Eminent faculty from across all four divisions of UChicago teach MLA courses in a Socratic seminar format. Students come to class having carefully read the assigned material and then engage in rich discussions, confronting fundamental questions and respectfully debating complex ideas. In this program, you’ll sharpen your critical, analytical, and writing skills as you examine topics from fresh perspectives that enrich your personal and professional life.
Classes meet once a week via Zoom with sessions scheduled on evenings or Saturdays to fit into a full-time work schedule. You also have the option to participate in our week-long, immersive residential seminars on the UChicago campus, which are offered twice a year in the Spring and Autumn Quarters.
You will not take many exams in this program. Instead, MLA faculty primarily evaluate students based on their participation in discussions and their performance on writing assignments. In both verbal and written communication, you’ll be expected to analyze complicated issues, make persuasive arguments, and synthesize information from multiple sources.
The Master of Liberal Arts brings the University of Chicago’s extraordinary intellectual assets together. You have the opportunity to engage deeply with professors from every division of our University in small, Socratic classrooms. Big ideas, eminent faculty, extraordinary peers—it’s a transformative combination.
Seth Green
Dean of the University of Chicago Graham School
Core Courses
Through four core courses, you’ll gain an interdisciplinary framework to break down complex topics into their basic components and answer challenging questions with methodological approaches from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Each class will require you to think critically, write thoughtfully, respond to your peers, and address problems.
To meet the core requirement, you’ll take one course in each of the following disciplines:
Humanities
Grapple with foundational literary and philosophical texts, learning to interrogate subtle uses of language and ask important questions about the historic and cultural contexts in which texts were produced. Training in humanistic inquiry equips students to read closely and communicate original insights through writing and discussion. You’ll leave your humanities courses a more attentive reader, stronger writer, and better organized thinker.
Social Sciences
Pursue nuanced questions about human interaction and how societies form and function. The social sciences courses will equip you with modes of analysis to examine the effects of economic, political, and cultural phenomena on human behavior. Through rigorously scrutinizing the competing viewpoints from classic texts and thinkers, these classes deepen critical and analytical thinking. You’ll hone your analytic and communication skills by conveying thoughts in concise and persuasive prose
Biological and Physical Sciences
Deepen your knowledge of the processes involved in scientific thought and reasoning. Explore the potential for new discoveries to spur cultural change, shape public policy, and transform how humans perceive our place in our world and universe. You’ll become a more logical, evidence-based thinker by applying the tenets of the scientific method and discussing the principles of experimentation and observation.
Electives
To meet the elective requirement, you may either take three general electives in any discipline or choose a concentration and take all three courses in one area of study. The available concentrations are:
There are few problems as enduring and central to Russian history as the question of the West—Russia’s most passionate romance and most bitter letdown. In this course we will read and think about Russia from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries through the lens of this obsession.
This course will focus on the nervous system, how the nervous system produces behavior, how we use our brain every day, and how neuroscience can explain the common problems afflicting people today.
The instructor will be smiling if the student takes away from the course what science is and isn’t, why it is important, a basic understanding of the fundamental laws of physics and how they have created the physical world around us, and the deep mysteries ahead.
Clearly, technology has advanced since the first century, but has wisdom? Maybe it has, or maybe it has only in specific areas, and declined in others. Anyway, that’s our challenge in this course.
This course will examine what Empire was in the case of British India and the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) by reading English and Dutch novels together with the work of Asian writers. This will help us develop an idea of how literature was both collusive with and critical of colonialism, how different cultures wrote about their contact with each other, and how the writing of that era has shaped our modern world.
This Residential Seminar course provides an introduction to the field of bioethics. Grounded in case-studies, it will explore how different philosophical and theological traditions describe and defend differences in moral choices in contemporary bioethics.
In this week-long Residential Seminar, we will read and probe some of Homer’s epics’ most famous episodes in various English translations from the Renaissance to today. We will also explore some of the vast array of responses to and transformations of Homer’s strange and wondrous tales in painting, cinema, and other arts.
I have always had a passion for learning and a desire to challenge myself. The MLA program presented a way to enhance my skills—not only as an individual but also as a participant and leader in our society. The MLA attests to the fact that there is inherent value associated with studying the humanities and in developing a background and comfort with the diverse topics that comprise the liberal arts.
Andrew F. Shorr
Division Head, Pulmonary, Critical Care, & Respiratory Services, Medstar Washington Hospital Center; and Professor of Medicine, Georgetown University
A faculty advisor will support you in selecting a thesis or project that aligns with your interests. MLA students have the flexibility to choose projects that hold value and meaning for them personally or that can be applied to their careers.
Examples of past MLA thesis topics include:
A Comparative Analysis of the American & Chilean Revolutions
Economic Survival of Small Chicago Area Farmers During COVID-19: Leadership Skills that Enabled Success in the Pandemic
Using Poetry as Leadership Training: Fostering a More Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive College
The format of special projects is flexible. Past examples include a piece of visual art and a book of poetry.
Once your thesis topic or project is approved, you will be paired with a faculty advisor, who will remain heavily engaged throughout the process. The advisor serves as a vital resource by pointing you toward scholarship and other sources of information that can guide your work. You will remain in contact as your project evolves, receiving meaningful feedback on drafts.
In most cases, it takes two quarters for students to complete a thesis or special project.
