Liberal Studies Seminars
Each year, Duke GLS offers a wide array of Liberal Studies (LS) Seminars developed exclusively for its students, including the GLS core course. Students in the program also can take graduate courses (500-level and higher) from across campus. For further details about course grades and requirements, see the Registration, Degree Requirements or Academic Policies pages.
Two comedic themes during the Pandemic of 2020 have been time and memory, and the discombobulation of both. In this seminar, we will read words and images recalling time, told in different forms. For publishing purposes, an item needs a “genre.” The items for this class may be convened under the genre “memoir,” in the form of essays, poems, drawings, and more conventional storytelling. Readings may include: James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (1955); Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream (1949); Larry McMurtry’s In a Narrow Grave (1968); Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals (1980); Patricia Polacco’s My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother (1994); James McBride’s The Color of Water (1995); Jerry Stiller’s Married to Laughter (2000); Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006); Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant (2014); and Miranda Richmond Mouillot’s A Fifty-Year Silence (2015). Weekly (2-3 pp. double-spacing, 10-11 point font) close reading from the assigned text. Papers due at time of class. Participation is 40% of your grade; papers, 60%. Listening attentively to your neighbor is as important as speech for your participation grade.
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The earth now has 7.8 million people and will likely peak at 10 billion around 2060. How can the diversity of plants, animals and ecosystems survive on a finite planet with a climate that is changing at an unprecedented rate? This course examines the role of national parks and other protected areas and the challenges these areas face in protecting species and ecosystems. It is notable that the acreage of protected areas is higher than ever, and substantially above the 10 percent that was once the target of the environmental movement. Yet global extinctions are high and rising. Two of the main issues for protected areas are dealing with a fast-growing flood of tourists and making peace with the hundreds of millions of people, many of them poor, who live in and around them. Is conflict among protected areas, local populations and tourism inevitable? Or can we make tourism “sustainable” and harness it for the benefit of both nature protection and local development?The earth now has 7.8 million people and will likely peak at 10 billion around 2060. How can the diversity of plants, animals and ecosystems survive on a finite planet with a climate that is changing at an unprecedented rate? This course examines the role of national parks and other protected areas and the challenges these areas face in protecting species and ecosystems. It is notable that the acreage of protected areas is higher than ever, and substantially above the 10 percent that was once the target of the environmental movement. Yet global extinctions are high and rising. Two of the main issues for protected areas are dealing with a fast-growing flood of tourists and making peace with the hundreds of millions of people, many of them poor, who live in and around them. Is conflict among protected areas, local populations and tourism inevitable? Or can we make tourism “sustainable” and harness it for the benefit of both nature protection and local development?
CLICK HERE TO WATCH A COURSE PREVIEW VIDEO
Through conversation, practice, and engagement with critical makers and thinkers, we’ll investigate how digital tools create knowledge, produce relations, and build worlds. We’ll look at how our digital tools, techniques, algorithms, search, and research are situated within and alongside systems of oppression (racism, sexism, ableism), both by design and by virtue of their being designed with/in those systems. We’ll interrogate how our tools are governing our actions and interactions as researchers, and how they are guiding our digital research insofar they are quietly influencing our projects.
We’ll think together about how to tell the stories of our research and projects knowing they are co-authored by the tools we use, and we’ll think through methods for how those tools might be hacked, or refused, to manifest more just systems. At its core, this class-qua-learning-lab is really about how we experience the world. If you are already using a digital tool for your research project, you’ll be invited to do a self-study of that tool with the goal of producing a short statement about how the tool is participating in and co-authoring your project.
INSTRUCTOR: CHARLIE THOMPSON
Humanity is on the move. Climate refugees, exiles of war, economic migrants, expatriates seeking new opportunities, along with others compelled to flee their current circumstances and look for a new life, are moving across borders comprise a chaotic movement en masse in greater numbers than ever in the history of humanity. Combine these movers with the billions of religious pilgrims, adventure travelers, and tourists, and we find ourselves in a chaotic world of migrations in every direction. How to make sense of it? What does this world of travel tell us about our future?
