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LTAF 110 - AFRICAN ORAL LITERATURE: PERFORMANCE AS CULTURAL TEXT LTAM 130 - READING NORTH BY SOUTH:
COMPARATIVE AMERICAN PROSE CHINESE LITERATURE - No Course Offerings Spring 2005 CLASSICS LTGK 112 (HOMER: SELECTIONS FROM HOMER’S ILIAD) LTLA 3 (INTERMEDIATE LATIN lI) LTLA 114 (VERGIL: VERGIL’S AENEID) LTWL 19C (INTRODUCTION TO ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS) LTWL 106 (THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: GREEK MEDICAL WRITERS) COMPARATIVE LITERATURE - No Course Offerings Spring 2005 LTCS 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: HOLLYWOOD ROMANCING THE ASIANS This seminar examines three stages of Hollywood’s romance with the Asians---silent, cold war, and postcolonial---as exemplified by three feature films---from Broken Blossoms (1919) to Sayonara (1957) to Madame Butterfly (1993)---and explores changes in screen representations of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. LTCS 150 - TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES:
SOUTH ASIAN-AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE This course examines the production and circulation of cultural texts within South Asian American communities. We will examine contemporary film, magazines, websites, Indian stores, parties, religious gatherings, music, parades, restaurants, beauty & talent contests, language classes, summer camps, activist groups, as well as other sites in which South Asian American culture is both formulated and contested. We will pay close attention to shifting understandings of culture, gender, nationality, citizenship, class, globalization, race and sexuality that are produced in such locations. We will also examine recent scholarly analyses that attempt to read in these cultural practices, a means of remembering old and forging new associations with other communities of color in the US. LTCS 170 - VISUAL CULTURE: VIOLENCE AND VISUAL CULTURES This course introduces key concepts and debates in the emerging field of visual culture. Over the course of the quarter, we will consider how US visual cultures have changed over time, from the Civil War to the present, in response to changing technologies and different social, economic, and political conditions. Much of the course will focus on questions of violence and visual culture, especially on scenes of war, crime, and female violence. We will consider a wide range of cultural technologies, including but not limited to photographs, film, and television. Among other things, we may consider Matthew Brady’s photographs of the Civil War; Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage; Ken Burns’ famous documentary about the Civil War; photographs from the Vietnam War era; wars on film as well as on CNN and other satellite channels; Jessica Hagedorn’s novel Dream Jungle, which was partly inspired by the filming of Apocalypse Now in the Philippines; and Susan Sontag’s book on war photography, Regarding the Pain of Others. We will also think about representations of crime and criminality across different cultural forms, including TV news, police shows, and videotaped images of Rodney King’s beating and the 1992 L.A. uprising. Finally, we will think about how female violence and criminality have been represented in a variety of media, notably in Hollywood films such as Thelma and Louise, Set it Off, and Monster. LTEA 120C - HONG KONG FILMS: TIME, SPACE, IDENTITY This course approaches the questions of space, time, and identity in Hong Kong cinema and offers a historical survey of this exhilarating transregional-transnational film industry and film culture in a century. Lecture topics include Hong Kong-Shanghai connections (1910s-1920s), rise of Cantonese cinema (1930s), postwar political divergence (1940s-1950s), urban modernity and youth culture (1960s), martial arts legends (1970s), the new wave cinema (early 1980s), the second wave and identity crisis (late 1980s), culture of disappearance (1990s), and new localism (2000s). No knowledge of Chinese (Mandarin) or Cantonese is required, but upper-division standing is recommended. All films carry English subtitles, and all reading and writing is done in English. LTEA 145 - LITERATURE, HISTORY, AND COLONIAL/POST-COLONIAL MODERNITY IN KOREA Instructor: Jin-Kyung Lee Recent years has seen a sizable production of scholarship on modern Korean history in the US. This course proposes to examine some of these contributions to re-thinking major issues, such as Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, authoritarian development, labor movement, and gender/sexuality. Alongside the historiographical representations, we will also read literary works from both the colonial period and the post-Liberation era and compare their conceptualization of these major issues. Some of the questions we want to ask ourselves include: how do literary and historiographical representations supplement and contrast with each other?; how does the recent US scholarship critique South Korean nationalist perspectives including those present in literary works?; how does the US scholarship differ from both the older and recent South Korean scholarship?; how would we compare certain assumptions implicit in both South Korean literary and historiographical works and the US scholarship? The class aims at offering a survey of canonical literary works and of the major historiographical trends in relation to each other. LTEN 23 - INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE BRITISH ISLES:
1832-PRESENT This course will serve as an introduction to the dominant literary trends in Britain from around 1832 to the present. Issues that will be examined in historical context across literary genres will include: the British empire, the construction of the British literary canon, redefinitions of culture, literary modernism, decolonization & the commonwealth, Black British writing, postcolonialism. In our attempt to cover 173 years of literary history somewhat adequately, we will aim to read works by some, if not all, of the following writers: Charlotte Bronte, Wilkie Collins, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett- Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Mathew Arnold, George Gissing, Joseph Conrad, W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Jean Rhys, Meiling Jin, Merle Collins, Salman Rushdie and Kasuo Ishiguru. Students will be evaluated on a midterm paper, final exam, in-class quizzes, and on section participation. Books will be available at Groundwork Bookstore. LTEN 29 - INTRODUCTION TO CHICANO LITERATURE This course will focus on the history and cultural production of the Mexican-origin population in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. We will begin with writings by Mexicans in the Southwest before and after the U.S. invasion of 1848 and then move on through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Topics to be covered include Anglo-Mexican relations, the migrant experience, the Chicano/a and Mexicano/a working class, the Chicano Movement of the Viet Nam War period, the construction of a militant collective identity (i.e., the Chicana/o), and the transition in the 1980s to Hispanic identities and markets. In addition to interpreting literary texts we will analyze film, music, performance art, and other cultural forms. LTEN 117A - 17TH CENTURY THEMES AND ISSUES: IMAGES,
IDOLS, AND UTOPIAS IN EARLY MODERN LITERTURE (a) This course will explore the role of imaginative writing—prose, poetry, and drama--in the development of early modern ideas and practices concerning the state, religion, the humanist subject, education, science, trade, colonial ambition, and other facets of life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the literary genres we will study is the utopian narrative which is related to what we today call Science Fiction. Beginning with an early example, Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), we’ll examine the distinctive features of utopian writing and the ways in which these are related to the project of Renaissance humanism. We shall proceed to look at how utopian discourse ranges beyond the specific genre of utopia to touch other literary forms as well. The course will focus on how literature was both a principal instrument in the formation of modern cultural and social institutions and, at the same time, an imaginative means of critiquing those institutions in the process of their formation. In addition to More’s Utopia, our readings may include works by Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, Aemelia Lanyer, Margaret Cavendish, Gerrard Winstanley, and John Milton. Two papers will be required. LTEN 143 - ENGLISH NOVEL 18TH CENTURY: THE GOTHIC NOVEL
(b) This is a course about late eighteenth-century Gothic novels and the worlds they construct: crumbling medieval abbeys isolated in terrifying, sublime landscapes; ancient castles and monasteries populated by despotic aristocrats and murderous monks; subterranean passageways and secret dungeons; strange sounds, sinister shadows, and flickering lights; cryptic manuscripts; apparitions, demons, and mysterious strangers; hidden family histories of violent death; adultery, incest, and rape. The characteristic world created by the British Gothic novel proclaims its "otherness": ostensibly, it is a very non-English world. The novels invoke a barbaric past, Mediterranean landscapes, and Catholic institutions. Orphaned heroines under the rule of tyrannical guardians face forced marriages or immurement in a convent, or worse; heroes battle the oppressive powers of family, church, and state; anti-heroes connive to protect their guilty secrets. Gothic novels became popular in England in the later eighteenth century at a time of social upheaval: revolution, radicalism, feminism, profound economic changes, and social and political backlash. While we may think of Gothic fantasies as pure escapism, they are not. Through the construction of "other" worlds, these novels in fact project and address anxieties about the British self. This class will examine the Gothic novels in relation to national and self identity, having to do with gender, class, religion, the family and the state. Though in many ways, these Gothic novels often seem to reinforce the dominant power structures of their day, they can also be read as a perverse and often subversive commentary on prevailing gender relations and domestic ideology; likewise, while they might appear to endorse conservative political values, they may also be read as offering a radical critique of state power. One of our continuing topics of discussion will be the relative validity of these various readings. Novels for this course will include Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, and others.
