This course will introduce you to the growing field of literary translation theory. We will read and discuss key historical scholars of translation, from St. Jerome to Walter Benjamin. We will also discuss the relevance of more recent trends in literary theory and translation studies, and will address more recent scholarship on translation such as The Dictionary of Untranslatables, Lawrence Venuti and Gaiatri Spivak's efforts to foster transparency in translation, and Naomi Seidman's writings on Biblical translation. Final projects may either be a scholarly essay on translation theory or translation, including a translator's introduction. 

In Why Indigenous Literatures Matter (2018), Cherokee scholar and author Daniel Heath Justice argues “relationship is the driving impetus behind the vast majority of texts by Indigenous writers—relationship to the land, to human community, to self, to the other-than-human world, to the ancestors and our descendants, to our histories and our futures, as well as to colonizers and their ideological heirs” (xix). This course grounds our engagement with the growing and vibrant field of critical Indigenous studies in Justice’s above quote by centering the notion of Indigenous writing as a relational praxis. We will read works spanning multiple genres that think transtemporally about the many ways Indigenous people have endured and thrived in spite of global projects of colonization, paying special attention to theory and poetry situated at the intersections of critical race studies, settler colonialism, queer studies, and decolonization.

LTCS 250

This course will consider the intimate relationship between chattel slavery and prison slavery as represented in the writings, songs, testimonies of enslaved and imprisoned peoples from the Middle Passage to the prison industrial complex. The course will also consider the relationship between the legal discourse of the colonial slavocracy and various strains of abolitionist thought and practice that have opposed it. A provisional list of authors now includes, Cedric Robinson, George Jackson, Assata Shakur, Leonard Peltier, Talitha LeFlouria, Angelo Herndon, The New Afrikan Prisoners Organization, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Dylan Rodriguez, Joy James.

The term “transpacific” has recently emerged into political and cultural discourse as a way to categorize and describe the increasing focus on American-Asian relationships in contemporary U.S. politics and culture. Yet how do contemporary discussions of “transpacific partnerships” develop out of prior social and cultural flows that have historically mapped (and remapped) the Pacific region? What kinds of cultural, political, and environmental legacies remain from these previous passages, and how do they shape contemporary literary imaginings of the transpacific?

This seminar offers an introduction to literary theories for first-year students in the Department of Literature doctoral program. Given the limited time available, we can only survey a few of the many different theoretical approaches to literary and cultural studies. These will include poststructuralism, queer theory, multilingualism and translation studies, world literature, literature and the environment, animal studies, and the digital humanities. A detailed syllabus will be available before the end of fall quarter. Students will be asked to write several critical responses to required readings, be responsible for in-class presentations, and write a theoretically-informed research essay on the topic of their choice.