People stop us all the time and ask us, "What is MALAS?"...
Here's the scoop! The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences (MALAS) is an always-evolving, interdisciplinary cultural studies graduate MA program based in the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University. Interdisciplinary Studies and Cultural Studies mean different things to different people. Like most Interdisciplinary Studies academic programs, MALAS graduate
students pursue coursework that combines two or more traditional fields from the university; for example, consider the case of a recent MALAS graduate who devised a program of study focused on biology, but with parallel coursework in 20th century history. Or, take another case: a graduate student whose work studied contemporary social rebellions (the Occupy movement; Burning Man), but who was also keen to study, simultaneously, recent trends in visual culture (both film and streaming media). In both cases, the students wanted to study cultural phenomena comparatively, but they also wanted to change the world, to leave it a better place than the way they found it.
This epitomizes the MALAS ideal--inventing programs of study that are also blueprints for action: a determination to study and be an activist / engine / enzyme for change here in San Diego and beyond. With MALAS, you are not trapped within the legendary ivory tower--far from that, you learn how to translate your research into public engagement with the surrounding community in California and the rest of our planet.
Our dynamic MA degree provides graduate students with an extraordinary intellectual agenda coupled with the experience of living in San Diego, California--a bustling international border community known for its bio-medical enclaves (the Salk Institute, Scripps Research Institute, Pfizer etc.), for high tech innovation (Qualcomm, Nokia), and for its burgeoning, cutting-edge transborder experimental arts, next-generation sustainability research, and Pacific Rim-focused institutions of higher education. (And yes, it is also known and loved for its amazing climate, tourism, and robust surf communities).
MALAS graduate students work with the best faculty from across the College of Arts and Letters at SDSU and beyond--first-class, high quality researchers from the humanities, social sciences, business, communications, and the sciences, whose teaching and scholarship are changing the face of disciplines across the university. MALAS offers what we like to call "an M.A. in Curiosity." Our graduate students master diverse and innovative intellectual, artistic, and/or scientific research goals through individually-tailored curricula in the most flexible graduate Liberal Arts programs on the planet (compare us to our talented peer institutions here).
MALAS is the MA program for all kinds of thinkers--while it caters to the intellectual desires and research interests of ambitious, new BA and BS recipients seeking full-time graduate study, it also serves the needs of national and international professionals and adult-learners who seek to dograduate school on a part-time basis. Whether you are an ambitious teacher looking to achieve a degree that will allow you to teach in community colleges (and get you a nice raise), a motivated, creative future professor looking for a stepping-stone MA to a top-shelf Ph.D. program, or just a wise, sojourning soul or budding entrepreneur who misses being at university, MALAS is the program for you.
We are often asked here at MALAS mission control, "what does a prospective MALAS student look like?" or "where do they come from?" Our response: what don't they look like and where don't they come from? MALAS graduate students come from all kinds of academic backgrounds, all kinds of unique research interests. Unlike other MA/ PhD programs that expect a specific undergraduate emphasis (some even make you do additional undergraduate coursework before starting your graduate curriculum), MALAS values your previous undergraduate and/or graduate degree and expects you to use our program to explore brave new worlds, to investigate diverse uncharted intellectual waters.
Whether you are a recent social science degree graduate with an itch to know more about the arts, a cardiologist who wishes to ponder Latin American novels, a documentary filmmaker obsessed with the environment, or a frustrated literature major wishing to explore the connections between books and music, cinema, photography, or painting, MALAS will be a great home for your intellectual adventures. Or maybe you are a brilliant, curious, corporate Stepford wife (or husband) who finds themselves trapped in an 8am to 5pm cubicle--your matchless, agile imagination paralyzed by the styrofoam-laced banality, the flourescent-light-lit mendacity of the Dilbert-esque world around you--well, with MALAS, deliverance is at hand.
