Spring 2008 Undergraduate Course Descriptions |
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AFRICAN LITERATURE |
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LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAS |
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CHINESE LITERATURE |
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| (The following courses in Classical Literature can be found under their
respective Literature sub-headings: European, Greek, Latin, and World) LTGK 3 (INTERMEDIATE GREEK II) LTGK 112 (HOMER: SELECTIONS FROM THE ILIAD) LTLA 3 (INTERMEDIATE LATIN II) LTLA 134 (INTERMEDIATE LATIN II) |
| COMPARATIVE LITERATURE No Course Offerings Spring 2008 |
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| CULTURAL STUDIES LTCS 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: DISABILITY IN FILM Instructor: Michael Davidson This one unit course will look at four films in which disability is a central component. I will present an overview of Disability and Deaf Studies and will make sure that the films are available at the Film/Video Reserves in the Library. The films we will see will be Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), Randa Haines,’ Children of a Lesser God, (1986), Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997), and Bhman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly (2005). Evaluation for this course will involve regular (mandatory) attendance, the screening of all four films, and participation in class discussion. Seminar will meet every other Tuesday beginning 4/15 (Week 3): 4/15, 4/29, 5/13, and 5/27. LTCS 100 - THEORIES AND METHODS IN CULTURAL STUDIES Instructor: Roddy Reid This class will familiarize students with some of the key texts that have become essential in cultural analysis of important topics of past and contemporary culture today. Topics include: sexuality and film, contemporary media and glamour, narratives of masculinity and warfare, immigration and citizenship, public health and the War on Drugs, globalization and consumerism. Open to all students. Those students who have taken LTCS 50 Introduction to Cultural Studies will have the opportunity to build on what they’ve already learned and pursue topics at a higher level in their paper. Prerequisite: upper division standing *This course will also count as a LTEN course. LTCS 125 - CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN JEWS Instructor: Steven Cassedy Have you ever wondered where modern Jewish culture came from? Have you ever wondered why "Jewish humor," from the "Borscht Belt" to Woody Allen to Seinfeld, has been so dominant in the media of the twentieth century? Have you ever wondered about the language, attitudes, and politics of the immigrant generation that came to the United States a hundred years ago the great grandparents of today's Jewish college students? Have you ever wondered about the origins of the question of American Jewish identity in the twentieth century? This course will explore the cultural history of American Jews, going back to the beginning of American Jewish history, in 1654. It will examine the early Jewish communities in America and subsequent waves of immigration, with particular attention to the mass immigration, from 1881 to World War I, that brought the ancestors of the vast majority of today's American Jews. We will look at literature, architecture, theatre, film, politics, and other topics. We will study the Russian background of the mass immigration, Yiddish culture as it was transplanted to the United States, and the establishment of an affluent and politically powerful community in the twentieth century. Lectures, slide shows, films, student presentations. Prerequisite: upper division standing or consent of instructor |
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| EAST ASIAN LITERATURE LTEA 110B - MODERN CHINESE FICTION IN TRANSLATION: REVOLUTIONARY WRITERS OF THE REPUBLICAN ERA Instructor: Larissa Heinrich In the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, Chinese literature underwent dramatic changes. Called upon to adapt literature to revolutionary ends, writers of this period struggled not only with formal concerns like new literary idioms and modes of expression, but also with the question of Chinese identity itself: What did it mean to be Chinese in a newly international world? What did it mean to be "modern"? This course examines a diversity of literature from this period (primarily fiction), focusing in particular on themes of realism and revolution; nationalism and Chinese identity; sexuality and gender; and problems of “voice” in the creation of new narrative modes. |
| LITERATURES IN ENGLISH LTEN 29 - INTRODUCTION TO CHICANO LITERATURE Instructor: Rosaura Sanchez Lit/Eng. 29 is an introductory course dealing with Chicano/a-Latino/a literature as a way of looking at the major social conditions faced by the growing Latino/a population during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and at the literary/cultural production coming from this heterogeneous population. The course will include a variety of readings (mostly short stories, testimonios and novels) and a few films. Among the authors to be studied are Ernesto Quiñonez, Ana Castillo, Angie Cruz, Sonia Navarro, Hector Tobar, and others. LTEN 113 - SHAKESPEARE II: JACOBEAN PERIOD (a) Instructor: Louis Montrose 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, and The Tempest. Film versions of a number of these will be viewed and discussed. LTEN 144 - ENGLISH NOVEL IN THE 19TH CENTURY: THE SOCIAL PROBLEM NOVEL (b) Instructor: Margaret Loose Unlikely to appear in advertisements for the Industrial Revolution were such features as sweatshops, famine, unemployment, and overcrowded slums. Faced with such an inheritance, the Victorians became a generation of reformers with radically divergent views on what reform meant and how it should be achieved. An important literary response to the “Condition of England” question, and the political and philosophical movements it engendered, was the social problem novel. We will read some examples of this characteristically Victorian genre