The Spanish Conquest in Literature and Film (Ideologies and Imaginaries)

Beneath the perpetual war of mythmaking and myth-busting about the Spanish Conquest and colonization of the Americas and the Philippines lies the reality that so much of the history of the conquest remains obscure. While some may express surprise that such a situation exists despite the army of priests, bureaucratic officials and chroniclers in Spain and the Americas between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, one may also argue that it is because of these agents of the Spanish Empire, who overlaid their accounts with the ideologies and imaginaries of conquest and Christianity, that the conquest remains a subject of debate and disagreement today. This is perhaps also the reason that most chronicles of the conquest are not read and studied as works of history, but of literature and the imagination. This course will examine selections of these chronicles and early works of literature and culture against both the historical background of Latin America and the Philippines during the first two centuries of colonial rule and recent films that reflect on the conquest and colonial period from the present.

The course readings will be offered in English, although students are highly encouraged to read and work in the original Spanish.  Grades will be based on participation, short reflections, an oral group presentation, two papers of increasing length, and a final creative or critical project. 

LTAM 140 The Americas

In this course we will focus on works on food and culture by modern Chinese and Sinophone writers, so as to examine ways in which these artists respond to glocal cultural economy of production and consumption.  We shall consider how their writings on food not only help construct imagined communities by narrating the nation, but also shape Chinese modernity, diasporic or Sinophone identity, cosmopolitan sensibilities, and divergent subjectivities, among other matters. Materials will be in English translation, with originals in complex or simplified written characters uploaded to Canvas.  Students have the option of writing journal entries and term paper either in English or in Chinese.  This course can be taken to fulfill the requirements for advanced Chinese.

LTCH 101 Chinese

LTCH 101 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course works through contemporary theories and methods informing cultural studies, with emphases on interdisciplinarity, mixed methods, and disciplinary considerations. Course readings are selected from a range of critical fields that share methodological affinities, including ethnic studies, literature, and queer of color critique. While this is an introductory course, students will be asked to identify and apply theories and/or methods to their own research projects. The final assignment is a developed section on theories and methods for ongoing research, or a heavily revised theories and methods section for an existing project.

Pleasure and Protest: Asian American Cinema (1980-present)

Asian Americans occupy a contradictory place in American culture. On the one hand, they are celebrated as overachieving model minorities on the other hand, they are demonized as threatening yellow perils. Even as Asian Americans garner increased media visibility in recent years, embraced as "crazy rich Asians" and courageous martial arts heroines, they continue to be targets of xenophobic violence, branded as vectors of disease. The course explores how filmmakers have responded to this simultaneous acceptance and rejection. Directors have protested the toxic media representation of Asian Americans as well as articulated the pleasure and joy of Asian American lives. We will study a range of media genres, including narrative fiction, documentary, experimental shorts, and digital media. Films may include Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987), History and Memory (1991), Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), Refugee (2003), Saving Face (2004), Call Her Ganda (2018), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Lingua Franca (2019), and Minari (2020). Assignments may include short film analyses, a midterm, and a final video essay.

LTCS 119

In this course we will explore the most important movements and developments in modern and contemporary Chinese poetry. We begin by studying Chinese New Poetry, which emerged during the Literary Revolution that was a key component of the May Fourth Movement. We then trace the modernist masters of the 20^th century, seeking to delineate what precisely “modernism” means, and how Chinese poets engendered unique forms of Chinese poetic modernism. Throughout, we will consider these themes and important questions: Why is poetry in particular so fundamentally important to Chinese literature, culture, and history? How do modern and contemporary poets remain connected and indebted to classical Chinese poetics and thought, even while they are also strongly influenced by Western texts and ideas? What role does poetry play in the 20^th century, a time that was marked by the arrival of modernity, revolution, as well as the experience of trauma on a large scale? Can we hear the voices of women poets, and how are they distinct from their male peers? And finally, how does the art of poetry intersect with calligraphy, visual art, photography, film, and other forms of media in oftentimes remarkable and revealing ways?

