MALAS 25th Anniversary Commencement featuring the 1st Annual Foucault/Fuentes Lecture in Cultural Studies | Paul Ryan Scheider, Purdue University

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With 21 MAs being handed out for 21 extraordinary agents of interdiscplinary and cultural studies, Commencement 2013 is the largest MALAS graduation cohort in the program's history.

This year our commencement will feature our 1st Michel Foucault/Carlos Fuentes Lecture on Cultural Studies--Professor Ryan Schneider, from Purdue University will treat us to a presentation entitled: "Madness and Delinquency. . . or, What Would You Do if Carlos Fuentes and Michel Foucault Showed Up at Your MALAS Graduation Party? "

MALAS Commencement is on Sunday, 10am, on the SDSU main campus in West Commons 220--no tickets are necessary and MALAS MAs need not feel the need to wear their graduation robes (though if you have them, why not strut your academic finery!???). Feel free to bring, friends, family, and (best yet) prospective folks you think might like to be part of the MALAS experience.

More on our first Foucault/Fuentes speaker:

Ryan Schneider holds a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard as well as an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from Duke.  He specializes in nineteenth-century American and African American literature with particular emphasis on Transcendentalism, Critical Race Theory, and intellectual history. His current research focuses on Cognitive Literary Studies, and his book, The Public Intellectualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. Du Bois: Emotional Dimensions of Race and Reform, was published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance series.

Professor Schneider’s articles have appeared in American Transcendental Quarterly, Arizona Quarterly, and edited collections including No More Separate Spheres!: A Next Wave American Studies Reader, (Duke University Press), and Boys Don’t Cry?: Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S., (Columbia University Press). He also has contributed essays to The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States and W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia. He currently is working on a book that examines the role of Transcendentalism in the construction and consolidation of various dimensions of ethnic identity in antebellum New England.

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In addition to serving as Director of Graduate Studies for the English Department, Professor Schneider teaches a wide range of courses in both English and American Studies.  He has received numerous teaching awards at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and is a two-time recipient of the Center for Undergraduate Instructional Excellence Fellowship. He also is a founding member of the Cancer, Culture, and Community Program (CCC): a joint venture involving the College of Liberal Arts and the Oncological Sciences Center in Discovery Park that explores the human response to cancer as expressed through art and literature. His first job in academe was as an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature--MALAS is excited to bring Dr. Schneider back to SDSU for this special event.

NEW MALAS FALL 2013 CLASS... NEUROTEXTS with Dr. Jonathan Ewell

NeuroTexts is a course on the meaning and the mystery of thinking, bringing together approaches from contemporary neuro- and cognitive science with an array of literary texts to explore brains, minds, intelligence, and their role in culture. The course includes two main units. The first, “The Mind-Body Problem, Then and Now,” offers a brief history of that philosophical quandary and its role in shaping cultural attitudes on and perceptions of the mind and human experience more generally.

We begin with readings from Descartes, Montaigne, and the Romantic poets, and then venture into 20th-century perspectives through works by Alan Türing and Daniel Dennett to show how advances in our understandings of neurophysiology and computer-based artificial intelligence have fundamentally changed the terms of the mind-body problem, changing in turn the way we view ourselves and our physical and mental being.  The second unit “Signifying brains,” looks at how the mind represents the world and also how the mind represents itself. We’ll explore representations of the mind in literature and popular nonfiction, including Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness style in Mrs. Dalloway, neural representations in contemporary science fiction, and a selection of narrative case histories from neurologist and author Oliver Sacks. Throughout this second unit, too, we’ll be studying a selection of recent scholarship that has attempted to bring cognitive science to our understanding of fiction, literature, and the arts.

MALAS Commencement Information, Spring 2013 | The 1st Annual Michel Foucault/Carlos Fuentes Commencement Lecture, May 19 @ 10am | Feature Lecture: Ryan Schneider, Purdue University

I know where you have to be on Sunday, May 19 @ 10am on the SDSU main campus! West Commons 220! MALAS Commencement!ALL present MALAS students are encouraged to attend with friends, family, and (best of all) prospective students! Remember! YOU are our best ambassadors!


