In this course we will examine the relationship between literature and authoritarianism in twentieth century Latin America.  We will read novels and short stories from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Chile.  We will look at the literary techniques used by authors from these countries to respond to and critique various forms of authoritarianism, from outright military dictatorship to the more everyday inequalities of power based on gender/sexuality, race, and class. 

LTAM 110 The Americas

This course explores various topics related to Chinese film stars, including star performance, star ethnicity, stars and audiences, gender and sexuality, translocal/transnational stars, stars in new media, etc. We will use both theoretical frameworks and film texts to examine specific star cases in China and its neighboring countries. The main goal is to revisit star studies through challenging clichés and opening up more discussions. By the end of this course, students are expected to develop critical thinking on Chinese film stars from the perspectives of cultural values, historical significance, and technological development. 

LTCH 101

LTCH 101 Chinese

LTCH 101 Asia

The course ​looks at the explosion of horror​ and thriller ​​films ​in Asia in the new millennium. ​We will ​focus on the role of the vengeful female ghost and the concept of the "monstrous feminine." Titles may include Ringu, Dumplings, The Eye, Nang Nak, The Housemaid, and Memento Mori.​ Students will learn foundational skills in film analysis.

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.

Monsters are featured pervasively in our myths and popular media. Yet, as much as we consume monstrous texts, images, and ideas for entertainment, we do not often consider monstrosity as having implications in our realities. The question of how we understand and theorize monstrosity as both metaphor and commentary for societal issues, institutions, and our relationships with others is at the core of this course’s interdisciplinary inquiry. Using examples from popular culture, mass media, literature, and cinema, we will critically consider the impact of monstrosity in shaping worlds and identities across cultures and generations. Our interlocutors range from Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny” to kaiju films like Godzilla.

In this student-oriented upper division course, we will consider such topics as migration and human integration, climate change and sustainability, cosmopolitan vernacular, and so forth, in critical response to the rise of conservatism and anti-global sentiments.  On top of reading essays and writing up journal entries, students need to do book and project reports.  

This course investigates visions of the city projected in Chinese cinema for over 100 years. We will watch selected films produced as early as 1922 and as recently as 2008, and see film clips from the 2010s. Weekly topics include urban entertainment and teahouse culture (1910s-1920s), urban corruption and cosmopolitanism (1930s), urban reconfiguration and idealism (1940s), urban reconstruction and socialist virtues (1950s), urban history and revolutionary aesthetics (1960s-1970s), urban migration and female sexuality (1980s-1990s), urban enigma and male subjectivity (1990s-2000s), urban quotidian and postsocialist nostalgia (1990s-2000s), as well as urban transformation and globalization (2000s-2010s). 

No knowledge of the Chinese language is required, but upper-division standing is recommended. All required films carry English subtitles, and all reading is done in English.  

LTEA 120A

LTEA 120A Asia

This course examines different lenses through which to study Japanese language literatures written from the late 19^th into the 21^st centuries. The category of “Japanese literature” is complex. It comprises, often, of contestations, movements, and reflections that resist broad categorizations and give voice to complicated historical and political networks. By grounding our questions in the study of the roles of colonialism, imperialism, and nationalism in Japanese language literary productions.

LTEA 132 Asia

This course is a survey of literary works and other cultural productions such as films and essays, produced both within and outside the Korean peninsula, concerning the experience of migration, emigration and immigration of “ethnic Koreans” to various parts of the globe since the early 20^th Century. We will attempt to situate these representations of Korean diaspora between the contexts of modern Korean history and the histories of the regions and nation-states to which ethnic Koreans migrated.  We will also examine the more recent phenomenon of labor migration of Southeast and South Asians and “returning” diasporic ethnic Koreans into South Korea. Our readings will include diverse materials such as South Korean literary works on emigration to the United States, Korean American literature, literature by Korean residents of Japan, films by Korean Chinese directors, historical sources on global Korean diaspora and contemporary theorizations of South Korea’s recent transition into an increasingly multi-ethnic immigrant society.