LTEA 100B Asia

This course presents an overview of key literary, cultural, and cinematic patterns in modern and contemporary China. By engaging in close readings of fiction, poetry, essays, and film, we will trace the changes that have occurred in China from the early 20th century to the present. As we discuss various transformative moments in modern Chinese history, we will discover how the influx of Western ideas merges with persisting classical Chinese aesthetics to mold the form and content of modern Chinese literature, poetry, and thought. In addition, we will study several Chinese films so as to gain insight into the evolution of Chinese cinema, and also the ways in which the visual/cinematic is interconnected with historical, political and cultural events. We will discuss the May Fourth Movement the evolution of women’s writing and thought the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath the emergence of dissident writers in the post-Mao era and key writers of our contemporary era. Throughout the course, we will delineate the various modes of modernist innovation and experimentation that are taking place in Chinese literary and cinematic art. 

LTEA 110C Asia

The course is an introduction to Taiwan cinema, with concentration on the ways in which films depict ways in which our teenager hero/heroines come of age in hard times of transition, during the colonial, postcolonial, and cold war periods. Rather than drawing on prevalent conceptual frameworks like “national cinema,” we consider the Taiwan film production teams as aiming to cultivate cosmopolitan vernacularism and indeed to go after the empires across the Pacific – particularly China, Japan, and the US. Not only do artists and directors appropriate the glocal popular trends of their times, but they also try to find voices and to capture realities in response to the mainstream cinematic apparatuses as established by the colonial or neocolonial regimes. The Taiwanese have experienced over the last four centuries the Dutch and Chinese settlers’ co-colonization, Japanese imperialism, Nationalist Party’s political suppression, global cold war, and various stages of democratization.  As a result, Taiwan films are products of such transcultural negotiation and pollination. In this course, we examine in detail scenes in which characters react to social, moral values while trying to cope with multifarious life situations and to develop arts of survival as they grow up and mature on the island. Quite a few films will be used to illustrate the evolution of Taiwan cinema in terms of volatile political economy, home and the world, national allegory, camera work, narrative technique, language policy, state ideology, transnational influences, among other themes. The course will highlight works by a rich diversity of Taiwanese and Taiwanese American film directors. Students need to complete reading assignments, do e-screening, write up weekly pop quiz responses, submit 3 in-depth journal entries, on top of teaming up to do a group video or to submit individual term paper at the end of the quarter.

LTEA 120B

LTEA 120B Asia

This course surveys English literature from the Anglo-Saxon era to the Early Modern period (8th to 17th centuries) and introduces students to the university-level study of Medieval and Renaissance literature. From the adventures of the warrior Beowulf 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, from late nineteenth-century populism to early twenty-first century popular culture, 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 to explosive cultural developments like the introduction of mass consumer technologies of film and television and to radical political reorientations through broad-scale movements like anti-racist struggles, feminist movements, and workers’ rights.

An introductory survey, this course traces Chicanx literature from its foundations to contemporary works. We will examine the different literary styles, themes, and social concerns explored by Chicanx writers. Issues of migration, assimilation, acculturation, gender, sexuality, race, violence, class consciousness, and struggles for social justice will figure prominently in readings and class discussion. Furthermore, exploring the cultural conditions under which literary texts are produced, disseminated, and received, we will consider not only the historical experiences that inform these works but also the sociological, educational, theoretical, and potential futures they imagine. 

What was it like to live the wake of the Black Death pandemic and the social, political and economic upheaval it caused? We will explore medieval life and thought through Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales paying close attention to its historical, cultural and literary contexts. Special consideration will also be paid to issues of gender and sexuality and how they inflect Chaucer’s poetics and politics, as well as to the role of Christianity in Chaucer’s works. We will also reflect on Chaucer’s influence in the present day, including the BBC’s 2003 adaptions of the tales, poems from Patience Agbabi’s Telling Tales, and the Refugee Tales project, www.refugeetales.org. Please note that attendance for this course’s extra discussion section is optional. All required materials and assignments will be covered in the Tues/ Thurs. lecture. Please contact the instructor, Prof. Lampert-Weissig, with any questions: llampert@ucsd.edu. This course fulfills the “a” requirement. 

