This course presents a comparative survey of Caribbean literature from the Hispanophone, Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean. Given these islands' linguistic, political and cultural diversity, we look for what Antonio Benítez-Rojo calls the “dynamic states or regularities that repeat themselves” in the region. These repetitions help us focus on key social and cultural movements that have emerged in response to the region’s dynamism and status as one of the world’s most sought-after imperial frontiers. The course is grounded in a socio-historic approach to cultural studies and we investigate literary movements by tracing critical historical paradigms. These paradigms include plantation slavery, emancipation and its subsequent new labor arrangements, the quest for nationhood and its frequent association with the role of public intellectuals, and the most recent debates around post-coloniality, language use, and transnational U.S. identities. What debates inform each author's arguments and equally important, what aesthetic strategies have Caribbean artists used to creatively engage their environments? Primary literary texts will be complemented by music (including salsa, reggae, calypso, hip hop) and film. The course will be conducted in a hybrid in-person and zoom format.

LTAM 111 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

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

In this course, we will read representative short stories from the Han dynasty to the late Qing, to examine ways in which "small talks" help shape Chinese novelistic discourses and cultural imaginaries.  The texts will be in English translation, with originals in classical Chinese provided as optional reading.  Students can use this course to fulfill the requirements for advanced Chinese.

LTEA 110A

LTEA 110A Asia

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

LTEA 120A

LTEA 120A Asia

Multiethnic South Korea and Diasporic Korea 

LTEA 141 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 course surveys an expansive body of literature and culture, beginning with pre-contact material and ending just before the U.S. Civil War. In this class we will take up various notions of myth and destiny to unpack the many ways writers articulated American identity and culture. The term “American,” however, is a slippery one. What precisely does it mean? Who counts as American? Is America the same things as the United States? What makes something “American literature”? Throughout the quarter we will turn to speeches, fiction, poetry, personal essays, maps, art, and periodicals to work through these questions. In addition, we will pay particular attention to the ways nation-formation, slavery, colonization, and industrialization shaped understandings of the United States, specifically, and the notion of “America” more broadly. 

Slavery, American Apartheid, and Black Liberation

This course will engage various forms of Black cultural production ranging from the nineteenth century through the present. In doing so we will pay particular attention to the way in which incarceration, state violence, and Jim Crow apartheid have been rendered—often in an oppositional and/or transgressive way—within the written, sonic, visual, and political practices of Black people in the US. Some artistic/historical moments that will be covered will include slave narratives and songs, anti-lynching discourse, the “Harlem Renaissance,” the Black Arts Movement, Black Feminism, and the narratives and music of the Black Liberation movement through the prison industrial complex. Questions to be considered throughout the term will include: What aesthetic/political strategies have Africans in the US deployed in the face of hundreds of years of enslavement, imprisonment, and state violence? What does a wide-ranging glance at Black cultural production in the US from slavery to our current era of mass incarceration allow for in terms of a genealogy of our current moment of structural anti-blackness? In what ways do our texts, songs, and films underline the structural roles of white supremacy and patriarchy under US capitalism? 

The course will explore the big questions that Shakespeare posed to his audiences, on topics that still matter very much to us today—including love, war, power, race, sex, mortality, good and evil.  Assigned readings will encompass a variety of plays from the first half of his career. We will pay close attention to Shakespeare’s masterful way with words and images, with complex plots and compelling characters but at the same time we will connect our close readings of Shakespeare’s dazzling language to broader interpretive investigations of these texts and their large-scale patterns of meaning.  As much as possible, the class will view and discuss film versions and adaptations of the plays in order to understand these texts as scripts intended for live performance. 

LTEN 112

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course will focus on the works of Virginia Woolf.  One of the most celebrated modernist writers, Woolf’s experimental writing explored themes of memory, intimacy, and relation.  We will examine how Woolf’s novels and non-fiction interrogated and challenged traditionalist understandings of gender and sexuality from a feminist lens, how her writing expresses a critical perspective on the fragmentation of modern society, and how she grappled with Britain’s class structure and its position as global imperial power.  We will also study how Woolf reimagined the novel in English as centrally concerned with subjectivity and interiority, but in a way that brought into play and questioned the role and impact of history on the experiences of everyday life.  