LTEA 144 Asia

This course will examine how British literature worked through the impact of economic change, urbanization, mass-war, imperialism and globalization, and the many movements for democracy and equality that characterized the past two centuries.  We will examine how the optimism of industrial development was tempered by both a nostalgia for a rural, aristocratic order and working-class upheaval how women fought for visibility in politics and culture (including literature) an how Britain both fortified its position as a global power and was confronted by anti-imperial rebellion and the voices of postcolonial authors.   Throughout the course, we will pay close attention to changes in literary form and the complex interaction between cultural production and historical conditions.

This class will survey some of the major works and authors of American literature from Walt Whitman to Toni Morrison. By the end of the course, you should not only be familiar with major literary movements from this period—including naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism—but you should also be able to discuss how these authors use literary techniques to address key concepts like democracy, nationhood, and race.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course introduces students to the work of Shakespeare in his last, creative decade. It examines plays and poems written in the first years of the seventeenth century, the years when King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, the years when Europeans began to settle the New World, when science and exploration gave new understandings to the everyday, but when a taste for magic and the occult still held the human imagination. We will focus closely on five major works of Shakespeare: The Tempest, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, and The Winter’s Tale. Each of these works says something powerful about Shakespeare’s imagination, about the social and political life of the time, and about the relationship between that time and the historical and legendary past. Each of these works, too, tells us something about how plays were acted and how books were published in their time. A goal of this course, therefore, is not only to understand the drama of the playhouse and the expectations of the audience it is to understand the printers and the publishers, the readers and the editors, that shaped Shakespeare’s texts for the future. In addition to reading the plays, we will look at some current literary scholarship and criticism to help us understand their worlds, their impact, and their endurance. Reading scholarship and criticism can help us find our own ways, as well, of talking and writing about Shakespeare. Assignments will include two critical papers (5-7pp) and a scheduled final exam. Attendance and participation will be a required part of the course. 

LTEN 113

A prolific writer and performer throughout the Victorian era, Dickens might be the only name from the period that almost everyone still recognizes.  Always writing for serial publication, a fact that shaped his writing in profound ways this course will examine, he poured forth novels of sheer comedy, of social protest, of melodrama, of shrewd observation, and more.  An enduring preoccupation of his career was the plight and development of children, with attention not only to their physical needs but also their mental and emotional ones—their necessity for affection, entertainment, education, and the development of a separate and authentic self.  Many of his novels include children and young people in some form of contest against injustice, tyranny, cruelty, or deprivation, and show their individual growth into self-sustaining and self-possessed adulthood.  We will read a few such novels, including (the Penguin editions of) Oliver Twist (1837-8), David Copperfield (1849-50), and Great Expectations (1860-61).  Though few in number because of our 10-week limitation, the novels for this class will require a good deal of (very rewarding) reading, so look elsewhere if you don’t think you can keep up.  

Though he was only a literary construct, the world’s most famous detective Sherlock Holmes can, in his sometimes-annoying way, teach us lessons we badly need in the 21^st century: how to cut through the deceptive and inaccurate narratives about the world that the media, salespeople, power-brokers, and our own brains serve up to us all day every day.  How do we become more skeptical thinkers?  Recognize and overcome our own biases?  Get some distance from emotional, impulsive, heuristic world views?  In this course we will read both Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional accounts of Holmes and some modern scientific literature that helps us understand why thinking like the detective is essential and can rescue us from fads, frauds, medical misinformation, and general stupidity.

In this class, we will explore the interrelation between literary imagination and technological progress with a focus on gender, from robot labor to artificial intelligence to video gaming to CGI Instagram influencers. Employing an intersectional perspective, we will look at dominant (literary, scientific, political, economic) models, their critiques - in particular those from marginalized perspectives - and at alternative forms of engaging with new technologies.