LTEN 107

This course introduces students to the depth and variety of nineteenth-century British fiction by exploring four, representative novels: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. We will read and discuss these books with special attention to the rise of the novelistic narrator, the representations of female authorship and authority, the relationship of the British to the colonial imagination, and the emergence of new genres (especially the detective story). Each of these books is a canonical work of English fiction but each is, as well, a challenge to the canon -- with authors male and female, English and Irish, and settings that include references to Australia, India, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. Course requirements: attendance and participation in class meetings, plus one short (5-7pp) and one longer (10-12pp) paper. 

What is antisemitism and what role has it played in English and American literature? How does literature’s aesthetic power feed into the dynamics of antisemitic prejudice? How has historical context affected representation of Jews and Judaism? We will begin by studying “the Jew that Shakespeare drew,” Shylock, and end with a contemporary novel by Man Booker Prize winner, Howard Jacobson: Shylock is My Name: The Merchant of Venice Retold (2016). We will also consider other figures important in the history of representation of Jews: the “beautiful Jewess” and the Wandering Jew. Readings include Anglo-Irish author Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington, George du Maurier’s Trilby, and poetry by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. This course fulfills the "b" requirement.

Allen Ginsberg exploded onto the American literary scene in 1956 with his short collection Howl and Other Poems.  It was immediately seized by the Federal Government for obscenity, and Ginsberg became a national figure in a trial that would rewrite the laws of obscenity and art. 

Ginsberg continued writing non-stop through four tumultuous decades of American life, from the 1950s until five days before his death in 1997. Virtually an institution, Ginsberg remained controversial throughout his career.  Openly gay, sexually explicit in his writings, an admitted drug user (until discovering meditation), a former madhouse inmate, a vocal opponent of the Vietnam war, a visionary, mystic, Buddhist, critic of American imperialism—and Soviet imperialism too—he was not always liked. Crowned King of the May Day Parade in Communist Czechoslovakia, he was thrown out of Communist Cuba he chanted for peace at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and later sought to ‘levitate’ the Pentagon.  He was jailed for protesting the Vietnam war and for disrupting the production of nuclear weapons.

Ginsberg revolutionized American poetry—and the way we think about poetry.  He published 15 books of verse, many more volumes of essays and journals, and gave thousands of public readings.  He recorded his poetry solo, with Bob Dylan and a punk band, collaborated on an opera with Philip Glass, and made videos with Glass and Paul McCartney.  Often hailed as the leader of the Beat Movement (a title he dismissed), he was a major figure in American letters, a recipient of both the National Book Award (for The Fall of America) and France’s L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres.

This course will center on Ginsberg’s written poetry, especially his longer poems (“Howl,” “Kaddish,” and “Wichita Vortex Sutra”) and we will also spend time with his recorded readings and musical settings.

We will use the definitive edition of his poetry, Collected Poems 1947-1997 (available at the UCSD Bookstore not to be confused with Selected Poems 1947-1995).

We begin the course by watching The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Aronson’s film biography.

Requirements: daily attendance with careful preparation, and two 5-page papers.

LTEN 176 The Americas

In this course we will examine Arab American literature, a genre comprising writings by authors of Arab descent in the United States (or its territories). We will interrogate what this categorization means for its participants and the works they create. What informs the experiences, identities, and artworks of these artists? What are the varieties of “Americas” they inhabit and represent? The objective of this course is to introduce students to the cultural history and breadth of Arab-American life and its literature. The kinds of works covered in this class will range from the novel and poetry, to prison literature and the graphic novel.

This class addresses a range of speculative fictions—broadly defined—by Asian American and Asian diasporic writers. From ancient monsters to sentient software, the texts we will explore in this class reflect on the ways that Asian American literary productions use the process of speculation to both reflect upon the turbulent twentieth- and twenty-first century dynamics around race, gender, technology, and war that have shaped contemporary Asian America.

LTEN 181 The Americas

European Romanticism transformed the world in ways that continue to resonate today. The French Revolution and the wars that swept Europe in subsequent decades gave people the sense that the world was changing in unpredictable and irrevocable ways. New attitudes emerged toward history, nature, religion, love, the family, and artistic genius. We will read representative works of British, German, and French Romanticism written primarily around 1800. Readings and class discussion will be in English, although you are welcome to read the German and French texts in the original. The course counts toward a regional concentration in Europe for a World Literature and Culture major and toward German Studies.

