This course looks into the production and circulation of Chinese literature across different generic demarcations, media platforms, and sensory formats. Given its cross-generic scope, the course materials range from traditional literature-film adaptation to the newly emerged transmedia practices across television dramas, cover songs, MVs, video remakes, video games, and other fictional representations in ACG culture. We approach each textual node in the intertextual network, as part of the IP system assembles multiple platforms, including the Jinjiang literature city, Weibo microblogs, Lofter, AO3, the Baidu post-bar, Tudou, Bilibili, and other fan forums. Traveling across the transmedia textual nexus, we will investigate how literary troupes in the source texts are adapted, appropriated, and metamorphized, from heterosexual romance to homoerotic boy love, from time-traveling back to the past to the alternative universe anticipated in the speculative future, from the magical world in the Bible to the fantastic universe of martial art, from conspiracies in the imperial court to the strategies and politics of wars. Given the vast amount and continuously expanding categories of transmedia texts, this list of existing sub-genres is by no means exhaustive, and the students are welcome to craft their own syllabus within the universe of transmedia storytelling in which they dwell.

LTCH 101 Chinese

LTCH 101 Asia

The course focuses on the explosion of horror, thriller, and suspense movies across Asia in the new millennium. Our investigation of this wildly popular genre will be framed by the concept of the "monstrous feminine." Case studies will include productions from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. Students will learn foundational skills in formal film analysis.

Through the study of YA novels and film adaptations, we consider how ideas about adolescence have been conceived and transformed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This quarter's focus will be on the sexual coming of age novel (1976 - the present). Titles may include Forever (Judy Blume, 1976), I'll Love You When You're More Like Me (M.E. Kerr, 1978), Stranger with My Face (Lois Duncan, 1981), Annie on My Mind (Nancy Garden, 1992), The Boys on the Rock (John Fox, 1994), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 1999), Every Day (David Levithan, 2012), and Adam (Ariel Schrag, 2014).

In this course, we will examine cultural production and cultural practices in the recently developed field of intercomprehension. We will learn the practice of metalinguistic reflection in our understanding of intersections between Italian and Latin American cultures, examining such topics as popular music (cantautori italiani and nueva cançión latino americana), intercultural solidarity between Italy and Latin American political movements, how indigenous traditions in Mexico migrated to Italy, etc.  No Spanish or Italian language knowledge is necessary.

This course approaches the questions of space, time, and identity in Hong Kong cinema and offers a historical survey of this vibrant transregional-translocal film industry and film culture over a century. Lecture topics include Hong Kong-Shanghai connections (1910s-1920s), rise of Cantonese cinema (1930s), postwar political divergence (1940s-1950s), urban modernity and youth culture (1960s), martial arts legends (1970s), the new wave cinema (early 1980s), the second wave and identity crisis (late 1980s), culture of disappearance (1990s), and new localism (2000s). No knowledge of Chinese (Mandarin) or Cantonese is required, but upper-division standing is recommended. All films carry English subtitles, and all reading and writing is done in English. 

LTEA 120C

LTEA 120C Asia

In this course we will read, analyze, and write about speculative modes of thinking and imagining the sociopolitical and intellectual conditions of our contemporary worlds through Japanophone fiction (fiction written in Japanese). In our readings, we will explore the genres of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, horror and other representations of alternative futures and realities in both literary texts and graphic novels. Our discussions and supplementary readings will also look into critical theories of thinking about gender, race, sex, colonialism, and ideology. Possible interlocutors include Ogawa Yōko, Matsuda Aoko, Sakiyama Tami, Medoruma Shun, Kim Sa Ryang, Ōhara Mariko, and Ōtomo Katsuhiro. 

LTEA 132 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 such as Japanese colonialism, the national division/ the U.S. occupation, the Korean War, South Korean participation in the Vietnam War, military dictatorships, labor and dissident movements, and multiethnicization of South 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

Between 1832 and the present Britain has undergone radical changes socially, politically, sexually, economically, religiously, and . . . literarily.  Besides getting a sense of some major authors of this period, we will also try to grasp the ways in which literature has undergone transformations both to create and to keep up with those other categories of alteration.  One marked transition has been the appearance of more women, more (openly) gay/lesbian, more working-class, and more post-colonial writers, so we will sample writings by all of these.  Another important set of shifts has been in the modes and lengths of narrative and in the formal features and social significance of poetry these too will occupy our attention, and we’ll spend some time getting an adequate vocabulary to talk about them. 

