Prior to the arrival of the Spanish Conquerors to the Continent the indigenous people in Latin America and the Caribbean had a different relation with nature and the environment. The arrival of the white European man introduced a utilitarian conception of nature radically separating the later from culture. Indigenous epistemologies, however, did not vanished into thin air, but rather continued to exist and inform indigenous and non-indigenous forms of relating to nature and the environment. 

This class has two parts. In the first part we will examine the notions of nature and the environment as they appear in a number of colonial texts from authors such as Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega or Guamán Poma de Ayala all the way to the XIX century. The second part of the class will examine filmic and oral anti-colonial narratives that question the old notions of development, and progress and the newer forms of economic extractivism (i.e. mining, agrobusinesses, electric dams etc.) so prevalent in the new economic models of the region. In addition, the class will include theoretical readings from eco-feminist and indigenous thinkers such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Marisol de la Cadena, María Galindo, Berta Cáceres, Julieta Paredes, and others. Forms of evaluation: short response papers, participation in the CANVAS chat, and a final creative digital project.

LTAM 110 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTCH 101 Chinese

LTCH 101 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTCS 108

The course explores the role of pleasure in the production, reception, and performance of Asian American identities in the mass media of film, video, and the Internet. We will review the debates about stereotype criticism in Asian American media studies and go on to examine the “perverse” potentials of spectatorship. The course considers how the representations of the deviant sexuality of Asian Americans (e.g. hypersexual women and emasculated men) do more than uniformly harm and subjugate Asian American subjects. The films in the course alternate between those produced by dominant culture and the interventions made by Asian American filmmakers. We will investigate how pleasure functions in relation to both sets of texts and consider perspectives that cannot be reduced to uncritical celebration or righteous condemnation. Exploration of these issues will draw on theoretical developments in cultural studies, film studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and sexuality studies, alongside Asian American studies.

LTCS 119

This course focuses on the sea as a subject and a conceptual space in world literature and film. At the crosscurrents of multilingualism, maritime studies, and postcolonial theory, we will examine topics such as language politics, border spaces, and alternative histories of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEA 120B

LTEA 120B Asia

This course offers an introduction to the study of Japanese cinema.  This course pays close attention to the languages and styles of films as well as the historical and socio-cultural contexts.  The primary goal of this course is to learn how to read formal and historical aspects of films and develop ability to talk about films in critical terms.

LTEA 138

LTEA 138 Asia

This course surveys English literature from the Anglo-Saxon era to the Renaissance and introduces students to the university-level study of Medieval and Renaissance literature. From the adventures of the warrior Beowulf to Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales to Shakespeare's sonnets to the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost, we will trace the development of English literature and culture through the centuries, from Old English to Middle English to Modern English. Lectures will discuss the assigned readings and their cultural, social, and political contexts while asking students to engage in critical analysis, close reading, and other forms of textual interpretation.  At the same time, we will identify and analyze the specific artistic techniques and rhetorical strategies (including verse form, symbol, allegory, and other forms of figurative language) that shape and enliven these lasting works of art.  Students will learn how Medieval and Renaissance cultures were different from our own, but they will also consider how these early texts and their authors continue to speak to us today.

In this survey of literatures written in the U.S. since the Civil War, we’ll take as our theme “Narrating Our Americas,” reconsidering the concept of “America” and the Americas as a way of posing a number of questions about the relationship between U.S. literature and American national identity.  In particular, we will trace the development of national consciousness across 150+ years, considering how literary texts have constructed competing and often contradictory understandings of U.S. culture.   We’ll pay particular attention to the evolution of national identity in relation to major social and economic transformations such as industrialization, migration, and urbanization and to radical political reorientations through broad-scale movements like anti-racist struggles, feminist movements, and workers’ rights.  Our goal will be to conceive of the literary in dynamic relation to the cultural and political history of the U.S. since 1865, to ask how these literary texts offer their own visions of U.S. history, and to consider how these visions might productively challenge and radically reshape our notions of Americanness in the twenty-first century.