This course focuses on the Age of Revolution in the Americas, a tumultuous epoch marked by ideological shifts in Europe and its overseas colonies. The class examines the migration of ideas, tracing how revolutionary rhetoric flew back and forth between British, French, Native and Spanish America as it was tailored to meet specific historic circumstances.  For example, just as French revolutionaries were inspired by the United States' declaration of independence, so too were Caribbean elites and the enslaved engaged in efforts to influence shifting metropolitan realities in negotiations for their own freedom and autonomy.  The fundamental questions: what did it mean to free an area from colonial control? what narratives developed to justify independence to a heterogeneous population?  how would a new nation be organized and who would be a citizen?  how could revolutionaries fighting in the name of liberty and equality justify the institution of chattel slavery and its mandate that women, men and children constituted the property of another?

LTEN 152 The Americas

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

Please contact instructor for course description.

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 production uses 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. This will be a reading-intensive course and will include work by authors including Ted Chiang, Hari Kunzru, Ling Ma, and others.

LTEN 181 The Americas

Allegories of Slavery and Colonialism

In this class we will discuss the generic category of American “gothic” fiction—a term that denotes a set of texts beginning in the nineteenth century that share a propensity toward horror, haunting, the supernatural, and various other forms of psychological titillation. Writers such as Edgar Allen Poe became famous for their ability to create stories that tapped into the “dark” and fantastical recesses of the human imagination. In our class we will interrogate the notion that the American horror story represents a mere a playground for the reader’s psyche. In doing so, we will read avowedly gothic texts alongside narratives not normally associated with this literary category such as the slave narrative. What does it mean that American gothic and slave narratives were being composed so close to one another in US history? Are there ways in which the tropes (or themes) of horror novels/autobiographies and “racial” novels/plays articulate with one another? How does a centering of histories of slavery and genocide in the US challenge conventional definitions of the category “gothic”? Can canonical horror or gothic texts be read as allegories of seemingly unrelated historical circumstances such as slavery and colonial genocide? What are the aesthetic, social, and historical points of contact between the categories of the gothic and the real within American social history? How do our texts and films unveil the ways in which gender dominance, racial capitalism, misogyny, and patriarchy are structured into the experience of terror and subjection in the US? We will supplement our literary exploration with discussion of films, visual art, and music that gravitate around the aesthetic/social categories of horror and haunting.

LTEN 183 The Americas

Anti-Prison Politics and Poetics from 1865 to the Prison Industrial Complex

LTEN 185 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEU 150C 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. 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. 

Emphasizes the development of effective communication in writing and speaking. Includes a grammar review. A contemporary novel and a film are studied to explore cultural and social issues in France today. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor in French literature. Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.

Emphasizes the development of language skills and the practice of textual analysis. Discussions are based on the analysis of various poetic texts (poems, short story, and songs…) and on a film. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Students who have completed 50 can register in upper-level courses (LTFR115 or 116). Prerequisite: LTFR 2C or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.

The course will be divided into three parts:

1) A close reading of excerpts from Un Amour de Swann and from Le Temps Retrouvé, i.e. the bookends novels from his vast opus A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Un Amour de Swann  features the narrator’s account of his protagonist’s slow descent into the abyss of jealousy and paranoia, while Le Temps Retrouvé conveys his epiphany about the secrets of art and identity in an immense fresco of the history of his times.

2) A close analysis of the main films made about La Recherche. The first novel was transposed into film by German film director V. Schlondorff: Swann in Love (1984), with Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti. The last novel was made into the film Marcel Proust’s Time Regained (1999) —with a spectacular cast— by Chilean director Raoul Ruiz.

LTFR 125 French

LTFR 125 The Mediterranean

LTFR 125 Europe

This is a more advanced intermediate level course in Greek that is suitable for students who have already covered the previous intermediate segment of Greek grammar/syntax. If you are seeking to continue advancing your mastery of Ancient Greek morphology and syntax, and wish to improve the fluency of your reading, this class is for you!

This course will cover the material presented in three sections of the required text. Class sessions will comprise translation and discussion of a range of grammatical topics. Emphasis will be placed on the acquisition and disquisition of vocabulary. In addition, in-class discussion will touch upon historical, cultural, and political milieus presented in the readings.

