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LTAF 120

LTAF 120 Africa

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LTAM 110 The Americas

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LTAM 120 The Americas

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LTCH 101 Chinese

LTCH 101 Asia

Monstrous Bodies in Popular Literature and Media  -This course explores how popular texts and media understand and theorize monstrosity as both metaphor and commentary for societal issues, institutions, and our relationships with others. Through our course materials, we will survey the variety of monsters across multiple genres (horror, reality TV, social media, popular music) and how they both illustrate and evoke sociocultural fears.

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 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 50 First Dates, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I Give It A Year, and Weekend. Students will learn foundational skills in film analysis.

This course will focus on the critical study of the current cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. She is both praised as one of the most phenomenal living songwriters, but how do we think about her music, her lyrics, and her personae (madwoman? Tortured poet? Showgirl?) in the context of a larger history of gender and pop culture?

Students will put Swift in conversation with other poets and writers. We will also engage contemporary theories of popular culture to develop tools to interpret various aspects of Swift’s pop cultural presence: fan culture, performance, marketing, social media, political engagement.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTCS 170

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LTEA 110A

LTEA 110A Asia

This course offers an opportunity to delve into the study of film analysis through a focus on the developments and transformations of cinema in Japan since the mid-twentieth century. Our collaboration involves a series of discussions around what constitutes and how we constitute the study of film through exploring and interrogating various theoretical and disciplinary models. Through this work, we will learn how to critically read and respond to the languages and styles of films that we watch while addressing the relationship between cinematic representations and broader historical and political debates that these representations engage.

LTEA 138

LTEA 138 Asia

Colonial Korea in Film and Lit -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, imperialization policies and collaboration, 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

This course is a survey of literary and cinematic representations of women, femininities and the historical waves of feminist movements in modern Korea, spanning from the colonial period to the contemporary era. We will read and view major literary works and films, paying close attention to the centrality of gender and sexuality in these works’ conceptualization of the broader historical issues in modern Korea. Alongside and beyond the representative masculinist literary and cinematic representations of modern Korean history by both male and female writers, we will examine feminist/female re-inscriptions.

LTEA 143 Asia

This survey course will examine the Anglophone literature of 1660-1832 in its historical context, focusing on Enlightenment ideas of the individual. Typically, this era of literature is taught as the one that formulated the individualized narratorial “I” subject, reflecting and constructing the idea of the western liberal self. Yet, the literature is complex in this understanding and construction of self. In this course, we will ask: how did this period conceive of or understand “the self”? How did it construct the self in relation to “the Other”? How did the British (or perhaps, English) individual understand themself in relation to the racialized “Other”? Were there any authors who challenge these narratives? How do these literary constructions connect to the sociopolitical and ideological climate of the time—and how do these questions relate to our present day?

Among the many certitudes that the beginning of the 21st century has called into question, we would have to include the shifting meanings of “Asian,” “American,” “Asian American,” “Literature,” and “Culture” themselves. How do we approach the idea of Asia and Asians, even "Asian-ness," in the US? How do we understand the fact that people spend more of their waking hours reading now than ever before yet educators grow increasingly alarmed by the “crisis of literacy?” Can we even speak of identity / identities that are not simply the product of an ever-shifting identity politics?

This introductory class to works (literary and cultural) by writers, artists, and performers explores the fictions, narratives, tales, myths and legends that construct our idea(s) of Asia, Asians, Asian-Americans and finally, America. Beyond a mere recounting of how Asians "over there" ended up "over here," or even how their descendants deal with their family's past and present, this course examines how literature and culture serve as techniques for promoting, dismantling, reorienting, or transgressing the networks of knowledge and power in US society through redefinitions and questionings of the self, the community, and the outside.

This course contributes to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion requirement, as well as the lower-division requirement for Literature majors in Cultural Studies (LTCS), English (LTEN), Literatures of the World (LTWL), and Writing (LTWR).