This course introduces students to the field of Indigenous literary studies. We will read work from an array of authors whose writings span hundreds of years and cover multiple geographic regions and Indigenous affiliations. Driving our discussion of these texts are a set of key questions: What is Indigenous literature? How does it differ from other genres? What is the value in thinking about Indigenous literature as a specific canon or body of writing? The course will include fiction, poetry, film, and nonfiction prose produced by Indigenous authors (and directors).  

The course will explore issues that have fascinated Shakespeare's audiences over the centuries--love, war, race, sex, mortality, good and evil--through a representative selection of plays from the second half of his career. We will pay close attention to Shakespeare’s masterful way with words and images, with plots and characters, but at the same time we will connect our close readings of Shakespeare’s dazzling language to a broader historical understanding of these texts and their patterns of meaning.

LTEN 113

Imagine leaping backwards 150 years to an unfamiliar culture to listen in on their disputes, which might have tackled questions such as: how do we reconcile our religious and philosophical values of individual freedom and responsibility with our enslavement of thousands around the world?  Are our beliefs about white, English superiority grounded in reality or on the need to solve the dilemma of our professed belief in universal human dignity and our practice of human degradation?  What’s happening to our women?  Are they the domestic preservers of our morality and peace, or are they insatiably sexual beings whose moral corruption leads them to prostitution?  What’s all this flap about education when women aren’t voters or professionals?  Is Industrialism revealing the weakest members of humanity who should be allowed to die in order for the race to progress?  Is work the highest expression of our beings, and does art have a role in a world so troubled by poverty and war and disease?  This course will raise and attempt to answer many such questions by examining what the Victorians themselves wrote about them.  In grappling with these issues, we will also study some linguistic and psychological aspects of their poetry and autobiography, the social implications of their essays, and the aesthetic principles of their fiction.

Imagine a world in flux: revolutions are toppling the powerful, and new forms of radical change feel more possible than ever before. Social movements make demands that would have been unthinkable a generation ago, yet at the same time, new forms of repression, militarism, and nationalism are on the rise. Science promises dazzling discoveries and new terrors alike. Political debates rage—and the future of humanity itself seems to be at stake. Meanwhile, even the weather’s starting to change…

What we now sometimes call the “Romantic period”—a few decades, give or take, surrounding the year 1800—has a lot in common with the times we live in, and this class, we’ll explore how poets in this period saw and sought to reshape the world around them. They wrote about rugged mountains and industrializing cities, histories of colonial conquest and anecdotes about beggars at their doors, ancient mythology and last week’s news, the deep expanses of geological time and ephemeral moments spent looking at a flower. All the while, they proposed radically new forms that poetry might take in a rapidly changing world.

This class will encompass a broad survey of British Romantic poetry, showcasing a more diverse variety of authors than the traditional canon of this period has offered. We’ll dive deep into the astonishing poetic creativity and experimentation that flourished in this time. Through these poems, we’ll practice slowing down, paying attention, and relishing everything that language can do. We’ll investigate how poetry can model new ways of thinking and being in the world—and you may even discover a new favorite poet. 

In this course, we will analyze how race is both naturalized and deconstructed through visual media. We will be focusing on one aspect: race as spectacle – the multiple ways in which race is produced as a visual mass culture commodity. This happens in political campaigns, music videos, local news reports, fashion, kids’ cartoons, mug shots and countless other sites. We will explore the modes of production of these racialized images as well as the conditions of their reception, and political and philosophical analyses of this process – particularly those relating to questions of gender, class, sexuality, religion and nation. We will also explore counterstrategies, which rather than rejecting visual mass culture attempt to use it to undermine dominant images.

LTEN 155

LTEN 155 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEN 176 The Americas

This course traces constructions of race and place in American culture and literature. Reading a number of late 20^th- and early 21st-century novels, short stories, and poems that take up questions of space and identity, we will think through notions of home, community, migration, and diaspora. In what ways are certain spaces racialized? How might the literary serve as a site of alternative (potentially emancipatory) mappings? In addition, students will complete a number of short writing assignments throughout the quarter that invite them to delve deeper into analysis of these questions and the course content.

