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 literature 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 and film. The course will be conducted in a hybrid in-person and zoom format. LTAM counts towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTAM 111 The Americas

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

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTCS 172

This course presents an overview of key literary, cultural, and cinematic patterns in modern and contemporary China. By engaging in close readings of fiction, poetry, essays, and film, we will trace the changes that have occurred in China from the early 20^th century to the present. As we discuss various transformative moments in modern Chinese history, we will discover how the influx of Western ideas merges with persisting classical Chinese aesthetics to mold the form and content of modern Chinese literature, poetry, and thought. In addition, we will study several Chinese films so as to gain insight into the evolution of Chinese cinema, and also the ways in which the visual/cinematic is interconnected with historical, political and cultural events. We will discuss the May Fourth Movement (1917-1921) the evolution of women’s writing and thought the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and its aftermath the emergence of dissident writers in the post-Mao era and key writers of our contemporary era. Throughout the course, we will delineate the various modes of modernist innovation and experimentation that are taking place in Chinese literary and cinematic art. We will read all works in English translation, and all films will be in Chinese but have English subtitles.

LTEA 110C Asia

The course will zoom in on the uses of Chinese spiritual tradition in Taiwan films, to consider ways in which film directors complicate the regional-transregional cultural dialectics in the face of drastic social changes over time.  The films to be discussed include Happy Farmers (local wedding ceremony in Japanese Taiwan), Confucian Confusion (family value change under the KMT), Pushing Hands (Chinese soft power and Taichi to "Confucianize America"), Rebels of the Neon God (teenage subculture), Great Buddha + (new Buddhist cult and the techno elites), among others.  We aim to expand the horizon of sinophone cinemas.  Students can take this class to fulfill GE or Chinese minor requirements.

LTEA 120B

LTEA 120B Asia

This course surveys literatures written in Japanese from the late 19th into the 21st 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. Hence our use of the term “Japanophone” to help us explore the roles of colonialism, imperialism, and nationalism in Japanese language literary productions. Readings may include the works of Higuchi Ichiyo, Mori Ōgai, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Abe Kōbō, Yū Miri, Medoruma Shun, and Tawada Yōko. 

LTEA 132 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEA 143 Asia

Can literature build or topple empires? Is literature a business like any other, or does it transcend the logic of the market? Can anyone write literature, or is literary fame only accessible to those with the right family, gender, race, education, innate genius, emotional experience, or marketing savvy? Should literature represent entire nations, or reveal one individual's inner world?

These were pressing questions for British authors and readers between 1660 and 1832, a time period that included massive expansion in both literacy and the print industry, the birth of new genres like the newspaper and the novel, and the Industrial Revolution. Literature, as we will discuss, was intimately connected to politics, battles over the meaning and boundaries of the nation, colonization and anticolonial resistance, and attempts to both forge and suppress revolution. We will delve into the history of this particular time and place while considering how its afterlives shape our present: climate change, global capitalism, the US legal system, the ongoing colonial occupation of Indigenous lands in what is currently called North America, and contemporary forms of racial inequality both here and globally all have deep historical roots in this period, and we will read authors who observed, actively shaped, and sometimes resisted the formations of these powerful structures.

This class will offer an introduction to British literature of this tumultuous period, with particular focus on the period’s most important historical and political debates: slavery and the growth of the abolitionist movement, changing definitions of gender and the place of women in literary production, what counts as legitimate government, and the importance of class and economic inequality in shaping access to both cultural and political representation. At the same time, we will practice the fundamental skills of literary analysis, learn the vocabulary of literary form, and learn how (and why) to read and write like a literary scholar. Throughout, we will return to the very questions that preoccupy the authors of our texts: what is literature, what does it do in the world, and why does it matter?

In this survey of literatures written in the U.S. since the Civil War, we’ll take as our theme “Narrating Our Americas,” reconsidering the concept of “America” and the Americas as a way of posing a number of questions about the relationship between U.S. literature and American national identity.  In particular, we will trace the development of national consciousness across 150+ years, considering how literary texts, from late nineteenth-century populism to early twenty-first century popular culture, have constructed competing and often contradictory understandings of U.S. culture.   We’ll pay particular attention to the evolution of national identity in relation to major social and economic transformations such as industrialization, migration, and urbanization to explosive cultural developments like the introduction of mass consumer technologies of film and television and to radical political reorientations through broad-scale movements like anti-racist struggles, feminist movements, and workers’ rights.  Our goal will be to conceive of the literary in dynamic relation to the cultural and political history of the U.S. since 1865, to ask how these literary texts offer their own visions of U.S. history, and to consider how these visions might productively challenge and radically reshape our notions of Americanness in the twenty-first century.