LTEN 148 - GENRES ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE: SENSATIONAL
LITERATURE (d) This course will cover a wide range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sensational literature, from Edgar Allen Poe’s horror and crime stories (1830s-1840s) to W.E.B. Du Bois’s fantastic novel Dark Princess (1928), a political thriller about a black liberator and an international anti-imperialist alliance among people of color. We will study several different examples of the genre: crime narratives, “mysteries of the city” literature, frontier/imperial adventure novels, international romances, narratives about the horrors of slavery, thrilling tales of war and banditry, and early science fiction. We will consider how and why these forms of sensational literature tried to thrill, shock, or otherwise move their readers; we will ask questions about how different kinds of audiences may have responded; we will critically analyze sensational literature’s focus on different kinds of bodies; and we will think about the larger social, political, and economic controversies and movements to which sensational literature responds. During the quarter, we may read Karl Marx, Frederick Douglass, John Rollin Ridge, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, Pauline Hopkins, Upton Sinclair, and George Schuyler, among others. Because many of the story types of sensational literature were incorporated into the theater and cinema, we will also investigate some of the intersections among these sensational cultural forms. LTEN 148 - GENRES IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE: TRAGEDY AS ONE
OF THE HUMANITIES It is a terrible thing to love what death can touch, says a character in a tragic play. This course assumes that there are advantages, personal and literary, from being able to face the worst. Tragedy as a mode of inquiry raises ultimate questions: of breakdown of family and nation, the meaning of death, conflicts that lead to murder and exile, the social pressures on individual acts. There are few answers, it seems, but the genre has something to say about how to behave under intolerable stress and how to search for a place in the world. Particular issues in readings: How define tragedy, and how does the genre have continuity? Does it change over time, through Ancient to Early Modern and Modern texts? Is there such a thing as a tragic sense of life, and how does tragic literature organize things differently from the loose ordinary way of talking about any death as tragic? How can plays and a novel about a shocking loss be understood as having as aesthetic dimension (“sweet violence,” as Terry Eagleton has it in the title of a book we’ll read)? Readings: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Euripides, Hippolytus; Marlowe, Dr. Faustus; Shakespeare, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet; Racine, Phaedra; Ibsen, Rosmersholm; Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles; O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms; Jeffers, Cawdor; Miller, Death of a Salesman; Sarah Kane, Phaedra’s Love. Readings in theory of tragedy will take up about 25% of the course: Aristotle, Poetics; Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s writing on tragedy; Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: the Idea of the Tragic (2003). One line I intend to follow from week 1 to week 9 is the treatment, over centuries and across nations and languages, of the story of Phaedra’s lust for her stepson Hippolytus. This course is organized to build later stages of discussion. A regular feature will be re-enactment by course members of a scene from each of the plays we read. There will be a couple of other tasks during the quarter, ungraded but needing to be completed---for example, everyone will take a turn to be a Reporter to take notes on class meetings for distribution to the group by email. Graded tasks: There will be two papers of middle length due in weeks 4 and 8, and a short final exam where course members will deliver their own theories of tragedy based on a personal interpretation of readings. With these contents and aims, the course would be especially welcoming to students in the Theater and Philosophy Departments---indeed to anyone who’s interested in a broad historical account of how, from the Greeks to yesterday in Sarah Kane, tragedy is a crucial instance of the meaning of the humanities. LTEN 155 - INTERACTION BETWEEN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND
VISUAL ARTS: FILM NOIR (d) This course will study American films made in the period between 1944 and 1963, dubbed by French critics, films noir for their dark, existential themes, low-key lighting, and dystopic views of American postwar life. It is also the period of the early Cold War, an era in which the attempt to contain Soviet influence abroad was met with an attempt to contain domestic consensus at home. While mainstream films of the era glorified American efforts in the recent war or focused on the trials of new suburban domesticity, film noir offered a more skeptical look at what could not be contained during the Truman and Eisenhower eras. Film noir has become a classic American genre, drawing from Grade B gangster and detective films of the 1930s as well as from German expressionism and French surrealism. Films like Double Indemnity, The Lady from Shanghai and Kiss Me Deadly are recognized as quintessential interpretations of American Cold War alienation and anomie. More recent films such as Breathless, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, and Bladerunner owe substantial debts to the film noir tradition. For this class we will see nine classic films noir, including Double Indemnity, The Lady from Shanghai, Mildred Pierce, Kiss Me Deadly, Out of the Past, Gilda, The Big Sleep, In a Lonely Place, and perhaps a later film indebted to film noir such as The Manchurian Candidate or Chinatown. We will also read several novels upon which films were made. Students must be willing to screen each film prior to class at the Film and Video Library (or at home via video rentals). Where appropriate we will read novels upon which films were based as well as selected essays on film noir history and theory. Weekly writings and quizzes on each film will constitute a substantial portion of the grade. Evaluation will be based on these writings and the completion of three short papers. LTEN 160 - IDEAS AND PHOTO IMAGES AMERICAN CULTURE Please see the Literature Undergraduate Office, room 110 for a copy of the course description for this course.
