Winter 2000 Undergraduate Course Descriptions |
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AFRICAN LITERATURE - NO COURSES OFFERED WINTER 2000 LTAM 110 CHINESE LITERATURE - NO COURSES OFFERED WINTER 2000 The following courses in Classical Literature can be found under their respective Literature sub-headings: European and Eurasian, Greek, Latin, and World. Greek Literature 2 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE - NO COURSES OFFERED WINTER 2000 LTCS
130 Since its establishment in the 18th century, the modern university has been undergoing constant change. The globalized economy of recent years has been making demands on the university for greater and faster transformation than in the past. The museum, an institution with a similar background, is also changing fast. This course will examine the history of organized learning and art, and ponders the future. A lot of reading and thinking. Two short papers on 1) Observations of a university or a museum, and 2) An analysis of some problem in the history of these institutions. LTEA 100B LTEN 18 This course will examine how Asian American literature and cultural production imagines and negotiates processes of racialization, during and after the World War II period. How do Asian American cultural texts narrate what it means to be an "American" at historical conjunctures when Asians are being figured as foreign enemies to the U.S. nation? How do Asian American cultural texts variously "map" the social landscape of America (and their own place within it) by positioning other racial minorities as either deviant outsiders or, alternately, as transgressive and enviable cultural "insiders"? What does this tell us about what it means for racialized groups to "become" American? How do Asian American cultural texts deploy language in order to tell "counter-stories" to official or dominant understandings of Asian Americans and national history? In addition to reading Asian American novels and short stories (including some African American literature), students will engage with material that provides a historical context for these works. Course requirements: Lecture and section attendance, 5 pg. paper, final exam. LTEN 22 LTEN 60 This course is a focused introduction to Asian American fiction and,
in particular, to the work of two key Asian American Writers: Maxine Hong
Kingston and Ninotchka Rosca. We will read their less frequently appreciated
texts, China Men and Twice Blessed, along with standard
historical accounts of Chinese- and Filipino-American migration or immigration
to ascertain how they use fiction to offer alternative ways of understanding
and re-telling the formation and displacements of these specific Asian
American communities. Specifically, we will look at what main events in
Asian American history and in the history of U.S. relations with the Asian-origin
countries of China and the Phillippines these writers signify as central
to the making of Chinese- and Filipino-Americans and to the intergenerational
experience. This critical angle will allow us to distinguish history-writing
from fiction-writing and the differing perspectives on Asian American
history and literature that they enable. A lecture/discussion course exploring the rich and varied achievements
of Shakespeare's later plays. Issues of form, theme, action, and language
will be studied in the context of Shakespeare's theatre and society. Six
plays will be read -- Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra,
The Winter's Tale, The Tempest. Film versions of a number of these
will be viewed and discussed. Charlotte and Emily Brontë, along with Marian Evans (we know her better as George Eliot), published under male pseudonyms; when their true identity became known, each was attacked as having violated culturally defined definitions of female propriety and modesty. Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë's first biographer, met with public approval for those of her novels which were called domestic, charming, and feminine, while she was sharply criticized for her politics in novels which attempted a more explicit social critique. Taking contemporary reaction as our starting point, we will be discussing the ways in which these women writers positioned themselves in relation to intellectual and sexual identities, social problems (religion, industrialization, male medical authority), English communities versus outsiders or exiles. Last but not least, we will investigate their ambivalent negotiation of a highly gendered literary tradition; that is, we will look closely at the representation of writing, public speech, and textuality in their novels. LTEN 143 Please Contact Department for Course Description Information. LTEN 147 Western literature, in some of its most acclaimed works, focuses attention
on a voyager whose travel is more than physical: inward journeys and cultural
crossings are as pertinent as miles covered. At a crucial juncture, this
traveler happens upon a cave, which may be positive or negative, sensuous
or cerebral, isolated or embedded in a society. This encounter functions
in very different ways in different authors and at different cultural
moments, but often it's at the center of a text that engages some of the
Big Questions (about gender and politics but also about philosophy and
religion) while also grabbing our attention. And many of these texts debate
with their predecessors in the same tradition. Texts will include Homer's
Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald; Plato's "Allegory of
the Cave" from The Republic; Vergil's The Aeneid,
trans. R. Fitzgerald (selections); Spenser's The Faerie Queene
(brief selections); Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell";
Wordsworth's "Peter Bell"; Byron's Don Juan (selections);
Mary Shelley's narrative of cave exploring near Naples; Percy Bysshe Shelley's
Prometheus Unbound; poems by Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich;
and E. M. Forster's great novel, A Passage to India. In this course we will examine the relationship between the Gothic literary
genre, the politics of nationhood, and identity formation in 19th
century American culture. We will give special consideration to the ways
in which the Gothic operates as a response, a revision, and/or a (re)interrogation
of the historical "scene of slavery," the U.S. frontier narrative,
and the sentimental novel. How does the Gothic participate in the production
of national identity in the 19th century, and what are the ways in which
the genre contributes to the making of race and gender in American culture?