Please contact instructor for course description.

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 are going to focus closely 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

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.  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.  Books are available through the UCSD Bookstore.

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.

Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is one of the most significant events in American literary history: the first book of poetry published by an African American poet, this book made Wheatley a celebrity across the English-speaking world. Published while she was still enslaved, the book not only circulated widely on both sides of the Atlantic, but also lent rhetorical power to the growing abolitionist movement—as well as contributed to the social and political pressure that most likely led to Wheatley’s own manumission. But Phillis Wheatley was far more than this one literary-historical event, and this course invites you to immerse yourselves in the poetry and legacy of a remarkable writer, while at the same time learning how to build your skills in literary and historical research in order to learn more about Wheatley’s life, work, and world.

In addition to delving deeply into the complexity and richness of her poetry, we will also learn about the world she inhabited and fought to change: we will discuss Wheatley’s place in a larger tradition of Black authorship and publication throughout early America and the Atlantic world, her responses to and transformations of English poetic tradition, her political engagement in both the struggle for the abolition of slavery and the events of the American Revolution, and the centuries-long legacy of her poetry as a crucial point of origin and inspiration for what the poet June Jordan called “the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America.” We will also situate her biography in a broader understanding of the world and communities she inhabited. From her childhood in Africa to her survival of the Middle Passage, her enslavement in Boston, her success in finding powerful patrons to support her literary career, her deep friendships with other members of Boston’s Black community, her later life as a free woman, her marriage to John Peters, and the literary career in which she persisted throughout her life, Phillis Wheatley (Peters)’s biography opens a window into the struggles, complexities, and contradictions of a revolutionary era. By reading her poetry alongside the work of historians, literary scholars, and contemporary poets who continue to be inspired by her, we will spend the quarter immersing ourselves in her world while also asking how a closer engagement with her life, works, and legacy might change our own. 

LTEN 176

LTEN 176 The Americas

In this course we will examine Arab-American literature, a genre comprising writings by authors of Arab descent in the United States. We will interrogate what this categorization means for its participants and the works they create. What is the history of Arab racialization in America? What is the relationship between Orientalism and American Empire? How do authors navigate the intersections of race, queer  and/or female identity? What are the varieties of “Americas” they inhabit and represent? And how do these lived realities inform artists’ creative output? The objective of this course is to introduce students to the cultural history and breadth of Arab-American life and its literature. 

This course will explore representations of failure in Asian American cultural productions. We will analyze how fiction, nonfiction, poetry, music, and/or film address the complexities and nuances of failure–including discussions around managing external and internalized expectations, working within systems that are setting one up to fail, and the role of failure in growth, healing, and the creative process.

LTEN 181 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEN 185 The Americas

This course examines the forms and functions of modernist drama in postcolonial Africa. What critical roles do African dramatists play in the historical moment of decolonization? How do they use their art to stage the social drama of colonization and decolonization? In this class, we will study the emergence of modern African drama, its diverse forms and critical functions, and African dramatists’ aesthetics and social visions. We will read plays by Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Tawfik al-Hakim (Egypt), Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona (South Africa), Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin (Ethiopia), Kateb Yacine (Algeria), Werewere Liking (Cameroon/Côte d’Ivoire), Ola Rotimi (Nigeria), Ngūgī wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo (Kenya). At the end of this course, students should be able to describe the development of modern drama in Africa, scrutinize the fundamental elements of different genres of African drama, and analyze African playwrights’ critique of the racial capitalist, imperialist, and patriarchal logic of colonial domination.

LTEN 189 Africa

In the 20th Century Italian writers "rediscovered" short stories, a genre they had basically neglected since the Middle Ages in favor of poetry, drama, novels, narrative poems, and non fiction.  

We will mostly (but not exclusively) focus on family and women, with a week dedicated to surreal stories for a change of pace.  The course is in English, BUT students who need credit in Italian Language, please contact me to find out how.  For any questions, please contact me at demarchi@ucsd.edu.

2 quizzes, mini presentations, and a final paper.

LTEU 100 Europe

For this analysis of the work of a giant of XXth Literature, the course will be divided into three parts:

1) Close readings and interpretations of excerpts from Proust’s Swann in Love (Un Amour de Swann) and from Time Regained (Le Temps Retrouvé,) which are the quasi-bookends “novels” from his vast opus In Search of Lost Time (À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.) Swann in Love features the narrator’s account of his protagonist’s slow descent into the abyss of regressive jealousy and paranoia until his suffering and grieving abate, while Time Regained  conveys his epiphany —that “Time” destroys, while “Memory” retrieves, and “Art” saves— about the intermittences of the heart, the secrets of identity, art and death, in an immense fresco of the history of his times.