LTEN 185 - THEMES AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE: AFRICAN AMERICAN HUMOR
(d) This course is a study of African American humor, particularly in performance, from slavery (ca. 18th century) to today. The humor of African Americans has historically been divided, consisting of humor created by and for a black audience, and humor performed for a white audience. We will investigate the origins of this division, and the ways in which African American humor has shaped American culture. Keeping in mind the social and cultural context in which African American humor emerged and developed, we will take an interdisciplinary approach to our subject. We will use various materials from cartoons, folklore, literature, and film (among others) to study the African American comic tradition. LTEN 187 -
BLACK MUSIC AND TEXTS COMMUNICATION AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION: THE BLACK
ATLANTIC (d) This course offers an introduction to Paul Gilroy’s pathbreaking 1993 study on the role of black culture in the modern West. While we will look both at the theoretical underpinning of Gilroy’s work and the historical context in which a black Diaspora consciousness developed, particular attention will be paid to contemporary models of (post)ethnic identity and the role of popular culture in creating a black Atlantic soundscape linking African Diaspora communities. Sources will include theory texts as well as well as films and music. LTEN Upper Division Codes:
Return to top of LTEN section EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN LITERATURE LTEU 147 - WOMEN IN ITALY: “LET’S SPIT ON HEGEL” Our goal will be to analyze and understand the specificity of Italian feminist writing from Italian unification (1861) to the present day. We will focus on manifestos (such as Carla Lonzi's "Let's Spit on Hegel"), novels, short stories, laws, practices and theories which question the western philosophical and political tradition from an Italian and transnational feminist perspective. In our discussions, we will examine such topics as the "dream of love;" the problems inherent in concepts of gender "equality;" the relation of women writers and thinkers to history, especially to the historical experience of fascism; the relation between Italian feminist theory and practice.
LTFR 2A - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH I Second-year course designed to be taken after 1C/CX. We undertake a thorough review of grammar while continuing to develop language skills (oral and written) by studying short stories, cartoons, and movies from various French-speaking countries. 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 2B - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH II We continue the review of grammar begun in LTFR 2A. To strengthen language skill, plays from the 19th and 20th centuries as well as the movie interpretation of Cyrano de Bergerac are studied. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Prerequisite: LTFR 2A or equivalent or a score of 4 on the AP French language exam. LTFR 2C - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH III: COMPOSITION AND CULTURAL ISSUES Designed for students who wish to further improve writing and conversational skills. Most advanced course in the program that offers a formal review of grammar. Oral skills are practiced through discussions of cultural issues presented in a contemporary novel and a film. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Students having completed 2C can register in upper-level courses (115 or 116). Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam. LTFR 21 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP I One-unit, one-meeting-a-week course, designed to develop and maintain oral skills by discussing current cultural issues of the francophone world. This course may be taken more than once, alone or in combination with any other literature course. Prerequisite: LIFR 1C/CX or consent of instructor. LTFR 31 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP II A one-unit, one-meeting-a-week course, designed to develop and maintain oral skills by discussing current cultural issues of the francophone world. This course may be taken more than once, alone or in combination with any other literature course. Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or consent of instructor. LTFR 50 - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH III: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS This course emphasizes the development of language skills and the practice of textual analysis. Discussions are based on analysis of poems as well as on a novel and films. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Students having completed 50 can register in upper-level courses (115 or 116). Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam. LTFR 116 -THEMES
IN INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY HISTORY Cette classe présentera une vue d'ensemble de la littérature française des XIXe et XXe siècles, de son contexte historique et culturel, de ses principales tendances (transformations de la notion de représentation, autonomie de l’écriture, etc.), mouvements (Romantisme, Réalisme et Naturalisme, Surréalisme, Théâtre de l'Absurde, Nouveau Roman) et auteurs (Chateaubriand, Hugo, Flaubert, Rimbaud, Proust, Breton, Sartre, Ionesco, Sarraute, Simon, etc.) L’évolution de la littérature française au cours des deux derniers siècles sera considérée avant tout comme un processus sans fin de découverte, d’exploration et d’approfondissement de nouveaux aspects (matériels, sociaux, existentiels) de la réalité, en même temps qu’une recherche des moyens nécessaires pour représenter ces nouveaux aspects par le langage. La classe sera conduite de manière interactive. Une participation active aux discussions sera attendue de chaque étudiant. TEXTES OBLIGATOIRES (disponibles à la librairie de UCSD à Price Center):
LTFR 125 - TWENTIETH CENTURY : SHORT STORIES AND
NOVELLAS This course will focus on short stories and novellas written in French in the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition to considering work by French authors (Camus, Tournier), students will examine texts by writers from Quebec (Canada), the former Yugoslavia (Southern Europe), Lebanon (the Middle East), Guadeloupe (a French Department in the Caribbean), Morocco (North Africa), Senegal (West Africa), Mauritius (an island in the Indian Ocean), and Cambodia (in Southeast Asia), including some, such as the Vietnamese French writer Linda Lê, or the Moroccan/Sephardic Canadian writer Oro Anahory-Librowicz, who have emigrated to France or Canada. We will attend to the themes and formal construction of the texts in relation to the conditions of their emergence in metropolitan, colonial, and postcolonial contexts, as well as to questions of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. Finally, we will discuss the ways in which the significance of a given story or novella may change, depending on the time and place in which it is read as well as the demographic composition of its readership. LTFR 170 - VISUAL CULTURE : RECENT FRENCH-LANGUAGE
FILM This class is for students interested in becoming
familiar with some of the most talked about filmmakers in contemporary
cinema in the French language in Belgium, Cameroon, metropolitan
France, Martinique, Québec, and Switzerland. All films will be in French
with English subtitles. Topics include: legacy of the French New Wave,
entertainment vs. art-house cinema, women in cinema, sexuality, adolescence,
marginality, colonialism and its fallout in the present, free-market
economy, immigration, and globalization and the question of Hollywood's
cultural dominance. LTGM 2C - INTERMEDIATE GERMAN lII In this final portion of the Intermediate German sequence, readings and discussions focus on trends in the 1940s and 1950s in the two Germanies. We also read a full-length play, Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s international hit ‘The Visit,” and complete the grammar review begun in LTGM 2A and in 2B. The course is intended to help students make the transition from language courses to more advanced work in German. Designed with all intermediate students in mind, LTGM 2C is particularly appropriate for those planning to spend time in German-speaking countries. Class conducted in German. Prerequisite: LTGM 2B or equivalent (AP score of 5 or transfer credit). LTGM 130 - GERMAN LITERARAY PROSE: FOLK AND FAIRY TALE The seminar focuses on the enormously popular collection of tales published by the Grimm brothers and known as Kinder-und Hausmärchen. When reading individual folk and fairy tales we will look for recurring themes, narrative components and characters. To help understand the texts in the broader context of the European fairy tale tradition, we will also compare Grimm versions with others (Perrault, for instance) and consider how Disney and Muppet adaptations relate to the tradition. This look at fairy tales as both genre and institution will also include essays by such figures as Bruno Bettelheim and J.R.R. Tolkien, who reflect on why the tales enjoy such a special place in children’s literature and popular culture. Taught in German. Prerequisite: LTGM 2C or equivalent, or permission of the instructor. LTGK 3 - INTERMEDIATE GREEK II: READING HOMER’S
ODYSSEY We'll continue to make our way through Schoder's introductory text. There will be longer passages of real Greek (Homer, Plato, Euripides, Theognis, New Testament, etc.) and more complexity....but also more 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. LTGK 112 - HOMER: SELECTIONS FROM