LTEU 110 Europe

The course will first address Proust’s language, style, psychology, and philosophy, as well as the social context of his work. It will then underscore divergences with some of the work of Woolf and Joyce, and finally problematize the “stream-of-consciousness” trope and genre.  Attempt will be made at delineating some of the analogous stylistic, existential and aesthetic researches which seem to define the contemporary epochal writers of the first half of 20^th century literature. Note that Marcel Proust (1871-1922) James Joyce (1882-1941) and Virginia Woolf (also 1882-1941) were almost contemporaries.  (Proust’s writing does not coincide with the stream-of-consciousness movement, though it was acknowledged as profoundly influential by both Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.) Our multiple agendas are as follows:

1) A close reading of excerpts from Swann’s Way (Un Amour de Swann) and from Time Regained (Le Temps Retrouvé) —the quasi-bookends novels from Proust’s vast opus In Search of Lost Time (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.)  Swann’s Way features the narrator’s account of his protagonist’s slow descent into the abyss of jealousy and paranoia until his eventual “working through.” Time Regained conveys his psychological epiphany (to wit, “Time destroys, Memory retrieves, Art saves”) about the secrets of identity and art in an immense fresco of the history of his mind’s eye and times.

1a) A close analysis of two major films made about Proust’s La Recherche. The former “text/novel” was transposed into film by German film director Volker Schlöndorff: Swann in Love (1984), with Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti, cast as Swann and Odette. The latter “text” was made into the film Marcel Proust’s Time Regained (1999) —with a spectacular cast— by Chilean director Raoul Ruiz.

2) An exploration of the continuum/innovation: Proust/ Woolf —the literary great “chain-of-being”

Excerpts from Woolf’s  To the Lighthouse, will be juxtaposed to sequences from Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002) —which actually addressed Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

3) Ditto with Proust/Joyce

Excerpts from Joyce’s short story The Dead (from The Dubliners) will be juxtaposed to John Huston’s film transposition (1987) —which was to be Huston’s last film before his death. It will be invaluable to compare the depressive inner voice at the end of The Dead to Molly’s renowned monologue at the end of Ulysses.

Students’ Contribution:

A// Class participation during Q&A. B// Weekly Feedbacks.  C// Term paper

LTEU 141 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. Continues the grammar review started in LTFR 2A. 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 est suivi de LTFR 116.Nous étudierons quelques textes littéraires représentatifs de leur période et les analyserons en les replaçant dans leur contexte historique et social à l’aide de films qui seront aussi discutés en classe. Prerequisite: LTFR 2C 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.

NOTE: This is a different topic than the LTFR 115 offering in FA20, so students may enroll in this course if they haven't already taken LTFR 115 three times (even if they enrolled in the FA20 version).  Please contact the instructor for more details if needed.

LTFR 115 French

LTFR 115 The Mediterranean

LTFR 115 Europe

This course will introduce students to the grammar and syntax of classical Greek. Since ancient Greek is no longer spoken, students will focus on learning how to read only, although there will be spoken drills in class. The spoken drills are fun and embedded in games like Pictionary.  So, the learning of the language will be achieved through reading exercises but also through less formal activities.

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, 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.  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 past governor Jerry Brown, J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, Karl Marx, and the late Chuck Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems, majored in Classics. 

TEXTBOOK:
Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek. Book 1, Revised Third Edition.

We will read, in ancient Greek, a selection of passages from the work of Herodotus, the first historian in the west. The selections include stories concerning wars, gods, kings, heroes, heroines, Amazons and others from distant lands.

Previous study of ancient Greek is required.

LTGK 104

LTGK 104 Greek

LTGK 104 The Mediterranean

LTGK 104 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course offers an introduction to the study of German literature. It is intended for students who have completed two years of university German (2ABC) or the equivalent (please contact the instructor if you have questions). The course is required for German Studies majors and can also be used to fulfill the requirements for a German Studies minor. We will read representative examples of various literary genres (lyric poetry, short prose, drama) by major German authors from Goethe through Kafka to the present day, and also view a few German films. Readings and class discussion in German. 

