Please contact instructor for course description.

LTAM 110 The Americas

The course looks at the relationship between love and time in contemporary romantic comedies. It examines rom-com relationships that follow traditional life courses and those that reject romantic chronology altogether. Films may include Beginners, 50 First Dates, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I Give It A Year, and Weekend. Students will learn foundational skills in film analysis.

It may be 2022, but the 1980s are alive and well. From the resurgence of neon colors and oversized blazers to the nostalgic settings and images present in current media production, the ‘80s are everywhere you turn. The decade is one that has an immediately recognizable aesthetic, and Hollywood continues to revisit it today in belated sequels like Cobra Kai or Top Gun: Maverick and in retro-styled serials like Stranger Things. So what defined the cinematic style and content of the 1980s? The course will investigate this question through an introductory overview of Hollywood cinema during that decade, an era in which a surge of “high-concept” blockbuster films hit the big screens (and the newer shopping mall multiplexes) of the USA. Students will watch, discuss, and analyze films in various genre, including Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), Martha Coolidge’s Real Genius (1985), Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction (1987), Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987), and John Carpenter’s They Live (1988). We will consider how these films affirmed and/or questioned the new values and technologies of the time.

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), Terminal USA (1994), Saving Face (2004), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and Lingua Franca (2019). Assignments may include short film analyses, a midterm, and a final video essay.

LTCS 119

In this class, we will study scholarly and literary engagements with race, gender, and sexuality within transnational frameworks. One of the goals of this course is to examine the cultural, social, and political theorizations of feminist and queer cultural producers, scholars, and activists. In addition to working through the significance of migrations and diasporas for studies of gender, sexuality, and transnational feminisms, this class attends to political affiliations across and beyond “the national.” Readings include scholarly works as well as cultural productions such as literature, films, and multimedia art forms that model diverse methods and practices of theorization. Assignments include weekly discussion participation, attendance at campus events, and a final research project.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course offers an overview of Chinese film from the silent era to the present. We will use films to provide an introduction to China’s rich cultural heritage, and discuss their significance as art, history, and culture. We will view a selection of internationally acclaimed Chinese films and place each film in historical context, considering both the aesthetic form and the socio-political content of the film. The fundamental question of the continuity between the cultural tradition and socio-economic organization of the past and the elements of change and modernity in the present will accompany us during the course. At the core of this class are questions about art: What makes a film a classic? What is a classic, and who gets to decide? What are the most important narrative themes, cinematic techniques, and cultural issues portrayed in a film? What is the relationship between cinema and history, as well as issues of gender, class, and ideology? Part of this course is about how to judge a film using criteria such as style, storytelling, technical accomplishment, and historical influence. As such, we will be delving into the craft of filmmaking, covering elements such as camera work, sets and props, editing, sound design, narrative structure, and performance. We will also look at how Chinese filmmakers made history, how they responded to wars, revolution and social change, and how they participated in global trends. No previous knowledge of Chinese literature or film is required, and all films will have English sub-titles.

LTEA 120A

LTEA 120A Asia

This course traces modern Korean history of the colonial period (1910-1945) through examination of short fictions, novels and films produced between the first decade of Japanese rule and the 2010s.  Major issues we will examine through our reading of literary and filmic texts include the following: Japanese colonization, impact of Marxism, Cultural Nationalism, colonial diasporas, modernism and traditionalism, gender and coloniality/nationalism, the rise of mass culture and consumerism, collaboration and imperialization policies, and changing South Korean conceptualizations of the colonial history. We will attempt to re-think the emergence of “Korea” as a modern nation-state transnationally, i.e., in relation to the regional and global historical changes that include imperial dominations, colonial capitalization, dissemination of ideologies such as liberalism, Marxism and nationalism, and multi-directional flows of culture, commodities and people. In addition to literary texts from the 1910, 20s and 30s, we will also study films made in the late colonial period under the imperialization policy as well as the cinematic representations of colonial Korea produced in South Korea in the late 1990s and 2010s.  Our examination of South Korean cultural productions from recent years will allow us to conceptualize the historicity and changing significance of Japanese colonialism in the contemporary world.