HOMER’S ILIAD We'll read a selection of passages revered since antiquity for their greatness and consider why they've been so regarded. In addition, we'll touch on some of the prominent areas of Homeric studies, such as metrics, oral poetics, and similes. Midterm, paper, final. HEBREW LITERATURE - No Course Offerings Spring 2005 LTIT 50 - ADVANCED ITALIAN This course provides an introduction to Italian literature and culture. Students will read 20th century short stories and newspaper articles. Close reading, written assignments, and conversation will prepare them for upper-division literature courses. Prerequisite: LTIT 2B or permission of instructor. LTIT 122 - STUDIES
IN MODERN ITALIAN CULTURE In this course we will read and discuss Umberto Eco's columns on life, culture, politics and society in general. Readings and discussions in Italian. One oral presentation and a final paper. LTKO 1A is designed to help students develop beginning-level skills in the Korean language and is recommended for students who have Korean language background. The concentration is on the development of basic listening and speaking skills, reading and writing skills, and cultural understanding. LTKO 1A - BEGINNING KOREAN: FIRST YEAR I First year Korean 1A (5 units) is the first part of the Beginning Korean series. This course is designed to assist students to develop low-beginning level skills in the Korean language. These skills are speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as cultural understanding. This course will begin by introducing the writing and sound system of the Korean language. The remainder of the course will focus on grammatical patterns such as basic sentence structures, some grammatical points, and expressions. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:
LTKO 1C - BEGINNING
KOREAN: FIRST YEAR III LTKO 1C is designed to help students develop beginning level skills in the Korean language. Section C01 is recommended for students who have no Korean language background, and concentrates on listening and speaking skills, and cultural understanding. Sections A01 and B01 are recommended for students who have Korean language background with a concentration on reading and writing skills. First Year Korean 1C (5 units) is the third part of the Beginning Korean. This course is designed to assist students to develop high-beginning level skills in the Korean language. These skills are speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as cultural understanding. LTKO 1C is designed for students who have already mastered LTKO 1B. This course will focus on grammatical patterns such as sentence structures, some simple grammatical points, and some survival level use of Korean language. Additionally, speaking, reading, writing, and listening comprehension will all be emphasized, with special attention to oral speech. Upon completion of this course, students will become able to do the following in Korean:
LTKO 2A - INTERMEDIATE
KOREAN: SECOND YEAR I LTKO 2A is designed to help students develop intermediate-level skills in Korean language. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have a good command of the language in various daily conversational situations. Second Year Korean 2A is the first part of the Intermediate Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught in the Korean 1A, 1B, and 1C courses. Students in this course will learn low-intermediate level skills in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Korean, as well as expand their cultural understanding. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to acquire and use more vocabularies, expressions and sentence structures and to have a good command of Korean in various conversational situations. Students are expected to write short essays using the vocabularies, expressions, and sentence structures introduced. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:
LTKO 2C - INTERMEDIATE KOREAN: SECOND YEAR III LTKO 2C is designed to help students develop intermediate-level skills in the Korean language. Upon completion, students are expected to have a good command of the language in various daily conversational and casual situations. Second Year Korean 2C (5 units) is the third part of the Intermediate Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught during the Korean 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A and 2B courses. Students in this course will learn high-intermediate level of standard modern Korean in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as expand their cultural understanding. After the completion of this course, students are expected to acquire and use more vocabularies, expressions, and sentence structures and to have a good command of Korean in various conversational situations. Students are also expected to write short essays using the vocabularies, expressions, and sentence structures introduced. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:
LTKO 3C - ADVANCED KOREAN: THIRD YEAR llI LTKO 3C is designed to help students develop advanced-level skills in the Korean language. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have a good command of Korean in various formal settings, which includes understanding and reading daily news broadcasts/newspapers, and also writing social and informal business correspondence. Third Year Korean 3B (5 units) is the second part of the advanced Korean courses. It is assumed that students in this course have previous knowledge of Korean taught in LTKO 2A, 2B, 2C and 3A. Students in this course will learn mid-advanced level skills in the areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing, as well as expand their cultural understanding. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to acquire and use more vocabulary, expressions and sentence structures and to have a good command of Korean in formal situations. Students are expected to read and understand daily newspapers and daily news broadcasts. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:
LTKO 100 - ADVANCED READINGS IN KOREAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE: SOUTH
KOREAN WOMEN’S LITERATURE IN THE 70s, 80s, 90s This course is designed both as an advanced reading class and as an introduction to South Korean literature and history. It focuses on South Korean women’s writing that attempts to re-think and re-write modern Korean national history. In the wake of the gradual dissolution of student and labor activism, the women’s movement re-emerged as one of the most active areas of continuing resistance and politicization in the 1990s. We will read feminist/female re-inscriptions of significant historical events and periods in South Korean national history, produced in the last three decades. We will examine the various ways in which women have been mobilized into the process of nation-building and modernization as mothers, wives/domestic workers, industrial workers, sex workers, and student activists. As we inquire into the ideological strategies of inclusion of women into the modern nation, our reading of feminist literary works will explore the simultaneous marginalization of women and consider the ways in which women’s re-writing of Korean national history begins to problematize the very boundary of an ethnic nation in the post-1945 era. Students who have completed three years of Korean at the college level as well as those who have literacy in Korean through informal and formal training may qualify to take this class. The level of difficulty of the reading materials and class discussion will be adjusted to the linguistic capabilities of the participants. LTLA 3 - INTERMEDIATE LATIN lI We'll read a selection of passages revered since antiquity for their greatness and consider why they've been so regarded. In addition, we'll touch on some of the prominent areas of Homeric studies, such as metrics, oral poetics, and similes. Midterm, paper, final. LTLA 114 - VERGIL: VERGIL’S AENEID Our main focus will be on reading book IV of Vergil's epic poem, the Aeneid. This book is a good choice for us since we may be able to complete it in a quarter, it comprises a fairly complete story within itself, and it is considered a masterpiece of Vergil's writing. We'll read the entire poem in English in order to provide context for our reading of book IV in Latin as well as to gain an appreciation for the work as a whole. Additionally, we'll also read in English relevant sections of works Vergil expects us to be familiar with when we approach the fourth book of the Aeneid: the Odyssey, Argonautica, and perhaps Euripides' Hippolytus. Midterm, Final, Paper. NEAR EASTERN LITERATURE - No Course Offerings Spring 2005
LTRU 1C - FIRST YEAR RUSSIAN 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 two 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. LTRU 2C - SECOND YEAR RUSSIAN 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 two 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. LTRU 104C - ADVANCED PRACTICUM IN RUSSIAN Development of advanced skills in reading, writing, and conversation. Course based on written and oral texts of various genres and styles. Individualized program to meet specific student needs. May be substituted for LTRU 101 A-B-C as requirement for major. Prerequisite for 104A: LTRU 2C or equivalent. LTRU 110C - RUSSIAN AND SOVIET LITERATURE: 1917-PRESENT By looking at both novels and short stories, this course will explore Soviet and Russian literature from post-Revolution to post-communism. Topics to be discussed include: the "sovietization" of Russian literature and the responses of writers to the legacy of the Revolution and communism; the question of Russian modernist and post-modernist aesthetics; and the rise of New Women's Prose during the glasnost' and post-glasnost' periods. All readings in English, no knowledge of Russian required.