This course surveys the range of American poetry from Anne Bradstreet to Amanda Gorman. We will begin by focusing on regions and regional poetic traditions: e.g., the New England traditions of the Colonial and republican periods the 19^th century Midwest New York poets California poets. We will look at some major authors (Bradstreet, Wheatley, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Ginsberg, Lowell, Plath, Ashberry Gluck) the impact of African-American verbal and musical arts the social function of poetry in America (public oratory, private confession, political action, aesthetic artifice) and the role of school and college teaching in the making of poetic canons and interpretive approaches. Two writing assignments: the first, a short (5-7pp) analysis of a single major poem of your choosing the second (7-10pp), an exploration of how anthologies and textbooks represent particular poets or poetic traditions. No exam.

MWF: 11-11:50AM.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEN 180 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? 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, sexualized, and classed state terror.

LTEN 185 The Americas

At the same time one of the most important contemporary Italian writers, well known internationally also thanks to movie adaptations of her novels, as well as for her writing style, included by Time Magazine among the 100 most influential contemporary cultural figures, at the same time Elena Ferrante's identity is still a mystery which spun numerous theories.  The Neapolitan Novels are a saga of 4 novels that tell the story of a long friendship between two women, whose lives developed in very different directions.

In this course we will read the 4 novels, in their English translation, and watch part of the Italian television adaptation.  Students will follow the protagonists from childhood to maturity, learning about not just these two women's personal struggles and victories, but also the social climate in which they lived, and the fascinating city of Naples, beautiful, scary, and mysterious at the same time.

Questions?  Write to me at demarchi@ucsd.edu

LTEU 140 The Mediterranean

LTEU 140 Europe

Discussions about gender and sex in the United States often assume an openness about sex and sexuality that is associated with French culture. We will examine a variety of texts from the past 100 years to trace dominant and counter-cultural trends in France have promoted or critiqued traditional notions of femininity, masculinity, and heterosexuality. From Simone de Beauvoir to #balancetonporc, we will study how French engagements with sex and power have changed over time, and discuss what we can take from these debates to inform our own views about gender and justice.

LTEU 141 Europe

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

Emphasizes the development of effective communication in writing and speaking. Includes a grammar review. A contemporary novel and various media sources 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. Students who have completed 2C can register in upper-level courses. Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTFR 104 French

LTFR 104 The Mediterranean

LTFR 104 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

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.

This online course is the second part of a two-quarter sequence introducing students to the practice of speaking, reading, and writing Italian with an emphasis on linguistic bridges between Italian and Spanish and cultural bridges between Italian and Spanish/Latin American cultures. We examine such topics as popular music (cantautori italiani and nueva cançión), folklore, intercultural solidarity between Italy and Latin American political movements, and the migration of indigenous traditions from Mexico to Italy. The bridge-building method enables heritage and second-language speakers of Spanish to accelerate the acquisition of competence in Italian while consolidating and strengthening competence in Spanish. Students may complete first-year Italian in two quarters and move to more advanced language study in Italian or Spanish.

Dalle lasagne al tiramisú.  Il nostro viaggio nella lingua e nella cucina italianana continua, con altre ricette, nuove regioni da esplorare, 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.

Spero proprio che questa volta il corso si incontri in presenza!

Per ogni domanda, scrivermi a demarchi@ucsd.edu

Same as above.

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.

Same as above.

Same as above.