Precarity is the state of insecurity.  In this course we will read literature from the global south that addresses the conditions and experiences of precarity.  We will ask how large social forces manifest themselves in everyday experiences.  How do writers, filmmakers, and theorists understand the effects of economic exploitation, global displacement, and climate change?   In what ways have artists, including writers, sought to represent and address and experience of precarity? 

You don't need to know Italian to take this course, but by the end of the quarter you will know some Italian. Italian writers came kind of late to short stories as a genre, but this particular style of fiction has become very popular and has produced some truly beautiful narratives. In this course we will work with short stories from the 20th and 21st Centuries, and as a final project you will have to write your own "Italian" short story. This course is applicable, by petition, to the Italian literature minor, the Italian Language Concentration (and the Italian Studies major and minor). The students who wish to do some of the work in Italian will be able to do so
Please contact me at demarchi @ucsd.edu if you have any questions. 

LTEU 100 Europe

In his novel The Monkey Wrench (La chiave a stella), Primo Levi, both a chemist and a writer, suggested that the practice of “sewing together” molecules taught him a lot about “sewing together” words and ideas and that the properties of molecules taught him to understand human relations. In this course, we will explore, in Levi’s writings, relations of thinking between chemistry and literature. The thinking of a chemist is articulated in all of Levi’s works from his holocaust testimony – Survival in Auschwitz (Se questo è un uomo) – to his novel, The Periodic Table, his science fiction, and his essays (for example, “Asymmetry and Life”). (This course will be taught in English with texts in translation.)

LTEU 140 The Mediterranean

LTEU 140 Europe

First course in the intermediate sequence designed to be taken after LIFR1C/CX (If you choose to take LIFR1D/DX, you will still need to take LTFR 2A to continue in the French program). Short stories, cartoons and movies from various French-speaking countries are studied to strengthen oral and written language skills while developing reading competency and cultural literacy. A thorough review of grammar is included. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor in French literature. Successful completion of LTFR 2A satisfies the language requirement in Revelle and in Eleanor Roosevelt colleges. Prerequisite: LIFR 1C/CX or equivalent or a score of 3 on the AP French language exam or a score of 4 or 5 on the Language Placement Exam. 

Plays from the 19th and 20th centuries as well as movies are studied to strengthen the skills developed in LTFR 2A. Includes a grammar review. Taught entirely in French. 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.

1er cours dans une séquence de 2 cours servant d’introduction à la littérature en français. Il sera suivi en hiver de LTFR 116.

Nous étudierons quelques textes littéraires représentatifs de leur période et les analyserons en les replaçant dans leur contexte historique et social. Prerequisite: LTFR 50 or consent of instructor. Le cours sera enseigné entièrement en français. Le cours peut être répété jusqu’à 3 fois quand les textes et sujets varient.

LTFR 115 French

LTFR 115 The Mediterranean

LTFR 115 Europe

In this class students will be Introduced to ancient Greek, the language of great scientific, philosophical, historical, and literary texts. In this introductory level, students will learn basic grammar and vocabulary, and engage with easy readings of ancient Greek texts. Surprisingly, learning to read ancient Greek is easier than learning to speak a modern language. This is because ancient Greek is not a spoken language anymore it can only be read and written. This year we will be introducing a new textbook, which comes with a companion website with self-correcting exercises and other resources.

This is the first quarter of a three-quarter sequence. Following completion of this sequence (LTGK 1-2-3), students will be equipped to read in the original Greek great works of philosophy, history, literature, as for example the medical texts of Hippocrates, the founder of Western medicine, the geometrical treatise of Euclid and even the New Testament. They will also be eligible to enroll in upper-division Greek Literature courses. Students are evaluated by quizzes, a midterm and a final. There is no paper to be written for this class.

Learning ancient Greek gives students access to the foundational texts of many modern disciplines such as medicine, mathematics, history, philosophy, and literary studies and it is very useful for those interested in computational natural language processing.   Ancient Greek is fun to learn, improve your analytical skills and prepare you for advanced qualitative analysis. Many notable public figures such as California’s governor Jerry Brown, J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, Karl Marx, and Chuck Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems, majored in Classics.  