This survey course gives a broad overview and introduction to some of the major works, themes, and concepts central to the study of Asian American literature. This course will outline some of the artistic movements, debates, and critical concerns that have formulated the production and reception of Asian American literature in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Some of the questions this course will explore include: How do we define Asian American literature? Is Asian American literature ultimately a national or transnational project? And given the diversity of cultures, traditions, and gender roles included within the rubric of “Asian America,” is there a way of speaking about or representing a unified Asian American experience?

This course introduces students to the work of Shakespeare in his first, great creative decade. It examines plays and poems written in the 1590s: the years when Queen Elizabeth I consolidated her power, when England established itself as a European naval force, when science and exploration began to challenge old beliefs and traditions, and when the study of the past became less a matter of legend and more a matter of history. We will focus close on five works written and circulated (though not necessarily first printed) in the 1590s: Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV Part I, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, and the Sonnets. Each of these works says something powerful about Shakespeare’s imagination, about the social and political life of the time, and about the relationships between that time and the historical and the legendary past.

LTEN 112

Victorian Poetry: What It’s About and How It Does It: 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.

The decades leading up to the Civil War marked an era of extreme political and cultural unrest in the United States, as mounting social divisions raised questions about the efficacy of the “American experiment.” In this course we will read work by authors, activists, and public intellectuals who imagined radical solutions to what they perceived as the prevailing problems of their era, be it slavery, colonization, gender discrimination, classism, sectionalism, or religious intolerance. Some of these thinkers envisioned ways that utopian communities, abolitionist organizations, and pantribal alliances could produce radical alternatives to the status quo. Paying particular attention to the writings of Native, Black, and women writers, we will focus our attention on a few of the most significant debates of the era and the ways literature intervened in those discussions. In doing so, we will also historically contextualize some of the concepts that dominate our own cultural discourse in 2021, especially abolition, (de)colonization, and (e)migration.

LTEN 154 The Americas

This course examines the cultural production—novels, poetry, theater, art, and music—of 20^th Century social movements in the United States through a relational study of race. With a focus on the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, we will examine the Chicano/a experience in relation to other similarly situated groups. As such, (and as proposed by historian Natalia Molina) we will attend to “how, when, where, and to what extent groups intersect.” Thus, our readings will draw from, among others, African American, Native American, Japanese American, and Puerto Rican cultural critics and artists. Our readings, discussions, and analyses will take up themes of gender, sexuality, race, class, language, culture, and identity as we explore the limits and possibilities for combined action. 

LTEN 159 The Americas

This course will trace and examine representations of “unruly” women in contemporary Latina/x literary and cultural production. We will consider how, for example, familial relations, traditions, and the performance of gender identities inform Latina womanhood and, thus, Latina girlhood. Reading novels, short stories, poetry, as well as visual and aural texts, we will analyze how representations of transgressive Latinas/x disrupt identities and identifications. The purpose of the class is to examine a multitude of Latina/x voices and perspectives that illuminate the heterogeneity of Latinidad or “being Latinx.” Readings may include works by Myriam Gurba, Karla Cornejo-Villavicencio, Alice Bag, and Jaquira Díaz.

LTEN 169 The Americas

The goal of this class is to address the ways that Asian American authors have used different literary genres to think through and express their experiences at the intersecting dynamics of race and gender. This quarter, we will be exploring works of short fiction, memoir/life writing, graphic novels, and stand-up comedy, including work by Mia Alvar, Thi Bui, Cathy Park Hong, Chanel Miller, and Ali Wong. We will outline and analyze the thematic and theoretical similarities and distinctions between these texts. 

