New MALAS/Religious Studies Collaboration, Spring 2015!!!! Muslims and Jews in Cinema

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MALAS, the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences Collaborates with the English Department at San Ysidro High: MEXTASY: “Visiting-Professor-for-the-Day”/ “The Past, Present, and Future of Mexican, Mexican-American, and Latino/a Literature, Film, Photography, and Art on the Border and Beyond”

Just a quick note regarding MALAS's effort to collaborate with local area San Diego Schools:

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PRESS RELEASE | Tuesday, September 16, 2014

MEXTASY

The MALAS High School Outreach Program

A Joint Community Engagement Initiative

Thursday, September 18, 2014

On Thursday, September 18, 2014, Dr. William “Memo” Nericcio, Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences (MALAS), will be a “Visiting-Professor-for-the-Day” at San Ysidro High School, San Ysidro, California. From 10am to 4pm, Nericcio will hang with San Ysidro High English teacher Aaron Magnan and his amazing students, watching their presentations, and commenting on their work in class. At 2pm, there will be a feature lecture for the students entitled: “The Past, Present, and Future of Mexican, Mexican-American, and Latino/a Literature, Film, Photography, and Art on the Border and Beyond.”

William Nericcio is a Mexican-American public intellectual born in Laredo, Texas. With a BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA and PhD from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Nericcio has worked in the United States and England for close to 25 years with appointments to the faculties of the University of Connecticut, the University of California, Riverside, the Foundation for International Education, London, and San Diego State University where he presently serves as Director, Master of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences (MALAS); Professor, English & Comparative Literature, Chicana/o Studies, and Latin American Studies; and Director, San Diego State University Press. He is the author of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the “Mexican” in America and Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck's Enduring Voice for California. Mextasy: The MALAS High School Outreach Program is an extension of the Mextasy Exhibition: http://mextasy.blogspot.com

Contact Information:

Bill Nericcio, Director MALAS: Master of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences, College of Arts and Letters | Nasitir Hall 224 5500 Campanile Drive, mailcode: 4423 San Diego, CA 92182-4423 Phone: 619.594.1524 Fax: 619.594.4998 memo@sdsu.edu

Aaron Magnan, Chair English Department San Ysidro High School 5353 Airway Road San Diego, CA 92154 Phone: 619-710-2300 Fax: 619-710-2318 Aaron.Magnan@sweetwaterschools.org

Delve Deeper Into and Beyond Facile Notions of "Middle East conflicts." INTERPRETING JERUSALEM... a New Religious Studies/MALAS Fall 2014 Seminar

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MALAS Commencement 2014!

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Post by M.A.L.A.S. The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Congratulations! Our Three MALAS Comprehensive Exam-takers Passed Their MALAS MA Final Hurdle!

Congratulations to Holly Puccino, Luke Sponsler, and Inez Coquereau--they all passed their MALAS MA Comprehensive Exam!

Let the celebrations begin!

SUSAN VISVANATHAN @ SDSU! Another MALAS Co-sponsored Lecture with Women's Studies

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Susan Visvanathan (born 1957) is an Indian sociologist, social anthropologist and a fiction writer. She is well known for her writings on religious dialogue and sociology of religion. Her first book Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba(Oxford University Press) is a pathbreaking work in the field of sociology of religion. She is Chairperson and Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems at the Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU).^[1] Susan started her career as Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Hindu College, University of Delhi in 1983. She was Head of the Department of Sociology there from 1989 to 1997. She joined the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 1997, where she is now a Professor. She teaches Sociology of Religion, Historical Anthropology, Classical Social Theory and gender studies. She was Chairperson of the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University from 2010 to 2012. ^[1]

Visvanathan was Honorary Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla 1990-1995, and Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi 1989-92. She was a Charles Wallace Fellow to Queens University Belfast 1997. She has been a visiting professor to Maison des Sciences de L’Hommes, Paris (2004), Paris 13 University (2011) and Guest Professor to the Free University of Berlin (2011). She has been a Honorary Consultant to the World Council of Churches, Geneva 1987-89, Consultant to the Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1994 to 1999 and from 2009 onwards and Consultant to Free University, Berlin,2011. She also writes fiction during winter and summer breaks from the university, extending sociological and theoretical concerns in the more vivid prose of literary fiction including short stories and novels..^[2]

