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): LIBA 200A or graduate status in History or instructor permission.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Examines two of the more creative literary genres that make up the canonical and deuterocanonical literature of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Both the historical and theological underpinnings of wisdom and apocalyptic writing will be explored in-depth, with some consideration given to literary analogues in Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Greek cultures. Significant research into wisdom and apocalyptic writings outside of the testament framework required.

Cross Listed: HRS 226; only one may be counted for credit.

LIBA 232.     Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Philosophic investigation of moral problems in the medical world, including decision making, rights and values pertaining to human life, and the principles of justice applied to the health care field.

LIBA 243.     The Holocaust. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Analytical study of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry, with particular emphasis given to the roots of exterminationist anti-Semitism, and to the cultural response of Jews and non-Jews to the tragedy of mass-murder.

LIBA 299.     Special Problems. 1 - 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Individual projects or directed reading.

Note: Open only to students who have demonstrated competence in undertaking individual work. Enrollment requires approval of the supervising faculty member and the Program Coordinator. No more than 6 units total of LIBA 299 may be counted toward the major.

Credit/No Credit

LIBA 500.     Culminating Experience. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): Advanced to candidacy and permission of the Program Coordinator.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Completion of a thesis, project or comprehensive examination.