In this course, we will seek to make sense of all the movements in which we find ourselves and others. Readings on pilgrimage will intermingle with memoirs and essays on travel, writings and films on the act of walking, and readings and explorations of refugees, immigrant life, and border crossings. We will seek to understand this means for humanity and for us personally.
We will place ourselves in this mix of movers as we consider our impact on the world. We will consider related questions, such as: How should we think of places and identities in a world in motion? Are there ethical means of travel in this age of climate change and political upheaval? How does travel and an act as simple as an afternoon walk resemble the pattern of a human life? How does a labyrinth give us a glimpse into the meaning of movement in larger contexts? What can pilgrimage mean for non-traditional participants on a religious journey? How do we make sense of our place in a world where refugees are knocking at our door asking to be let in to American safety? What of border walls and their meaning for our collective human future? And more!
We will explore such readings as:
- Ian Reader’s Pilgrimage: A Very Short Introduction
- Selection from three books by Rebecca Solnit: A Book of Migrations, A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Wanderlust
- Henry David Thoreau’s Walking
- Frederic Gros’s: A Philosophy of Walking
- Duncan Minshall’s While Wandering: A Walking Companion
- Suketo Mehta’s This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto
- John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath
- Sonia Nozario’s Enrique’s Journey
- John F. Kennedy’s A Nation of Immigrants
- Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- Timothy Egan’s A Pilgrimage to Eternity
- Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera
- Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
- Charles Thompson’s Border Odyssey: Travels Along the US/Mexico Divide
- And more.
In addition to readings, we will watch and discuss such films such as Estevez’s The Way, Herzog’s Pilgrimage, Apted’s 63 Up, and the classic, Wizard of Oz, among others.
This course should appeal to anyone interested in current affairs, especially those reflecting on the meaning of life, whether backwards or forwards; those considering the meanings and ramifications of travel; global citizens hoping to live ethically in a world of the displaced; humanists concerned about climate change and movement; and generally anyone who has ever walked and, with Thoreau, wanted to reflect on what it means “to saunter.” Hint: the root word signifies walking is a holy undertaking.
Seminar format. Participation mandatory. Applied studies of pilgrimages, work with immigrants, and travel encouraged. No prerequisites. Meant to appeal to all GLS students.
The development and initial offering of this new course in the Spring of 2021 was supported through the generosity of GLS alumna Lottie Applewhite.
Charles D. Thompson, Jr. is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University. A common thread through his work is a deep concern for people doing their all to have a voice in our agricultural systems.
Thompson holds a Ph.D. in religion and culture from UNC-Chapel Hill, with concentrations in cultural studies and Latin American studies. He also holds an M.S. degree in Agricultural Education from NC A&T State University. His particular interests include farmworkers, immigration, agriculture, and Appalachian Studies. His methodology includes oral history, ethnographic writing, documentary filmmaking, and collaborative community activism.
A former farmer, Thompson remains concerned about laborers within our food system. He has written and made films about small farmers and farmworkers. He is an advisory board member of Student Action with Farmworkers, the Duke Campus Farm, and other food and agricultural initiatives.
Thompson is author or editor of six books. His latest (2015) is, Border Odyssey: Traveling the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He also wrote Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World. He is also editor, with Melinda Wiggins, of The Human Cost of Food: Farmworker Lives, Labor, and Advocacy.
Thompson is the producer/director of five documentary films, including Faces of Time (2015), Brother Towns/ Pueblos Hermanos (2010), We Shall Not Be Moved (2008), and The Guestworker (2007). His latest film, in collaboration with the organization, Farm Aid, is entitled, Homeplace Under Fire (2016).
Our current pandemic is, for many, revealing critical failures and design flaws in the foundational systems that guide our daily functioning. These revelations open problem spaces for entrepreneurial thinkers and tinkerers to ask What new techniques and technologies might we design in light of our current context? How might we think through the pandemic as we move through it?