LTEN 181 The Americas

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

In this class we will examine what the prison abolitionist scholar Angela Davis describes as the U.S. “slavery of prison” from the end of the Civil War through today’s prison industrial complex. Some questions of concern will be: What are the connecting links between chattel slavery and prison slavery? Why do prison narratives repeatedly invoke the antebellum period (slavery) in reference to supposedly post-slavery moments? What are the connections between colonial settler genocide, slavery, and prison slavery? What institutional, social, and cultural apparatuses inform America’s current status as the most incarcerating nation in the history of humankind? How do overlapping social structures such as capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, neoliberalism, and homo/transphobia inform strategies of criminalization across different time-periods? What forms of resistance have the imprisoned marshaled in order to combat regimes of terror, torture, familial dislocation, and re-enslavement? Through our engagement with prison narratives, songs, and testimonies, we will connect the everyday incidence of legal murder of criminalized black, brown, Indigenous, and poor bodies in the “free world” to the conditions of slow murder that prisoners endure under the prison industrial complex, a system that now incarcerates well over 2.3 million people both domestically and globally. Our readings of captive narratives will be supplemented by analysis of alternative cultural forms—e.g. prison blues, chain gang songs, hip-hop—that have been used by the enslaved and the incarcerated to give expression to (and resistance against) the experience of racialized, gendered, and classed state terror. 

LTEN 185 The Americas

(Open to All Years of Lit Majors) 

There is an exciting and wide array of career options for Literature Majors to explore, and students will think systematically about where their own strengths and interests lie for life after college.

We discuss graduate school, gap years, entrepreneurial opportunities, and hear from people who are making good use of their degrees.  Students collaborate with representatives from the Academic Internship Program and Career Services to acquire experiential learning, workshop their resumes and interview skills, and develop a "Career Action Plan." 

What strategies can help you leverage your training to get the edge in the hunt for jobs and advanced studies? Let's check them out!

The course will be divided into two distinct parts to study the novel Dangerous Liaisons (1782), the well-known eighteenth-century epistolary text by Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803), and to vet thereafter the film adaptations and interpretations that various filmmakers have proposed.

a. During the first four weeks of the course, several letters from the novel will be closely examined, so as to apprehend the novel’s structure, the arc of its characters’ development, gender representations, mores norms and sexual transgression –just a few short years before the advent of the French Revolution in 1789– and to ponder the question of what does constitute a “dangerous liaison.”

b.  During the following six weeks, students will evaluate film adaptations of the novel: Stephen Frears’s 1988 version (with remarkable performances by Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer,) Milos Forman’s 1989 version (with Colin Firth, Annette Bening, Meg Tilly,) and Roger Vadim’s early adaptation in 1959 (with Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philippe.) Cruel Intentions as adaptation in 20^th-century Manhattan by Roger Kumble in 1999 (with Sarah Michelle Geller, Ryan Philippe and Reese Witherspoon) will also be on our agenda. In the process, students will be introduced to methods and techniques of close analysis of cinema, as well as to questions of text-to-film transposition and film adaptation.

This course will be held in seminar style. It is open to advanced students (and interested graduate students as well.) Students will present a paper on the literary text for the midterm and another paper on one of the film adaptations for the second paper. (Music students may substitute one of the opera versions of Laclos’s novel.)

Note 1: If requested, discussion in French will be offered to French majors and minors, in overtime.

Note 2: The course will be counted towards the minor in Film Studies at UCSD.

LTEU 141 Europe

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Rereading the Russian Novel

LTEU 150B Europe

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

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 or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.

In this course we will read  texts and see movies produced by racial minorities in the French Republic, and will discuss their place and the challenges they face in French society. The list of authors will include Edouard Glissant, Faiza Guene, and others.

LTFR 141 French

LTFR 141 The Mediterranean

LTFR 141 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

2C is the last course 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 discussions of films. 

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.

The course will meet "LIVE" on ZOOM.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

This course is a survey of major issues in modern Korean history from 1945 to the present, including national division, the U.S./Soviet occupation, the Korean War, authoritarian rule, industrialization, and labor/agrarian movements. 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. 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.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104A Russian

LTRU 104A Europe

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Rereading the Russian Novel

LTRU 110B Russian

LTRU 110B Europe

LTSP 2A is an intermediate-level language-culture course that reinforces and enhances the development of the four communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and the students´ intercultural competency. Class activities are designed so that students can build up these skills and function at an intermediate proficiency level. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this class will provide students with ample opportunities to work in small groups and in pairs, while gaining confidence communicating in Spanish. As language does not exist outside of culture, students will learn the language considering the cultural contexts in which it is produced, using a  variety of texts (film, literature, journalism, professional documents, songs, etc.) and registers, from more formal to more colloquial, including the regional variations of the language. LTSP 2A is the first course of the intermediate level sequence at UC, San Diego and, consequently, it is followed by LTSP 2B and LTSP 2C.