How do the "horrors of the body" at work in many Gothic narratives
reflect broader social and historical anxieties in 19th century
America? Close attention will be paid to the narrative politics of terror
and horror in representations of race and gender, as well as the tropes
of enclosure, nautical terror, and the phantasmagoric body. Authors included
Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Jacobs, Louisa Picquet, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Henry "Box" Brown, Harriet Wilson, Charles Chesnutt, Pauline
Hopkins, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass. In American popular culture today, "The West" is a term associated with an array of stock characters: slow-talking white cowboys on horseback; unruly, warlike "savages" wielding tomahawks; and the occasional hardy white woman wearing gingham. They enact their drama on the stage of Texas, perhaps Wyoming. And they represent in some way the struggle to tame a "wild" land, to subdue its "uncivilized" inhabitants, and to make the terrain safe for American values and culture. Despite the dominance of this formulation today, however, "The West" is an idea that has changed considerably over time and has always been significantly more diverse than its stereotypes allow. A term whose meaning has always been contested, it is a shifting and changing signifier whose definitions have had profound implications for individuals living in what is now the United States. In this course, we will focus on the ways in which the West has been defined in relation to geographical, cultural, national, and racial frontiers. Tracing the changes of this definition throughout the nineteenth century, we not only will examine representations of the West from an eastern perspective (which imagined it moving westward from New York to California as the century progressed); we will also explore the ways that these constructions of the West were continually challenged and problematized by individuals who viewed the frontier from the other side, who were marginalized and/or conquered through American Manifest Destiny. Representing, then, a variety of genres and points of view, course texts will include excerpts from the journals of Lewis and Clark, along with other early narratives of exploration and conquest; Frederick Jackson Turner's speech The Significance of the Frontier in American History; Owen Wister's now-classic western The Virginian; Caroline Kirkland's guide for eastern white women migrating west, A New Home, Who'll Follow?; Pauline Hopkins' Winona A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest; selected Native American responses to removal and conquest; excerpts from Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins' Life Among the Piutes; as well as corridos (or border ballads) sparked by the U.S.-Mexican War and its aftermath. Course work will include journal writing, an essay exam, and a paper. LTEN 150 This course will focus on links between the production and consumption of fiction and domesticity. The domestic, perhaps more than other modern institutions, has been recycled and reinvented over the centuries. Women have been at the center of this arena -- just as they have been central to the development of fiction in English. We will look closely at the means by which both these commodities (fiction and domesticity) are gendered by focusing on four different locations: 1) domesticity and the rise of the English novel; 2) love stories; 3) domesticity in the novel of empire, 4) novels that resist the "domestic urge." We will read a wide variety of literary texts which will help us consider how domestic ideologies have shaped (and in turn been shaped by) the understanding of gender, race, nation, class, and sexuality in specific locations. We will read most of the following novels in this course Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Contending Forces, The Yellow Wallpaper, Harlequin Romances, Meridian, Captain Desmond VC, The Grass is Singing, and Love Story. We will also read literary/cultural criticism by the following scholars: Terry Lowell, Nancy Armstrong, Edward Said, Michel Foucault, J.S. Mill, Maria Mies, Janice Radway, and Tania Modlesksi. This seminar will be conducted through a combination of lecture and discussion. Students will write two short papers and take a final examination. LTEN 159 This course attempts to examine the role of Chinese poetry and poetics
in the making of modern American poetry. The word "influence"
hardly describes what actually happened. Instead, we will ask these questions:
Under what cultural climate and socio-political condition did certain
American poets propose perceptual and expressive procedures that are compatible
with those in Chinese poetry? Or, to put it slightly differently, what
kind of language strategies did they find in Chinese poetry that would
help them circumscribe their own problems? Since we must not assume that