Together we’ll explore these questions:
- How do our things, spaces, artifacts, environments design us?
- How has the pandemic, and let’s think broadly here, (re)designed our spaces, things artifacts, environments, actions, reactions, and interactions?
- How can we use speculative research to redesign the world?
- How can we call on a wide variety of knowledges to inform our practice?
- How can speculative fiction provide a model for future ways of living and/or ways of dreaming futures?
The development and initial offering of this new course in the Spring of 2021 was supported through the generosity of GLS alumna Lottie Applewhite.
Watch a course preview. 
Understanding the role of science in everyday life is a critical aspect of modern society. Science is often discussed through social media, news outlets, and politics without details of the underlying concepts. “Science in the Public Eye” is designed to give all students taking it a broad introduction to fundamental scientific concepts, expose them to the natural world, and make them a more informed citizen. In this course, students will investigate topics that are often discussed through these platforms. We will explore the science behind the topic, popular opinions, and discuss misconceptions. We will focus on topics ranging from vaccinations, disease epidemics, genetically modified organisms, and antibiotic resistance to the Endangered Species Act and climate change. Our main goal through our classroom discussions will be to focus on effective communication of the topic.
Each week we will read and discuss scientific and nonscientific readings on the assigned topic. We will compare and contrast the readings and discuss misconceptions that the general public might get from only reading nonscientific articles. Students will work individually or in pairs to lead one of the weekly discussions. Students will also research a recent topic in the news and prepare a 5-7 minute presentation on the topic. In addition, students will work in groups to prepare an educational video or other form of scientific communication (podcast, infographic, newspaper column, etc.) geared towards any age group about a topic related to the course.
The development and initial offering of this new course in the Fall of 2020 was supported through the generosity of GLS alumna Lottie Applewhite.
Laurie Mauger is a Lecturer in the Department of Biology. She received her Ph.D. in 2010 from Drexel University on population genetics and conservation of American crocodiles in Costa Rica. Since graduating, her research has focused on involving undergraduate students in research on projects focusing on population genetics of crocodiles, caterpillars, ringtail cats, and ants. Today, Dr. Mauger focuses mainly on pedagogical research investigating the impact of course-based research projects on student learning and attitude towards science and nature. She has published 5 scientific papers and is working with students to submit several more. Dr. Mauger has taught a variety undergraduate level courses on genetics, evolution, general biology, conservation biology at institutions such as Princeton University, Drexel University, and Southern University and a graduate level course in population genetics at Cedar Crest College. She joined the faculty at Duke in 2018.
The purpose of this course is to better understand the processes and outcomes of death and dying. The US and other developed countries have become death phobic and have avoided interactions around death and dying. Both death and dying are culturally bound and strongly influenced by religious beliefs, we will take a interdisciplinary approach to our examination of these phenomena (including sociological, psychological, religious, biomedical, and social psychological). This will help us better understand how and where people die, multiple beliefs about life after death, and what drives the American population to experience anxiety and fear about death and dying more than any other culture in the world.
The course includes an overview of the biological process of dying and biomedical definitions of death, the social and psychological aspects of death and dying in modern American culture, death and dying as multicultural phenomena, the clinical issues around death and dying, and the management of those issues in an aging society.
Requirements include four short response papers, an oral presentation, and a final research paper.
For most of the past five hundred years, the overwhelming majority of the global population was governed by one of the major imperial powers (Ottoman, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, Hapsburg, and Russian/Soviet as well as the Chinese and Japanese Empires). It was not until after the Second World War that the sun began to set on this age of empire, when anticolonial movements secured national independence and the nation state became the preeminent form of governance. The long-standing impact of imperial governance on historical developments throughout the (formerly) colonized world is widely acknowledged. Less recognized are the reciprocal effects of empire on the imperial home front. Many of the technological, economic, cultural, and political attributes in which the developed world has taken a racialized pride were in fact products of the colonial encounter. The economic “revolutions” of the 17th and 18th centuries (commercial, financial, industrial and consumer), political democratization—the inclusion of white workers and eventually women in the political nation-- in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the “tribal” warfare that nearly destroyed Europe between 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, were all profoundly shaped by the colonial contexts in which national and international events unfolded.