LTSP 2A - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH I: FOUNDATIONS This 5 unit intermediate course meets 4 days per week and is taught entirely in Spanish. LTSP 2A emphasizes the development of communicative skills, reading ability, listening comprehension and writing skills. It includes grammar review, short readings, class discussions and working with Spanish-language video and Internet materials. This course is designed to prepare students for LTSP 2B and 2C. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisites: Completion of LISP 1C/CX, its equivalent, or a score of 3 on the AP Spanish language exam. LTSP 2B - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH II: READINGS AND COMPOSITION This intermediate course is designed for students who wish to improve their grammatical competence, ability to speak, read and write Spanish. It is a continuation of LTSP 2A with special emphasis on problems in writing and interpretation. Students meet with the instructor 4 days per week. Work for this 5 unit course includes oral presentations, grammar review, writing assignments, class discussions on the readings and work with Spanish-language video and Internet materials. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisites: Completion of LTSP 2A, its equivalent, or a score of 4 on the AP Spanish language exam. LTSP 2C - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH III: CULTURAL TOPICS The goal of this intermediate language course is twofold: to further develop all skill areas in Spanish and to increase Spanish language-based cultural literacy. LTSP 2C is a continuation of the LTSP second-year sequence with special emphasis on problems in grammar, 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 the understanding of Spanish-language materials on the Internet. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Completion of LTSP 2B, its equivalent, or a score of 5 on the AP Spanish language exam. This course satisfies the third course requirement of the college-required language sequence as well as the language requirement for participation in UC-EAP.
LTSP 2D - ADVANCED READINGS AND COMPOSITION: SPANISH FOR HERITAGE
SPEAKERS Designed for bilingual students who have been exposed to Spanish at home but have little or no formal training in Spanish. The goal is for students who are comfortable understanding, reading and speaking in Spanish to further develop existing skills and to acquire greater oral fluency, and grammatical control through grammar review, and reading and writing practice. Building on existing strengths, the course will allow students to develop a variety of Spanish language strategies to express themselves in Spanish with greater ease and precision. Prepares native-speakers for more advanced courses. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Native speaking ability and/or recommendation of instructor. Enrollment for LTSP 2D requires department stamp. Contact instructor (bpita@ucsd.edu) with any questions regarding placement. LTSP 2E - ADVANCED READINGS AND COMPOSITION An advanced/intermediate course designed for bilingual students who may or may not have studied Spanish formally, but possess good oral skills and seek to become fully bilingual and biliterate. Reading and writing skills stressed with special emphasis on improvement of written expression, vocabulary development and problems with grammar and orthography. Prepares native speakers with a higher level of oral proficiency for more advanced courses. A diagnostic test will be administered on the first day. Prerequisite: Completion of LTSP 2D, native speaking ability and/or recommendation of instructor. Enrollment for LTSP 2E requires department stamp. Contact instructor (bpita@ucsd.edu) with any questions regarding placement. LTSP 41 - CONVERSATION AND ORTHOGRAPHY The one-unit workshop format of this course will allow students to attain a stronger command of skills in matters of conversation, pronunciation, spelling, punctuation and accent rules. Focus will be on vocabulary development, use of idiomatic expressions and advancing oral and written proficiency in Spanish. Pre-requisites: LISP 1C/CX or consent of the instructor. Note: This conversation/discussion class meets once a week. May be taken as an adjunct to lower division LTSP courses, alone, or in combination with any other LTSP course. Recommended for students planning to study abroad. May be taken 3 times for credit as topics vary. May be taken P/NP or for a letter grade. LTSP 50C - READINGS IN LATIN AMERICAN TOPICS 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 written assignments. LTSP 50C prepares Literature majors and minors for upper-division work. LTSP 50A and either 50B or 50C are required for Spanish Literature majors. Prerequisites: Completion of LTSP 2C, 2D, 2E or 2 years of college level Spanish. Note: The final exam for LTSP 50B is scheduled is scheduled for Monday, June 6th, 2005. LTSP 119C -
CERVANTES: DON QUIJOTE Un estudio intensivo de los textos escritos en 1605 y 1615. Estudiaremos las novelas desde un punto de vista formalista (¿cómo está compuesta y por qué?) tanto como socio-histórico; el profesor dará ponencias sobre el panorama cultural del período. Será la responsabilidad del estudiante leer y comentar con cuidado los textos. Dos exámenes midterm y un examen final. LTSP 130B - DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
A survey of Latin American Literature from Pre-Columbian times to Ruben Dario (c. 1900). Each historical period is treated according to representative works: for example, a chronicle by Las Casas for Conquest, the Letter by Sor Juana for the Colonial period, etc. Two exams, one intermediate, one final. (If the number of students allows it, there will be brief oral presentations of 15 minutes. LTSP 136 - FROM RURAL TO URBAN NARRATIVE IN THE ANDES
This course attempts to bridge the traditional cultural divide between the rural, indigenous, Andean interior and the urban, criollo (white) coast in Peru and Ecuador. Rural to urban migrations of the last 50 years have transformed life in both the Andean countryside and coastal urban centers, giving rise to new cultural formations. In this course we will follow these migrations through novels, short stories and a bit of poetry. Our concern throughout will be to examine emergent cultural formations and identities in the Andes as they are represented in a variety of literary works, and to ask what influence these new cultural formations have had on literature itself: its themes, forms, and relationship to a changing society. LTSP 137 - CARIBBEAN LITERATURE: CUBAN CULTURAL STUDIES Este curso es una introducción a la cultura cubana a través de la literatura, la música y las artes visuales. Examina momentos históricos integrales al desarrollo de la nación, incluyendo la época colonial, las Guerras de Independencia contra España, el período republicano, la Revolución de 1959, y el “período especial” contemporáneo. Explorando el concepto de “Cuba Libre,” examina cómo el término representa visiones diferentes de la sociedad ideal según la política del momento-de los mambises del siglo diecinueve, hasta la diáspora internacional más reciente. Novelas, cuentos, ensayos y poesía se leen al lado de la narrativa musical (e.g. rumba, Silvio Rodríguez, La charanga habanera, etc.), películas, y artes gráficas en busca de cómo “la cubanía” ha sido influida por proyectos imperiales, el legado de la esclavitud y las luchas continuas entre diversas clases sociales. LTSP 140 - LATIN AMERICAN NOVEL A study in depth of selected novelists of Spanish America. May be organized around a specific theme or idea which is traced in its development through the narratives. LTSP 162 - SPANISH LANGUAGE IN THE UNITED STATES This course provides an overview of the varieties of Spanish brought from Latin America and now spoken in the Northeast, Southwest, California and New York, from an anthro-political linguistic perspective. We pay special attention to Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Central American communities. Topics include issues of maintenance and loss (and what Spanish attrition looks like), contact with English, gender patterns, and language attitudes. Lectures will be in Spanish, but most readings are in English, and assignments can be completed in Spanish or English. Requirements:
READINGS: Most of the course readings are available via E Reserves: You will need to print these articles from computers on campus, or apply for a proxy for off-campus access. If the reading is a book chapter, not from a journal, the book is on reserve in the library. Please come to class ready to discuss the day’s required readings. Required text will be available in UCSD Bookstore :
LTSP 174 - TOPICS IN CULTURE AND POLITICS: Narrativa mexicana del siglo XX Please see the Literature Undergraduate Office, room 110 for a copy of the course description for this course. LTTH 115 - INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORY An introduction to a number of major twentieth-century intellectual movements in which literature and culture are studied from various theoretical perspectives. The aim of the course is to give the student a foothold in some of the basic categories and terminologies of contemporary theoretical discourse and to examine critically some of the points of contention among different theoretical models. This is intended as a foundation for further work, especially for undergraduates with plans for graduate work in literature and cultural studies. Critical movements studied will include the (now old) “new criticism”, structuralism and poststructuralism, feminist criticism, new historicism, and post colonial criticism. Selected readings from various sources (to be announced). LTWL 4M - FICTION AND FILM IN TWENTIETH CENTURY STUDIES MULTIPLE
NATIONAL LITERATURES AND FILM: INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM
Since the earliest days of filmmaking, “Africa” and African peoples as well as those of the Diaspora have been a central focus of the Western cinematographic imagination. From D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1915, Rouch’s “progressive” ethnographic films of the 1960s to Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball, white filmmakers have used visual constructions of blackness in an attempt to define and affirm their own cultural and racial identity. Black Filmmakers in turn have always countered these representations with their own images and stories. This class is designed to give you a first impression of the rich and diverse tradition filmmakers of the African Diaspora have created. This tradition is far too broad to be covered in one course, the thematic threat connecting the movies chosen for this class is the look from one part of the African Diaspora to another. The focus on dialogues between different communities of African descent will allow us to explore the concept of “Diaspora” from different angles, tracing the various ways in which race relates to national identity, gender, and sexuality, and the specific role film plays in this process. Textbook: David Bordwell/Kristin Thompson, Film Art. An Introduction, 6th edition, New York 2001. Additional texts for each session are on E-reserve. LTWL 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: US WAR FILMS Narrative, camera work, lighting, sets, and cultural/political meanings in recent U.S. war films, e.g. The Alamo, Saving Private Ryan. LTWL 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: BLACK FILM AS A GENRE? BLAXPLOITATION FROM
VAN PEEBLES TO TARANTINO Students will discuss select films (viewed outside of class) considered part of the “black film” genre beginning in 1971. We will think about the meaning and relevance of “black film” as a concept. LTWL 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: MUSIC IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY In this course, we will examine music in Europe and the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. This is the era when blues became popular and ragtime and jazz were born. It’s also the era when classical composers started tearing down conventions, intentionally featuring dissonance, polytonality, and other techniques unfamiliar to contemporary audiences. It’s an era when American popular music and European classical music traded ideas (as jazz borrowed European harmonies and composers like Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel borrowed harmonies and rhythms from jazz). We’ll study the music of Scott Joplin, Claude Debussy, Maurice ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and others. LTWL 19C - INTRODUCTION TO ANCIENT GREEKS AND
ROMANS In the pitifully short time of 10 weeks, we will read a smattering of the major Roman writers, mostly from the 1st centuries BC and AD -- Plautus for comedy, Livy for history, Cicero for oratory, Suetonius for biography, and Catullus, Horace, Vergil, Ovid and Juvenal for glorious poetry. LTWL 106 - THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: GREEK MEDICAL WRITERS The Hippocratic Corpus is an ancient Greek medical library of essays that address topics ranging from wounds and diseases to diet and public health. Ancient though it was, its authority in medical matters was accepted into the nineteenth century, and medical students read the works of this collection as part of their medical training. For those of us who read them today, these essays make evident that diseases are not conceptualized in the same way in all times and places. Not only the pathological realities of a particular historical moment but also ideological tendencies shape medical theory and practice. As we read selections from non-medical writers, such as the historian Thucydides' account of the plague at Athens, we'll also see how the attempt by early Greek physicians to account for disease solely in terms of the human body, without reference to gods or magic, exerted its influence across all of Greek culture. Paper, midterm, final. LTWL 116 - Adolescent
Literature: Rites of Passage This quarter the course will focus on the literature of pubescence, coming-of-age stories that reflect the unique expectations and travails of the transition from childhood to adolescence and by extension adulthood—roughly during the ages 11-14. Using an approach that links developmental concerns with literary ones, we will examine how authors handle issues of social acceptance, disillusionment, sexuality, relations with parents, authority figures, and peers, culture and ethnicity, as well as matters of literary presentation and audience. LTWL 120 - Popular Culture:
Youth Cults in the Age of Rock In the early years of the 20th century, a combination of historical and sociological forces in the U.S. laid the groundwork for a distinct youth culture that first peaked in the Jazz Age of the 1920s. In the aftermath of World War II, youth acquired even greater importance as the Age of Rock began. In this course we will examine the movements, fads, styles, and pop arts that shaped the sub-cultures of teens and twenty-somethings—from the Beats of the 50s through the Boomer Revolution of the 60s to today’s MTV and Internet generation. In the process we will read the novels, excerpt the movies and music, and discuss the trends that have made youth cults an essential institution of postmodern culture. LTWL 138 - CRITICAL RELIGION STUDIES: FAITH AND DOUBT IN THE MODERN
AGE Is belief in God a consolation for those who are afraid of death? Is it a primitive stage in human intellectual development? Are there pragmatic reasons for believing in God? Is faith a neurotic symptom? How are weakness, fear, and guilt connected to it? Is the idea of God intelligible and communicable? This course is a study of selected classics of modern literature (including poetry and philosophy), with an emphasis on works that have included a critical treatment of religion, including works by Marlowe, Pascal, Sade, Blake, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Bataille (warning: adult content), Camus, Cioran, and Eliot. In what ways do these texts undermine faith and God while also testing the limits of what we can know using scientific reason? Discussion and examination of controversial issues will be encouraged and expected in an enthusiastic, non-dogmatic, and responsive atmosphere. LTWL 145 - SOUTH ASIAN RELIGION LITERATURE SELECTED TOPICS: DEATH AND
DESIRE IN INDIA This class investigates the link between desire and death in classical and modern Hindu thought. In the most elementary formulation, this link is expressed as follows: Human beings are subject to death because they have desires; by controlling desire, human beings can escape death. This correlation between desire and death holds true for men and women alike, but it leads to disparate constructions of gender. Men are expected to practice self-control, while women are expected to submit themselves to the control of men. To tease out the many cultural and intellectual dimensions of desire/death, this class treats the following topics: the relationship between the sexes; the construction of gender identities; practices associated with the reduction of sexual desire; practices associated with the arousal of sexual pleasure; practices associated with the harnessing of desire for the attainment of immortality (i.e., Tantra). We will investigate these issues by looking at stories of the Hindu gods (especially Rama, Krishna, and Shiva), as well as by looking at the lives of contemporary South Asian men and women, in literature and film. LTWL 155 - GENDER STUDIES: ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA This course will look at contemporary visual media, especially film, with an eye to new ways of framing questions of gender and sexuality. We will look at a wave of mostly young film directors. Possible films include Todd Field's In the Bedroom (starring Sissy Spacek), Lisa Cholodenko's Laurel Canyon (with Frances McDorman), Scott McGehee and David Siegle's The Deep End (featuring Tilda Swinton), Patrick Stettner's The Business of Strangers (with Stockard Channing), Todd Haynes' Safe (with Julianne Moore), and Patrice Chereau's Intimacy (starring Kerry Fox) and François Ozon's films, 8 Women (with Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Fanny Ardant, Danielle Darrieux) and The Swimming Pool and Underneath the Sand (starring Charlotte Rampling). LTWL 176 - LITERATURE AND IDEAS: CANALS, PIAZZE, VOLCANOES, WAR:
WHAT “FOREIGN” WRITERS SEE IN ITALY We will explore and analyze literary representations of Italy in the works of non-Italian writers. What do writers see (and what do they miss), as they travel and live in different parts of Italy? What symbolic value does Italy hold? What can we learn of the quality of these writers’ relations with Italians they meet (beyond the tourist encounters)? What is the impact of their works on Italian readers and writers? Does the Italian language impact the style of these writers? Although we will begin with Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the other writers we will study wrote originally in English. Works will include:
Students may choose other writers of special interest for further study (e.g. Goethe, Stendhal, Madame de Stael, etc.) LTWL 181 - FILM STUDIES AND LITERATURE: FILM MOVEMENT NEW GERMAN CINEMA AND BEYOND Instructor: Cynthia Walk This course will look at German narrative film from the 1960s to the most recent developments since reunification. Beginning with the "New German Cinema," an internationally acclaimed movement prized for its formal experimentation and utopian energy, we will examine major films of Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder, von Trotta and Treut in the context out of which they emerged. Issues include national identity and the ambivalence of NGC toward America as well as its contradictory relationship with Hollywood. We will then consider a paradigm shift in the post-wall cinema of the Berlin Republic, culminating in the most popular German film of the 1990s, the philosophical game comedy Run Lola Run, along with the work of prize-winning Turkish-German director, Fatih Akin. LTWL 183 - FILM STUDIES AND LITERATURE: DIRECTOR WORK POSTMODERN ANGST
FILMS Please see the Literature Undergraduate Office, room 110 for a copy of the course description for this course.
LTWR 8B - WRITING POETRY Instructor: Eileen Myles Poetry is either a tiny monster, or grand proposition, a great cartoon, a message to god or a way to kill time. It's so much more. I'm teaching this class to create both readers and writers. Nothing is more serious than poetry and nothing in your education will continue to illuminate and inform you fifty years hence so get it now, whether you find it to be a new channel to turn to when you are trying to comprehend the world, or deepen the channel that already exists. The bias of this class will be to read some of the great speech-based works in the last fifty five years and maybe peer into the past for their antecedents. We'll look at film as a way of organizing a poem, talk (and try) performance. We will memorize some poems, write at least ten, read one hundred poems and write critical responses to readers who come to campus. Some names to look forward to: James Schuyler, Lucille Clifton, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Vladimir Mayakovsy, Ellyn Maybe, Ali Liebegott, Rae Armantrout, Dennis Cooper, John Weiners, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Sappho, Velimir Khlebnikov, Tu Fu, Elliot Smith and so on. LTWR 8C - WRITING NON-FICTION It’s all about writing the difficult truth. Classes will alternate from workshop, on Thursdays, to lectures and discussions of readings (and anything else that arises), on Tuesdays. Required work includes eight writing or revision assignments, each two pages long, and weekly reading quizzes. The course grade is based on a ten-page final project (50%), on workshop performance (30%), and on class participation and attendance (20%).