what is true of the source-model must also be true of its transplanted
product, we must find out the native elements -- historical and aesthetic
obsessions -- in the consciousness of these poets that conditioned the
process of their appropriation and transplantation. In other words, we
must ask: what kind of consciousness crisis prompted them to reject certain
traditional dimensions in favor of an alien ideology? In the course of
acceptance, what native ideological and aesthetic models were resorted
to for support or justification? What kind of modification was being made
to localize a given alien model for acceptance?.....and more questions
of this nature. We will begin with Pound's generation, certain Black Mountain
poets, including Cage, the Beat Poets, and end with Rexroth, Snyder, and
others. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway did their best work in the decade
of the twenties, and they came to characterize that period of American
life. We will study their major novels: The Great Gatsby, The Sun
Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms; and in addition a good
chunk of their short stories. Among the stories will be Fitzgerald's "The
Diamond as Big as the Ritz" and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair,"
and Hemingway's "The Killers" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place." We tend to think of Poe as a writer of horror stories. But Poe clearly regarded himself as a philosopher and an aesthete, and he used his tales to instruct his readers and to demonstrate to them what was likely to go wrong in the lives of those who failed to understand the human imagination's creative coherence. He believed that the mind could alter the conditions of reality--that anything one could imagine could also be made real. The painters of the romantic era inspired his dreams of an ideal future. In this course we shall examine the principles underlying Poe's belief in the transformative power of the creative imagination. In addition we shall take a close look at the paintings that inspired him. We shall also examine the deformation of Poe's ideas in the art, movies and comic books that have helped establish our current perception of Poe as a writer of gruesome fiction. LTEN 185 This course addresses a very basic dilemma facing African American cultural producers invested in representing African Americans as possessed of humanity, agency, and history. Students will read novels by Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler, films by Haile Gerima and Julie Dash, and other African American popular cultural productions. These texts will be read alongside contemporary "theoretical" works dealing with the psychoanalytic concepts of "trauma," "mourning," and "working through." The course will have the dual aim of examining how these African American cultural producers respond to the difficulties posed by African American history, and interrogating the limits of psychoanalytic frameworks in making sense of this "work." LTEN Upper Division Codes:
Return to top of LTEN section EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN LITERATURE LTEU 158 "The perusal of Tolstoy is an immense event, a kind of splendid
accident for each of us....Tolstoy is a reflector as vast as a natural
lake; a monster harnessed to his great subject--all human life!
--Henry James DEPARTMENT APPROVAL FOR LTFR 2A, LTFR 2B AND LTFR 50 IS AVAILABLE IN THE LITERATURE UNDERGRADUATE OFFICE FROM 9:00-3:30, MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY BEGINNING 11/10, WEDNESDAY. LTFR 2A Second-year course designed to be taken after LIFR 1C/1CX. We undertake
a thorough review of grammar while continuing to develop language skills
(oral and written) by studying short stories, cartoons, and a movie from
various French-speaking countries. The course is taught entirely in French
and may be applied towards a minor in French literature. Prerequisite:
LIFR 1C/CX or equivalent or a score of 3 on the AP French language exam.
LTFR 21 A one-credit, one-meeting-a-week course designed to allow students to practice and develop the oral skills necessary to participate in literature classes. It emphasizes the expression of abstract ideas in discussions on cultural topics. May be taken alone or in combination with any other LTFR course. May be taken 3 times for credit. Enrollment is limited to 15 students. Prerequisite: LIFR 1C/CX or equivalent or consent of instructor. LTFR 50 This course emphasizes the development of language skills and the practice
of textual analysis. Discussions are based on the reading of poems as
well as on a novel and a film by Marguerite Duras. The course is taught
entirely in French and may be applied towards a minor in French literature
or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Prerequisite:
LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.