to see how each characterizes progress, tries to educate the middle- and upper-classes, represents the working class, and envisions remedy. We will also examine the impact of the novelist’s “having a purpose” on the narrative style of his or her work: how do writers domesticate large social issues in the stories of private lives? what is the role of authorial intervention and outbursts of narrative comment in fiction? how do authors utilize history to contextualize or distance contemporary events? how convincingly portrayed are the lives and personalities of members of opposing classes, and how important is that question? Students will be asked to research particular movements or social problems to enrich our discussions of the texts, which will include but are not limited to Thomas Martin Wheeler’s Sunshine and Shadow, Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, and George Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical. The class will also include weekly quizzes, a final interpretive essay, and a final exam. LTEN 147 - METAMORPHOSES OF THE SYMBOL: MOSES AND MULTIPLICITY Proposed Instructor: Eliza Slavet As a grand narrative of radical transformation, the Biblical story of Moses and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery has been used to model political, theological and social change. Yet it has also been used to cement particular racial, religious and national identities and to establish a sense of continuity with the past. Particularly in the last three centuries, a number of literary authors, composers, film-makers and political leaders have turned to Exodus as a source of inspiration. This seminar will use the Exodus-narratives as a point of departure to explore the tensions between spiritual redemption and earthly political action, between universalist liberation movements and particular ethnic-religious interventions, between utopian dreams of the future and visionary appropriations of particular pasts. We will begin with the Hebrew Bible’s portrayal of Moses as the tongue-tied leader of the Jewish people, and briefly consider debates about reading, re-reading and re-writing the Biblical stories as literature. We will discuss Enlightenment literature that imagines Moses as an Egyptian, and move on to look at nineteenth century literature on Moses as the liberator of African-Americans and finally, twentieth century works which re-writes Moses as a complicated figure of modernity and modernism. How have various individuals and groups called upon this singular figure to define themselves even as they are well aware that he does not “belong” to any one nation or ethnicity? How can we understand Moses’ multiple identities as part of a single narrative phenomenon? Course materials may include works by Edward Wilmot Blyden, Martin Buber, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sigmund Freud, Ahad Ha’Am, Zora Neale Hurston, Bob Marley, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Ishmael Reed, and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as critical essays by Jan Assmann, Jonathan Boyarin, Barbara Johnson, Edward Said, Marc Shell, and Michael Walzer. LTEN 148 - GENRES IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE: MEMOIRS Instructor: Kathryn Shevelow Any list of bestselling nonfiction these days is almost certain to contain memoirs, since this form of autobiography has become enormously popular with readers, writers, and publishers. In this class, we’ll be reading a group of memoirs published within the last ten or fifteen years in order to explore the nature of the genre and its appeal to contemporary U.S. readers. Among the issues we discuss will be those that arise in regard to all autobiographical narrative, such as: the narrative requirements of self-representation and the relations between self and culture; the relationship between fact and fiction; questions of honesty and dishonesty; the operations of memory and the conditions of writing; differences in reader expectation according to genre; the perspective and structural effects of a textual “I” that is both subject and object, narrator and narrated. We’ll also be discussing current debates over the use and abuse of autobiography in our culture today: for instance, the controversy over the proliferation of memoirs, pitting those who defend the form against those who criticize it as perpetuating the excesses of our confessional, sensationalist, talk-show culture. We’ll look specifically at the James Frey scandal--created by the revelation that some of the more sensational details of Frey’s recovery memoir were untrue--and what the responses to him and his work imply about the uses and abuses of the memoir genre in general. The texts on our reading list will be selected to provide a representative sampling of some of the varieties of memoir, defined both in relation to content (narratives concerning, for instance, nostalgic recreations of a vanished past, cultural conflict, racial marginalization, sexual nonconformity, family dysfunction, traumatic events, disability, etc.), and in relation to form (such as comic sketch memoir; graphic narrative; cultural critique; third-person narrative, etc.). The texts for this class have not yet been determined, but they will probably include Kenji Yoshiro’s Covering, Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother, Temple Grandin’s Thinking in Pictures, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Marie Arana’s American Chica, Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, one of David Sedaris’s books, and others. Course requirements will include short (1-2 pp) papers written on each memoir, a midterm, a final and a paper or project. Students will be expected to read and write about one additional memoir besides those on the syllabus, chosen from a longer list. Part of one assignment may require everyone to write both a segment of their own memoir and an analysis of it. Class and small-group discussion will be strongly emphasized, and regular attendance will be required. LTEN 152 - ORIGINS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (c) Instructor: Staff Studies in American