Literature Undergraduate Course Descriptions
2023 Summer Session 1

LTEA-138: Japanese Films
Japanese Cultural Products and Socio-Political Discourses
Instructor: Yui Kasane

This course explores how Japanese cultural products, including films, literature, and anime, have been created regarding the transnational political, cultural, and ideological dynamics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This course focuses on how these cultural products have been accepted as "Japanese" in foreign countries and how these products have represented the racial, gender, and ideological discourses influential to Japanese society.

• LTEA-138 will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
• LTEA-138 will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEN-114: Shakespeare III: Stage, Film, and Television (a)
Shakespeare's Animals
Instructor: Mayra Cortes

Shakespeare's plays are full of animals--many of which engage in play. In this course, we will examine the imagery, the performance, and the plot function of Shakespeare's animals. If you are interested in Shakespeare, animal studies, sound studies, critical race studies, and game studies, then this is the class for you!

• LTEN-114 will count towards the British Lit Pre-1660 ("A") requirement for the Literatures in English major.

LTEN-169: Topics in Latino/a Literature (d)
Latine and Chicana/o Film Representation
Instructor: Marisol Cuong

This course will use Latine and Chicana/o Films to highlights the positive attributes of Latine and Chicana/o communities and the importance of representation. Issues such as criminalization, generation trauma, gender violence and immigration will be seen relationally rather than in silos to problematize power structures. The importance of this class is to draw on a trajectory of Latine and Chicana/o creations to contrast mainstream representations of the Latine culture.

• LTEN-169 will count towards the U.S. Lit Post-1860 ("D") requirement for the Literatures in English major.
• LTEN-169 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEN-178: Comparative Ethnic Literature (d)
“The Streets”: Architectures of the American City
Instructor: Evelyn Vasquez

The course will incorporate learning about architectural depictions of poor living environments and how artistic depictions (literature, art, film, and music) shed a different light on human social relationships. In 2002, WC released the song “The Streets.” The music video opens up with WC running away from two cops holding an Olympic torch towards the Los Angeles Coliseum. The song and music video contend with the meaning of the “ghetto” and a way of living. What’s the meaning of showcasing the LA Coliseum in relation to the message of the “Ghetto Olympics”? How is a ghetto a space of dwelling and living? These are the sort of questions that our course will be discussing in regards to representations of cities and neighborhoods in the U.S. We will focus on visualizing and listening to the city and its architecture through the perspective and representation of the common folk in popular culture.

• LTEN-178 will count towards the U.S. Lit Post-1860 ("D") requirement for the Literatures in English major.

LTEN-181: Asian American Literature (d)
Queer Diasporic Filipino/x American Literature
Instructor: Steven Beardsley

A queer diasporic and critical gender analysis of works by Queer Filipino/x writers in the U.S. and wider diaspora. We will read texts from the Martial Law era to contemporary writings by Filipino/x Americans, focusing on second and beyond generations.

• LTEN-181 will count towards the U.S. Lit Post-1860 ("D") requirement for the Literatures in English major.
• LTEN-181 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTSP-100B: Advanced Spanish Reading and Writing for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (Heritage Speakers)
Instructor: Ryan Bessett

Contact instructor for course description.

• LTSP-100B will count towards the Spanish Language concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL-100: Mythology
Greek Mythology
Instructor: Jacobo Myerston

This class introduces students to the study of ancient Greek myths. The course is designed to give students an understanding of how Greek myths were used to reflect on various issues, including the individual, politics and religion, power and inequality, and gender differences. Students will become familiar with the main Greek texts that tell the stories of gods and heroes. The course will also pay attention to how ancient Greek myths are used today to think about current problems.

• LTWL-100 will count towards the History concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWR-102: Poetry Workshop
Ecopoetries
Instructor: Kira Jacobson

As we consider the climate crisis as an issue that is equally a social issue, how do the genres of Nature Poetry and Environmental Writing change? This is the question this writing workshop will consider, examining works that complicate our preconceived understandings of nature through considerations of social justice, focusing on embodiment and affect, human and non-human, labor and capital, colonialisms and borders, and imagining futurities. The class will focus on generative work that can be expansive and multimedia in its approach to poetry, engage in craft oriented workshops, choose and direct readings for the course, and build a writing community. 

LTWR-102: Poetry Workshop
Queering the Line
Instructor: Dana Fidler

This writing workshop will use queer poetic texts to help develop students’ thinking about their own work vis-à-vis traditions of experimentation in both form and content. Approaching poetics as transformative inquiry, whether stressing questions of gender and sexuality or not, implies pushing the verse line beyond its binary contrast with prose and tracing the irregular course of inherited influence. Thus, the course would center the social and temporal nature of inspiration, play, and risk.

LTWR-115: Experimental Writing Workshop
Intermedia Translation
Instructor: Lucien Spect

The course I am proposing is an experimental writing workshop focused on intermedia translation. We will practice ekphrasis and translating work from film, dance, painting, music, and other mediums into writing. The course will be designed for a maximum amount of writing, feedback, and study of related material; we will have in-class writing prompts, outside reading assignments, and workshops designed around students’ needs and interests.