2C is the last sequence of the intermediate series. It will continue to study grammar, vocabulary and other aspects of the German language.  The class is conducted entirely in German and emphasizes the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. This course will focus on cultural readings of historical content as well as current events and engage in discussions of films.

AKA LTIT2C!! Intermediate/Advanced Italian.

Learning Italian Through Food, Family and Traveling:  Dalle lasagne al tiramisú

Con questo corso termina il nostro viaggio attraverso le regioni italiane e la loro cucina.  Per ora...

Il nostro viaggio nella lingua e nella cucina italiana continua, con altre ricette, nuovi modi di dire, e argomenti di conversazione e scrittura.  Ci incontriamo L-Me-V (non martedí), per parlare di cibo, viaggi, cultura e un po' di grammatica.

Un progetto finale, per presentare la California a un futuro visitatore italiano.

4 units.

First Year Korean 1C (5 units) is the third part of the Beginning Korean. This course is designed to assist students to develop high-beginning level skills in the Korean language. These skills are speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as cultural understanding. LTKO 1C is designed for students who have already mastered LTKO 1B or who are already in the equivalent proficiency level. This course will focus on grammatical patterns such as sentence structures, some simple grammatical points, and some survival level use of Korean language. Additionally, speaking, reading, writing, and listening comprehension will all be emphasized, with special attention to oral speech. Upon completion of this course, students will become able to do the following in Korean: 

Speaking: Students are able to converse with ease and confidence when dealing with the routine tasks and social situations. They are able to handle successfully uncomplicated tasks and social situations requiring an exchange of basic information. They can narrate and describe in all major time frames using connected discourse of paragraph length, but not all the time.

Listening: Students are able to understand, with ease and confidence, simple sentence-length speech in basic personal and social contexts. They can derive substantial meaning from some connected texts, although there often will be gaps in understanding due to a limited knowledge of the vocabulary and structure of the spoken language.

Reading: Students are able to understand fully and with ease short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics to which they brings personal interest or knowledge. They are able to understand some connected texts featuring description and narration although there will be occasional gaps in understanding due to a limited knowledge of the vocabulary, structures, and writing conventions of the language.

Writing: Students are able to meet all practical writing needs of the basic level. They also can write compositions and simple summaries related to work and/or school experiences. They can narrate and describe in different time frames when writing about everyday events and situations.

Second Year Korean 2C (5 units) is the third part of the Intermediate Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught during the Korean 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A and 2B courses. Students in this course will learn high-intermediate level of standard modern Korean in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as expand their cultural understanding. After the 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 also 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 can perform all intermediate-level tasks with linguistic ease, confidence, and competence. They are consistently able to explain in detail and narrate fully and accurately in all time frame. In addition, they may provide a structured argument to support their opinions, and they may construct hypotheses. They may demonstrate a well-developed ability to compensate for an imperfect grasp of some forms or for limitations in vocabulary by the confident use of communicative strategies.

Listening: Students are able to understand, with ease and confidence, conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as complex factual material such as summaries or reports. They are able to follow some of the essential points of more complex or argumentative speech in areas of special interest or knowledge.

Reading: Students are able to understand, fully and with ease, conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as more complex factual material. They are able to follow some of the essential points of argumentative texts in areas of special interest or knowledge. In addition, they are able to understand parts of texts that deal with unfamiliar topics or situations.

Writing: Students are able to write about a variety of topics with significant precision and detail. They can handle informal and formal correspondence according to appropriate conventions. They can write summaries and reports of a factual nature. They can also write extensively about topics relating to particular interests and special areas of competence.