LTEA 140 Asia

The course examines cultural productions in all mediums, film, television drama, television variety shows, literature, and music video, that belong Hallyu, the Korean Wave, in particular relation to the issue of race. Race as a political, cultural and experiential category has become part of South Koreans’ daily lives, both in the virtual and non-virtual worlds.  The Korean Wave also generated, by definition, non-Korean fans, i.e., racially diverse fandom. Keeping in mind this new kind of “racial interaction,” made possible by the globalized South Korean entertainment industry, how would we critically think about race? We will attempt to think through the following questions: How has the mode of inter-racial interaction changed through these virtual cultural flows? How might the earlier global racial hierarchy have been modified in this process? How are “whiteness,” “Korean-ness,” “Northeast Asian-ness,” “Southeast Asian-ness,” “Western-ness,” “whiteness,” and other races figured in the Korean cultural productions? If global fandom for the Korean Wave is racially diverse, how is that racial diversity represented or excluded from the cultural products themselves or in the production process? What determines the “new” or revised global racial hierarchy and how does the Korean Wave contribute to the new criteria?

LTEA 142

LTEA 142 Asia

This course surveys English literature from Old English to the middle of the seventeenth century. Among the texts we will consider will be Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Spenser’s Fairie Queene, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Milton's Paradise Lost. We will also examine selections from medieval lyric and drama, Kempe, Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Herrick, and Marvell. Lectures will discuss these texts and their cultural, social, political, and religious contexts, with special attention to issues of gender and sexuality. The course is designed to familiarize students with the traditional "canon" of early English literature, but also to facilitate an understanding of how that canon came to be formed and to encourage questioning of the idea of the "canon" itself.

Please contact instructor for course description.

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.

LTEN 107

John Milton’s life and art are both remarkable.  He has been described as a committed revolutionary, a religious radical, a political propagandist, and a prophetic sage. He lost his eyesight while working to overthrow the English monarchy, but after going blind he claimed to have dreams in which his Muse sang to him and when he awoke, he “translated” this song, reciting the lines of Paradise Lost to others who wrote them down.  We will discuss his claims to divine inspiration, his audacious determination to outdo his Classical and Christian precursors, and his obsessive effort to “justify the ways of God to man.”  Milton was not only a great poet--he was also the first European to declare in print that a republic is the only acceptable form of government, and that monarchy is an unacceptable form of tyranny.  We will consider the ways that his writings engaged intensively with the social and political concerns of his time (including the experience of his political party’s defeat and the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy as well as his controversial gender politics). The course will survey his long and turbulent career, from the early poems to the prose of his mid-career to his late epic and tragic verse.

LTEN 117

Shake your hips tap your feet lend me your ears let’s talk about poetry.  It’s about sound, about soul, about sex it deals with death, and doubt, and difference.  Whether you want to write poetry or just learn to be a better reader of it, it’s indispensable to know about the things you thought you hated: meter, and alliteration, and the difference between sonnets and sestinas.  Here is your chance to learn that vocabulary (no experience required) and why it really matters—the Victorians can show you how.  The Victorians also struggled with the appropriate subjects for poetry: should it address large, contemporary social issues? the realities of the domestic sphere? the subjective experience of the lyric “I”?  They wondered how to (and whether to) represent the individual’s sense of alienation from self, how much poetry should seem like painting or music.  They created a wide cast of characters, from the criminally insane to the deeply pious to the prostitute to the classical hero, and we’ll encounter many of them in the course of our study.  This will be a strongly participatory class.

My hope for this class is that we make something unique and lasting of it, as we spend an entire quarter really dwelling with what many regard as the greatest novel in the English language.  Writing under the pseudonym “George Eliot,” British writer Marian Evans published Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life in 8 installments during 1871-2, and it has never stopped captivating and provoking readers with its humor, yearning, humanistic morality, and penetrating psychological characterization.  We will carefully read the novel, then a selection of modern scholarship about it, and end with the New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead’s book about this novel and how it has woven itself into her identity, career, and relationships.  Whether it is Eliot’s book or another, my wish is for you to find yourself entangled for your whole life with some book or books, and this course will make a case for how that can happen and what it might look like.  To that end, I will ask you for total commitment: read every word, attend every class, and be prepared to bring extraordinary candor, bravery, and mental seriousness to the project in which we will engage.  If you don’t want to invest that much or be part of such a community, this isn’t the class for you and that’s ok.  But if that ideal of learning appeals to you, come on!  We will read with the critical distance of scholars and with the intimacy of fans, be awed and be irritated, but above all we will read like it matters beyond the classroom, because it does.

The last decade has witnessed a groundswell of innovative Indigenous poetry. In this class, we will read work from a variety of contemporary Native American and Indigenous poets whose work directly engages decolonization, formal experimentation, and/or the lyric, while foregrounding Two-Spirit, queer, trans, and women’s lives. The poetry we will read during the quarter is primarily—but not exclusively—written or performed in English.