We will read poems concerning politics, love and seduction, worship of the gods and other topics, by lyric poets of the archaic age. Previous study of ancient Greek is a prerequisite. 

LTGK 102

LTGK 102 Greek

LTGK 102 The Mediterranean

LTGK 102 Europe

This intermediate-level course is conducted entirely in German and emphasizes the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing while focusing on cultural awareness, developing higher level literacy skills and a review of grammar. Course activities include cultural readings on historical content as well as current events, discussion of films and classroom practice in the target language.

Part 1: From insalata caprese to pasta all'amatriciana.
Language does not exist in a vacuum. Travel (virtually) through Italian regions, learning about their foods, beauty, and culture. At the same time review Italian Grammar and conversation. LTIT 2A is the first of a 3 course intermediate-advanced series that will help you strengthen your Italian, and at the same time will show you why food is so important in Italian life and culture, and how tied it is to the different areas of its territory. The course meets 4 times a week for 5 units. At lunchtime )
Please contact me at demarchi @ucsd.edu if you have any questions.

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: 

Speaking: Students are able to handle successfully a limited number of uncomplicated communicative tasks by creating with the language in straightforward social situation. Conversation is restricted to some of the concrete exchanges and predictable topics necessary for survival in the target-language culture. They can express personal meaning by combining and recombining what they know and what they hear from their interlocutors into short statements and discrete sentences.

Listening: Students are able to understand some information from sentence-length speech, one utterance at a time, in basic personal and social contexts, though comprehension is often uneven.

Reading: Students are able to understand some information from the simplest connected texts dealing with a limited number of personal and social needs, although there may be frequent misunderstandings.

Writing: Students are able to meet some limited practical writing needs. They can create statements and formulate questions based on familiar material. Most sentences are re-combinations of learned vocabulary and structure.

Pre-Requisite: No Prior Study of Korean.

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:

Speaking: Students are able to handle a variety of communicative tasks. They are able to participate in most informal and some formal conversations on topics related to school, home, and leisure activities. Students demonstrate the ability to narrate and describe in the major time frames in paragraph-length discourse. They show the ability  to combine and link sentences into connected discourse of paragraph length.

Listening: Students are able to understand short conventional narrative and descriptive texts with a clear underlying structure though their comprehension may uneven. They understand the main facts and some supporting details. Comprehension may often derive primarily from situation and subject-matter knowledge.

Reading: Students are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts with a clear underlying structure though their comprehension may be uneven. These texts predominantly contain high-frequency vocabulary and structure. Students understand the main ideas and some supporting details. Comprehension may often derive primarily from situational and subject-matter knowledge.

Writing: Students are able to meet basic work and/or academic writing needs. They are able to compose simple summaries on familiar topics. They are able to combine and link sentences into texts of paragraph length and structure. They demonstrate the ability to incorporate a limited number of cohesive devices.

Pre-Requisite: LTKO 1C or equivalent level of Korean language proficiency

Third Year Korean 3 in the fall quarter (5 units) is the first part of the advanced Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught in the Korean 2A, 2B, and 2C courses. Students in this course will learn low-advanced 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 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:

Speaking: Students are able to communicate with accuracy and fluency in order to participate fully and effectively in conversations on a variety of topics in formal and informal settings from both concrete and abstract perspectives. They discuss their interests and special fields of competence, explain complex matters in detail, and provide lengthy and coherent narrations, all with ease, fluency, and accuracy. They present their opinions on a number of issues of interest to them, and provide structured arguments to support these opinions.

Listening: Students are able to understand speech in a standard dialect on a wide range of familiar and less familiar topics. They can follow linguistically complex extended discourse. Comprehension is no longer limited to the listener's familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of more complex structures and linguistic experience within the target culture. Students can understand not only what is said, but sometimes what is left unsaid.