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

This course is a survey of major issues in modern Korean history from 1945 to the present, including the national division, the U.S./Soviet occupation, the Korean War, authoritarian rule, industrialization, labor movements and recent multiethnicization of South Korea. We will read literary works by major South Korean writers such as Choi In-hun, Cho Se-hui, Hwang Sok-yong, Pak Wan-so, and O Chong-hui among others. This course is designed both as an advanced reading class and as an introduction to Korean literature, history and culture. Students who have completed three years of Korean at the college level as well as those who have literacy in Korean through informal and formal training may qualify to take this class. 

LTKO 100 Korean

LTKO 100 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

This is an advanced level course in Latin that is suitable for students who have already covered the basic Latin grammar/syntax and are seeking exposure to an original Ciceronian text and an improvement in the fluency of their reading.

This course will aim to read the last part of Cicero’s De Re Publica, a text independently known and transmitted as the Somnium Scipionis. Class sessions will comprise translation and discussion of a range of topics. In-class discussion will focus on historical, cultural, and political milieus, the influence of a Greek predecessor, and Cicero’s prose style.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104A Russian

LTRU 104A Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 110C Russian

LTRU 110C Europe

LTSP 2A is an intermediate-level language course that reinforces and enhances the development of the communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and the intercultural competency of the student. Class activities are designed so that students can build up these skills and function at an intermediate language level. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this class will provide students with ample opportunity to work in small groups and in pairs while gaining confidence communicating in Spanish. Students will learn the language in the cultural contexts in which it is produced, using a variety of formats (film, literature, journalism, songs, etc.) and registers from most formal to more colloquial and from the metropolitan rule to each of the regional variations of the language. 

LTSP 2C is an advance-level language course that reinforces and enhances the development of the communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and the intercultural competency of the student. Class activities are designed so that students can build up these skills and function at an intermediate language level. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this class will provide students with ample opportunity to work in small groups and in pairs while gaining confidence communicating in Spanish. Stundents will learn the language in the cultural contexts in which it is produced, using a variety of formats (film, literature, journalism, songs, etc.) and registers from most formal to more colloquial and from the metropolitan rule to each of the regional variations of the language.

The literature and culture of the Indignados

This course introduces students to cultural analysis through the representations of the 15-M or “indignados” movement in Spain. In 2011 thousands of Spaniards took to the streets and plazas to protests the economic situation of the country and the lack of true democracy. The popular assemblies produced a number on discourses, performances, songs, essays, and films. This class will use all of these cultural manifestations as the basis to improve and develop all four skills in Spanish. Special emphasis will be place in the ability to read and write at an academic level.

Coursework includes reading of texts, analysis of films, songs, and performances,  participation in class discussions and written assignments. LTSP 50B prepares Literature majors and minors for upper-division work. Two classes from the LTSP 50ABC series (any two) are required for Spanish Literature majors. May be applied towards a minor in Spanish Literature or towards fulfilling the secondary language requirement for other Literature majors. Prerequisites: Completion of LTSP 2C or LTSP 2E

Este curso explora la relación entre cultura, feminismo y psicoanálisis, con el fin de analizar la ley de la madre en una diversa constelación de narrativas cinematográficas y literarias en el Chile postdictatorial. Trabajaremos en torno a dos conceptos centrales del psicoanálisis: deseo y goce, para interrogar el nudo pulsional de la maternidad.

LTSP 133 Spanish

LTSP 133 The Americas

¿Qué es el crimen cuando el sistema mismo es criminal? ¿Quién defiende el orden público cuando el estado ni está en orden ni representa al público?  En este curso vamos a leer novelas negras o policiacas de varios países latinoamericanos publicadas entre 1985 y 2000. Analizaremos la forma en que estas obras representan la desigualdad, corrupción, crimen y violencia de los últimos 35 años en América Latina, y la manera en que critican estos fenómenos y sus causas. Como la novela negra es un género predominantemente urbano, también estudiaremos la representación de las ciudades latinoamericanas en estos textos (e.g. México D.F., Santiago, San Salvador, Bogotá).  

