The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences (MALAS) is an ever-evolving, interdisciplinary, cultural studies graduate program based in the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University. Our dynamic Master of Arts degree provides an extraordinary intellectual experience in the sensational city of San Diego, California--a buzzing West Coast international border community known for it
s various bio-medical enclaves (The Salk Institute, Scripps, etc.) and a burgeoning borderland mecca for cutting-edge transborder experimental arts, next-generation sustainability research, and Pacific Rim-based multidisciplinary studies. (And yes, also known for tourism and our rad surf community). Our graduate students master diverse and innovative intellectual/artistic/scientific goals through individually-tailored course-clusters in one of the most flexible graduate Liberal Arts programs on the planet. MALAS is the MA program for all kinds of thinkers--while it caters to the intellectual desires of ambitious, new BA and BS recipients seeking full-time graduate study, it also serves the needs of Southern California professionals and adult-learners pursuing graduate study on a part-time basis. Whether you are looking to achieve a degree that will allow you to teach in community colleges, looking for a stepping-stone MA to a top-shelf Ph.D. program, or just miss being at university, MALAS is the program for you. We are often asked here at MALAS headquarters, "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. Unlike other M.A. and Ph.D. programs that expect a specific undergraduate emphasis (some will even make you do additional undergraduate coursework before starting your graduate curriculum), MALAS values your undergraduate degrees and expects you to use our program to explore brave new worlds, broad uncharted intellectual waters. Whether you are a cardiovascular surgeon who now wishes to ponder the mysteries of the heart in Shakespeare or García Márquez, a documentary filmmaker now curious about sustainability and theenvironment, a literature major wishing to explore the connections between literature and dance or cinema or photography or painting etc, or even, maybe, a brilliant, curious soul trapped in a cubicle in corporate America (your imagination somewhat stifled by the styrofoam-laced banality of the world around you and ready to leap into a groovy collaborative team inspired by minds like Spivak, Hall, Harraway, McLuhan, Freud, Foucault, Sontag, Said, Derrida, Irigaray and others), then our SDSU MALAS is the program for you. Our M.A. (Magister Artium, as it was originally conceived) features a series of cutting-edge seminars. These classes (always already in metamorphosis) compose a core interdisciplinary curriculum with these areas of concentration:
A. Cultural Studies
B. Science and Society/Environmental Studies
C. Globalization, Technology, & Future Studies
D. 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). 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 .pdf of the most recent MALAS specifications from the official SDSU Graduate Division Bulletin here or hit the .pdf page facimile to your right. If you are on the fence about applying to our unique graduate program, don't hesistate to call the program director and graduate advisor, Professor Bill Nericcio, at 619.594.1524 or email him at [email protected].