Reading: Students are able to understand texts from many genres dealing with a wide range of subjects, both familiar and unfamiliar. Comprehension is no longer limited to the reader's familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of complex structures and knowledge of the target culture. Students at this level can draw inferences from textual and extralinguistic clues.

Writing: Students are able to produce most kinds of formal and informal correspondence, in-depth summaries, reports, and research papers. They demonstrate the ability to explain complex matters, and to present and support opinions by developing cogent arguments and hypotheses. They demonstrate a high degree of control of grammar and syntax, of general vocabulary, of spelling or symbol production, of cohesive devices, and of punctuation.

Pre-Requisite: LTKO 2C or equivalent level of Korean language proficiency

One thing that has been rarely discussed in this era of the corona virus is that the words “corona” and “virus” are both Latin words “quarantine” is a Latin derivative and the phrase “remote-learning-inspired ennui” surely contain some Latin roots.  And while it seems that no one has tried to link the rise of Covid-19 to the ancient Romans (as yet), it is not completely unreasonable to expect that reading authors such as Ovid and Vergil -- who lived through periods of bloody and contagious illness -- could offer some solace and advice in these times (not to mention the fact that reading Seneca, the Roman author du jour, can surely teach us how to approach death and crowded gyms with some degree of confidence [if also cynicism]).  It is the development of such wisdom and jadedness that one can find in Latin I, along with much more simple things, such as learning basic Latin grammar, Latin vocabulary, and Latin knock-knock jokes that really kill during Zoom meetings.  No knowledge of ancient languages, modern languages, or contact tracing is required.  This class is also a relatively small group that will meet in some form or the other three times a week.  It encourages class participation and holds its members accountable with weekly quizzes and in-class conversation.  Grade is based on quizzes, mid-term, final, and participation.

Readings from and discussion of various Roman authors, both to review Latin grammar and to introduce students to the breadth of Latin literature.
Prerequisites: LTLA 3 or equivalent.

LTLA 100

LTLA 100 Latin

LTLA 100 The Mediterranean

LTLA 100 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104B Russian

LTRU 104B Europe

LTSP 2A is an intermediate-level language course that reinforces and enhances the development of the communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and the intercultural competency of the student. Class activities are designed so that students can build up these skills and function at an intermediate language level. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this class will provide students with ample opportunity to work in small groups and in pairs while gaining confidence communicating in Spanish. As language does not exist outside of culture, the class also assumes that the teaching of Spanish cannot be decoupled from the countries and cultures where that language is spoken, including the United States. Therefore, we will learn the language in the cultural contexts in which it is produced, using a variety of formats (film, literature, journalism, songs, etc.) and registers from most formal to more colloquial to each of the regional variations of the language.

LTSP 2A is the first course of the intermediate level sequence at UC, San Diego. It is consequently followed by LTSP 2B, and 2C.

LTSP 2B is an intermediate-level language course that reinforces and enhances the development of the communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and the intercultural competency of the student. Class activities are designed so that students can build up these skills and function at an intermediate language level. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this class will provide students with ample opportunity to work in small groups and in pairs while gaining confidence communicating in Spanish. As language does not exist outside of culture, the class also assumes that the teaching of Spanish cannot be decoupled from the countries and cultures where that language is spoken, including the United States. Therefore, we will learn the language in the cultural contexts in which it is produced, using a variety of formats (film, literature, journalism, songs, etc.) and registers from most formal to more colloquial to each of the regional variations of the language.  

LTSP 2B is the second course of the intermediate level sequence at UC, San Diego. It is followed by LTSP 2C.

This course is the first quarter of a sequence of classes (2D/E) designed for students who are heritage speakers of Spanish, that is, students who speak Spanish at home or in their daily lives, but may have not received “formal education” in Spanish. The course will emphasize reading and academic writing skills, although all four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) will be considered. The course adheres to the following premise: Languages do not operate on a vacuum rather they function through dynamics of power. For instance, norms in Spanish (and English) are not based on an arbitrary or neutral set of rules, but rather are the product of a history of colonial and cultural domination disseminated from the former metropole and its entities, such as the Real Academia Española. With this in mind, in this class we will learn formal and normative Spanish writing practices but always in the context of the historical transformations that produced a variant of Spanish as the “norm.” In other words, we will question the production of linguistic hierarchies while we learn about the different registers and uses of Spanish. Students will learn grammatical structures, and linguistic registers with texts, films, music and articles from Spanish-speaking regions.

