Liberal arts graduates know that interdisciplinary study helps you become a more flexible thinker and gives you a wide range of tools to solve complex problems. In Penn’s Master of Philosophy in Liberal Arts (MPhil), students who have already completed a master’s degree can deepen or redefine their expertise by completing five courses and an independent study.
But what does an advanced interdisciplinary degree look like? With the ability to select courses from across the University to complement your interests and fit your schedule, how do you decide which courses to take?
At Penn, MPhil students work closely with an academic advisor and faculty mentors to design their own curriculum. For example, consider the following course pairings designed to encourage intellectual exploration and collaboration across disciplines.
Want to reimagine place through time and space?
Pair CLST 517: The Odyssey and its Afterlife with URBS 532: Mapping Philadelphia
CLST 517: The Odyssey and its Afterlife is a Proseminar, one of the program’s intensive seminars with small class sizes designed to maximize thoughtful discussions and feedback on student research, writing, and critical thinking skills. As a classical studies course focused not only on close-reading the ancient saga but on retellings from Virgil’s Aeneid to James Joyce’s Ulysses, you’ll dive deep into the mental, philosophical, and physical geography of heroic journeys in literature across time.
In contrast, URBS 532: Mapping Philadelphia focuses on a much more recent saga: how the city of Philadelphia was planned, built, and changed from William Penn’s vision to the present day. As the course title suggests, this urban studies course will explore the city’s historical iterations through maps—but will also weave in concepts from public history, art, and social sciences to develop a deep sense of place. Together, these two courses prepare you to explore a place (or imagine one, if writing a creative capstone) through different lenses to understand it more deeply.
Planning to study how bias is built from the ground up?
Pair PSYC 562: Psychopathology and the Media with GSWS 531: Gendered Constructions of Other Cultures in Western Travel Literature
Perception is a challenging object of study—what can we look at to better understand the way we see? These two courses approach social perception and cultural mythmaking by applying an interdisciplinary lens to frequently misunderstood topics. In the Proseminar PSYC 562: Psychopathology and the Media, the subject is mental illness: how psychopathology is portrayed in media, and how media representations contribute to the ways mental illnesses are commonly understood—or, in many cases, stigmatized.
Where this course combines psychology with media studies, GSWS 531: Gendered Constructions of Other Cultures in Western Travel Literature draws on a range of written and visual materials to explore the intersection of cultural bias with gender bias. Between the two courses, you’ll develop a set of analytical and interpretative tools which can be used to examine how other social biases or cultural myths are created and circulated.
Aspiring to become a better global citizen?
Pair ANTH 619: Cultural Diversity and Global Connections with PHIL 588: The Idea of Nationalism
The Proseminar ANTH 619: Cultural Diversity and Global Connections uses ethnographic research to understand how different stakeholders approach complex social problems such as climate change, armed conflict, and poverty. In urgent global issues where the needs of numerous stakeholders frequently conflict, ethnography can capture a range of perspectives to gain a better understanding of social and political dynamics.
Where this anthropology course examines international challenges, PHIL 588: The Idea of Nationalism looks at the ways questions of power, values, and identity are resolved within national borders: What is a nation? How do nations differ from other groups and communities? How do (or don’t) nationalist movements address global issues such as political conflict and human rights? These two courses ask challenging questions that complement one another in scope and complexity.
Your ambition is the curriculum
Course offerings vary from term to term. The above pairings represent a fraction of what’s available to MPhil students in spring 2021—and offer a sampling of the interdisciplinary coursework that characterizes Penn’s Master of Philosophy in Liberal Arts. Available on a full- or part-time basis, this advanced graduate degree opens doors across the University.
Contact our program director, Dr. Christopher Pastore, to schedule an appointment to review your current research and explore your options for pursuing a Master of Philosophy in Liberal Arts at Penn.
(215) 898-7326
lps@sas.upenn.edu
www.upenn.edu/mla-mphil