LTSP 140 Spanish

LTSP 140 The Americas

Este curso analiza la emergencia y el devenir de los feminismos latinoamericanos en relación con las problemáticas geopolíticas y culturales de la región, desde una mirada genealógica. Se pondrá especial atención a las trayectorias teóricas e intelectuales propias en conexión con los procesos históricos y políticos de América Latina desde el siglo XIX hasta la actualidad. Leeremos a críticas feministas fundamentales, tales como, Julieta Kirkwood, Sueli Carneiro, María Galindo, Julieta Paredes, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Graciela Hierro, Marta Lamas, Pedro Lemebel, valeria flores, entre otras. Además de trabajar con el contra-cine feminista y la pluralidad de la cultura gráfica y escénica de los movimientos.

What is the place of literary criticism in society? Why argue about books? Why not just read them? This course explores the history of critical, philosophical, and pedagogical responses to literature. It begins with Classical notions of mimesis in Plato, works through ideas of poetics in Aristotle, looks at medieval and early modern theories of allegory, and then addresses some of the major shapers of modern literary criticism: Philip Sidney (Apology for Poetry), Samuel Johnson (Lives of the Poets and Preface to the Dictionary),  Romantic poets, Matthew Arnold (Study of Poetry),  ending with selections from Eric Auerbach’s Mimesis. In the course of the term, we will look at the relationship of these theorists to particular works of literature, often of their own time (for example, Classical theory and Virgil's Aeneid Sidney and Shakespeare). And at the heart of the course is another question: what is the sublime, and how do we feel something when we read? We will also try to explore our own intuitions about authorial intention, reader response, and the status of historical and formalist approaches to criticism.  Requirements: attendance and participation in class, and four short (3-5pp) response papers in the course of the term. No final exam.

So you think you can go to the theater, make yourself comfortable, and leave the real world outside?  Not so fast!

For a long time playwrights have been fascinated by the concept of metadrama (theater within theater), the knocking down of the fourth wall, and the interaction with the audience as part of the theatrical experience.

In this course we will read plays by  Shakespeare, Pirandello, Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Michael Frayn, and more.  Students will also write and perform a short play for their final project.

What is an American novel? How did World War II change the idea of who could be an American? In this 1-month seminar we will read one best-selling novel by Herman Wouk, a wildly popular fiction and comedy writer who lived much of his life in Southern California. We will read the Pulitzer prize winning "The Caine Mutiny," and a selection of short essays and stories. We will discuss Wouk's integration of his Jewish background into his American fiction, his interest in comedy and religion, and his writings about war. We will watch the Humphrey Bogart film adaptation of "The Caine Mutiny," as well as popular culture take-offs (including a spin-off Simpsons episode). The class will meet on Tuesdays from 2-3:30 from April 28-May 19 (4 weeks). The class is also required to attend a public lecture on Herman Wouk on Monday, May 18, 5-7 pm. All enrolled students will receive a free copy of "The Caine Mutiny.”

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

It’s the end of the world as we know it! Narratives of environmental destruction and apocalypse surround us.  So does the increasing emergence of scientific knowledge that points to mutuality and cooperation as defining traits of interrelated organisms forming a holistic ecology.  This course will explore contemporary fictional narratives that engage with the environment and with ideas of ecology. Students will generate their own writing using these readings as a model.

What possible role can poetry play in a world in crisis? How can “poetic thinking” offer possibilities of ecological practice and awareness beyond the conceptions of other disciplines? This course will track the emergence of the field of "ecopoetics": students in this course will collectively examine and model ways that poets have made use of language as a site for altering and expanding conventional responses to humanity’s impact on our planet. We will work to produce texts that intentionally confront the ethical questions posed by our own inextricable complicity in the warming of the planet, and to inhabit forms that are open to possibility and closed to closure. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