2) A close analysis of two major films made about La Recherche. The first “text/novel” was transposed into film by German film director Volker Schlöndorff: Swann in Love (1984), with Jeremy Irons and Ornella Muti, cast as Swann and Odette. The last “text” was made into the film Marcel Proust’s Time Regained (1999) —with a spectacular cast— by Chilean-French director Raoul Ruiz.

3) Proust and his literary context: An attempt at the delineation of some of the analogous stylistic, existential and aesthetic researches which seem to define the contemporary epochal writers of the first half of 20^th century literature: Marcel Proust (1871-1922) James Joyce (1882-1941) and Virginia Woolf (also 1882-1941) –  Freud (1856-1939) will also be present. 

LTEU 141 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEU 154 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. The class will continue to study grammar, vocabulary and other aspects of the German language.  This course is conducted entirely in German and emphasizes the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. The class will focus on cultural readings of historical content as well as current events and will engage in discussions of films.

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 bring 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.

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

Third Year Korean 130P (4 units) is the third part of the advanced Korean. Students in this course are assumed to have previous knowledge of Korean, which was taught in the Korean 2A, 2B, 2C, 3A and 3B courses. Students in this course will learn high-advanced level skills in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Korean, as well as expand their cultural understanding. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to acquire and use more vocabularies, expressions and sentence structures and to have a good command of Korean in formal situations. Students are expected to read and understand daily newspapers and daily news broadcasts. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to do the following in Korean:

Speaking: Students are able to communicate with accuracy and fluency in order to participate fully and effectively in conversations on a variety of topics in formal and informal settings from both concrete and abstract perspectives. They discuss their interests and special fields of competence, explain complex matters in detail, and provide lengthy and coherent narrations, all with ease, fluency, and accuracy. They present their opinions on a number of issues of interest to them and provide structured arguments to support these opinions.

Listening: Students are able to understand speech in a standard dialect on a wide range of familiar and less familiar topics. They can follow linguistically complex extended discourse. Comprehension is no longer limited to the listener's familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of more complex structures and linguistic experience within the target culture. Students can understand not only what is said, but sometimes what is left unsaid.

Reading: Students are able to understand texts from many genres dealing with a wide range of subjects, both familiar and unfamiliar. Comprehension is no longer limited to the reader's familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of complex structures and knowledge of the target culture. Students at this level can draw inferences from textual and extralinguistic clues.

Writing: Students are able to produce most kinds of formal and informal correspondence, in-depth summaries, reports, and research papers. They demonstrate the ability to explain complex matters, and to present and support opinions by developing cogent arguments and hypotheses. They demonstrate a high degree of control of grammar and syntax, of general vocabulary, of spelling or symbol production, of cohesive devices, and of punctuation.

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

LTKO 130 Korean

LTKO 130 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

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 150 Russian

LTRU 150 Europe

Course is taught in Spanish, emphasizing the development of reading ability, listening comprehension, and writing skills. It includes grammar review, weekly compositions, and class discussions. Prerequisites: LISP 1C/1CX or LISP 1D/DX, or score of 3 on AP Spanish Language Exam, or placement result of 3 or 4 the Language Placement Exam—Spanish, or consent of instructor.

Continuation of LTSP 2B, with special emphasis in writing and translation. It includes discussion of cultural topics as well as grammar review and composition, further developing the ability to read articles, essays, and longer pieces of fiction/nonfictional texts. Prerequisites: LTSP 2B or score of 5 on AP Spanish language or 4 on AP Spanish literature exams or consent of instructor.

Spanish for native speakers. Designed for bilingual students seeking to become biliterate. Reading and writing skills stressed with special emphasis on improvement of written expression and problems of grammar and orthography. Prepares native speakers with little or no formal training in Spanish for more advanced courses. Prerequisites: native speaking ability and/or consent of instructor.

Second course in a sequence designed for bilingual students seeking to become biliterate. Special emphasis given to improvement of written expression, grammar, and orthography. Prepares bilingual students with little or no formal training in Spanish for more advanced course work. Prerequisites: LTSP 2D and/or consent of instructor.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Esta clase es un curso de escritura y lectura superior para hablantes de herencia o bilingües. Estudiantes de “herencia” son aquellos que crecieron hablando español en la casa o en otros contextos. Como tal LTSP100B es el curso que continua la secuencia LTSP2D y el LTSP2E. El curso asume que lxs estudiantes ya saben su propia variante del español o del Spanglish y simplemente busca familiarizarlxs con la escritura y lectura de español en un registro académico. Para ello, los materiales de lectura y escritura buscan reflejar las problemáticas de las comunidades Latinx en Estados Unidos y ponerlas en relación con las comunidades y culturas de América Latina 

El curso tiene el propósito de preparar a aquellxs estudiantes interesados en desarrollar sus destrezas de escritura, lectura por razones laborales o profesionales (i.e. desarrollar proyectos de investigación en América Latina, trabajar para un sindicato o una ONG en la frontera etc.).  