writing from the Puritans to the early national period (1620–1830), with emphasis on the thrust and continuity of American culture, social and intellectual, through the beginnings of major American writing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. LTEN 159 - 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE (d) SIXTIES POPULAR MUSIC IN CULTURAL CONTEXT: “IT’S ONLY ROCK ‘N’ ROLL Instructor: Robert Cancel Contrary to current mythology, most popular music during the decade of the 1960s was neither revolutionary nor particularly innovative. Mainstream radio was mostly AM and the music industry controlled what was played and created for the teen audiences. It was only in the late 1960s that innovations born of the rise of FM radio, national cultural politics, the confluence of several genres of music, and formerly underground publications began to change the shape of popular musical tastes. We will consider music from the entire decade, reading not only histories of the industry and its performers, but also cultural criticism developed first by the emerging “rock press” of the late sixties and contemporary cultural studies looking back at that period. We will examine the roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll (including Blues, R&B, and Rockabilly), the musical streams of the decade (teen idols through surf music, the folk revival, the British Invasion, the San Francisco scene, guitar heroes, etc.), and also learn the economics of the industry and the major role played by record producers and song-writers. Moreover, the political and economic history that shaped the decade will be seen as profoundly influencing the evolution of popular music and its reception. Readings and listening will be combined with lectures and video material, and discussion will be highly encouraged in class. Prerequisite: upper division standing. LTEN 159 - CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE (d) POSTMODERN FEMINIST LITERATURE: IDENTITY TRAVELS AND TRANSGRESSIONS Instructor: Anna Joy Springer The focus of this rigorous Literature course is on feminist and post- feminist fiction about traveling between identities and identity transgression. We’ll be reading resistance literatures written by women whose stories of moving between places reflect the authors’ multifaceted identity-complexes. The course readings specifically explore how writers, scholars and activists have re-defined women’s physical, intellectual, discursive, spiritual, and political interactions (and fights) in their world(s) and the vicissitudes and interplay of characters’ “identities” as gendered, racialized, nationalized, aged, embodied subjects of a specific moment in history – from the late 70’s to now. There will be an emphasis on changing notions of identity in feminist and postmodern discourses. In addition to scholarly essays, we will read the novels Hootchie Mama: The Other White Meat by Erika Lopez, Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig, Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker, Incubation: A Space For Monsters by Bhanu Kapil, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, plus excerpts from Hello Cruel World by Kate Bornstein, and comics selections from Hothead Paisan by Diane DiMassa, A Child’s Life by Phoebe Gloekner, and Rent Girl by Michelle Tea, and we will watch the film Corporation. Prerequisite: upper division standing LTEN 181 - ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Instructor: Jin-Kyung Lee This course will explore diverse Asian American experiences through a comparative understanding of Asian American literatures. We will discuss issues common to all Asian American communities in the context of the larger American society as well as those specific to each Asian American community and its own particular history in the U.S. We will make particular efforts to situate the changing meaning of “Asian America” in the transnational context of the United States’ relations with various Asian nation-states during WW II and into the post-war eras. Some of the topics for readings and discussion include the following: Asian American experiences of WW II; US wars in Asia and Asian responses; military prostitution in Asia for US troops; representations of emigration and the first generation experience; genders and sexualities in Asian America; Hollywood representations of Asia/Asian America and Asian American orientalisms; globalization and transnational labors of Asia/Asian America; transnational popular culture in Asia/Asian America. LTEN 185 - THEMES IN AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE Instructor: Dennis Childs In this class we will examine US (anti)prison narratives—particularly those of African Americans—and the way captive narration interrogates liberal tenets such as “progress,” “freedom,” and “democracy.” Some questions of concern will be: Why do prison narratives repeatedly invoke the antebellum period (slavery) in reference to supposedly post-slavery moments? What is “crime” in the US context and how has its meaning changed and/or resisted change over time? How do the forms of expression produced by the incarcerated challenge prevailing conceptions of American legal history? What institutional, social, and cultural apparatuses inform America’s current status as the most incarcerating nation in the history of humankind? Our readings of captive narratives will be supplemented by analysis of alternative cultural forms—e.g. chain gang songs—that have been used by the incarcerated to give expression to (and protest against) the experience of state terror. Our engagement with the various cultural forms emitting from spaces of state violence will inform the class’s own written compositions. We will therefore spend a great deal of time performing close readings of these “texts” in terms of both form and content. |
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The following courses also count as an LTEN Course:
LTAM 108 (INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICAL
TRADITIONS: THE CHICANO MOVEMENT 1965-75) |
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| EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN
LITERATURE LTEU 105 - MEDIEVAL STUDIES: DANTE Instructor: Stephanie Jed Dante (and we, his readers) awaken in the dark wood of Inferno. We know that we are lost, that we cannot ignore the "beasts" we encounter, but must experience suffering, hopelessness, alienation, deceit, and betrayal within ourselves. We are overcome by suffering and a fear "so bitter it is close to death" (Tant’è amara che poco è più morte). We will journey with Dante through Inferno, working through the pain of gruesome suffering and negative patterns to reach, in Purgatory, experiences of hope, light, and spiritual guidance. We will use bilingual texts. No previous knowledge of Italian is required. We will schedule an extra section for students of Italian (to be conducted in Italian). Prerequisite: upper division standing or consent of instructor. This course is crosslisted with LTIT 115. LTEU 110 - EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM Instructor: John Granger What is Romanticism? This course will deal with that vexed term within its historical contexts, foremost among them the newly formed, quickly developing mode of production, capitalism. The age of revolution, and counter-revolution—the Napoleonic years—the rise of nations—this moment leaves us much to figure out, not the least of it writing by Ugo Foscolo (Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis), Giacomo Leopardi, Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther), Höderlin, Baudelaire, E.T.A. Hoffman (The Golden Pot), Novalis (Henry von Ofterdingen & Hymns to the Night), Nerval (Aurélia), and J-J Rousseau (Reveries of the Solitary Walker). Classes start with reading quizzes. Required work will include a ten-page term paper, for 50% of the grade, and shorter, less formal responses to readings. |
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| FRENCH LITERATURE LTFR 2A - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH I Instructor: TAs supervised by Catherine Ploye Please visit our Lower Division Language/Literature French Literature website at http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/french/frenchoffer.html#2a for a course description for this course. LTFR 2B - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH II Instructor: TAs supervised by Catherine Ploye Please visit our Lower Division Language/Literature French Literature website at http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/french/frenchoffer.html#2b for a course description for this course. LTFR 2C - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH III: COMPOSITION AND CULTURAL TOPICS Proposed Instructor: Rikke Sommer Please visit our Lower Division Language/Literature French Literature website at http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/french/frenchoffer.html#2c for a course description for this course. LTFR 21 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP I Instructor: TA supervised by Catherine Ploye Please visit our Lower Division Language/Literature French Literature website at http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/french/frenchoffer.html#21 for a course description for this course. LTFR 31 - CONVERSATION WORKSHOP II Instructor: TA supervised by Catherine Ploye Please visit our Lower Division Language/Literature French Literature website at http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/french/frenchoffer.html#31 for a course description for this course. LTFR 50 - INTERMEDIATE FRENCH III: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS Instructor: TA supervised by Catherine Ploye Please visit our Lower Division Language/Literature French Literature website at http://literature.ucsd.edu/ugrad/litandlang/french/frenchoffer.html#50 for a course description for this course. LTFR 60B - FRENCH FOR READING KNOWLEDGE II Proposed Instructor: Sarah Leibovitz - Dambre This course is meant for undergraduate and graduate students who wish to develop their ability to read French texts but do not need to speak or write in French. The course will provide basic strategies for reading and understanding French texts, as well as practice in reading and translating from French into English. The class will explore a wide variety of short texts in the humanities and social sciences (Camus, Bergson, Benveniste, Lévi-Strauss, Ricoeur, Barthes, etc.). When possible, students will also be encouraged to submit French texts that are relevant to their own interests or areas of research so that they can be studied in class. Required textbook: Karl Sandberg, French for Reading, Prentice Hall. This course is a continuation of FRENCH FOR READING KNOWLEDGE I. No previous course work in French is required, though recommended. LTFR 116 - THEMES IN INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY HISTORY Instructor: Oumelbanine Zhiri En cette année du centenaire de la naissance de Simone de Beauvoir, nous allons consacrer ce cours à lire des œuvres littéraires de femmes qui ont connu le succès, ont eu de l'influence, ou ont provoqué le scandale, telles que Beauvoir, Colette, Sagan, ou Djebar. Prerequisite: LTFR 50 and 2C LTFR 124 - NINETEENTH CENTURY: FANTASTIQUE/ EXOTIQUE Instructor: Catherine Ploye Les représentants de la littérature fantastique au 19e siècle (Gautier et Mérimée par exemple) nous ont aussi laissé de nombreux récits/romans de voyage. Est-ce une coïncidence ou faut-il voir un même geste à l’origine de deux mouvements qui se développent en parallèle et en réaction au réalisme du 19e siècle? C’est ce que nous anlyserons à partir de différents textes ‘fantastiques” et ‘exotiques” du 19e siècle. Auteurs possibles: Prosper Mérimée, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, Louis Hémon. Prerequisite: 115 or 116 or consent of instructor LTFR 170 - TOPICS IN FRENCH FILM: FILM STARS Instructor: Roddy Reid This course will look at the history of the French star system that in many ways rivals but also departs from the Hollywood model of stardom, glamour, and celebrity. We will study French stars from the Silent Era of the early 20thcentury to our on time as the star system changes with the proliferation of other French-language cinemas and transnational co-productions. Possible actors include everyone from Max Linder, Jean Gabin, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean-Paul Belmondo to Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, and Isabelle Hupert to Ludivine Sagnier and Louis Garrel. Readings in English and French, films in French with English subtitles, and class work in French. Prerequisite: LTFR 115 or 116 and upper division standing or consent of instructor. |