Dans ce cours, nous étudierons un certain nombre de textes comiques,
et analyserons les différents types de comique utilisés par des auteurs
francais du Moyen Age jusqu'au XVIII siecle. Textes: "La farce de
Maître Pathelin"; Molière: "Tartuffe" A travers quelques pièces de Molière qui représentent diverses périodes de sa production nous pourrons faire l'analyse d'un certain nombre de types sociaux du 17e siècle et de problèmes ou conflits liés à ces personnages (ainsi l'arbitraire paternel, l'hypocrisie des dévots, l'arrogance des nobles, la suffisance des savants, la vanité des bourgeois, le snobisme des salons, l'innocence des amants etc). Textes proposés: Don Juan, Le Tartuffe, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, L'Ecole des femmes, Le Malade imaginaire. LTFR 144 Nous analyserons la représentation de l'exil et de l'exclusion à partir de 4 romans des 19 et 20 siècles. Nous lirons en particulier George Sand, Marguerite Duras, Marie-Claire Blais. DEPARTMENT APPROVAL FOR LTGM 2A IS AVAILABLE IN THE LITERATURE UNDERGRADUATE OFFICE FROM 9:00-3:30, MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY, BEGINNING 11/10, WEDNESDAY LTGM 2A LTGM 2B What does it mean to be German today? How has Germany been defined in
the past? In just two years the Germans will give up their beloved D-mark
to become further integrated into the European Union, yet it was only
a decade ago that Germany (once again) became a unified nation-state.
The Berlin Wall is gone now, but many feel that invisible psychological
and economic barriers still divide East and West. Children and grandchildren
of Turkish "guest workers" brought to Germany in the 1960s remain
suspended between a homeland they have never known and an adopted country
that refuses to grant them citizenship. Memories of Hitler and the Holocaust
cast dark shadows over contemporary debates about the state of the German
nation. Berlin has served as the cultural metropolis of modern Germany. This course will explore its pivotal role as the site of modern urban culture in Germany across a range of diverse texts, including essays (Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin), fiction (Döblin's Alexanderplatz and Keun's Das kunstseidene Mädchen), poetry (Brecht's city poems), drama (Kaiser) and film (from Die Sinfonie der Großstadt 1927 to Redupers 1976 and Der Himmel über Berlin 1987) as well as architecture (the Reichstag as a palimpsest of the city's history). We will view Berlin's cultural pre-eminence against its changing political status throughout the 20th century, especially within divided postwar Germany and today as political capital of the unified country at the millennium. LTGK 2 We'll continue to make our way through Schoder's introductory text. There
will be longer passages of real Greek (Homer, Plato, Euripides, Theognis,
the New Testament) and more complexity... but also pleasure! By the end
of the term we will be prepared to embark on reading the Odyssey in Greek
3. Midterms, quizzes, and final. Prerequisite: Greek 1 or permission of
the instructor. HEBREW LITERATURE - NO COURSES OFFERED WINTER 2000 LTIT 2B Second in a 2-course series. LTIT 2B will complete the grammar review
started in LTIT 2A. Students will also be introduced to different aspects
of Italian literature: theater, prose, and poetry. Contemporary aspects
of Italian life and culture will also be an important part of this course.