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

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104A Russian

LTRU 104A Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 100A Spanish

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 100B Spanish

Dentro de las varias esferas de la economía, política, sociedad, cultura, religión, y redes sociales, se menciona con frecuencia el impacto del “patrimonio colonial” sobre el presente y porvenir de los países latinoamericanos. ¿En qué consiste este patrimonio, y a qué se debe su gran influencia a lo largo de los siglos? Si tomamos en cuenta que la conquista de México [Nueva España] y la destrucción de Tenochtitlán tuvo lugar entre 1519-1521 y que las guerras de independencia latinoamericana se cumplieron en 1826, ¿no parece inverosímil rastrear los problemas del presente a la sombra de un pasado distante? Este curso explorará la persistencia del patrimonio colonial mediante una lectura de varias obras de literatura (novelas) producida en los ss. 19-20. Abordaremos varias facetas de este patrimonio, incluyendo (pero no limitadas a): los vestigios de las regiones fronterizas, las raíces del extractivismo y explotación, las paradojas de la fe cristiana, y la supervivencia de las comunidades indígenas.

LTSP 116

LTSP 116 Spanish

LTSP 116 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 171 Spanish

This course aims to give students an understanding of how Greek myths relate to the neighboring cultures of the Near East, including Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia (today modern Turkey). While reading ancient Greek and Near Eastern texts, we will establish comparisons between the literary traditions of the Greeks, Hittites, Babylonians, and other populations. We will study how gods change their names when they move from one culture to another without losing their main characteristics but acquiring new meanings. The main two questions underlying this course are why different cultures developed similar myths and what messages myths conveyed to the people who lived in the ancient world.  This class covers an important part of the cultural diversity of the ancient Mediterranean.

The text books to be used are:

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

George, Andrew, trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

LTWL 100

In this course, we'll look at representations of the vampire from early appearances through to more recent depictions such as Twilight and True Blood. Lectures will include discussion of many aspects of vampires and vampirism, including the "historical vampires," Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory, the European vampire "epidemic" of the eighteenth century, medical explanations for early cases of vampirism, and folk traditions surrounding vampires. We will also consider the vampire in relation to other famous legendary beings, especially the werewolf. We will explore why vampires are such popular figures, considering them as cultural symbols that have and still do allow writers an incredibly rich way to explore themes of death, immortality, power, racism, sexuality and addiction.

The objective of this course is to introduce students to both the tradition and modern iteration of speculative fiction in Arabic literature. What does it mean to assert a modern genre of Arabic science fiction? Through close analyses of Arabic fantasy/speculative fiction/sci-fi works (in translation), students will interrogate the origins of this modern genre and its relationship to “Western” science, progress and modernity. The texts upon which we will focus originate primarily from Iraq, Egypt and Palestine, including pieces of short fiction, novels, theatre and film.

LTWL 124 The Mediterranean

LTWL 124 Africa

Films about “relationships” constitute a quasi “genre” in the history of cinema. This course will vet the psychology and æsthetics of modern/postmodern “relationships.”

Filmmakers have found myriad ways of questioning the definition and the unfolding of “relationships”, —wherein couples meet, love, fight, part, or meet again, in the everyday as well as during war or traumatic circumstances — and  worked hard e.g. in decontructing sexual jealousy. Or they challenged us with their creative portrayals of a wide spectrum of “attachments” by presenting the arc of protagonists’ characters in their convoluted relationships.

Excerpts from classics or cult films will highlight a few conflicted relationship entanglements. Film analysis will extend to clips from Mike Nichols's Closer (2004), his masterpiece about  crisscrossing couples – played by C. Owens, J. Roberts, N. Portman and J. Law–, contrasted with his cult film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), François Truffaut’s French New Wave classic and cult film Jules & Jim, Woody Allen’s self-destructive characters in his classic Manhattan (1979) contrasted with his later and stylistic Celebrity (1998), or his morally tragi-comic Match Point (2005), David Lynch’s identity and gender identity crisis in Lost Highway (1997) and (his not so complex) Mulholland Drive (2001), Stanley Kubrick’s study of the aggressive use of dreams and fantasies in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Lisa Cholodenko's tormented women lovers in High Art (1998), Paul Schrader’s postmodern lovers lost in an uncanny Venice in The Comfort of Strangers (1990).

Excerpts from a few other clips from more current films will also be included.