The course will look at some of the greatest literary achievements of the Renaissance in England, including texts by William Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney, Lady Mary Wroth, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton. Genres discussed will include lyric poetry, comic drama, epic, and “discovery” narratives. Students will engage with the following topics, among others: Renaissance Humanism Lyric Poetry and the Psychology of Desire The Human and the Non-Human: Humanists, Cannibals, Nature and Tyranny, Empire and Resistance.

LTEN 110

The course will focus on one of the high points in the history of Western theater: the early seventeenth century, when William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton and other great playwrights were all writing for the London stage. Plays to discuss and analyze, both comic and tragic, will include Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_ and _Measure for Measure_, Jonson’s _The Alchemist_, and Middleton’s _A Chaste Maid in Cheapside_.

LTEN 117

The Romantic Era (1770 – 1830) was also called the Age of Revolution. Rife with political upheaval, this period also generated some of the most famous poetry of the British canon. This course will examine Romantic Era poetry within its rich historical context. We will be reading the Big 6 as well as going beyond and analyzing lesser known but equally important poets to more deeply understand the time period, the legacies of which still persist.

How do photographs and moving images shape the stories we tell? This course explores the intersections of literature, photography, and film, examining how writers and visual artists use multiple media to represent memory, identity, history, and social life. Bringing literary texts into conversation with photography, documentary, and experimental visual culture, students will consider how words and images work together to produce meaning and challenge dominant ways of seeing. Particular attention will be paid to questions of race, gender, class, place, and historical memory, as well as the ethical and political dimensions of visual representation. Through literature, photography, film, and critical scholarship, students will examine how artists have used visual and literary forms to document, critique, and reimagine the world around them, while exploring the possibilities and limits of representation across media.

LTEN 148 The Americas

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LTEN 179 The Americas

How have Black writers imagined relationships among people, land, plants, and animals? Drawing on the emerging field of Black Ecologies, this course examines African American literature and culture through histories of enslavement, agriculture, environmental racism, migration, urbanization, and climate change. Through literature, photography, and interdisciplinary scholarship, students will explore Black gardening traditions, foodways, environmental justice, Black geographies, and changing relationships to the natural world. Reading works by Alice Walker, Ross Gay, Camille Dungy, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lauret Savoy, and others, students will consider how Black writers and artists represent gardens, farms, forests, cities, and other landscapes as sites of memory, labor, resistance, and community formation. Together, we will examine how Black environmental literature challenges dominant understandings of nature and cultivates alternative visions of ecological relation, belonging, and communal life.

LTEN 185 The Americas

The world changed around 1800. Revolutionaries in the Americas and France confronted empires and overturned ancient feudal hierarchies. Thomas Jefferson declared that “all men are created equal” – but did that include women and the enslaved? Views of nature shifted from a static world that could be categorized and conquered to a series of dynamically evolving ecosystems. A fascination with folklore and fairy tales supplemented ongoing interests in ancient mythology and religious tradition. Poets stopped praising princes and began to express their inmost thoughts in works of original genius. Logically arranged marriages for political purposes yielded to overwhelming, transgressive passion. An accelerating process of globalization brought Europeans into contact with radically different societies, prompting questions about racial difference and the course of human history. We will read representative works by mostly German (in translation) and perhaps some British and French writers, who did their best to make sense of a new world in which the old rules no longer applied.

LTEU 110 Europe

In 2017, the hashtag #balancetonporc emerged on Twitter to indicate stories of sexual harassment at work. Journalists were quick to define this as the French #MeToo moment, but what does it mean to take a movement in one context and pull it into another? How did this formulation add to a long history of French exchanges about gender, sex, sexuality, and power? We will examine a variety of texts from the past 100 years to trace dominant and counter-cultural trends in France that have promoted or critiqued traditional notions of femininity, masculinity, and heterosexuality. From Colette and Simone de Beauvoir to #balancetonporc, looking at music, essays, and contemporary literature, we will study how French engagements with sex and power have changed over time.