Intensive reading and writing course structured around selected works from the Spanish literary canon (poetry, essays, works of fiction) and current event articles from Spain’s main newspapers. Written reports on readings, in-class exams, short research papers.

En este curso estudiaremos la relación entre producción cultural y la construcción de la nación mexicana. A lo largo del siglo XIX, intelectuales y artistas forjaron mitos e idearon imágenes de la heterogénea sociedad mexicana en sus escritos literarios e históricos y a través textos visuales (mapas, litografías, caricaturas, fotografías). ¿Qué grupos sociales o étnicos pertenecen a la nación? ¿quiénes deber ser excluidos? ¿en qué consiste la identidad nacional? son algunas de las interrogantes que abordaremos en el curso. El papel del periodismo y el folletín, la tradición didáctica, el corrido, también serán temas de estudio y discusión. Las lecturas incluyen obras de José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Justo Sierra, asi como artículos periodísticos de la época, lecturas sobre fotografía, etc. Curso de lectura intensiva.

LTSP 135A

LTSP 135A Spanish

LTSP 135A The Americas

Este curso se propone abordar la historia y la cultura brasileña desde su producción teórico-crítica local. Con este fin está organizado en torno a ejes temáticos y problemas relevantes que han marcado la trayectoria de Brasil (o brasiles) desde el siglo XIX hasta el presente.

Se espera que las y les estudiantes adquieran una visión introductoria, pero no por eso menos compleja, que les permita reflexionar de manera crítica e interseccional en torno a la producción de conocimiento teórico en esta significativa región de América Latina. Se estudian Ignez Sabino, Gilberto Freire, Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Antônio Cândido, Roberto Schwarz, Sueli Carneiro, Silviano Santiago, Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda y Suely Rolnik, entre otras y otres.

Asimismo, el curso trabaja con una diversidad de prácticas simbólicas (fotografía, cine y otras textualidades) que permiten indagar en la conflictividad y heterogeneidad de una sociedad poscolonial y posesclavista como la brasileña.

LTSP 159 Spanish

LTSP 159 The Americas

Este curso tiene por objetivo caracterizar la plural articulación de los feminismos latinoamericanos desde 1990 en adelante, especialmente en Bolivia, Chile, Argentina y Brasil. Interesa analizar el tejido simbólico que puebla las corporalidades y lenguajes feministas como fuerza despatriarcalizadora, anticapitalista, antirracista, anticolonial y disidente (queer). En este último ciclo se trama el deseo de lo que en el curso se define como un pachakuti feminista, es decir, una nueva politicidad que promueve saberes provocadores y discordantes que ponen en jaque la posibilidad de Estados coloniales neoliberales o “posneoliberales” con perspectiva de género.

Se espera que las y les estudiantes adquieran una visión panorámica sobre la teoría crítica feminista de la región, sus modalidades y políticas del texto. Nelly Richard, Diamela Eltit, Suely Rolnik, valeria flores, María Galindo, Julieta Paredes y Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, son algunas de las teóricas feministas que se abordan. Esto en el marco de un diálogo con las corpo-prácticas desplegadas en la calle, el video experimental, el cine, la fotografía, la literatura, y otras luchas feministas por el sentido en el campo de batalla de la cultura y la política.

LTSP 170 Spanish

LTSP 170 The Americas

Does language shape our social, material, environmental, or emotional worlds, or do these forces determine the forms language can take? How should we interpret the world around us, and can changing our interpretations or our stories lead to political, social, or environmental change? Are language and literature at the core of what humanity is, or is “humanity” a narrow category we ought to leave behind? Can literature make us into better people? How do complex social, economic, and cultural systems actually work, and what makes them change?