As usual, precise methods of film analysis – shot composition, shot-by-shot and sequence-by-sequence analysis, narrative programs, – will be emphasized during the first weeks of the term. During the second half of the term, filmic figures, film genre, deep structure, integration of specific films into the history of cinema, and filmic poetics will be underscored so as to explore /Relationships/ films in their cinematic and psychological interweave. “Veteran” students will be asked for work building upon their previous research.

Note: Course counts for Film Studies Minor.

LTWL 184

LTWL 184

This course introduces many of the basic elements of contemporary short fiction, including memorable characterization, vivid imagery, compelling and consistent narration, energetic narrative structure, and other tools of fiction-craft. Emphasis will be placed upon two things:

• Learning to write from your most unfettered imagination
• Learning the basic engineering tools to sculpt these wild writings into shapely, dynamic short stories through a variety of creative draft and revision assignments.
• Learning how to read fiction in both draft and published form not only for meaning, but for the behind-the-scenes literary techniques that result in a story’s effectiveness.
• Learning how to finish your stories and to present them in a way that allows a reader to most deeply and profoundly experience the fictional world you’ve created.

Course participation requires intensive reading and writing every week of up to 50-100 pages. There will be quizzes on stories, terms, and concepts in addition to weekly readings, fiction craft exercises, and analytical papers.

Participants will read and study writing by established contemporary short fiction writers, including both conventional and experimental approaches to ‘realist’ stories about regular everyday life, conceptual stories, and ‘speculative’ stories about other worlds and realities. Writers will learn draft-development and critical feedback techniques by sharing, writing about, and discussing weekly works-in-progress.

Course participants should be available for the required New Writing Series literary readings (LAB) that take place throughout the quarter on some Wednesday evenings 5PM-6:30PM.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course, we'll explore the ongoing evolution of the common categories of genre fiction - science, fiction, fantasy and horror - to hybridize and reinvent themselves to include the surreal, the slipstream, and the fabulist. We’ll read example fiction texts and craft essays, and allow these texts to inform writing that is then workshopped in small groups.

Areas of linguistic friction, where multiple languages and discourses butt up against each other, vie for dominance, accommodate each other, and evolve, abound in a world stitched together by colonization and migration. Where different identities, modes of being, socio-economic relations, or knowledge discourses encounter each other, language falters, stutters, but always retools itself and in that retooling has the potential to alter the parties involved and generate entirely new identities and bodies. We will read a wide variety of texts that, both in form and in theme, explore these frictive/productive points of contact, and we will write our own pieces that explore places where multiple languages and discourses intersect, looking for new and inventive language to adequately imagine and express a frictive world.  Knowledge of foreign languages is not necessary.

Both creative nonfiction and science aspire to the “truth,” some accurate modeling of the world around us (and within us).  Both depend on careful observation and reality-testing, whether by experimentation or through an ideal of narrative verisimilitude. Yet both also require imagination for discovery.  How can science power insightful narratives about the world?  How can the craft of writing nonfiction illuminate and communicate the work of science? In this course students will be reading a wide variety of writing across all genres that addresses science in creative ways, and then take cues from those readings to develop their own pieces of writing about science. Science students with an interest in creative writing and creative writing students with an interest in science are equally encouraged to register. 

Creative nonfiction has emerged as a third genre alongside fiction and poetry in the field of creative writing.  The only one defined negatively, as "not-fiction," meaning that on the one hand it is "not untrue,” and that on the other hand it is also "creative." This suggests both that truth (aka the “not untrue”) is something we generate rather than simply receive or transmit, and that there is more than one way to be "not untrue." This course will explore varied approaches in creatively communicating the “not untrue,” including: observation, in which a faithful rendering of the world the writer encounters is a key concern, though we will quickly come to see what a complicated and contested ground this can be essay, in which we privilege an examination of the internal life and processes of the writer’s own mind memoir, in which we use the artifacts of our lives as a tool through which to interrogate the nature of memory and vice versa and lastly, the lyric mode, in which experimentation pushes at the envelope of what might be considered “not untrue.” 

Please contact instructor for course description.