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| GERMAN
LITERATURE LTGM 2C - INTERMEDIATE GERMAN III Instructor: Edda Hodnett 2C is the last course in the Intermediate German series. We are using a multimedia approach to retrace the difficult years from the end of the war to the building of the Wall with news reports, personal interviews and videos. The feature film” Das Wunder von Bern” tells the story of a soccer match that lifted the somber mood of the nation, We will spend the second part of the quarter reading the riveting play “Der Besuch der alten Dame” by the Swiss writer F. Dürrenmatt. Claire who left her home in disgrace returns as a wealthy woman to seek revenge, and the entire town is drawn into the dramatic events. Last, but not least, there will be the usual dose of exciting grammar exercises, to help us get the most out of the materials in this course, and to refine our four skills in German. Prerequisite: LTGM 2B or equivalent or score of 5 on AP German Language Exam or consent of instructor LTGM 60B - GERMAN FOR READING KNOWLEDGE READING II Instructor: Edda Hodnett This course, a continuation of German for Reading Knowledge I, is aimed at students who need to read some German in connection with their research. You will learn basic grammar concepts, strategies to decipher sentences, and the tools to untangle those never ending compound nouns. Weekly sessions are devoted to check your translations, read longer passages together, and discuss particularly thorny problems. You are encouraged to bring some of your own texts to be translated to class. No knowledge of German is required. LTGM 126 - 20TH CENTURY GERMAN LITERATURE: MULTICULTURAL GERMANY Instructor: Laurel Plapp In this course, we will explore the development of an increasingly multicultural German identity as expressed in late twentieth and early twenty-first century writing and film. Calling into question the marginalizing term “Migrantenliteratur,” this course will feature the work of a diverse group of writers and filmmakers who live in Germany and write in German, including those of German-Jewish, Afro-German, and Turkish-German identity. Using theories of transnational and minority literature, we will analyze the different historical, political, and cultural undercurrents that shape their work. We will look at the slippage of language, national identity, ethnicity, gender, and religion; the difficulty of finding a home in Germany and the German language; experiences of oppression and resistance; and the possibility of solidarity between people of different ethnic backgrounds in Germany. Texts will include fiction and essays by Jeannette Lander, Esther Dischereit, Zafer Senocak, May Opitz, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and films by Fatih Akin (Gegen die Wand) and Angela Maccarone (Fremde Haut). Readings and discussion will be in German. |
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The following courses also count as an LTGM Course: LTWL 4B (FILM AND FICTION IN TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIETIES) |
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| GREEK LITERATURE
LTGK 3 - INTERMEDIATE GREEK II |
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| HEBREW LITERATURE
No Course Offerings Spring 2008 |
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| LITERATURES IN ITALIAN
LTIT 50 - ADVANCED ITALIAN LTIT 161 - ADVANCED STYLISTICS AND CONVERSATION |
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| KOREAN LITERATURE
LTKO 1A - BEGINNING KOREAN: FIRST YEAR I
LTKO 1C - BEGINNING KOREAN: FIRST YEAR III
LTKO 2A - INTERMEDIATE KOREAN: SECOND YEAR I
LTKO 2C - INTERMEDIATE KOREAN: SECOND YEAR III
LTKO 3 - ADVANCED KOREAN: THIRD YEAR II LTKO 100 - ADVANCED READINGS IN KOREAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE: |
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| LATIN LITERATURE
LTLA 3 - INTERMEDIATE LATIN II Instructor: Eliot Wirshbo More of the same, except piled higher and deeper. The completion of the grammar chapters midway through the term leads to ... well, more grammar, barely concealed under the guise of "translating passages of actual Latin!" Veterans of the first two courses in the sequence will put into play the techniques adopted in earlier terms: going over translations again and again, making sure you've identified forms correctly, re-reading grammatical explanations you're fuzzy on, conforming with the models. If this doesn't help discipline the mind (very unfashionable to say today), what does? Wir mussen die Vorstellungskraft austilgen! Same six quizzes, mid-term, final, daily recitation. Prerequisite: LTLA 2 or equivalent LTLA 134 - HISTORY: TACITUS Instructor: Charles Chamberlain We will read selections from Tacitus' Annales. There will be a midterm, a final, and a paper. The emphasis in this course will be on careful reading of Latin, with much attention to grammatical and style points. Prerequisite: LTLA 1, 2, 3 or equivalent |
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| NEAR EASTERN LITERATURE No course offerings Spring 2008 |
| PORTUGUESE LITERATURE No course offerings Spring 2008 |
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| RUSSIAN LITERATURE
LTRU 1C - FIRST-YEAR RUSSIAN |
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| LITERATURES IN SPANISH |
INTERMEDIATE COURSES IN SPANISH
LANGUAGE/LITERATURE:
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LTSP 2A - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH I: FOUNDATIONS
LTSP 2B - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH II: READINGS AND COMPOSITION
LTSP 2C - INTERMEDIATE SPANISH lll: CULTURAL TOPICS AND