Therefore, there will be weekly language assignments dealing with Italian
television and radio news. There will be weekly short quizzes, a midterm,
and a final exam, in addition to in-class oral presentations. Both oral
and written production and comprehension will be stressed. Homework will
be assigned daily. Concurrent enrollment in Music 12 suggested (but not required). Lo scopo di questo corsè di imparare a scriver bene e ad apprezzare testi scritti di vari livelli e intenzioni. Si parlerà di stillistica, metrica, retorica e letteratura e si analizzeranno diversi tipi di linguaggi letterari (letteratura dell' infanzia, testi di canzoni, giornalismo, propaganda politica, pubblicità, ecc.). L'enfasi sulla conversazione si tradurrà in presentazioni orali. Midterm in classe, final a cassa, un saggio di circa 5 pagine. LTKO 1B First-year Korean 1B aims to introduce the fundamentals of standard modern Korean in four skill areas: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (including cultural understanding). By the end of the course, you will be able to understand the basic structure of Korean and to read and write in Hangul (Korean). LTKO 2B LTLA 2 We will read selections from Cicero, Catullus, Martial, and Suetonius which bear on the question of freedom of speech in ancient Rome. In theory, one could say or write whatever one wanted. In practice, however, powerful forces acted to prevent such freedom. In addition, the change from Republic to Empire added a new dimension to the limits of free speech. A midterm, final and term paper will be required. You should have a dictionary and a grammatical reference book; I will provide texts, notes, and vocabularies. NEAR EASTERN LITERATURES - NO COURSES OFFERED WINTER 2000 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE - NO COURSES OFFERED WINTER 2000 LTRU 1B LTRU 2B Continuing expansion of previous language acquisitions and introduction
to new, unexplored territories. While systematically reviewing grammar,
we will begin focusing on the language for more creative purposes in reading,
writing, listening, and speaking. Language lab videos and readings texts
will supplement the basic text. This course meets three days a week for
grammar lectures and two days per week for conversation. Every effort
will be made to integrate material on Russian culture into the language
curriculum. "The perusal of Tolstoy is an immense event, a kind of splendid accident for each of us....Tolstoy is a reflector as vast as a natural lake; a monster harnessed to his great subject--all human life! --Henry James This course will begin with discussion of Tolstoy's short autobiographical fiction, "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth", then focus for the rest of the quarter on close reading and analysis of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Readings will be available in both English and in Russian. All lectures and discussions will be conducted in English. Papers may be written in either Russian or English. ***Students should enroll in this section if they intend on reading the texts and writing their papers*** in Russian. Students who intend on doing all course work in English should enroll in LTEU 158. LTSP 2A Notes: The Final Exam for LTSP 2A is scheduled for Monday, March 20th.
Notes: The Final Exam for LTSP 2B is scheduled for Monday, March 20th. LTSP 2C This intermediate course is a continuation of the LTSP second-year sequence with special emphasis on problems in writing and translation. It includes class discussions of cultural topics as well as grammar review and composition assignments. The course will further develop the ability to read articles, essays, and longer pieces of fictional and non-fictional texts as well as to access Spanish-language materials on the Internet. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Completion of LTSP 2B or its equivalent. This course satisfies the third course requirement of the college-required language sequence. Notes: The Final Exam for LTSP 2C is scheduled for Monday, March 20th.
Designed for bilingual students seeking to become biliterate. Reading and writing skills stressed with special emphasis on improvement of written expression, vocabulary development, and problems of grammar and orthography. Prepares native-speakers with little or no formal training in Spanish for more advanced courses. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Native speaking ability and/or recommendation of instructor. Notes: The Final Exam for LTSP 2D is scheduled for Monday, March 20th.
Enrollment for LTSP 2D requires department approval. Notes: This conversation/discussion class meets once a week. May be taken
as an adjunct to lower division LTSP courses. Recommended for students
planning to study abroad. Enrollment for LTSP 31 requires department stamp.
May be taken 3 times for credit as topics vary. May be taken P/NP or for
a letter grade. This course introduces students to literary analysis through the close textual reading of a selection of Latin American texts including novels, plays, short fiction, and poetry. Coursework includes reading of texts, participation in class discussions, and writing assignments. LTSP 50B prepares Literature majors and minors for upper-division work. LTSP 50A and either 50B or 50C are required for Spanish Literature majors. Prerequisite: Completion of LTSP 2C or 2D or 2 years of college level Spanish. Notes: The Final Exam for LTSP 50B is scheduled for Monday, March 20th.