LTEN 148 The Americas

We will focus on literature and cultural production that addresses the complex history of the place we call “California,” a region that is home to a rich diversity of Indigenous communities and that was occupied by Spain, then Mexico, then the United States. We will address topics like colonization, enslavement, war, racial formation, and migration to think through the complex histories of California and how writers have attempted to make meaning of the space. To interrogate what we mean when we say “California,” we will read across an array of novels, short stories, poetry, testimonios, journalism, speeches, government documents, and political cartoons, through a combination of literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and contemporary  literature that “writes back” to the past.

LTEN 152 The Americas

Course Topic: Chicanx Travel Narratives. This course explores how Mexican American travel and mobility reveals the function of space, place, national borders, and social practices. Through a survey of Chicanx literature on travel and mobility, we will critically engage how Chicanx movement across and beyond the US-landscape charts terrains of struggle and new strategies for change. Moreover, we will address some of the following questions: What is the travel genre? How does Chicanx mobility align with this tradition? What does travel and mobility tell us about citizenship and rights? How is mobility tied to ideas of race, class, gender, and sexuality? And what does it then mean to be a good mobile citizen?  

LTEN 180 The Americas

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.

Emphasizes the development of language and analytical skills through the close reading of texts. One part of the course will focus on the art of translation. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor or a major in French literature. Counts towards a concentration in French regional concentration on Europe and the Mediterranean. Prerequisite: LTFR 2C or equivalent or consent of instructor.

LTFR 104 French

LTFR 104 The Mediterranean

LTFR 104 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTFR 116 French

LTFR 116 The Mediterranean

LTFR 116 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. 

We will read one of the hilarious, bawdy, communal plays of Aristophanes, in ancient Greek. Previous study of ancient Greek is required. Grades will be based on participation in class meetings, translation in class, and a final paper to be discussed extensively in class.

LTGK 103

LTGK 103 Greek

LTGK 103 The Mediterranean

LTGK 103 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

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 130 (4 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.

LTKO 130 Korean

LTKO 130 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

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

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.

Advanced development of writing and reading skills in Spanish thru the analysis of cultural production from Latin America. Introduction to literary and cultural analysis in preparation for upper division coursework in Spanish and/or to the development of near-native writing and reading proficiency in Spanish for the social science and the humanities.  The class will use a variety of cultural representations (novels, poetry, short stories, photography, film, social media, etc.) as a springboard to develop student’s capacity to understand complex texts and cultural products in Spanish. In addition, students will learn how to formulate formal and academic arguments in Spanish, as the basis for more advanced research in Spanish.

LTSP 100A Spanish

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 100B Spanish

Dentro de las varias esferas de la economía, política, sociedad, cultura, religión, y redes sociales, se menciona con frecuencia el impacto del “patrimonio colonial” sobre el presente y porvenir de los países latinoamericanos. ¿En qué consiste este patrimonio, y a qué se debe su gran influencia a lo largo de los siglos? Este curso explorará la persistencia del patrimonio colonial mediante una lectura de varias obras del teatro, literatura, historia, periodismo, y ensayos contemporáneos. Abordaremos varias facetas de este patrimonio, incluyendo (pero no limitadas a): los vestigios de las regiones fronterizas, las raíces del extractivismo y explotación, las paradojas de la fe cristiana, y la supervivencia de las comunidades indígenas.

Los requisitos son: asistencia y participación en los talleres y grupos de discusión, entrega de cuestionarios y ejercicios, presentación oral (en grupo), y dos composiciones más largas (5-7 páginas). 

LTSP 116

LTSP 116 Spanish

LTSP 116 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 140 Spanish

LTSP 140 The Americas

¿Por qué es tan importante el proceso de escritura y aprobación de una nueva constitución política en Chile?, ¿cómo puede ser leído este proceso desde la cultura y los movimientos sociales?, ¿qué implica a nivel simbólico y material que la Convección Constituyente, organismo que tiene a cargo la escritura de esta nueva carta magna, declare como primer artículo constitucional que: “Chile es un Estado social y democrático de derecho. Es plurinacional, intercultural y ecológico. Se constituye como una República solidaria, su democracia es paritaria y reconoce como valores intrínsecos e irrenunciables la dignidad, la libertad, la igualdad sustantiva de los seres humanos y su relación indisoluble con la naturaleza”?