COMPOSITION
LTSP 2D - INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED SPANISH: SPANISH FOR HERITAGE
SPEAKERS
LTSP 2E - ADVANCED SPANISH READINGS AND COMPOSITION: SPANISH FOR
HERITAGE SPEAKERS
LTSP 41 - CONVERSATION/ ORTHOGRAPHY WORKSHOP
LTSP 50C - READINGS IN LATIN AMERICAN TOPICS
LTSP 116 - REPRESENTATION OF SPANISH COLONIALISM: LA CONQUISTA DE MEXICO |
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| LITERATURE/THEORY
LTTH 110 - HISTORY OF CRITICISM |
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| LITERATURES OF THE WORLD LTWL 4B - FILM AND FICTION IN TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIETIES: HISTORY AND MEMORY IN GERMANY Instructor: Laurel Plapp Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, German writers and filmmakers have contributed to an explosion in cultural production that remembers and represents the many pasts of Germany: the Nazi period and the Holocaust, the division of Germany into East and West, and the legacy of immigrant and ethnic minority cultures. In this course, we will focus on texts and films that have come out since 1990 to consider the implications of how the reunified Germany is approaching its history and hence redefining German identity. We will also address contemporary debates about memory and memorialization in Germany since reunification through fiction, essays, personal narratives, and photographs. Films will include The Nasty Girl (Verhoeven), Locked-up Time (Schönemann), The Lives of Others (Donnersmarck), Good-Bye, Lenin (Becker), The Edukators (Weingartner), and Head-On (Akin). This course counts toward German Studies requirements. LTWL 19C - INTRODUCTION TO THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS Instructor: Charles Chamberlain 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 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: THE RELIGION: SCIENCE OF WARS Instructor: Steven Cassedy The religion-science wars in the United States continue today, with dozens of books and articles coming out every year. The particular focus has always been the debate over evolution. This seminar will examine both current positions in the debate and the history of the debate. We will read selections from Darwin himself, contributions to the debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examples of Creationism from the second half of the twentieth century, Intelligent Design theory from the last fifteen years, and writings by scientists in recent years who seek to educate the public about the purpose and methods of scientific investigation. One question we will try to answer is whether supporters of evolutionary theory have at times failed to make a compelling case for their cause and, if so, how and why. LTWL 87 - FRESHMAN SEMINAR: SEX AND LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES Instructor: Lisa Lampert-Weissig This course will provide an introduction to questions of love and sexuality in medieval texts. Topics include “courtly love,” marriage, same-sex love, and the connection between sexuality and spirituality. LTWL 106 - THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: THE ANCIENT ‘NOVEL’ Proposed Instructor: Emily Kugler What characterizations about the ancient world can we glean from these texts? How did these books fit into the culture and politics of the time in which they were written as well as in our own time? How was narrative fiction different in the ancient world, and why? What produced the differences between Greek novels and Roman novels? How do we decide what is and is not a “novel”? These are some of the questions we will consider as we examples of narrative fiction from the ancient Greek and Roman world. Reading works in translation, we will approach these texts from both a historical and aesthetic perspective. We will read in translation several ancient novels from both the Roman and Greek tradition, such as Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Petronius’ The Satyricon, and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. LTWL 120 - POPULAR LITERATURE AND CULTURE: YOUTH IN THE AGE OF ROCK Instructor: Stephen Potts In the early years of the 20th century, a combination of 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 commenced. In this course we will examine the movements, fads, fashions, and pop arts that shaped the subcultures of teens and twenty-somethings—from the Beats of the 50s through the Boomer Revolution of the 60s to the more recent MTV and Wired generations. In the process we will read the novels, excerpt the movies and music, and discuss the trends that have made youth culture an essential institution of postmodern society. *This course will also count as a LTEN course. LTWL 128 - INTRODUCTION TO SEMIOTICS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA Instructor: Alain J.-J. Cohen Dreams and dream interpretation, the flashback as art and convention, (audiences) patients and psychoanalysts in cinema (with rf. to C. Metz, L.Mulvey, G.Gabbard and K.Gabbard): The relationship of psychonalysis and cinema is at the heart of film theory and film history, as are several approaches to the semiotics of cinema. This introduction to semiotics will focus upon psychoanalytic theory in cinema as a method and an open system, which ranges from Freud to the present. The course will be run in seminar style. Films with explicit dreams, fantasies, symptoms, will lead to the study of anxiety, repression, neurosis, perversion, borderline personality disorder, psychosis, et al. Films will focus upon compelling psychoanalyst/ patient interaction and psychoanalytic interpretation. Excerpts will be studied according to students’ knowledge of psychoanalysis and cinema. Note: In the past, films included such classics and cults as Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957), Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Bob Fosse’s All that Jazz (1979), Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983, with Woody and Mia Farrow), Barbra Streisand’s Prince of Tides (1991), Phil Joannu’s Final Analysis (1992), Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999, with N.Kidman and