Enrollment for LTSP 50B requires department approval. En este curso, trazaremos un caudro panorámico de la literatura hispanoamericana centrado en las siguientes etapas claves: modernismo, criollismo y las tendencias renovadoras en la narrativa y la poesía de mediados del Siglo XX. Haremos además reflexiones teóricas sobre los géneros literarios para captar posibles cambios en el interior de los mismos como producto de la relación literatura-sociedad. LTSP 135 Beginning in the 1940s Mexico entered a phase of government-planned accelerated industrial growth. The period of "economic miracle," as it has been labeled, lasted approximately three decades. Capitalist modernization led to massive rural migration from the country to the city, and, as Mexico's traditional agrarian society slowly languished (a process that continues to this day), a new ebullient and chaotic urban society began to emerge. In this course we will discuss how the dilemmas of modernization in Mexican society were depicted in film and fiction during this period. We will read selected works by José Revueltas, Octavio Paz, Elena Garro, Juan Rulfo, Rosario Castellanos, and Carlos Fuentes. Films include Luis Buñuel's Los olvidados and Emilio Fernández' Maclovia and/or La Perla, from the so-called Golden Age of Mexican cinema, among others. LTSP 140 LTSP 151 LTSP 171 Una introducción a la literatura producida en los siglos 16 y 17 sobre la conquista de México. Los textos incluyen las cartas de Hernán Cortzés, la "verdadera historia" de B. Díaz del Castillo, el primer texto escrito por un criollo y algunas crónicas indígenas. Análisis formal del texto y discusiones sobre la relación entre cultura y colonialismo. Los estudiantes tendrán la responsabilidad de leer y analizar los textos; el profesor dará ponencias breves sobre el panorama socio-cultural. Habrá un énfasis sobre la discución y la participacion en clase. LTTH 150 We will consider the history of the "I", the first person singular, and the ways in which it is seen, and theorized, in the Western tradition. Readings will include lyric poetry, philosophy, the novel, autobiography, and theoretical works. LITERATURES
OF THE WORLD In this course we will focus on events at the center of controversy in recent German history and how they have been represented in literature and film: Hitler's war and the Holocaust, the Berlin Wall and Cold War discourse, the collapse of socialism and, despite reunification, persistent hostility between East and West along with the rise of xenophobia. Multiple readings and films on each topic explore different constructions of the same event. Our literary texts include stories, essays, interviews and various forms of the personal narrative. Films emphasize the alternative cinema of independent film makers in the West, as well as newly released prints from the East produced in the DEFA studios of the former German Democratic Republic. Titles include Michael Verhoeven's Nasty Girl (1979), Bernhard Wicki's The Bridge (1959), Helma Sanders-Brahms' Germany, Pale Mother (1980), Frank Beyer's Jakob the Liar (1974), Fassbinder's Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) and Ali Fear Eats the Soul (1973) as well as Sibylle Schönemann's Locked up Time (1991), among others. LTWL 19B Students taking this course should gain a sense of why the achievements of the classical age of ancient Athens are so highly regarded. Our efforts will be concentrated on extracting the still-vital content from a variety of literary survivals. ("Literary" is meant in a broad sense, to cover works philosophical, historical, dramatic, and rhetorical.) Paper(s) totaling 2,500 words, mid-term, and final. LTWL 114 Children's literature is deeply rooted in the ancient oral tradition, which includes folk tales, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes--few originally intended for children. Thus, for most of its modern history children's literature has in fact been tied to some of the oldest and deepest paradigms of myth and human thought. Even as we mature--and as children's literature as a genre has matured over the 19th and 20th centuries--the stories we think of as children's stories resonate with mythic paradigms and psychological material of continuing relevance. They also form the basis of much of our popular culture. Beginning with the mythic roots of the genre in the folk or "fairy" tale, we will examine children's literature up to the present, noting the enduring motifs as well as the increasing realism of the form. LTWL 120 Certainly one of the most popular categories of leisure
reading today is detective fiction. Successful writers of detective series
spin out at least a new book a year. Yet few readers would agree that
detective stories constitute "respectable" reading. This course
aims to investigate several questions: What is the appeal of detective
stories to American readers? For how long has the detective story exercised
this kind of appeal? What kind of characters have traditionally been the
subject of detective fiction? How has the contemporary political landscape
changed that population? And why does the genre remain outside the pale
of respectability? Then, turning our attention to more contemporary issues,
we will discuss the appeal of the serial form and the lure of local color,
concentrating on California detectives, including Charlie Chan, Kinsey
Milhone, and Jake Giddes of Chinatown. I will invite you to participate
directly in our discussions of what might be called special-interest detective
fictions (with heroes who demonstrate detecting prowess regardless--or