At SDSU, MALAS is associated with innovation and entrepreneurship--MALAS hosted the first graduate seminar in the Digital Humanities; the first bridge-class between the humanities and the cognitive sciences: Neurotexts; the first graduate seminar on Hip hop Culture(s). So, join us and get ready to leap and join a groovy collaborative team inspired by interdisciplinary thinkers like Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek, Judith Halberstam, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Donna Harraway, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Marshall McLuhan, Sigmund Freud, Lydia Liu, Michel Foucault, Susan Sontag (left), Edward Said, Carlos Fuentes (right), Jacques Derrida, Renato Rosaldo, Luce Irigaray, Federico Fellini, Frida Kahlo, Glenn Gould, Stephen Greenblatt, Elena Poniatowska, Stephen Colbert, Mark Twain, John Berger (below, right) and others.
Our M.A. (Magister Artium) features a series of next-wave, cutting-edge seminars. These classes (always already in metamorphosis) compose a core interdisciplinary curriculum with these areas of concentration:
MALAS 600A. Cultural Studies
MALAS 600B. Science and Society/Environmental Studies
MALAS 600C. Globalization, Technology, & Future Studies
MALAS 600D. Media Studies, Fine Arts, & the Transformative Arts
Our students select the rest of their courses from across the curriculum at SDSU--present students take courses from the excellent graduate programs in the College of Arts & Letters as well as from the other seven colleges on the SDSU campus. This Spring, our MALAS graduate students
are pursuing coursework in Women's Studies, Anthropology, Geography, Educational Technology, Art, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and many other fields/disciplines/departments. For Fall 2013 and onwards we have now established graduate emphases within the MALAS curriculum--present and future graduate students can now pursue MALAS Graduate Emphases in Social Justice, Ethnic Studies, Sustainability Studies, the Digital Humanities, American Studies, Intellectual History, Technology and Education, Media Studies, and a host of other categories. The MALAS program at SDSU is a member of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs. To learn more about university requirements, consult the Graduate Bulletin; and to learn about applying to the program, consult the SDSU Graduate Admissions page. NOTE: officially, MALAS is known as the M.A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences in the SDSU Graduate Catalogue or Bulletin. You can download a handy pdf of the most recent MALAS specifications from the official SDSU Graduate Division Bulletin here or click these two images here:
So if you are a talented undergraduate or graduate student with an interest in public policy, arts and sciences, humanities, social justice, cultural studies, ethnic studies, social sciences, biology, music, film, world politics and policies, world trade, the environment, global warming, progressive economics, comparative literature, semiotics, the cognitive sciences, marketing, educational leadership, and/or sustainability studies, you will find a dynamic, challenging home away home from with the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences at San Diego State University (and that is just a partial listing!).
MALAS students come from all walks of life--documentary filmmakers, veteran Navy musicians, cloning researchers, administrative coordinators, surgeons, teachers, arts professionals, business majors, philosophers, civil engineers, dancers, rain-forest researchers, and retired intelligence community agents alike have all joined MALAS in recent years. Whether you are looking to spend a couple of years on the West Coast in preparation for a doctoral degree program or if you are a retired or working professional living in San Diego but yearning for the classic, unique challenges of a university seminar room, MALAS is there for you. Combine the highest quality professors from SDSU with the most eclectic, curious graduate students on the planet, and what you get is a dynamic, welcoming environment for learning.
And if you are on the fence about applying to our unique graduate program, don't hesistate to call the MALAS director and graduate advisor, Professor William A. Nericcio, at 619.594.1524 or email him at bnericci@sdsu.edu. You can also contact our ace program coordinator, Katie Waltman, at 619.594.1516, from 8:30am to 4pm, daily, or email her at kwaltman@mail.sdsu.edu.
One last thing--we get calls all the time from graduate students worried that the GRE requirement imposed by the CSU and the SDSU graduate division or a somewhat spotty undergraduate GPA might prove an obstacle to admission to MALAS. Don't let that stop you from applying to our cool intellectual mothership. MALAS looks at the entireportfolio of each individual during the admissions process. Check out the happy crew of singularly talented graduate students currently thriving in our program and then apply to MALAS now and let us worry about the rest!