LTEU 141 Europe

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LTEU 150A Europe

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LTFR 104 French

LTFR 104 The Mediterranean

LTFR 104 Europe

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Please contact instructor for course description.

LTGK 103

LTGK 103 Greek

LTGK 103 The Mediterranean

LTGK 103 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.

Food is culture in Italy: it is the expression of history, geography, tradition, and art.
Learning Italian is not just learning a language, but partaking of the culture this language allows you to enter.
Italian 2A/2B/50 is a grammar review, through the language of food and travel, meant to give you an "insider's perspective" on Italian culture at all levels, including music, film, sport, gestures, and of course, recipes!

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.

Prerequisite: No prior study of Korean is required.

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.

Prerequisite: LTKO 1C or an equivalent level of proficiency in Korean language.

Third Year Korean 130F (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.

Prerequisite: LTKO 2C or an equivalent level of proficiency in Korean language.

LTKO 130F Korean

LTKO 130F Asia

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Please contact instructor for course description.

LTLA 100

LTLA 100 Latin

LTLA 100 The Mediterranean

LTLA 100 Europe

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Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104B Russian

LTRU 104B Europe

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LTRU 110A Russian

LTRU 110A Europe

Emphasizes the development of communication skills, listening comprehension, reading ability, and writing skills. It includes grammar review, compositions, and class discussions. This course is for students who began learning Spanish in a classroom environment. Students who have experience with Spanish outside of the classroom (at home, in their community) should take courses for heritage learners (1F, 2F, 3F, 100F).

Review of major points of grammar with emphasis on oral communication and critical reading and interpretation of Spanish texts through class discussions, vocabulary development, and written compositions. It is a continuation of LTSP 2A. This course is for students who began learning Spanish in a classroom environment. Students who have experience with Spanish outside of the classroom (at home, in their community) should take courses for heritage learners (1F 2F, 3F, 100F).

Continuation of LTSP 2B, with special emphasis in speaking and writing. It includes discussion of cultural topics, grammar review, composition and presentations to further develop the ability to read longer fiction/nonfictional texts. This course is for students who began learning Spanish in a classroom environment. Students who have experience with Spanish outside of the classroom (at home, in their community) should take courses for heritage learners (1F, 2F, 3F, 100F).

This course is designed for those students who learned Spanish at home and/or other students from Spanish-speaking backgrounds that have little or no formal training in the language. The main goals of the course are to enhance students' reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in a culturally relevant setting. Students also explore their cultural heritage and learn about Hispanic cultures in the United States and the language diversity of its speakers.

This course is designed for students who have been raised in a Spanish-speaking environment and speak some Spanish as a result of hearing it in the home, and in the community by family, friends, and neighbors, or some experience with Spanish in the classroom. The main goals of this course are to further develop and expand the Spanish language skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking, while promoting a greater connection with the Hispanic cultures of the students' heritage.

This seminar analyzes cinematic productions by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, from Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), Babel (2006), Biutiful (2010), to Birdman(2014) and The Revenant (2015). 

En este seminario analizaremos la experiencia de la gente latina en los Estados Unidos, el papel del lenguaje y la cultura en dicha experiencia y la reproducción de las ideologías lingüísticas y culturales en la sociedad estadounidense. In this seminar we will discuss the experiences of Latinxs in the USA, the role of language and culture in their experiences, and the production of language and cultural ideologies in US society.

An advanced Spanish conversation and writing course for second language learners. The objective of this course is to promote the development of academic Spanish in reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. Students will explore a variety of cultural, literary, and writing genres from the Spanish speaking world. This course has the purpose of preparing students to work in a professional context in Spanish. Students who have experience with Spanish outside of the classroom (at home, in their community) should take the equivalent course for heritage learners (LTSP 100F).

LTSP 100A Spanish

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LTSP 100F Spanish

This course is designed for students who have developed their Spanish language skills in informal and family settings rather than in a traditional classroom. Class assignments will include reading and creative reports from diverse cultural productions, including fiction, nonfiction, TV series, films, documentaries, and music.