because--of their race, sexual orientation, disability, religion, or geographic
location). We will conclude the course with a comparative reading of two
novels featuring Native American issues by Tony Hillerman and Sherman
Alexie. An investigation of the textual and historical beginnings of Islam; the development of the religion in the early middle ages; and an examination of the formalization of schools of Islamic law and the confrontation between Sunni and Shii versions of praxis. Concludes with the rise of Islamic modernism and the roots of Islamic fundamentalism. LTWL 143 Exploration of the common areas in the revivalist movements
affecting different religious traditions, including Hinduism, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam with reference to their cultural, social, and
political dimensions The problematic term "fundamentalism" will
be subjected to critical scrutiny, while emphasis will be placed on distinguishing
the specifically religious features of these movements from their wider
socio-political dimensions. As the sole course on Native American literature and orality at UCSD, this course will be conducted as an introduction to the thought of the Fourth World and to the historical and contemporary problems in interpreting and conveying that thought in the nonIndian-dominated academy. We will be reading a small number of works by Native scholars in the field of Native American studies to give us some sense of the many available theoretical, community, and personal lenses through which the verbal arts of the First Nations may be viewed. In addition, we will read recorded oral genres, short stories, novels, poetry, and contemporary criticism. No specific regional focus is planned. Students will encounter works by speakers and writers of Mesoamerica, the U.S. Southwest and Southeast, Iroquoia, California, the Great Plains, the Yukon, and the Plateau region. LTWL 160 This course takes as its theme the articulation of female selves and sexualities in a series of wildly popular, often notorious novels and memoirs written by British, French, and Russian women between 1797 and 1910. It focuses on the expression and/or repression of female sexual desire in representative works of Gothic, Romantic, Victorian, and fin-de-siècle pulp fiction by Ann Radcliffe, Madame de Stäel, George Sand, Nadezhda Durova, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Evdokiia Nagrodskaia. Issues addressed in lectures and discussions will include the following: the physical and psychic "spaces" of female desire; sexual tourism and transvestism; same-sex passion; changing notions of "heroinic" sexuality; female sexual agency (or lack thereof); mental and physical sexual "disorders"; and the fascination of "criminal" (i.e. adulterous, incestuous, "decadent") sexualities. We will pay particular attention to these writers' portraits of their heroines and narratrices as both actual and potential writers, actresses, and painters in order to explore the ways in which sexual and societal pressures shape the public and private image of the woman artist. The course will also trace the ways in which these writers borrow from and argue with one another in their work. All readings, lectures, and discussions in English. LTWL 172 This seminar is primarily organized around independent study
and weekly discussion groups in the history of Filipino American cultural
formation. The fall quarter topic was on "Colonial and Late-Colonial
Formations" and involved a basic reading list that students were
expected to master before launching off on their own research ventures.
This winter, as a result of the heavy interest evinced by Fall Quarter
enrollees in the topic, we would assemble a reading list on "Filipino
Americans and U.S. Popular Culture." A major requirement of the class
is a paper produced at the end of the quarter, displaying evidence of
primary research and tackling methodological questions or problems. No three writers have so greatly influenced 20th-century life and thought as Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. This course will introduce students to the major ideas of all three writers in some of their most famous works. We shall also pay special attention to the literary styles of all three authors, and to problematic and disturbing aspects of their work. The readings are: Nietzsche: "On Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense," Beyond Good and Evil, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book 1. Freud: An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Fragment of a Case
of Hysteria (the "Dora" case), Beyond the Pleasure
Principle. Baudrillard reflected upon simulacral worlds while Lyotard wondered about
the end of the `great accounts' of modernity (Marx's, Freud's, Einstein's).
Can this mode of thought be helpful in a reflection about cinema as well?
Is the `Postmodern' a historical, and chronologically-marked, predicament
which typifies our new epistemology - an extension of modernity and its
`aftermath' (perhaps a clash with `modernity')? Or, is it more useful
as a transhistorical conceptual structure? In this course we will read critical essays, novels, and works in cultural
studies in order to produce research paradigms and delve into the pleasures
of the text. We will ask questions like: "How do I constitute an
object of study?"; "What methodologies are most appropriate
to my project?"; "What theory of culture does my project assume?"
We will read widely in the area of literary and cultural criticism and
the students will produce weekly short written responses to the readings.
