Whether for professional advancement or for lifelong learning, the MLS degree can change your life.

Broaden yourself. expand your world.

“ I am taking away from the MLS Program a recharged curiosity for all not yet tackled subjects, and a confidence in knowing I will succeed in the next goal I set for myself, no matter how daunting it may seem. The summative project experience gave me the motivation I needed to start the projects I have always wanted to do.”

—Shelly H., Class of 2011

The USC Master of Liberal Studies ProgramSuccessful individuals in today’s ever-changing world think critically and act strategically. In every field or discipline, those who can research and assess information analytically, write cogently, and present their thoughts effectively have a competitive advantage.

In the USC Master of Liberal Studies Program, hone your edge as you develop your capacity to express your intellectual passions and goals. With the MLS multidisciplinary approach taught by world-class USC faculty, tap into your potential and love of learning to foster new interests and life objectives.

Small, evening courses make it possible to complete this degree on either a part-time or full-time basis. Finish the degree in as few as five fall and spring semesters.

Benefit from individual writing coaching, personal attention, and USC’s legendary alumni network.*

* No GRE is required.

Units: To complete an MLS degree, students take nine three-unit courses, for a total of 27 units.

Degree strUctUre: In addition to the course “Methods of Knowing”, students select seven courses from the MLS Program electives. In their final semester, students enroll in a summative project course, in which they apply interdisciplinary research frameworks to a subject of intense personal interest.

scheDUle/coUrses: Classes meet once a week in the evenings. Part-time students take one course a semester. Courses are offered year-round: fall, spring, and summer semesters. All are interdisciplinary; see http://dornsife.usc.edu/mls for a current listing of MLS courses.

tUition: Consult the University Schedule of Classes for the tuition and fees applicable to graduate units for the semester of enrollment: http://web-app.usc.edu/soc/.

commUnity: Be part of a close-knit academic community with the MLS Student Association. Present papers at international symposia and take advantage of opportunities to publish your work.

mls Writing moDUle: All students can work individually with a USC writing faculty member. Throughout the program, MLS faculty provide direction on course work and the summative project.

“ Immediately after completing the MLS Program, I received job offers which represented enhancements in my law enforcement career that I would not have been considered for prior to obtaining my MLS degree. ” —Dan H., Class of 2010

The MLS Degree Requirements

Successful individuals in today’s ever-changing world think

critically and act strategically.

The USC MLS Program strives to sharpen each student’s analytical

writing skills.

emily Anderson, Associate Professor of English, is interested in 18th-theater history and theories of fiction. She has written extensively on British women writers who worked simultaneously as novelists and playwrights and on the links between performance and emotional expression in 18th-century literature and culture.  

michael Bunn is Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Writing with the USC Writing Program. He earned a joint Ph.D. in English & Education from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A in Creative Writing (fiction) from the University of Pittsburgh. He has published articles on the teaching of college-level reading and writing.

roberto ignacio Díaz is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature. Díaz researches Latin American literary and cultural history with a focus on transatlantic relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. He has written on multilingualism in Spanish American literature and on the prose of Borges. He is presently at work on a book-length study of opera in Latin America.

William Feuer is Associate Professor (Teaching) of Writing. His expertise in composition and rhetoric, 20th-century American and British literature, popular culture, Los Angeles in literature, and literary theory. His Ph.D. is from University of Southern California. His short story “The Boomerang” was published in Concho River Review, 2012. He has received the USC General Education Teaching Award and other teaching awards. stephen Finlay, Associate Professor of Philosophy, explores how insights from our philosophical understanding of language can shed light on many of the traditional problems of metaethics, as well as the new problems of practical reason. He is currently working on a book on understanding why moral disagreements can seem intractable, and why moral judgments seem to motivate, and how moral facts fit into the natural world, yet matter for what we ought to do. He is a 2012-2013 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship recipient.  

Faculty Biographies

Jack halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature. Halberstam works in the areas of popular, visual and queer culture with an emphasis on subcultures. His most recent book is Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of Normal (2012).

William r. handley is Associate Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity. Handley researches the American West, particularly through the study of 19th- and 20th-century American literature. His books include The Brokeback Book: From Story to Cultural Phenomenon, True West: Authenticity and the American West and Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West. Handley is affiliated with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

edwin mccann’s research interests center in the history of modern philosophy, especially Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Newton, and Kant, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and contemporary philosophy of mind and action. As a Professor of Philosophy and English, McCann teaches a wide variety of philosophy courses and he also teaches regularly in the USC undergraduate “Thematic Option” honors program.

lori rachelle meeks, Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures, researchs the social, cultural, and intellectual histories of Japanese Buddhism, with a focus on the roles of women as consumers and practitioners of Buddhism in the Heian and Kamakura periods (roughly ninth through early 14th centuries). She examines ways in which gender is handled in Buddhist texts, on the roles that Buddhist texts played in the dissemination of gendered ideology, and on popular responses to doctrinal discussions of sex and gender. Her publications include her book Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (2010).

“ The MLS degree expanded my background beyond technology and gave me the qualifications to rise above an IT position into a management position. I can also better relate to my colleagues in today’s culturally diverse workplace.” —Chris W., Class of 2009

Students work with MLS faculty in

writing seminars, workshops, and private

consultations.

Build your confidence and capacities throughout your coursework to research and write a thesis-quality summative project.

tania modleski is the Florence R. Scott Professor of English and Professor of English studies. Her research efforts focus on women in film, women in popular culture, women in literature, and soap operas. She is the author of Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Postfeminist Age (1992); Old Wives’ Tales and Other Women’s Stories (1998); The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (1988); and Loving with a Vengeance: Fantasies for Women (1982).

William g. thalmann, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, focuses on Greek tragedy and epic poetry and is especially interested in the role of poetry within social and political developments in ancient Greece. His books include Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry; The Odyssey: An Epic of Return, and The Swineherd and the Bow: Representations of Class in the Odyssey. He is currently writing a book on ideas of space in the Argonautika of the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes. In addition to courses in classical antiquity, he has taught in a number of interdisciplinary programs, where his courses regularly include Dante’s Divine Comedy.

tok thompson, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Anthropology, was born and raised in rural Alaska. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Research Fellow with the Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he helped launch a new M.Phil. in Translation Studies. He also worked in Northern Ireland, lecturing on cultural heritage at the University of Ulster at Coleraine, and was engaged in linguistic research on the use of Irish (Gaelic). He is co-founder and co-editor of the journal, Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture.

“ I had the incredible learning experience of presenting a paper at the annual Graduate Liberal Studies symposium. In the MLS Program, I’ve been encouraged and supported to stretch for goals I could not have imagined were possible.” —Roselia R., Class of 2013

Come visit and apply:experience an mls class. ask us your questions. apply today.http://dornsife.usc.edu/mls/

master of liberal studies program3501 trousdale parkwaytaper Hall of Humanities 355university of southern California los angeles, California 90089-0355

tel: (213) 740-1349fax: (213) 740-5002

email: mls@dornsife.usc.edu

Broaden yourself. expand your world.