Books[edit]

• The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba. Oxford University Press, Madras 1993. Reprinted 7th time as paperback from OUP Delhi in 2010
• Missionary Styles and the Problem of Dialogue. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla,1993
• An Ethnography of Mysticism: The journeys of a French Monk in India. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla 1998
• Structure and Transformation: Theory and Society in India. Oxford University Press. Delhi, 2000.
• Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism: Essays in Dialogue, Orient Longman, (Black Orient Swan) 2007.
• Children of Nature: The Life and Legacy of Ramana Maharshi, (Roli Books, 2010)
• Reading Marx, Weber and Durkheim Today, ( Palm Leaf Publications,2012)
• Culture and Society ( Readings in Indian sociology,Vol.IX), (Sage, 2014)

Fiction[edit]

• Something Barely Remembered: short stories. Flamingo 2000 and Roli IndiaInk, 2000
• The Visiting Moon, Roli IndiaInk 2002
• Phosphorus and Stone, Penguin and Zubaaan,2007
• Seine at Noon, Roli IndiaInk, 2007
• Nelycinda and Other Stories, Roli Books,2012

source

sourced from wikipedia

Does San Diego State Offer a Masters Degree in American Studies... Yes! It's Called MALAS!

We often get asked here at MALAS, the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences, if San Diego State offers an MA in American Studies.

Technically, the answer is no. While the Department of English and Comparative Literature used to offer a program in American Studies, that went the way of the world about the time SDSU's amazing Americanists, Larry McCaffery and Sinda Gregory went emeritus on us.

Today, in 2014, however, there is a way to do American Studies and receive an MA in Cultural Studies with an American Studies emphasis.   You guessed it! MALAS.  Go to our website, look around and contact our graduate director, Dr. William A. Nericcio; his email address is bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu. You will soon see that building an American Studies MA from the host of classes offered across the College of Arts and Letters and beyond is easy with MALAS. While our acronym is not officially Master of Arts in Lively American Studies, you will feel that it is by the time you finish your MA.

PS: MALAS has sent 5 graduate MAs on to PhD programs in the last two years--two in American Studies, one in Education, one in Literature, and one in Media Studies.

Today! Wednesday March 12, 2014! A MALAS Co-Sponsored Event | Christie Herring @ SDSU!!!!!

MALAS! Co-sponsoring ERIKA LOPEZ @ SDSU!!!!

more info!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1424539401123785/

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & COMPARATIVE LITERATURE (with MALAS!!!)

IN COLLABORATION WITH SDSU DOWNTOWN GALLERY PRESENTS: 

PERSONAL NARRATIVES gallery talks featuring SDSU School of Art & Design Faculty: 

CRAIG CARLSON, DAVID HEWITT, SUSAN MERRITT

AND A SPECIAL READING/PERFORMANCE BY THE AUTHOR/ARTIST 

OF THE GIRL MUST DIE: A MONSTER GIRL MEMOIR

ERIKA LOPEZ

**Limited Seating** 

Please arrive promptly

Erika Lopez's reading is sponsored by:
SDSU Department of English & Comparative Literature
M.A.L.A.S. The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences
LGBTQ Research Consortium
SDSU Press
SDSU School of Theatre, Television, and Film
Women's Studies Department, SDSU

Watch that Pitchfork!!!! New Seminar for MALAS @ SDSU: Satan and Satanism!!! Spring 2014 with Professor Rebecca Moore, Religious Studies, SDSU

Spring 2014
Satan and Satanism
Professor Rebecca Moore, Religious Studies
4pm-6:40pm, Mondays

This course goes beyond the fiendish man in the red suit to examine a number of historical, philosophical, religious, and moral issues. These include the nature of evil, the personification of evil, and the projection of evil described by Jung as the “shadow side” of the human personality. It tracks the historical development of the character called Satan and various movements of his followers. It considers how the Other is demonized by association with the devil. It concludes by studying contemporary uses and appropriations of Satan in popular culture.