LTSP 2C is the continuation of LTSP 2B and the final course in the intermediate level series (LTSP 2A, LTSP 2B, LTSP 2C).

This course is conducted entirely in Spanish and strives to refine the four skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) while increasing intercultural competence and critical thinking by connecting authentic material with students’ own life experiences. A greater focus is put on writing and translation skills to maintain the basic ideas, intent, style, and linguistic register of the original source. Students will be exposed to culture and literature using a variety of authentic materials including movies, radio, advertisements, written texts, etc. Collaborative learning activities such as peer review, pair and small group activities, and discussion will be emphasized to improve student written and oral communication skills and competency.

Prerequisites: LTSP 2B or equivalent or score of 5 on AP Spanish language or 4 on AP Spanish literature exams or consent of instructor. 

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 advanced 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 to each of the regional variations of the language.

Este curso aborda la producción crítica y cultural de la andinidad, desde una mirada genealógica. Con este fin, está organizado en torno a ejes temáticos y problemas relevantes que cruzan las diversas articulaciones históricas coloniales y postcoloniales de los Andes. En concreto, algunas de las textualidades que se estudian son: las crónicas virreinales de Guamán Poma de Ayala y el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega la prensa ilustrada (Mercurio Peruano, 1791-1795) el ensayismo de mujeres en el siglo XIX (Teresa González de Fanning y Clorinda Matto de Turner) la vanguardia andina (José Carlos Mariátegui, César Vallejo) literatura indigenista (José María Arguedas) pensamiento anticolonial indianista (Fausto Reinaga) crítica literaria andina (Antonio Cornejo Polar) crítica marxista, feminista y poscolonial (René Zavaleta, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Aníbal Quijano). Además, estas escrituras dialogan con registros audiovisuales y fotográficos que nutren el estudio y la crítica de lo andino y sus devenires semánticos.

LTSP 136 Spanish

LTSP 136 The Americas

En este curso exploraremos los temas mas salientes del florecimiento y transformación de la novela latinoamericana entre los siglos 19-21.  Enfocaremos en la novela en función de la forma de expresión literaria para representar y reflejar las crisis de la modernidad: el legado colonial los límites y las contradicciones de las revoluciones del s. 19 la división entre la vida campesina y la sociedad urbana la hegemonía / influencia de los Estados Unidos sobre las cuestiones hemisféricas la relación entre el populismo y dictadura y el proyecto para imaginar un futuro mas allá de la sociedad neoliberal y su penetración a las rincones mas íntimas de la vida personal. La base de evaluación va a consistir en 2 ensayos breves, reflexiones semanales a la lectura (escrita o videográfica), cuestionarios / quizzes ocasionales, y un proyecto final (crítico o creativo). 

LTSP 140 Spanish

LTSP 140 The Americas

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

LTSP 174 Spanish

Este curso aborda producciones culturales feministas recientes que escenifican una memoria crítica transgeneracional con respecto al trauma histórico causado por las dictaduras militares en el Cono Sur. Se revisan una diversidad de modalidades expresivas: testimonios, crónicas, novelas, poesía, cine y música, para explorar tanto la “memoria” como objeto de estudio como las ficciones que se oponen a la borradura del recuerdo y sospechan de su neoliberalización. Algunos registros que se revisan son, por ejemplo, los documentales Los Rubios (2003) de Albertina Carri y El edificio de los chilenos (2010) de Macarena Aguiló novelas como Mapocho (2002) de Nona Fernández y Sistema nervioso (2019) de Lina Meruane poemarios de Alejandra del Río y María Ester Alonso Morales canciones de Camila Moreno y Miss Bolivia, entre otros.