LTSP 100F Spanish

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LTSP 116

LTSP 116 Spanish

LTSP 116 The Americas

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LTSP 145 Spanish

Este curso aborda la relación entre vida y política, naturaleza y cultura, humano y no-humano con el fin de analizar las figuraciones de la animalidad en las textualidades feministas y cuir/queer contemporáneas en América Latina. Revisaremos diversas producciones culturales desde la novela al cine para pensar la animalidad como frontera en donde se expresa el naturalismo racionalista y antropocéntrico, el dimorfismo sexual y la heteronormatividad de la colonial modernidad.

Leeremos estas ficciones desde los trabajos en torno a la corporalidad y la territorialidad.

El objetivo de este seminario es explorar el español tal como se habla en la comunidad y el significado social y cultural que se atribuye a las diferentes formas de hablar. A través de un análisis crítico, las discusiones de clase se centrarán en las experiencias de los/las/les estudiantes acerca de su propio uso del español.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course, we will examine how the Central American civil conflicts, the NAFTA agreement, the ‘drug war,’ and post-9/11 policies, among other political disputes, have shaped the cultural landscape of the U.S. over the past two decades. Issues to be discussed include representations of displacement, diaspora, and borders bureaucratic apparatuses governing transnational mobility and narratives that challenge notions of citizenship, identity, and belonging.
Students will analyze a wide range of contemporary literary and non-literary forms (such as film, visual arts, performance, and music). The course will be conducted in English (but Spanish is also required).

Slavic Mythology and Folklore is an introduction to the folklore of various Slavic peoples (including present-day Russia, Ukraine, and other countries in eastern Europe). We will read and study a variety of collected folkloric texts translated from several Slavic
languages. Using different tools of analysis, we will aim to understand important aspects of the traditional culture of these groups, as well as the resonances of those traditions in the present moment. By learning to recognize the different forms these stories take in traditional cultures, we will better understand their functions and significance in culture of the distant past as well as the present. The class will include a creative fieldwork component (story-gathering and analysis).
All readings and class discussions will be in English a separate section for Slavic language speakers can be arranged.

LTWL 100

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Please contact instructor for course description.

LTWL 110B

This course explores the tradition of metadrama—plays that draw attention to their own theatricality, staging, and artifice. From Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author to Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (and more), we will examine how dramatists use self-reflexive strategies to question identity, performance, authorship, and reality itself. Readings will include works across cultures. Students will analyze how metadrama engages audiences in critical reflection, blurs boundaries between art and life, and anticipates postmodern media.

This course examines film history and its influence on culture and literary history. It studies key films such as Metropolis, Citizen Kane, Psycho, Star Wars, Do the Right Thing, Parasite, and Taste of Cherry to explore the evolution of cinematic style and storytelling.

LTWL 180

This advanced seminar is designed to help students prepare for the Honors Thesis, as well as introduce graduating writing majors to key facets of the creative writing discipline and to aspects of professionalization in the field of creative writing. Assignments for the course will help students to develop an extended writing project (the Honors Thesis), to place their writing in context and conversation with the literary artists that inspire them, and to write an artist statement that reflects on their own creative practice and literary art. Moreover, students will read contemporary literatures from the three major creative writing genres: non-fiction, fiction, and poetry and students will be required to present on one of the course’s books. Finally, students will be required to participate in in-person workshops–both sharing developing work toward their Honors Thesis and providing feedback to their peers’ writing projects in-progress.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course will provide an introduction to the practice of writing poetry. Designed with the strategy that to be better contemporary poets we must be better readers of contemporary poetry, the course will look at 20th and 21st century poetry to learn various approaches and elements of poetic craft. To help your engagement with assigned readings, you will be required to post to an online reading journal and to take in-class reading quizzes. Students will also be given five poetry assignments based on our readings in poetry and poetic craft. In addition to the creative practice of writing poems, this course also requires you to work on the critical practice of commenting on your classmates’ poems in online discussion boards and in-person workshops. Prompting your participation in the larger literary community outside of our classroom, the course also requires you to attend and write about two New Writing Series Events (what constitutes the Lab for this course). Finally, to measure your quarter-long progress, you will be required to hand in a final portfolio with your assigned poems along with two significantly revised poems.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course will focus on the emerging field of digital poetry and digital literature that is, the intersection of artistic poiesis (making) with digital technology. As the scholar Chris Funkhouser states, “A poem is a digital poem if computer programming or process (software) are distinctively used in the composition, generation, or presentation of the text (or combination of texts).” In this course, we will consider this poesis/poetics as a constantly evolving process that is refracted and reflected through our changing writing technologies.