Este curso intenta responder a estas y otras preguntas. Desde la cultura, aborda el ciclo de lucha social en Chile que va desde la “revolución pingüina” en 2006 hasta la revuelta social de octubre de 2019. Se analiza la crítica neoliberal que instala primero el movimiento estudiantil secundario y luego universitario (2011) en el escenario postdictatorial. Estas movilizaciones ponen en jaque la persistencia de la “jaula de hierro”, como denominó el sociólogo Tomás Moulian al proceso neocapitalista y necropolítico de Pinochet que continúa tras la transición democrática. Asimismo, se profundiza en la agenda feminista y la resistencia indígena que es parte fundamental de todo este ciclo.

Lxs estudiantes trabajarán con diversas producciones culturales: literatura, performance, cine, series de televisión, fotografía y cómics. Las evaluaciones combinarán formas tradicionales con otras más creativas.

LTSP 175 Spanish

A few films will be studied in depth through the lens of “French Theory.” The renowned thinkers who have been grouped together under this rubric, e.g. Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, Metz, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Derrida, et al., were far from being homogeneous. Nonetheless, from the 1970s to the present, their works were perceived as a Zeitgeist in critical thought, as they also inspired US critical theory.

The course will play back and forth in synergy between reading excerpts from the above-mentioned authors and a close analysis of films which might benefit from such juxtaposition. “Film Studies” as a discipline stands at the cutting edge and interweave of methods and approaches derived from psychology and history, arts and techniques, etc., which we try to make explicit as we study specific films, film genres, or specific film-auteurs.

To suggest a few examples:

- Persona by Ingmar Bergman, in the lens of Lacan’s “mirror stage” as well as Gilles Deleuze’s Masochism.
- A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, along with Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. & Julia Kristeva’s The Powers of Horror.
- Vagabond by Agnès Varda, on the investigation of the death of a homeless woman, —itself an homage to Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane— in tandem with social concerns.
- Christian Metz’s comments about Juri Lotman’s comments on Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow up (based upon J. Cortazar’s short story.)
- Jean Baudrillard’s remarks on J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick, whose work was transposed to film.

Other References:

- One of the elaborations for our film/theory work will be Roland Barthes’s remarkable S/Z —which is a meticulously slow deconstructive analysis of a short story by 19^th-cent. author Balzac, and part of his relentless focus upon a general theory of narratives and narrative codes, as well as his refined comments on cinema (in “The Third Meaning”) and photography (Camera Lucida.)
- Selected essays from Braudy, Leo & Marshall Cohen’s rich anthology Film Theory & Criticism will be helpful, for instance the book chapters addressing feminist film theory.
- Restuccia, Frances. The Blue Box. Kristevan/Lacanian Readings of Contemporary Cinema.

Students will contribute research on a sequence from a selected film, according to methods of film analysis, and a synopsis of one of the theoretical works studied this term.

The course will count towards the minor in the Film Studies program.

This class is the first of a sequence that introduces students to the study of the literatures and cultures of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This year the sequence will be taught by professors Jacobo Myerston (Archaic Greece), Page duBois (Classical Greece), and Ted Kelting (Rome), all experts in the area.

In LTWL 19A, Professor Myerston will read, analyze, and discuss with students a selection of literary and philosophical texts that were produced between 800 and 480 BCE, which played a major role in the cultural development of early Greece.  Among these texts are Homer’s Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns, which tell the stories of the gods, the writings of the first philosophers, and the tragedies of Aeschylus.

The class will be based on close readings of the assigned texts and their discussion in connection with cultural and political issues of the time. Guided by the professor, students will also explore the relevance of such texts for the understanding of the present world.

How did the legend of the vampire originate and how has it changed over time? What can vampires tell us about our fears and fantasies? We will examine the portrayal of vampires in a series of films ranging from Murnau's 1922 classic Nosferatu to the shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries.