The intellectual traditions that travel under names like “literary criticism” and “theory” are concerned with big philosophical questions like these—and more. In this class, we’ll read some of the core theoretical texts in a conversation that spans centuries, and continues today. From ancient philosophers asking how art shapes social order to contemporary questions about what it means to be human in an age of ecological turbulence, we’ll read a selection of crucial texts that can help us reconsider how we interpret the texts we read, the world we inhabit, and the way we experience language. Along the way, we’ll become conversant in some of the major traditions that continue to inform interpretive approaches to literature and society: humanism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism/poststructuralism, feminism, postcolonial theory, queer theory, and more.

In our work together, we’ll prioritize learning how to read a theoretical or philosophical text: these genres can be intimidating to many readers, but we’ll focus on developing the tools, vocabulary, and reading methods that can open these texts up to you and help you join the conversation. When we draw interpretive conclusions about the world around us, and when we think critically about how we’re getting to those conclusions, we’re doing theory—and that’s what we’ll all be doing together in this class. Above all, we’ll practice reconsidering our most foundational assumptions about ourselves, language, culture, and consciousness.

This course will introduce students to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman accounts of gods, myths, heroes, and the universe. We will ask how mythology and philosophy helped these peoples make sense of their place in the world. Readings will include selections from Egyptian mythology, Homer’s Odyssey, Hesiod’s Theogony, Presocratic philosophy, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The course will include a midterm, final, and a short essay on ancient myth in contemporary graphic novels, film, tv, or video games.

This course examines race and ethnicity in American and Soviet film during the Cold War (roughly 1917-1991). We will discuss key phenomena such as Black Leninism, the presentation by US of Jews as evidence of Soviet human rights abuses and the presentation by the USSR of American racism as a parallel human rights abuse. The comparative context will help to complicate the place of under-represented minorities in the US by offering a global scale.

In this course, we will have the opportunity to explore the particular contribution of a humanistic approach to loneliness and wisdom research in the field of healthy aging. Studying literary texts in relation to research articles in the science and engineering fields, we will bring humanistic skills and practices to our discussion of such topics as the neurobiology of loneliness and wisdom, engineering and writing, neuroscience and architecture, creativity and dementia, culture and heart disease, and literature and medical education.

LTWL 177

As the first film movement centered on gay, lesbian, and queer sexualities, New Queer Cinema emerged in the early 1990s in the context of independent filmmaking, the AIDS pandemic, and gay/lesbian activism. Up to that point, LGBT activists and critics had lobbied for positive images of gay people as normal upstanding citizens. By contrast, New Queer Cinema proponents adopted an anti-assimilationist, confrontational political stance. They embraced the view of queers as rebels, criminals, and outlaws as a way to challenge gay respectability politics based on heteronormative values. This course examines the social, historical, and aesthetic context of New Queer Cinema in the 1990s and tracks its influence on contemporary LGBTQ cinema. The course asks, What's "queer" about LGBTQ cinema, from classical Hollywood’s demonization of queer characters to today’s inclusion of LGBTQ as a market demographic? Units will include: gay connotation, Hollywood, indie film, experimental video, AIDS activist media, trans cinema, film festivals, and LGBTQ mainstreaming.

LTWL 181

What should every literature major know? What is the place of theory in the undergraduate experience? How do critics establish their voice? These are the questions we will ask throughout this course, designed for Literature Major seniors and, especially, those students considering to write an Honors Thesis. Classes will be devoted to close reading of selected works by contemporary critics and theorists, balanced by short student writing exercises engaging with those authors. Among the writers and ideas we will explore will be: Franco Moretti (distant reading), Deirdre Lynch (loving literature), Joseph North (the political history of literary criticism), Leah Price (book history), Sianne Ngai (cultural aesthetics), and Denise Gigante (the history of taste). I will also hope to share some of my own work in literary history with the class. Requirements: attendance and participation in class four short (3-5pp) response papers in the course of the term an oral presentation for those students planning an honors thesis.