As this course is a "C" designated course, it serves as both a literature and writing course. We will read and respond to various examples of digital literature as well as theories and critiques of this emergent form alongside digital literature’s logical (and, sometimes, illogical) antecedents and possible futures.

Finally, we will create and workshop digital texts of our own: including a “hack” of a social media site, an audio or visual exploration and expansion of our writing and a hypertext narrative.

This course is open to anyone working in any genre of writing or willing to experiment with form and content. While no prior knowledge of programming or software is necessary to take this course, please bring a willingness to experiment and learn together.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course will not only explore various forms of "experimental writing" but will serve as an experiment itself, one that uses our campus as a laboratory. We will write in each other's company and in response to the built and natural environment of UCSD's campus.

Particular attention will be paid to the concept of "ekphrasis": creative writing in response to visual art, and we will explore various approaches to writing and responding some of the monumental, site-specific works on our campus, including the Stuart Collection, galleries, and architectural sites.

There will be writing in real time, revision, discussion, invention, and curated reading on these subjects. Pack light.

This workshop will provide students the chance to give and receive critique of their creative non-fiction work. All forms of CNF are welcome and encouraged, from literary journalism and science writing to lyric memoir and speculative essay and beyond. In addition to the workshopping itself, we will investigate workshopping practices and specific concerns related to the genre of creative non-fiction.

Ecopoetics

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What Is Worship? This seminar explores worship as a cultural phenomenon through which individuals find meaning, cultivate belonging, and seek pathways for transcendence. Drawing on diverse traditions and practices, the course examines methods of worship such as prayer, movement, and music sacred spaces including synagogues, temples, churches, and mosques and the varied forms through which worship is expressed. The seminar considers the relationship between worship and identity—how practices relate to belief, community, and ways of life. The seminar also considers worship in the context of modernity and post-modernity, including how religious practices are continued, adapted, challenged, or displaced in secular and progressive settings. Emphasizing discussion and reflection, the course invites students to think deeply and respectfully about worship as an important (and often marginalized) contemporary practice that can both inspire and unsettle.

The Greek diábolos (διάβολος), “slanderer,” seems to be the etymological root of the Devil, personification of evil. Centuries before the appearance of this figure, however, both the early Judaic holy books (Tanakh) mentioned several times a Ha-Satan (Hebrew: הַשָּׂטָן hasSāṭān), from which we derive the word Satan. The elevation of this figure to the prince of darkness, however, involved a process of religious change and intercultural mingling that took place over two millenia, in which orthodox Christianity alternately negotiated, appropriated, resisted and suppressed the popular masses who had their own convictions about the existence of the devil, evil, and sin in the world and their lives. Throughout those centuries, which include our own, the faces of evil have taken so many shapes and forms, that we are left wondering whether a clear concept of evil still exists today.


This class explores the intertwined concepts of the devil, demons, and the concept of evil, with a particular focus on the early Christian, early modern, and modern periods. By taking up a select group of historical, religious, political, and literary texts, we will analyze the ways in which Christians have understood the Devil as a force and agent in society and culture. These understandings, in turn, will provide material for a larger reflection on the concept of evil, the demonic or diabolical, or even the monstrous and abominable in our lives and societies today.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.