T.Cruise), or Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), as well as clips of several other films where psychoanalytic decoding will not seem to be as called upon at first. Readings in film interpretation will run the gamut from early Freud and Lacanian feminist theoreticians all the way to contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Students will be responsible for the close analysis of at least one film, in conjunction with at least one of the authors selected from the Reader. Graduate students are welcome. Prerequisite: upper division standing LTWL 138 - CRITICAL RELIGION STUDIES: APOCALYPTIC COMPULSION IN TEXT AND HISTORY Instructor: Dayna Kalleres This course considers apocalyptic literature and practice as a window into the recurrent fusion between religious certitude/truth and human devastation. Topics include: literary/cultural features of biblical apocalypse which have shaped various communities and events from early to medieval Christianity followed by a comparative exploration of the intersection between apocalyptic/millenarian perspectives and incendiary issues in the 20th and 21st centuries (e.g., racism, sexism, sexual identities, the AIDS pandemic, and the War on Terror). LTWL 172 - SPECIAL TOPICS IN LITERATURE |
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STUDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETED THEIR COLLEGE WRITING
REQUIREMENTS |
| LTWR 8A - WRITING: FICTION Instructor: Sarah Bynum This course introduces the basic elements of fiction: characterization, dialogue, setting, point-of-view, and narrative structure. To explore craft and technique, there will be a number of brief writing exercises, both in and outside of class, which will help to generate a short story as the quarter progresses. Writing will be reviewed in class workshop groups, as well as by T.A.s and the instructor, and revised based on these critiques. In addition, we will discuss a range of short fiction in class, providing an opportunity to experience in context some of the techniques that will figure in the course. In addition to attending class lectures and workshops, students will be asked to attend at least three readings in the UCSD New Writing Series. Evaluation will include short quizzes, a midterm, a portfolio of writing submitted at the end of the quarter, brief reports on readings, and regular attendance and participation. Prerequisite: Fulfillment of college writing requirements. Prerequisite: completion of college writing requirement. LTWR 8B - WRITING POETRY Proposed Instructor: Rae Armantrout This course is an introduction to the basic elements of writing poetry, from syllable and line to stanza and finished poem. Lectures will cover topics such as metaphor, image, sound, and structure, focusing on how a poem makes meaning. Students will become more sophisticated readers and writers. You will turn in seven poems, a collaborative response paper, and a notebook with your reading responses, ideas for poems, and drafts. There will be regular workshop sessions devoted to peer critique. In addition to lectures and workshops, students will be asked to attend three events in the New Writing Series. Prerequisite: completion of college writing requirement. |
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DEPARTMENT APPROVAL FOR UPPER-DIVISION WRITING
COURSES IS AVAILABLE IN THE LITERATURE UNDERGRADUATE OFFICE FROM
9:00-3:30, MONDAY-FRIDAY. |
| LTWR 100 - SHORT FICTION Proposed Instructor: Heather Fowler In this course, students will read, write, and explore several types of short stories and story genres, including micro-fiction (often known as flash fiction), traditional stories, regional stories, intertextual fiction, magical realism, experimental fiction, and “the longer story.” Reading and writing will be required each week, and all members of the class will actively participate in the workshop and discussion of how words create art, what constitutes a satisfying “short story” experience, and how other genres relate to the form. We will experiment with writing from numerous sources, including, but not limited to, existing literature, cultural artifacts, personal heirlooms, visual media, and pop culture. There will be the opportunity for students to read their work aloud, both in a small workshop environment and in a public sphere (if desired). We will also briefly discuss revision and submission processes for the publication of short fiction. Extra credit opportunities will be provided for attending featured fiction readings, for signing up and reading short fictive work at local open readings, or for creating and submitting MP3 audio files of completed student work to the instructor. Prerequisite: 8A; departmental approval. LTWR 102 - POETRY Instructor: Rae Armantrout 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; departmental approval. LTWR 104 - THE NOVELLA Instructor: Melvyn Freilicher Students will write a complete novella in stages: toward the beginning of the quarter, you’ll turn in the first section along with an outline of the rest of the work. These will be read and critiqued in groups. Your draft of the whole novella will be read by the entire class in the last part of the quarter: you’ll provide written critiques for about half of these drafts. Final version of the novella will be due finals week. There will also be quizzes and writing exercises on several novellas (and long short stories), including Nathanael West’s MISS LONELY HEARTS, Nella Larsen’s PASSING, Clarice Lispector’s HOUR OF THE STAR, Carson MacCuller’s THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFÉ, and others. Be aware that this is a labor-intensive and rigorous course. There will be a strict attendance policy: your grade will suffer if you’re not there. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A and LTWR 100; departmental approval. LTWR 106 - SCIENCE FITION, FANTASY, IRREALISM Proposed Instructor: Nancy Holder This course will provide you with a grounding in non-realistic fiction-- science fiction, fantasy, and the forms of irrealism, which include expressionism, surrealism, fabulism, and metafiction. We will begin with readings and discussions of representative stories. Through lectures, exercises, and creative brainstorming we will explore the elements common to all fiction-- narrative, characterization, setting, and style--while confronting the unique requirements of suspending disbelief in non-realistic fiction. Emphasis is placed on producing a substantial piece of work, and revising it not only to your own satisfaction but to that of your editor and readership (i.e., instructor and workshop). Prerequisite: 8A; departmental approval. LTWR 107 - WRITING FOR CHILDREN: BEYOND HARRY POTTER Proposed Instructor: Marivi Blanco This workshop class focuses on the writing fiction for young readers. Texts include excerpts from A Wrinkle in Time, The Chocolate War, Silent to the Bone and others by selected authors. Such readings have been chosen to illustrate the range of options available to writers in this genre. Students will work on in-class writing exercises based on the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method. Manuscripts will be discussed and critiqued by one’s peers in a supportive, non-threatening context. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A; departmental approval LTWR - 110B ADVANCED SCREEN WRITING WORKS Proposed Instructor: Silas Howard Course for students who have taken one quarter or more of LTWR 110 Screen Writing. Workshop designed to encourage writing of original screenplays and adaptations. Discussion of student work together with analysis and discussion of representative examples of screen writing. Repeatable for credit as topics vary. Prerequisite: LTWR 110; departmental approval LTWR 115 - EXPERIMENTAL WRITING: WOMEN’S RESISTANCE WRITING NOW Instructor: Anna Joy Springer The focus of this class is on innovative approaches to women’s resistance writing. Each of the course texts will provoke questions about what literature IS and what it DOES in the world. Via theme, syntax, process, context, and structure, the course readings 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 ourselves and our worlds through our reading and writing practices. Using these works as prompts, you will create writing experiments based on your own formulations of what writing CAN BE and CAN DO and even SHOULD DO now. 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 within specific historical contexts. The authors’ work will force us ask questions about the ever-contingent relationships between form and content, fantasy and [f]act, and desire and violence. Readings will include anti-conventional and hybrid works by Miranda Mellis, Monique Wittig, Kathy Acker, Marjane Satrapi, Vanessa Place, Suzan-Lori Parks, Teresa Cha, and Bhanu Kapil in addition to literary criticism and philosophy. It would be very good to take LTEN 159 in conjunction with this class to understand the broader historical and literary context in which these writings were produced. Prerequisite: LTWR 8A; departmental approval LTWR 117 - LANDSCAPE WRITING: LOCAL SPACES Proposed Instructor: James Meetze In this class, we will explore the landscape around us: freeways, beaches, housing developments, chaparral, urban areas, and desert. We will use our interaction with these spaces to craft poems both about and because of our place in them. The local landscape provides unlimited subject matter with which to explore the possibilities of poetry. We will look at the trajectory of landscape-based poetry, read books of poems that incorporate landscape into their fabric in a more liberal sense, and use these texts as a springboard for our own poetry. Each student’s work will be critiqued in a constructive workshop environment and culminate in the production of a finished series of poems or long poem, and chapbook. Prerequisite: 8B; departmental approval LTWR 126 - CREATING NON-FICTION WORKSHIOPS: THE CULTURE OF EXPERIENCE Proposed Instructor: James Meetze This class will focus on how writers employ personal experience/interaction with current cultural phenomena as the basis for sustained works in prose. Using readings from a wide variety of sources, observations, research, and individual documentary, students will compose a series of short exercises in essayistic or narrative prose. We might ask what makes something culturally relevant in today’s world of instant media. How do the writer’s “voice” and “style” shape the nature of the subject? How are we changing the cultural landscape? Writing can range from description of a daily experience to the exploration of a sub-culture to a stance on a current political issue. The coursework will culminate in the production of a 10-15 page essay or personal narrative based on a culturally relevant subject. Prerequisite: 8C; departmental approval LTWR 128 - EDITING WORKSHIP Instructor: Ben Doller This workshop will familiarize us with the responsibilities and decisions that the editors of small literary magazines face. Often called a “labor of love,” the role that the editors and facilitators of literary publishing have played in world culture throughout (print) history has been a crucial (though sometimes thankless) one. We will peer inside the inner workings of a current literary magazine, and study the history and output of a few seminal such projects from the past. We will also introduce ourselves to some of the alternatives to print publishing, and develop our own editorial retinas, building both anthologies and modeling and designing our own literary publishing projects. Prerequisite: departmental approval LTWR 148 - THEORY FOR WRITERS Instructor: John Granger This course applies philosophy, historical analysis, and literary theory to creative writing projects. To this end we will read Badiou, Derrida, Gramsci, Deleuze, Benjamin, Althusser, Foucault, Wittgenstein, and others. Participants will workshop weekly writing exercises written in response to theoretical positions, leading to a ten-page final project representing, with a greater critical awareness, what writers do. Required text: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (NY: Norton, 2001). Required work & grade breakdown: weekly exercises (50%); final project (50%). Prerequisite: departmental approval |