This course introduces many of the basic elements of contemporary fiction, including concreteness, characterization, style, point-of-view, dialogue, theme, and narrative structure, and other tools of fiction-craft. Emphasis will be placed upon writing first from your most unfettered imagination AND upon sculpting these wild writings into shapely, dynamic short-short stories through a variety of creative revision techniques. Each week we will read both conventional and innovative short stories and flash fiction published (mostly) within your lifetime, in order to discuss the fiction-writing techniques you’ll be practicing in your own writing. We will read and study 3-4 published stories a week, plus read and provide written comment upon 5-7 student-written drafts per week. Over the quarter, you will write five very short fictions and one longer short story.

To explore craft and experimentation, there will be a number of brief writing exercises, both in and outside of class, which will help to generate a final short story as the quarter progresses. Additionally, you will submit a 2-page double-spaced short-short story every week for group discussion.  There is a LOT of writing and reading for this course. You should plan to work an average of 6-8 hours each week outside class doing homework, including reading, commenting, writing exercises, writing stories, preparing for quizzes, and studying craft techniques. There is an in-class midterm and final essay. Your course textbook is Writing Fiction, A Guide To Narrative Craft, 10th Edition by JANET BURROWAY, WITH ELIZABETH STUCKEY-FRENCH, AND NED STUCKEY-FRENCH. This course is prerequisite for the Lit/Writing major and minor, and it fulfills arts and writing requirements for some colleges, but it’s also a fantastic and rigorous course for basic interest.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course, students will commit to studying, discussing, and creating beautiful works of short fiction. The class will study the elegant works of authors as attentive readers subsequently, students will use those examples to enrich their approaches to writing. In workshop, all students will be called to focus on being a critic, in the very best sense, of the work of others. By the end of the course, students will have developed and submitted one completed story, radically revising it for the final assignment. 

Rather than an overview of visual poetry, concretism, or interdisciplinary collaboration, the Poetry Workshop will focus on basic forms and tactics, and feature poets that pull from other disciplines, which might dovetail nicely with the workshop on experimental forms that's offered each quarter, and for those enrolled in the class from other majors. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course introduces students to the basic elements of a screenplay, including format, terminology, exposition, characterization, dialogue, voice-over, and variations on the three-act structure. Class time will be spent on brief lectures, screening scenes from films, extended discussion and assorted readings of class assignments. This is primarily a writing class, with students required to complete regular assignments reflecting the concepts covered in class.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Memoir has become the genre of our time. The personal expression of experience challenges the creative writer and the creative reader. This course introduces writers to the techniques of personal narrative. Its goals are: to develop an effective personal voice to explore literary allusion as a means of reflecting experience and emotion to read closely in some recent (and historical) memoirs to learn how to capture a reader and mediate feeling and form. Readings will be assigned for discussion -- for example, selections from St. Augustine's Confessions, Rousseau's Confessions, The Autobiography of Malcom X, Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss, Tom Grimes's Mentor, Seth Lerer's Prospero's Son. Writings by students will be workshopped and prepared for potential publication.

This workshop will be centered on theory and practice of literary translation. Students will translate literary text and discuss issues of craft and technique in literary translation. There is no language requirement for this course, but students are encouraged to either have some experience studying another language, or be currently studying another language.

Stories create empathy, bear witness, and can have the power to drive action toward social change by influencing the way people relate to and interact with their world. Consider the influence of such movements as Black Lives Matter and MeToo, as well as the struggles for immigrant and LGBTQ rights, all rendered especially personal, urgent, and vital through engaged storytellers. With particular attention to memoir, essays, and literary journalism among other forms of writing and creative expression, students will plumb the depths of narrative, studying how writer-artists have brought issues, concerns, and experiences to light—and to life—in their works. Turning to reflect on their own personal narratives and values, students will explore the power and potential of their own stories. In workshop, students will engage one another’s work and present their own works-in-progress by the end of the course, students will submit a completed piece.

A close look at sentence-level features of written discourse–stylistics and sentence grammars. Students will review recent research on these topics and experiment in their own writing with various stylistic and syntactic options. We'll first examine standard structures of style and grammar, before considering how we might break and stretch those rules to push the boundaries of traditional units of meaning. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.