LTGM 100 German

LTGM 100 Europe

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, of course :)
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.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Same as above.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTKO 149 Korean

LTKO 149 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

Readings from and discussion of various Roman authors, both to review Latin grammar and to introduce students to the breadth of Latin literature. In this course, reading a selection of notable Roman authors will be both a means and an end. A means, in that it will facilitate review of Latin vocabulary and grammar in an applied context and an end, in that we will take time to discuss why these texts and the light they shine on Roman culture are worth our time and effort.

LTLA 100

LTLA 100 Latin

LTLA 100 The Mediterranean

LTLA 100 Europe

Wanna know what Putin is really saying? Wanna know what Dostoevsky really wrote? This is the first course in the Beginning Russian sequence. Heritage and Non-Heritage speakers of Russian work together to begin their year-long study of the fundamental vocabulary and grammar of Russian. Course meets 3 hrs. per week for lecture and 2 hrs. per week for discussion section. Materials from adapted and original written texts and visual media are included, along with online work through Canvas. After one year of study students can begin working on opportunities for travel to Russian-speaking countries, research projects using Russian, local Russian community involvement, internships abroad, etc... Course helps fulfill the Revelle and ERC Foreign Language requirements, Muir Fine Arts/Humanities/Foreign Language, Marshall Humanities or Disciplinary Breadth, and Warren Programs of Concentration or Area Studies. A commitment to at least one full year of language study is suggested. Our beginning course only starts once per year in the fall. Sign up now!

Have you finished the Beginning Russian course and found you're thirsting for more? Have you realized your life won't be complete until you can fully delve into the mysteries of Russian language and culture? This is the first course in the intermediate sequence. Heritage and Non-Heritage students work together to complete their study of more advanced Russian grammar and develop a solid foundation in Russian vocabulary. Includes work with current and classic Russian film and original Russian texts. Course meets 3 hrs. per week for lecture, 1 hr. per week for discussion, and requires participation in online film viewing and discussion threads. Final project required. After this second year of study students can begin working independently with the language. Opportunities abound for travel to Russian-speaking countries, research projects using Russian, local Russian community involvement, internships abroad, etc... Course helps fulfill the Revelle and ERC Foreign Language requirements, Muir Fine Arts/Humanities/Foreign Language, Marshall Humanities or Disciplinary Breadth, and Warren Programs of Concentration or Area Studies. A commitment to the full year of intermediate language study is suggested, but not required. Intermediate sequence only starts once per year in the fall. Sign up now!

Prerequisite(s): LTRU 1C or equivalent.

You can't stop now! Russian is a part of your life. Continue to grow with the language and to develop your Russian cultural literacy. Gain important practical experience with Russian through the reading of a contemporary novel, analysis and discussion of the text, research on related historical, literary, political, philosophical, economic, and other topics, viewing and analysis of current and classic Russian and Soviet films, and construction of creative projects. Class is conducted in a collaborative seminar style and meets for three hours per week. All levels of advanced native, heritage, and non-heritage students work together in this practicum experience. Extra language support is provided to those who need it through a weekly discussion section. The course continues to evolve and may include new research, community involvement, and creative projects each quarter. Can help fulfill the Revelle and ERC Foreign Language requirements, Muir Fine Arts/Humanities/Foreign Language, Marshall Humanities or Disciplinary Breadth, and Warren Programs of Concentration or Area Studies. Can be included as part of Russian Literature or Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Minor. Required for Russian Literature and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Major. Repeatable once for credit, as topics vary each quarter.

Prerequisite: LTRU 104A or equivalent language background.

LTRU 104B Russian

LTRU 104B Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Este curso aborda el colonialismo español desde la Conquista hasta el periodo de la Independencia política (siglos XVI-XIX) en América del Sur. Se discuten tanto procesos históricos como culturales desde los debates actuales sobre “lo colonial” y sus continuidades en la región. Por lo tanto, el acercamiento conceptual se hace cargo de poner en discusión andamiajes teóricos diversos (pensamiento anticolonial, poscolonial, decolonial, entre otros) con la intención de comprender la colonial modernidad en sus complejidades y contradicciones. Asimismo, la perspectiva del curso atiende al devenir subjetivo en una sociedad fuertemente estamental, razón por la que son fundamentales las perspectivas indianistas-indigenistas, feministas y antirracistas.