LTWR 100 - SHORT FICTION Students will write two complete short stories, in drafts. First drafts of story #1 will be critiqued in peer groups; first drafts of story #2 will be read and discussed by the whole class. There will be a variety of analytic writing exercises (which are graded check, check minus, check plus) in response to the readings, which include fiction by Nella Larsen, Jane Bowles, Issac Babel, Poe, Edith Wharton, Cortázar, Kafka, Clarice Lispector, Duo Duo, Kenzaburo Oe and others. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A. LTWR 100 - SHORT FICTION LTWR 100 is a short fiction workshop, including both traditional and nontraditional approaches. The course will also focus on the practical process of publishing fiction. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A. LTWR 102 - POETRY This course is for students with an interest in writing (and reading) contemporary poetry. Poetry has been variously defined by modern poets. William Carlos Williams said a poem is a "small (or large) machine made of words." Charles Bernstein described poetry as "turbulent thought" which "leaves things unresolved." We will explore a range of approaches to poetry writing and students will be encouraged to invent their own poetic forms. Assigned readings may include work by Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Charles Bernstein, Frank O'Hara, and Harryette Mullen. There will be intensive small group discussion of student poems. Prerequisite: LTWR 8B. LTWR 104 - THE NOVELLA A workshop class in which students will write a novella of 30-50pp in three installments. We will begin by briefly studying novellas by Joseph Conrad, Clarice Lispector, and Paul Auster, then spend the rest of the quarter discussing student novellas. Prerequisite: LTWR 100 LTWR 110 - SCREEN WRITING The course explores the art and craft of writing a feature-length narrative screenplay. Fundamentals include: scene structure, conflict, visual story telling, character development, dialogue, and theme. Includes regular presentations of scenes to fellow writers. LTWR 115 - EXPERIMENTAL WRITING:
Transnational Women - Radical
Resistance(s) The focus of this class is women’s identity-based, innovative writing. We’ll be reading contemporary experimental texts written by women whose work reflects the authors’ multifaceted identity-structures and radical politics. Each of the course texts will provoke questions about what literature is and what it can do to in the world. We will be reading Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères, Sharhrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men, and Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, and Ali Liebegott’s The Beautifully Worthless, plus selections from Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt Ups, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, Sawako Nakayasu’s “Hockey Wedding,” Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, in addition to theoretical texts. The course readings specifically explore women’s physical, intellectual, discursive, spiritual, and political interactions in their world(s) and the vicissitudes and interplay of characters’ “identities” as gendered, racialized, nationalized, aged subjects. Via theme, syntax, methodology, and structure, these works provide counter-narratives to a variety of dominant and dominating discourses. In so doing, they galvanize critical/creative agility, allowing us fresh possibilities for understanding ourselves and for re-creating our perspectives and worlds through our work. Grades are based on 5 writing assignments, a presentation, and weekly written and verbal responses to peer writing. LTWR 117 - Writing
Landscape: East and West Representations of landscape in poetry are responses to crises of consciousness. The different perceptual grounds one finds in the landscape poetry written in East Asia from those in Western counterparts should form not only as an exciting subject for scholars to study, they should challenge writers to come up with ways of representing them in new expressive tropes that must also challenge the hermeneutical habits of their language. Most contemporary readers have only a very vague sense of the use of nature in poetry. They have inherited from the Romantics the general idea of returning to Nature for guidance and search for harmonious reintegration. They must be shocked to find out that Nature in the literary and art works in pre-Romantic times played only a secondary role, to put it mildly. The following attitudes must seem quite strange to today's readers. "Nature... was sought, not so much for what she was, as for what she was not." One of the major objects in Nature, the mountains, had been called "Wens, Warts, Pimples, Blisters and Imposthumes." Petrarch had to apologize for having indulged in viewing a pure landscape; he remembered that the proper object for admiration was the human soul. Untrammeled Nature was considered wild, hostile, and not beautiful .... Suddenly, with the Romantics, Nature's seat was slowly resurrected, so to speak, and was re-invested with what amounted to a mythical status without a myth. What were some of the perceptual priorities or biases that had conditioned the eyes and minds of the pre-Romantics to see and represent Nature the way they did? What epistemological assumptions were there to make it possible for them to give their representations a coherent raison d'etre? When and why such a unifying world view broke up? What new surrogates had the Romantics come up with to replace the "broken circle"? In what ways the re-establishment of heliocentric consciousness had precipitated a series of reactions to, and adjustments of earlier contours of paradigms? These will be only some of the questions raised in the Workshop. We will explore also the evolvement of Ideal Landscape and the development of Classical Prototypes: locus amoenus, hortus conclusus, the idea of a paradise is a garden; a garden can also be a paradise? emblematic/ didactic/political/allegorical landscapes, theories of the sublime, Wordsworth as an "anti Nature"(Bloom) Nature poet , question of the adequacy of landscape in Wordsworth (Wesling) etc. We will test these various positions with Oriental and Amerindian philosophical and aesthetic positions so as to achieve a wider circumference of consciousness to retrieve Nature as it is. We will offer the Daoist critique of power-framing in language, leading to our participation in the Free Flow of Nature in Chinese landscape poetry and paintings. We will also explore Amerindian poetics as well as Gary Snyder's apology for Nature. Prerequisite: LTWR 8B LTWR 119 - WRITING FOR PERFORMANCE: WRITING FOR SOLO PERFORMANCE In workshop style, this course will focus primarily on the production of solo performance texts by the students, and the presentation of these texts for critical feedback within the class. While our aim is to create powerful original monodramas, it is nonetheless important that we study the roads traveled and the work produced by those who came before us. For this reason, we will engage with the visual, literary and aural products of earlier monologists/monodramatists, examining issues particular to craft, such as the transformation of a text from the page to the “stage”(performance arena), how performativity affects the writing process, and how diction, syntax and meaning shift strategically within the performance text and the performance. LTWR 120 - CREATIVE NON-FICTION: GRAPHIC TEXTS Every picture frames and stages a story, and all writing is both visual mark and cognitive prompt. What kinds of truth can we conjure when we combine illustrations with writing and when we blur distinctions? In this class we will study various kinds of graphic texts, or texts in which visual design and illustration do as much work to perform the narrative as words do. For instance, we will look at a medieval bestiary, scathing Revolutionary War broadsides, Carrie Mae Weems’ plates and photographs, Kamau Brathwaite’s Trenchtown Rock, Michelle Tea’s Rent Girl, and Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde and digital intermedia pieces. We will create our own graphic texts that use the page and other objects to stage non-fictional investigations. We will also read framing commentary from Kieth A. Smith’s Text in the Book Format, Roland Barthes’ Image, Music, Text, Hal Foster’s The Return of the Real, and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, among others. Course participants will create several short non-fiction graphic texts, (some requiring research), following thematic and formal prompts like "Our Taxonomies/Ourselves,” “Counter-Propaganda,” and “Formal Trauma.” Grades are based on 3 shorter and 2 longer written/designed assignments, a presentation, and weekly written and verbal responses to peer writing. In addition to serious literary artists, I encourage visual artists to participate in this course. LTWR 121 - MEDIA WRITING:
Writing about the Arts
and Popular Culture This will be a writing workshop focusing on issues and subjects primarily related to the arts and popular culture. This means music, film, visual art, writing, television, photography, your last bout of food poisoning, your cats or whatever really interests you. We will read magazines and journals, both popular and independent, as well as some writing for the Internet. We will look at self-published zines and journals. Assignments may include columns, critical essays, personal essays, reviews, blurbs, profiles, interviews, features, oral histories/compiled interviews, coming up with pitch ideas for magazines, writing press releases, and in-depth research. There will be weekly reading assignments that will be part of class discussion as well. In addition to weekly assignments, there will be in class writing and exercises. The final will be to make your own magazine or journal compiled of your assignments from the quarter, as well as a feature-length article or potential cover story. This can be as high or low tech as you desire, creativity is important, not your computer savvy. Your final grade will be based on class participation (both in discussion and critique, as well as your own writing assignments and attendance), and equally important is your willingness to challenge yourself and really consider your criticisms and your ability to grow and push yourself as a writer. Prerequiste: LTWR 8C. LTWR 143 - STYLISTICS AND GRAMMAR "Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be in the grammar of the language" (Wittgenstein). This course adopts a lecture-workshop format. An anatomy of grammar in the lectures and discussions (Tuesdays) alternates with workshops (Thursdays) in which students will complete a set of twenty stylistic transformations of some unassuming, page-length composition of their own. Required texts include Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed. (UC Press, 1991); Queneau, trans. Wright, Exercises in Style (New Directions, 1981). There will be a final exam on the subject of grammar for half of the grade. Prerequisite: LTWR 8C. |