Here's more MALAS INFO from an email sent to the program:

MALAS Familia! Friends, Students,

Alumni and Faculty of the Master of Arts

in Liberal Arts and Sciences,

It gives me great pleasure to announce

that all 12 of our MALAS Comprehensive

Exam takers have PASSED their final 

hurdle and will be graduating at Commencement,

May 19, 2013 @ 10am in West Commons 220.

Please make plans to attend with friends and family

as MALAS brings our 25th Anniversary year to a 

close with our largest graduating class ever!

Here is the official list of MALAS graduate

students being heralded at commencement--

I have placed an asterisk next to the group

of twelve that just passed their exam:

*Sean Lindsay Armijo

Trevor T Auser *Stephanie Bobp

*Jennifer Anne Carter

*Victor Fabian Delgadillo

Yadira  Diaz

*Leticia  Gomez

Malinda Hunter Hinesley

Allison Josephine Hooker

*Diane Alexandra Becker Hunt

*Sophia Nabil Jacoub

*James Loren Johnson

Marla Carissa Laguardia

Francisco A. Miramontes

*Richard Grant Muir

*Sharon Lynn Payne

Caleb James Rainey

*Thupten  Tashi

Jonathan Areola Valdez

Jenny Mae Weisenborn

Siobhan Theresa White

*Richard James Whitehead 21 MAs for 21 extraordinary agents of interdisciplinary and cultural studies--this is the largest MALAS graduation cohort in the program's history. Remember, our commencement will feature our 1st Michel Foucault/Carlos Fuentes Lecture on Cultural Studies--Professor Ryan Schneider, from Purdue University, will treat us to a presentation entitled:

Madness and Delinquency. . . or, What Would You 

Do if Carlos Fuentes and Michel Foucault Showed 

Up at Your MALAS Graduation Party?

MALAS Commencement is on Sunday, 10am,

in West Commons 220--no tickets are necessary

and MALAS MAs need not feel the need to wear

their graduation robes (though if you have them, why

not strut your academic finery!???).  Feel free to bring, friends,

family, and (best yet) prospective folks you think

might like to be part of the MALAS experience.

This is a renaissance year for MALAS. I am in 

debt to the College of Arts and Letters for its

ongoing support of MALAS. I am in debt as well

to the MALAS Faculty Advisory Cohort--including

its newest member Roy Whitaker, Lecturer, Religious

Studies, for their guidance and counsel during

the year.  My warm thanks to: Huma Ahmed-Ghosh, 

Professor and Chair, Women's Studies; Stuart C. Aitken, 

Professor and Chair, Geography; Peter Atterton, Professor, 

Philosophy; James Gerber, Professor, Economics; Seth Mallios,

Professor and Chair, Anthropology; Vincent Martin, Professor, 

Spanish and Portuguese; Professor, English and Comparative 

Literature, Chicana/o Studies, and Latin American Studies;

Harry Polkinhorn,Professor, English and Comparative Literature;

Director, SDSU Press; Stephen Colston, Associate Professor, History, 

and Adjunct Faculty, American Indian Studies and Chicana/o Studies;

D. J. Hopkins, Associate Professor, Director of the School of Theatre, 

Television, and Film; David Kamper, Associate Professor and Chair, 

American Indian Studies; Ghada Osman, Associate Professor and Chair, 

Linguistics; Joseph Andrew Smith, Associate Professor, Classics 

and Humanities; Edward J. Blum, Associate Professor, History;

Roberto D. Hernández, Assistant Professor, Chicana/o Studies; 

Yetta Howard Assistant Professor, English & Comparative Literature;

Amy Schmitz Weiss, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and 

Media Studies, Jonathan Ewell, Lecturer, English & CompLit and MALAS;

and the aforementioned Roy Whitaker, Lecturer, Religious Studies 

and MALAS.

Yours in MALAS,

William A. Nericcio

Director, MALAS

http://malas.sdsu.edu

ps: you are also invited to our final MALAS Monthly of the

academic year at the Blind Lady Ale House in Normal Heights!