LTSP 116

LTSP 116 Spanish

LTSP 116 The Americas

In this class we will study TV series from Argentina and Chile that promote social justice. Some of the TV series we will discuss deal with topics such as squatering and the strugle for public housing, the student movement, human rights abuses and the fight against impunity, feminisms, and sexual dissidence. The class is both an introduction to televisual studies and to the cultural analysis of TV series from Latin America. Some of the series we will discuss include, Okupas, Ramona, El Reemplazante, Los Puccio, Los Archivos del Cardenas, and Mujeres asesinas.

LTSP 123 Spanish

LTSP 123 The Mediterranean

LTSP 123 Europe

A modo de un taller performativo, este curso busca que lxs estudiantes reflexionen y ensayen las posibilidades estéticas que se articulan en el vínculo entre escritura, imagen y feminismos latinoamericanos. Nuestro mapa de referencia está compuesto por trabajos provenientes preferentemente de América del Sur y que incursionan en la prosa poética y la crónica. Entre ellos están la Escena de Avanzada, Diamela Eltit y Pedro Lemebel en Chile Néstor Perlongher y valeria flores en Argentina Mujeres Creando en Bolivia, entre otros. La idea es que lxs estudiantes desarrollen un proyecto poético narrativo que utilice diversos soportes para pensar la escritura como una fábrica de pulsiones y ficciones políticas descolonizadoras, antipatriarcales y antirracistas. 

LTSP 166 Spanish

LTSP 166 The Americas

“Imaginarios Transpacíficos” offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Transpacific Studies with a comparative focus on modern and contemporary Latin American and East Asian media cultures. Specifically, our class will examine the connections and encounters between Latin America and East Asia. Discussions will explore the idea of the transpacific as a site of real and imaginary connections and disconnections, asking: How do transpacific perspectives help us understand cross-cultural influences between contexts that are usually studied separately? Further, how does the comparative study of literatures, philosophical texts, and popular cultures in Asia and Latin America transform how we imagine global contemporaneity?

LTSP 174 Spanish

This course offers an introduction to the most important concepts and critical issues in literary and cultural studies today.  Our primary focus will be literary theory and critical methodology.  The study of literary theory will lead us to explore exciting, foundational questions having to do with textual interpretation, cultural production, and the making of meaning. Students will learn about the most important schools of recent and contemporary literary theory and then apply these theories to the interpretation of literature and other cultural productions. We will ask not only “What do these texts mean?” but also “How do they mean?” Some of the other questions we will raise and discuss include the following: what is “literature”? What is the purpose and function of literary studies? How do we determine what a text means? Where does meaning reside—in the author, the reader, or the text? What is the relationship between literature and society? Between text and historical context? Our study of critical theory will help us to understand the ways in which literature and culture both respond to and shape the world around us.

This course will examine a broad range of Latinx popular culture with a particular emphasis on the transnational circuits that link U.S. Latinx to Latin America and beyond. Through an analysis of film, art, music, and literature among other forms of popular cultural production, we will consider the role of US Latinx cultural expressions as a site of contemporary social practice and cultural politics in both local and global contexts. In our exploration of this work, we will discuss how writers and artists have historically and continuously rethought notions of citizenship, identity, and culture to create more fluid spaces of representation through the social uses of popular culture.

LTWL 120 The Americas

Cities around the world talk to us in their own unique, recognizable voices. They tell us about their people, their histories, their dreams, their hope, and their despair. In this course we will travel to London, Tokyo, Rome, Los Angeles, Saõ Paulo, and more cities through the fictional voices that spring from their walls.
We will read novels and short stories, give oral presentations, and write a paper.
The course meets 3 times a week for 4 units.
Please contact me at demarchi@ucsd.edu if you have any questions.

Who were the Egyptians? What was death and life like in ancient Egypt? How did they view themselves and the world around them? This course will set out to answer these questions. We will look at Egyptian mythology, literature, stories about the gods, approaches to death, views of gendered and ethnic difference, and the legacy of ancient Egypt today.