Riot Grrrl Nicky Click once said, “Never underestimate the power of a girl daydreaming in her bedroom about changing the world.” It is this spirit that is at the heart of one of the most powerful Feminist, cultural, and artistic movements of both the 20th and 21st century: Riot Grrrl. While most know Riot Grrrl for its empowering, defiant punk rock and zine culture, what many do not know is that Riot Grrrl remains one of the most influential writing communities world-wide today (and it’s not just for “girls” anymore!). All over the world riot grrrls are using the tools of narrative and memoir to write themselves out of pain as well as into liberation, going beyond the discussion of gender and gender equality to include discourse and texts around race, sexuality, and accessibility. What makes Riot Grrrl such a lasting cultural imprint is the intimate, raw, unapologetic, layered, and straightforward attitude that their writing embodies. In this workshop we will explore the ways riot grrrls access their material and follow-through creatively by engaging in some of the writing and cultural activities they have established, most notably: first and second-person narratives experimentalism through journals, diaries, letters, lists, interviews, playlists, and mixtapes radical performance such as guerilla performance, performance art, and spoken-word and radical economies such as independently-owned record labels, feminist bookstores, small presses, zines, zine fests, grrrl conventions, and non-profits. We will also explore where Riot Grrrl got their inspiration by looking at the ancestors and fore-parents that helped foster Riot Grrrl such as 70’s Feminism, folk music, and art-as-protest. Through exploring these modes of culture and process writers will gain a fuller understanding of current events, history, and counterculture as well as build a toolbox for accessing work, creating work, and putting out work in the world. Writers will also have the opportunity to learn how to take an idea and make it more than just a good piece of writing but also a cultural affair. This course is designed as an upper-division undergraduate creative writing workshop and critical thinking Literature course where fifty percent will be writing & workshop of our own creative writing developed during the course twenty-five percent will be readings, discussions, and guest speakers and twenty-five percent will be a final consisting of a complete body of work or excerpt from a longer work (novel/stories/essays, poems, zine) as well as organization and participation in a class-wide, end of the quarter cultural event honoring Riot Grrrl at UCSD.  Through exploring the diversity of styles and forms that Riot Grrrl embraces, writers will better understand the urgency of this culture’s work, the ways this culture has been both problematic & inspiring to others, and how in our own writing we can learn from their work and honor the truths we feel need to be heard. By the end of the quarter, successful students in this course will have a sample of creative work not just for the course final but for future use as well. Successful students will also have given back to the community around them by creating an event at UCSD for all students to honor and engage with Riot Grrrl. Some of the writers and culture-makers we will explore this quarter include: Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Third Woman Press, Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill, Kill Rockstars, Sleater-Kinney, Billy Rain, India’s Pink Army, Guerilla Girls, Pussy Riot, Bitch magazine, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Aya de Leon, Riot Grrrls of Color, and many, many more. Course texts and materials will be distributed through online resources and in-class. You will need regular, reliable access to the Internet and Canvas to fully participate in this course.

In this multi-genre course, we’ll explore the journal as both predecessor to works of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as its overlooked position as a writerly form in its own right. We’ll then transition into reading work that employs the fragmentary products of regular journaling, and the process of transforming those initial modes of gathering into more polished work.

This course will explore experiments in creative non-fiction that interrogate what the truth is that memoirists seek when they plumb their lives for narrative.  We will explore non-linear narrative, the privileging of emotional truth, emphasis on image/the poetic, formal visual experimentation, and other topics.  Students will be encouraged to experiment with innovating new forms in their own personal narratives.

In this course, we will approach an introduction to theory as writers invested in foundational questions, but questions that we often take for granted: What is literature? What is reading? What is an author? What is a text? What is interpretation? What is a subject? What is identity? We will examine and grapple with central thinkers from various schools and movements in theory and criticism, including New Criticism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, the Frankfurt School, Feminist, Queer, and Critical Race Theory. In addition to these theoretical and critical statements, we will also look at contemporary literature: Italo Calvino’s novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and Claudia Rankine’s lyric verse and prose text Citizen—two works that engage with literary and cultural theory in creative and critical modes. Students will have the opportunity to write both creative writing and critically expository texts engaging with, responding to, and modeling our course readings. Incorporating seminar style discussion, student presentations, and small group workshops, this course will require your attendance, participation, and collaboration.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.