The class will also operate through and within a series of workshops within
which the students read each others papers, set each others assignments
and produce topics for general discussion. Some workshops may be broadly
conceived as being about reading or writing and other workshops will focus
very specifically on particular texts or essays. These texts enable us to ask about the kinds of investments that people make or do not make in their writing projects. Preliminary Reading List: Books: Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text Isabella Fonseca, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey D.A. Miller, On Roland Barthes Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights Lauren Berlant Judith Butler Michel Foucault Saidiya Hartman Eric Lott Eve K. Sedgwick Students may also be interested in: Third World Studies (TWS) 24 be read in English translation. The books deal with Guadeloupe, Martinique,
Haiti, Trinidad, and Antigua, as well as the Caribbean diaspora (the Barbadian
community in New York and Caribbean peoples in the UK). STUDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETED THEIR COLLEGE WRITING REQUIREMENTS PRIOR TO ENROLLMENT IN LTWR 8A-B-C. LTWR 8 A, B, AND C ARE PREREQUISITES TO DECLAIRING A MAJOR IN WRITING. STUDENTS ENROLLED IN LTWR 8A AND 8B ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND 3 READINGS IN THE NEW WRITING SERIES. See Literature Department for times and dates. LTWR 8A This is a course in the writing of poetry, open to all who have completed their college writing requirements. Those who take the course will read a number of poems from a good anthology, and will hear lectures on finding materials to write about, on poetic forms, and on the life and role of a poet in the year 2000. Some poems will be written as exercises, and some will be your choice of form and topic. The instructor makes no judgement of quality as between regular meter, free verse, and the prose poem, and all these will be attempted. What makes a poem competent, even excellent? We will discuss the possible criteria of value. The tasks will be: several poems written as exercises, and several written to no special assignment; a quiz on meter and scansion (topics that will be taught before the quiz); commenting on others' work and taking comments on your own. DEPARTMENT APPROVAL FOR UPPER-DIVISION WRITING COURSES IS AVAILABLE IN THE LITERATURE UNDERGRADUATE OFFICE FROM 9:00-3:30, MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY. PRIORITY ENROLLMENT BEGINS 11/9 FOR SENIOR WRITING
MAJORS Students will write two short stories in drafts: the emphasis is on learning
to revise and polish stories, on conceptual and technical levels both.
Drafts of the first story will be critiqued by me and writing group members;
I'll critique drafts of the second story, which the whole class will discuss.
The course also entails numerous writing exercises and responding analytically
and imaginatively to the extensive readings, which include works by Poe,
Chekhov, Kafka, Edith Wharton, John Edgar Wideman, Jane Bowles, Clarice
Lispector, Julio Cortázar, Nella Larsen, Kenzaburo Oe, and others. Prerequisite:
LTWR 8A. A workshop designed to encourage writing of original screenplays and adaptations. There will be discussion of student work, together with analysis of discussion of representative examples of screen writing. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A and LTWR 8C. LTWR 120 Designed as a writing workshop, this course consists of a series of sequenced writing assignments -- stipulative definitions of literacy, writing and reading inventories, memory work, and literacy anecdotes -- which converge in a final essay where students locate and explore places where they learned to write and read and what those sites contribute to how they see themselves as writers and readers. Readings include educational memoirs, material on examining the social and cultural contexts of individual experience, and essays produced by students in the class. Prerequisite: LTWR 8C. LTWR 125 Students will read, and do exercises, in a variety of genres, including advertising , "zines," pop magazine features. These exercises encourage both analysis and emulation of different styles and strategies involved in persuasive writing. The major paper (drafts of which will be read and discussed by the whole class) is a "high brow" literary essay examining a trend in popular culture or contemporary U.S. life. Readings include James Baldwin's The Evidence of Things Not Seen: essays by Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Nell Irvin Painter, Rebecca Mead, Mike Davis; excerpts from The Gen X Reader, and Susan Faludi's Backlash and Stiffed. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A, or 8C (8C is advised). LTWR 128 Collectively, workshoppers will determine the cover theme of their issue of OOPs after considering selected student writing. Shorter articles will be "commissioned" which conform to the theme, and some instruction in copy editing will be provided. Prerequisite: LTWR 121 or consent of instructor. LTWR 142 |