M.A./Ph.D. in Mythological Studies
Myth, Literature, and Culture
These courses focus on the interpretation of classical literature, poetry, and the mythic aspects of culture. Contemporary film and literature are also considered from a mythic perspective. Mythology’s role in the social realm and the natural environment is considered, as well as how modern cosmologies and evolutionary theories function as contemporary myths.
Cultural Mythologies I, II, III
MS 514, 614, 714........ 2 Units each
Psychological life is situated in the complexities of politics, media, architecture, technology, economics, and history. These courses draw on key theories from a range of disciplines to examine the underlying archetypal patterns influencing personal experience and the cultural institutions which, in turn, shape and display our quandaries, aspirations, and needs. Repeatable for credit depending on topic.
Joseph Campbell: Metaphor, Myth and Culture
MS 516........ 2 Units
Following on Joseph Campbell’s insight that “metaphor is the native tongue of myth,” this course explores the centrality of myth in subjects as diverse as history, cosmology, religion, poetry as well as the wide range of world narratives as inflections of one great monomyth. These explorations examine the nature of mythic consciousness and provide insight into the power of myth in psyche and culture.
Folklore and Fairy Tales
MS 602........ 2 Units
The archetypal interpretation of folktales and fairy tales is the focus of this course. Principal themes include: theories concerning the origin and dissemination of folktales; review of mythological, sociological, and psychological approaches to the study of fairy tales; the purpose and meaning of violence in fairy tales; parallels between the archetypal motifs of fairy tales and their manifestation on psychology and culture.
Ritual
MS 603........ 2 Units
Myth and ritual are inextricably related. This course proposes that ritual offers an equally eloquent, though no-discursive, commentary on the human condition. The aims are: to make students familiar with classic theories of ritual process; to explore comparatively fundamental ritual phenomena across cultures, such as: the initiation, divination, purification and healing, pilgrimage, sacrifice, masking, and funerary rituals; to assess the association of myth and ritual in religious traditions and depth psychology.
Epic Imagination
MS 604........ 2 Units
Epics are stories created by the poet to give an entire people a sense of their history and their destiny. As stories that give shape and coherence to their collective myth, epics engage the figure of the epic hero, who either breaks through the conventional wisdom of the people or re-establishes their most profound wishes.
Psyche and Nature
MS 615........ 2 Units each
Geographies of paradise, wilderness, frontier, desert, and ocean are mythic interior landscapes as well as external habitations of divinities and demons, where the individual experiences tests, revelations, and illuminations. This course explores external landscapes and their (archetypal) analogues as mythopoetic spaces to discern how mythic consciousness is rooted in the poetry of landscapes.
Myth and the Underworld
MS 619........ 3 Units
The underworld is place, condition and situation. This course explores both the journey to, the dwelling within, and the departure from, this nether region of the soul. Poetic renderings of the Underworld offer the richest repositories for the insights gleaned in this arena. The inescapable journey down and into the realm of the invisibles, where figures who journey there begin to discern its patterns, its darkness, and its treasures, is the focus of this course. In the Underworld, the archetypal ground of being is confronted most directly. Works from the early Sumerian period to contemporary psychological and literary illustrations will amplify the complexity of this depth.
Mythic Motifs in Cinema
MS 626........ 2 Units
An application of the concepts of depth psychology to the analysis of film. Using the archetypal method, the instructor presents selected portions of films to disclose underlying themes and archetypal patterns, in an effort to illustrate as wide a range of archetypal characters as possible. Television fiction series may occasionally be included.
Mythopoetic Images
MS 727........ 2 Units
This course explores the confluence of mythology and poetics through an exploration of the language, imagery, geography, and themes of merging in classical and contemporary works of literature and myth. Its method will include a hermeneutics of aesthetic intuition in order to prepare students for dissertation topics and research in literary studies.