LTWL 172

LTWL 172 The Mediterranean

LTWL 172 Africa

What does it mean to live in the "postmodern age"? How do we define "modern"? In this course, we will examine approaches to postmodernism in literature, digital media, architecture, and art. We will also be exploring how technology shapes our perceptions of language, borders, and global culture with foci on the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. We will cover topics such as magical realism in world literature, utopic and dystopic imaginaries, commercial tourism and island economies, U.S./Caribbean relations, historical erasure and cultural recovery, “international” languages and language revitalization, and “virtual” identity formation through a postmodern lens.  

What is “queer”? What is a queer film? How are same-sex desires pathologized, affirmed, and contested in different cinematic genres and historical contexts? What role does cinema play in the formation of modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans desires, identities, and movements? The course examines the ways in which communities, cultures, and subjects that we today designate as “queer” have been rendered in/visible in the cinema from the 1930s to the present. It seeks to account for how queer subjects have responded to that in/visibility in their construction of queer identities and communities, in particular, through their non-normative viewing practices and their own film and video production. It begins by exploring the politics of representation as it relates to the dialectics of visibility/invisibility, stereotyping/authenticity, and homophobia/affirmation. The rest of the course investigates key areas of queer cinematic production: avant-garde cinema, AIDS activist video, trans politics, queer of color critique, global cinema, and digital media. Films may include Maedchen in Uniform (1931), Rope (1948), All about Eve (1950), Flaming Creatures (1963), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Dyketactics (1974), Cruising (1980), Looking for Langston (1989), Boys Don't Cry (1999), Mosquita y Mari (2012), Moonlight (2016), and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).

LTWL 180

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.

Study of fiction in both theory and practice. Narrative technique studied in terms of subjectivity and atmosphere, description, dialogue, and the editing process will be introduced through readings from the history of the novel and short story. Students are required to attend at least three New Writing Series readings during the quarter.

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.

“Living in a multicultural society, we cross into each other’s worlds all the time,” observes the writer, scholar, and activist Gloria Anzaldúa. Complicating the notion of multiculturalism while also foregrounding border art and culture, the writer and performance artist Guillermo Gómez Peña argues, “Whenever and wherever two or more cultures meet—peacefully or violently—there is a border experience.” This poetry writing workshop will explore how such intercultural crossings and meetings may inform, as well as find form within, our writing and writing practice. To help us with that practice, we will turn to writers such as Anzaldúa and Gómez Peña as well as others, focusing primarily on Black, Indigenous, Asian American, and Latinx poets. Poetry writing assignments will ask students to engage with communities, to work critically and inclusively through experimental techniques, and to work across languages and translation. Students will have the opportunity to participate in workshops, both giving and receiving critical feedback on specific poetry assignments. Moreover, students will also be required to participate in the larger literary community by attending and writing about New Writing Series events.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this workshop—itself a durational performance—we will consider a range of texts (theater, cabaret, poetry, prose, performance, new media, body art, installation, video, political protest and actions, cinema, and criticism) from across the Americas to, in turn, think about what it means to write for and about performance. Possible activating works—primarily by women—include: Adrian Piper’s Calling Cards, Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, Diamela Eltit’s Lumpérica, Coco Fusco’s “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe’s 2001 televised wedding, and selections from No Grupo, ASCO, Suzan-Lori Park, Judith Butler, Diana Taylor, and Holly Hughes and David Román.

EKPHRASIS

In this course, we will focus on twentieth and twenty-first century examples of and writing about ekphrasis—a summoning and summing up of artwork or visual phenomena through words. We’ll also turn to site-specific artwork for ekphrastic inspiration. Specifically, students in this class will produce writing in dialogue with works from UCSD’s own Stuart Collection in anticipation of a final mobile class reading.

An advanced seminar open to all writing majors in their senior year. Required for those interested in the Honors Program. It offers an integrative experience by considering key facets of the discipline and profession, including relationships between aesthetics/culture and politics, genre writing, craft/technique, literary theories/theories of writing, and distribution/publication. Restricted to major code LT34 or consent of the instructor and department.
Prerequisites: senior standing.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.