MALAS Co-Sponsors Talk by Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Professor of History in the Chicano/a Latino/a Transnational Studies Field Group at Pitzer College

Please join us today for a talk by Dr. Suyapa Portillo Villeda, professor of history in the Chicano/a Latino/a Transnational Studies field group at Pitzer College. She has been documenting abuses of LGBTTI people in her native country of Honduras since 2006.

The coup d'etat in Honduras in June 2009 brought about state teror and increased repression against everyone in resistance to the coup, and especially to the more vulnerable sectors such as the organized Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Transvestite, and Intersex community. Since the coup, there have been over 200 murders, of those 99 have been LGBTTI individuals. Dr. Portilla will be presenting today on LGBTTI resistance in Post-Coup Honduras. 
Date: TODAY (April 30)
Time: 2pm, reception to follow
Location: AL 101

This event is hosted by: The Center for Latin American Studies, MALAS, the Department of Women's Studies, and Chicana and Chicano Studies.

We hope to see you there!

MALAS Summer Class, Summer 2013 @ SDSU | Sex, Drugs, [Film, Lit, Art,] & Rock 'n' Roll | English 525

mas info here!

Neil Kendricks Lecture on Graphic Narrative, Comics, Dan Clowes, and More! MALAS @ SDSU, the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences, the MA in Curiosity

What: Workshop in American Religious History (WARh) When: Thursday, March 21, 11:30-1:30 Where: San Diego State University, Arts and Letters Building, room 524

Workshop in American Religious History (WARh) is pleased 

to welcome Guy Emerson Mount (University of Chicago) and 

Sarah Azaransky (University of San Diego) to discuss a chapter 

from Azaransky’s The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and 

American Democratic Faith. Widely praised, one reviewer writes of 

The Dream of Freedom: “Azaransky's study is one of those books that 

makes me wish I could re-write my previous works - not just because 

Murray is such a fascinating subject, but also because Azaranksy 

does such a nice and succinct job of interrogating her life, writings, 

ideas, and perspectives.” 

What: Workshop in American Religious History (WARh) 

When: Thursday, March 21, 11:30-1:30 

Where: San Diego State University, Arts and Letters Building, room 524 

Contact: Edward J. Blum eblum@mail.sdsu.edu for chapter to be discussed 

Pizza will be provided – but only for those who contact 

eblum@mail.sdsu.edu to RSVP 

Co-sponsored by MALAS and the Department of History at SDSU.

MALAS! Co-sponsoring SHEREE ROSE event @ SDSU, March 13, 2013, 7pm

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MALAS Chavela Vargas Pre-Doc, Laura Herbert, Leading a Discussion on Orson Welles's TOUCH OF EVIL

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MALAS, The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences at San Diego State University, Featured in SDSU Daily Aztec Feature Article

Click the image below to enlarge or read the story by Eric Dobko here: http://www.thedailyaztec.com/2013/03/malas-program-offers-unconventional-learning/

Spring 2013 Classes to Add to Your Roster of Intellectual Treats! Vampires! Freud!!!

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NEW MALAS Collaboration with Religious Studies @ SDSU: GOD AFTER THE HOLCAUST

update: January 11, 2013..... some bad news: the Department of Religious Studies and MALAS have been asked to close this class for Spring 2013 due to low enrollment; we will try again soon in the future....

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NEW MALAS Seminar, Spring 2013: MALAS 600A SEM:CULT STUDIES:VAMPIRES IN FICTION AND FILM

VAMPIRES IN FICTION AND FILM
Professor Veronica Shapovalov

This course will investigate many transformations of Central European folkloric vampire into a Romantic literary character, an ultimate monster of horror cinema, a next-door neighbor of popular culture, and much more. We will explore how and why the image of a vampire became a metaphor for political and social concepts such as imperialism and colonialism, gender and sexuality. The seminar features readings/discussions of fiction, historical accounts, and academic articles as well as screenings/discussions of film.

MALAS 600A
SEM:CULT STUDIES:VAMPIRES
3 units
Sched#21737
open seats: 30/30
Seminar 4:00pm-6:40pm
T
PS-140
V. SHAPOVALOV