LTSP 175 Spanish

This course aims to give students an understanding of how Greek myths, philosophy, and religion relate to the neighboring cultures of the Near East, including Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia (today modern Turkey). While reading classical ancient Greek texts, we will draw comparisons between the literary traditions of the Greeks, Hebrews, Babylonians, and other populations. We will see how gods change their names when they move from one tradition to another, without losing their main characteristics (readers of Rick Riordan will definitely enjoy this class). The main question underlying the course is how similar myths and ideas were constructed by many cultures and how they were synthesized in ways that facilitated their continuity to our modern times.  In this regard, this class covers much of the cultural diversity of the ancient Mediterranean.

The textbook that we will use is:

López-Ruiz, Carolina. Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Myths in Translation. 2^nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Evaluation for this class consists of 2 midterm essays and a short final paper.  This class is asynchronous with an optional weekly discussion session.

We will read the myths, that is, the ancient stories, of the world, from the ancient Greek and Roman to the Norse, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese, Aztec, Maya, and Pacific Islander, myths of Africa, Asia and the Americas. Among these amazing stories are myths of creation, of the female divine, of male gods and heroes, of tricksters, and sacred places. Literatures of the World 100: Mythology can be repeated for credit if the material covered, that is, the subtitle, differs.

LTWL 100

How do we compare our analysis of our everyday dreams with the dreams represented in film? Our readings in film interpretation will run the gamut from Freud’s foundational Interpretation of Dreams, to today’s psychoanalytic theories and to research done in neuroscience so as to elaborate upon this question. Films proposed for extended study will include such classics as Alfred Hitchcock’s renowned Spellbound (1945) and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957). Other films which explore dreams and dream-like fantasies will extend to Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Chris Nolan’s complex dream-within-dreams in Inception (2010), Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) –whose main protagonist does not dream as her life experience is that of a lived nightmare –, as well as clips from several other contemporary films. These clips will illustrate the relationship of psychoanalysis and cinema which is at the heart of film theory and film history, as are several approaches to the semiotics of cinema. The films with explicit dreams, fantasies, and reveries will be studied with focus on the viewer/character and psychoanalyst/patient interactions, towards the interpretation of symptoms, anxiety, conflict, trauma, repression, et al.

The course will be run in seminar style around the main topics of dreams, dream interpretation, the flashback as art and convention, audiences’ involvement, patients and psychoanalysts in cinema, with rf. to the foundational texts of film semiotics (by C. Metz, L. Mulvey, G. & K. Gabbard). Lectures will also deal with methods of psychoanalytic theory applied to dreams in film – which involve psychoanalysts and semioticians from early Freud to current research in neuroscience (e.g. J. Fosshage.)

For their paper on close analysis and for their course project, students will consult with their professor to choose a specific film involving dreams, in conjunction with at least one of the authors selected from the reading list and from the course Reader (made available by week 3 through University Readers.) Several films will be suggested for such, during the first half of the course – e.g., Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), or his amusing The Science of Sleep (2006), among so many films where dreams appear.

Graduate students are welcome. The course will be counted towards the minor in Film Studies at UCSD.

LTWL 128

A long long time ago detective fiction tried to re-establish "order from chaos," and somehow show the positive side of law enforcement.

Contemporary murder mysteries have somewhat given up on that purpose, focusing on what is the dark side of the human experience, on societal problems, and of the difficulty (impossibility?) of trying to fully trust the representatives of the law. This genre has become a complex, sophisticated way of pointing out the "rot" between the facade of "law and order."

In this course we will read 6-7 murder mysteries from around the world, and we will watch a couple of films.

Students will take two short quizzes, give presentations, and write about an extra novel (not on list).

2 recorded lectures and a "LIVE" Zoom meeting every week.

Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photography has played a crucial role in literary texts and literature’s efforts to reflect upon its own modes of representation. Whether images are discussed, described or inserted within a text, they tend to influence and reconfigure the descriptive and interpretative eye. Photography, in effect, introduced new ways of representing the real, and complicated the relationship between truth, fact and fiction, in literature as in other realms. Photographic images can be used as proof of reality, trigger memory, and socio-political tools. Since they "capture an instant," they are also fragmentary and, as such, provide a great potential for narrative. What was the effect (on literature, reading, writing, viewing, etc.) of the emergence of photography and its ability to reproduce and widely diffuse images? We will be reading from the works of a number of authors on photography and viewing/interpreting images with them: Walter Benjamin, Italo Calvino, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Orhan Pamuk, Tina Modotti, Andy Warhol.