Rebecca Moore has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Marquette University (1996), where her specialty was Jewish and Christian dialogue. She has written and published on medieval Christian theologians and their debt to Jewish biblical commentary. In the past five years she has turned her attention to the study of New Religious Movements, where she has concentrated on explicating a group called Peoples Temple and the events at Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978. This effort can be seen on the website http://jonestown.sdsu.edu. Recently she has returned to questions of inter-religious dialogue. She co-authored the book A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity, with SDSU colleague Risa Levitt Kohn. The book examines how first-century Judaic groups interpreted Israelite religion in a new historical context. Home Page: http://kali.sdsu.edu

New Spring 2014 Seminar on Social Justice and the Environment! MALAS 600B: Water Wars: Environmental Exploitation, Resource Scarcity, and Human Rights | Dr. Michael Tiboris, Philosophy @ SDSU

MALAS 600B: Water Wars: Environmental Exploitation, Resource Scarcity, and Human Rights

Dr. Michael Tiboris

Southern California should be impossible. Annual rainfall here is similar to Iraq, and the main sources of water are a vast and expensive system of aqueducts (some of which are 1,400 miles long, drawing water from the Colorado River basin) propped up by a massive energy system and a management system which is not entirely democratic or technocratic.  And yet, it is one of the most successful desert civilizations in the history of the planet.  As the population swells, water consumption is on pace to far exceed current supply.  In other parts of the world, for example India and Bolivia, similar crises have degenerated into, at times, violent political conflict.  Why does this seem unlikely to happen here, or is it just a matter of time, or of history repeating itself?  What does the history of water conflict in California's past say about the same in its future?

This course blends resources from history, philosophy, economics, environmental science, and a little bit of poetry to investigate issues of justice in times of resource scarcity. Students will learn about the surprisingly fraught history of water reclamation in the western United States. They will confront questions about whether water is a private commodity or a public good, what it means to "preserve" a "natural" environment, and whether access to water is a basic human right. Course texts include works of social history, environmentalist journalism, economics, philosophy, and contemporary research in the natural sciences all aimed at answering the question: who owns the water and what do we do when it runs out?

Michael Tiboris, Lecturer in Philosophy

Dr. Tiboris's work is broadly ethical, focusing on issues of moral responsibility and autonomous agency in juvenile justice and education.  He also has significant research interests in the ethics and economics of resource scarcity.  After completing his graduate degree at UCSD (2012) he was awarded a UC postdoc with support from a grant by the Spencer Foundation to write about autonomy as a goal in educational policy.  This year he is a fellow at the SDSU Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs specializing in ethics in educational policy.  He teaches courses in ethical theory, applied ethics, and political philosophy. An example of his recent work can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/japp.12046/abstract.  

NEW Spring 2014 MALAS Seminar: "God's Fist! Religion in United States Empire" with Professor Ed Blum, History, SDSU

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Religion in United States Empire is a reading-intensive course that focuses upon intersections of religion, colonialism, imperialism, and foreign relations throughout "American" history. Our emphasis will be on secondary sources to obtain theoretical understandings of these subjects and enough historical evidence to evaluate the theories.

Edward J. Blum (University of Kentucky, 2003) is a historian of race and religion in the United States. He is the author (with Paul Harvey) of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America(2012), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet(2007), and Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005). He is also the co-editor (with Paul Harvey) of The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (2012), (with Jason R. Young) The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (2009), and (with W. Scott Poole) Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction (2005). Blum has been awarded the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities by the Council of Graduate Schools for the best first book by a historian published between 2002 and 2009 (2009), the Peter Seaborg Award for the best book in Civil War Studies (2006), and the C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in southern history (2004). Twice he has been recognized by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights and in 2007 was named by the History News Network a “top young historian.” He has been a fellow with the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and with the National Endowment for the Humanities. In the classroom, Blum engages the past in a variety of ways, whether through music and images or debates and historical simulations. His courses include Antebellum America, the Civil War and Reconstruction, American religious history, and history through biography. He is a co-editor of the teaching blog and with Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde of Major Problems in American History.