Europe did not simply export “western civilization”, for good or ill, to the colonized world. This course will explore the connections through which a global modernity has emerged: connections between past and present, between colonized and colonizer, between underdeveloped and developed nations, between the West and the Rest. Our method of inquiry is necessarily transnational and implicitly comparative. It is also interdisciplinary. We will be examining the colonial past and postcolonial present from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives: in addition to imperial, economic, military and social history, these include journalism, economics, international relations, law, medicine, anthropology, literary criticism, cultural studies, sexuality and gender studies, and public policy.
Requirements: extensive reading, weekly reaction papers, and an independent research project.
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People take the places where they spend their waking hours for granted. Yet the landscape we inhabit is a complex product of history, of economics, of government action and of personal tastes. For most of American history, where people lived depended on where they worked (and hence on the needs of the firms that employed them) and where they shopped and played depended on where they lived. Technological changes, particularly highways and the Internet, would seem to fundamentally change those relationships, yet the hand of the past still lies heavily on the landscape. This course will show how various forces produced the American landscape, the surprising role of a few “visionaries,” and how land use choices affect the natural environment.
Living: Early cities, birth of the streetcar suburb, the “landscape of race,” post WWII suburbanization, slums and Urban Renewal, the abortive “New Town” movement, exurbs, urban revival, gentrification, second homes, New Urbanism
Working: the Industrial Revolution, early offices, the elevator and the “skyscraper,” multi-story and one-story industrial buildings, agglomeration economies, growth of the service sector, women in the labor force, open offices, working from home, WeWork
Shopping: the “high street,” the department store, Sears and catalog sales, the automobile and strip commercial, chain stores, Big Box I, Big Box II, the shopping mall (open and enclosed), outlet stores, dollar stores, e-commerce
Playing: Olmsted and urban parks, National parks, rail tourism for the rich, automobile tourism (Blue Ridge Parkway), festival tourism (from Chatauqua to Woodstock to Burning Man), the Disney parks, virtual tourism
Impacts on the Environment – Air, Water, Land, Climate – Andrew Goudie (Human
Impact on the Natural Environment – Table 5.7 of fourth ed. – 7th ed online at Duke); urban wildlife
Driving Forces
The work-live-school nexus
Transportation technologies
Demographics
Visionaries (Andrew Jackson Downing, Olmsteds – father and son, Wallace Nichols, William Levitt, Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, Victor Gruen, James Rouse, Andres Duany)
Government Action (the Vernacular Landscape v. the Official Landscape)
Literature and Art: The Jungle, The Warmth of Other Suns, John Cheever (Checkov of the Suburbs—the Swimmer), Stepford Wives, David Sedaris, art (Riis, Lozowick, Ashcan School, John Sloan)
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Sin has been narrated as social and as personal in mainstream, North American storytelling - as a matter of lies writ large and as a result of individual choice. Through a close reading of these works in North American literature, we will think through different ways of reckoning with trauma, accident, and systemic injustice. We will also consider ways that each author offers possibilities for continuing to risk the possibility of change, and even love. Readings include: Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral by Jessie Redmon Fauset, Does Your House Have Lions? by Sonia Sanchez, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Moral Disorder and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood, and Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.
Course requirements: Weekly in-class discussion of material and weekly close-reading papers (approximately 2 pp. double-spacing) on the text for the week. Participation in class is 40% of your grade; papers, 60%. Listening attentively to your neighbor is as important as speech for your participation grade. Visiting with me about the texts outside of class also counts as participation.