Rather than a truly organized movement, ITALIAN NEOREALISM was named such by film scholars. And, despite its continuing influence, what we have come to know as Neorealism was a rather short lived phenomenon. Nevertheless it did deeply influence directors and film traditions around the world. This course will consider the impact of Italian neorealism beyond the period of 1945–1952, its beginning and end, and beyond its own national and cultural borders and “intentions”. Neorealist filmmakers developed innovative and engaging narrative techniques that sought to bring to the foreground social issues and a redefinition of national identity. Beginning with Italian neorealist films we will then move on to view productions from India, Africa, China and other regions. We will explore neorealism’s complex relationship to its matrix and to the various national film traditions styles, and historical periods in which it manifests, in order to ascertain its impact and the ways that it continues to complicate the relationship between ideas of nation, national cinema, and national identity.

LTWL 180

“A video essay is a short online video which cuts together footage from one or more films in order to reveal new insights about them.” (Filmmaker Magazine)

The video essay blurs the boundaries between academic analysis and creative approaches to film criticism. The course will alternate between discussion seminars, technical workshops, and critiques of students’ projects. Students will produce four short video exercises and a final polished video essay. Taking the meaning of essay (“to attempt” or “to try”) seriously, the course encourages experimentation and play with form, style, structure, and mode of address. Our research-creations will draw on multiple senses of the essay: descriptive, poetic, personal, reflective, open-ended, and provisional that hold in tension the theoretical and experiential, visual and tactile, conventional and idiosyncratic, or didactic and meditative.

This multimodal course combines scholarly research with artistic practice in the study and production of the video essay. It thus breaks down the division between theory and practice. Previous experience with videomaking would be helpful but is not required. Course readings will include texts by scholars, critics, and filmmakers from different genres, periods, and national contexts. Units may include star studies, spectatorship, historiography, cinephilia, fandom, body genres, as well as copyright and distribution. Viewings may include work by Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Harun Farocki, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Isaac Julien, Agnes Varda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mark Rappaport, Kogonada, Tony Zhou, Catherine Grant, Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin, Kevin B. Lee, and Chloé Galibert-Laîné.

LTWL 184

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course studies "creative nonfiction:” works concerned with actual events, people, and places written with a special focus on language engaging personal views and experiences. Throughout the quarter, students will write three essays, one each on a person, place, and thing building on both discussion and readings, students will practice bringing to light observations, insights, and memories in compelling ways.

In this course, we commit ourselves to reading discussing, and creating beautiful works of short fiction. First, we study the elegant works of authors present and past for inspiration and instruction, being attentive readers. Then we use those examples to enrich approaches to our writing. In this course, students do not only develop their own piece, submitting and radically revising one completed story, but also focus on being a critic, in the very best sense, of the work of others. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

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

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course students will explore the form and function of the comedic essay by deconstructing examples of the style and attempting to write their own. Class times will be spent on brief lectures, large and small group discussions, writing time, and workshopping of student material. Authors covered will include Samantha Irby, David Sedaris, Scaachi Koul, David Foster Wallace, John Waters, Shirley Jackson and Tiffany Haddish, among others. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S BORDERLANDS

In this class, we will examine the cross-genre writing (essays, poetry, science and speculative fictions), artmaking, activism of Tejana thinker-tinker Gloria Anzaldúa. Closely reading Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, we’ll track Anzaldúa’s contributions to Latinx and Latin American studies, transnational ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, inter-American literary and cultural studies, border studies, disability studies, Native American and indigenous studies, and border studies (to name a few of the inter/disciplinary formations reshaped by Anzaldúa’s praxis). Finally, following Anzaldúa’s lead, you’ll crisscross the borders of the critical and the creative in sequenced course writing assignments. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

The course is an introductory study of cinema and religion. It explores how cinema depicts religion and spiritual experience. A number of films such as "La Dolce Vita" and "Under the Moonlight" will be studied to understand how cinematic and religious narratives and practices overlap and, at times, diverge in complex ways. Prerequisites: upper-division standing or consent of instructor.