​The course explores​ how young adulthood ha​s​ been conceived and transformed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This quarter's focus is sexual coming of age in the YA novel and ​the ​teen movie ​from ​1976 ​to​ 202​1​. Our discussions will be informed by scholarship in cultural history, literary studies, trauma studies, film​/media​ studies, gender and sexuality studies. Novels may include Forever (1976), Annie on My Mind (1982), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), ​​To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2014), Let’s Talk about Love (2018)​, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club (2021). Films may include Fast Times at Ridgemont High​ ​(1982), ​Kids (1995), Jennifer’s Body​ (2009​), and Euphoria (2019-). ​

This course examines the power of fantastic texts to illuminate, interrogate and subvert reality by analyzing modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean short stories, novels and films. How can fantastic texts teach us to perceive problems in the cultural psyche from a more critical, insightful perspective? What is the cognitive function of fantastic fiction and film at the threshold of the modern and postmodern moments? How have modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean intellectuals and artists shaped the literary genre of the fantastic to fit their particular experiences?  And how do these fantastic texts fit into the practice of modernism? So as to find answers to these questions, we will read key examples of the modern fantastic genre in conjunction with theoretical articles and other secondary materials. We will define each literary / cinematic text’s relationship to its particular historical-intellectual context and also consider the aesthetic bonds that tie the modern literary or visual text to its roots in classical East Asian tradition. Throughout the course, we will also place the works in a comparative literary and theoretical framework that relates them to the Western tradition of fantastic writing and filmmaking, which influenced East Asian authors in important ways. This comparative, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach crosses genres and cultural boundaries and allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning contained within each individual work of literary or cinematic art. The course is arranged chronologically in that it presents material from late Qing China (ca. 1860-1911) and Meiji Japan (1868-1912), traces the modernist high points of the 20th century, and then culminates in a study of contemporary fiction and film. All literary texts will be available in English translation and the films will have subtitles. By experiencing these examples of the modern fantastic in East Asia, students will understand interrelationships that exist between texts and authors from different periods and cultures, and thus trace some of the cultural flows that occurred – and continue to occur – between China, Japan, Korea, and the rest of the world.  

Dream or reality?  Ghost, real person, fantasy?  What is this place?  Why are cats talking to me?  What is reality?  Is there a reality? Surrealism makes you question the reality of the world and of the people around you, of your perceptions, and at times of your own existence and sanity. Storytelling can create worlds where the rules of logic no longer apply, and yet in stories we learn to adapt to new universes and work within them. In this course we will read surrealist literature from around the world (Italy, US, Japan, China, Mexico, Germany and more), as well as examples of "magic realism" we will discuss elements and purposes, and you will write a short story in which you will apply what you learned. Please contact me at demarchi@ucsd.edu if you have any questions.

This course focuses on German film of the past century, from the silent cinema of the 1920s to works of the recent past. We will view the films as artistic responses to historical and social change. The films, supplemented by selected readings, offer a window into the major events of a particularly eventful century: the advent of modernism in the Weimar Republic the rise of fascism the aftermath of the Second World War the nation’s division in the Cold War and reunification in its wake the influx of “guest workers” and the transformation of today’s Germany into a multicultural society. Films will include Metropolis, The Triumph of the Will, The Murderers are Among Us, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Nowhere in Africa, Good-Bye Lenin, The Lives of Others, Fear Eats the Soul, and Tschick. The course counts toward the Film minor and the German Studies major and minor as the equivalent of LTGM 101.

LTWL 180

This course is designed to give an overview of some of the major themes and topics in contemporary literary scholarship. Topics covered will include 1) an overview of current literary theories and methodologies 2) refining or developing literary research skills 3) preparation for writing works of original literary criticism and 4) how to apply the skills developed through literary study in a range of future careers. While this course is a prerequisite for students who plan to write an honors thesis, you do not have to write an honors thesis to take this course. All Literature majors with senior standing are welcome to enroll.

This is a craft-based course in which we will read and write fiction. We will discuss published work in class, and we will discuss student work in workshop. We will aim to develop fluency in craft as we explore the process of writing, approaching our work as an act of discovery and inquiry. Our discussions will be grounded in craft—the primary methodology of workshop—and we will read always with an eye toward technique and execution. The course will build on the skills to advance and refine an understanding of how fiction works to create both dramatic effect and meaning.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Linguists define code-switching as a person’s ability to flow between languages. De-hyphenating “codeswitching,” in this seminar-workshop we will approach the practice as such but also metaphorically to consider intersections and circuits of the personal and political, fiction and memoir, prose and poetry, the written and spoken word, the verbal and visual. On the one hand, we will closely engage a growing 20th-21st century archive of literature, art, and cinema that shuttles between English and Spanish, between Englishes and Spanishes in the plural, including possible work by Gloria Anzaldúa, Cecilia Vicuña, Junot Díaz, Urayoán Noel, and Cognate Collective. On the other, we’ll turn to the yet-to-be-imagined — your interpretations of codeswitching as practice.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course, we will focus on 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.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.