Los objetivos del curso son los siguientes: 

• Aprender a hacer resumenes escritos de textos complejos 
• Escribir textos autobiográficos, expositivos, descriptivos y argumentativos. 
• Aprender como hacer una presentación oral formal en español. 
• Identificar y leer textos complejos de diversos registros (ensayísticos, narrativos, jurídicos, coloquiales periodísticos, sociológicos etc.) 
• Desarrollar conexiones entre la historia y la cultura latinoamericanas y sus diásporas en Estados Unidos

LTSP 100B Spanish

Este curso ofrece una introducción al México del siglo XIX, con un enfoque en la interconexión de la producción cultural con la historia (Independencia, intervención extranjera, conflictos étnicos) y la política (proyectos de nación en disputa). A través del periodismo político, las llamadas publicaciones para señoritas, la tradición del “corrido”, además de novelas y cuentos, exploraremos la noción de “literatura” y las ideas de nación (quiénes pertenecen, quiénes deben ser excluidos) que se formulan a lo largo del siglo. Algunas expresiones de la cultura visual --mapas, tarjetas de visita y pinturas (con sus mensajes sociales, étnicos, etc.)-- contribuirán al debate en torno a la cuestión racial, de género y clase social en el proceso de formación nacional.

LTSP 135A

LTSP 135A Spanish

LTSP 135A The Americas

This course is taught is Spanish. It focuses on a transhistorical and transregional study of cultural products from what we know today as “Central America” and its diasporas. We will study literary texts ranging from the Popol Wuj to testimonio, short fiction, and poetry. We will also delve into media such as contemporary film and music from Central America, as well as English language texts and performance by Central Americans in the United States. 

LTSP 138 Spanish

LTSP 138 The Americas

Taught in Spanish. This course examines 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 does the comparative study of the histories, literatures, philosophical texts, and popular cultures that link Asia and Latin America transform how we imagine global contemporaneity?

LTSP 155 Spanish

LTSP 155 The Americas

LTSP 155 Asia

A modo de un taller performativo, este curso busca que lxs estudiantes reflexionen y ensayen las posibilidades estéticas que se articulan en el vínculo entre escritura e imagen. Con este objetivo, se aborda el debate teórico en torno a la imagen fotográfica y su uso performático para ponerlo en relación con una serie de producciones escriturales de la cultura transandina. A partir de diversos modelos, la idea es que lxs estudiantes desarrollen proyectos poético-narrativos breves y exploren diferentes soportes.

De forma semanal, el curso está organizado en tres partes: 1) Cátedra: esta instancia consiste en un diálogo dirigido por la profesora en torno a las textualidades que nos sirven de modelo para la fase creativa de cada semana. 2) Creación: instancia de producción escrita y/o audiovisual, de acuerdo con el modelo o tema que semanalmente estemos trabajando. 3) Taller: reunión para comentar entre pares los textos de forma analítica.

La modalidad de evaluación es procesual, por lo tanto, es muy importante realizar cada una de las actividades del taller. Al final del curso, cada estudiante preparara una antología con todos sus trabajos. 

LTSP 166 Spanish

LTSP 166 The Americas

En este curso estudiaremos narrativas culturales (cine, literatura, testimonio, artes visuales, etc.) que indagan en los efectos de la transición ecológica en América Latina. La hipótesis central de la clase es que el inminente agotamiento del petróleo, junto con los efectos del cambio climático, están produciendo en América Latina una intensificación de los procesos de extracción de minerales y recursos naturales que se montaría sobre dinámicas de saqueo colonial y dependencia económica de larga data (ecocolonialismo).  

La pregunta central de la clase es ¿cómo contar la crisis climática y la transición ecológica hacia una economía no dependiente del petróleo desde América Latina? En este sentido pondremos en cuestión las lógicas y la óptica del norte que tienden a ver la electrificación de la economía o las energías renovables como la única solución al colapso ecológico.  

Frente a estas narrativas, el curso pone el foco en películas como Para recibir el canto de los pájaros (Jorge Sanjinés, Bolivia), CAM liberar una nación (Chile), los cuentos de José María Arguedas (Perú), los proyectos de arte del colectivo feminista Mujeres Creando (Bolivia) o los testimonios de las comunidades indígenas Kolla del norte de Argentina afectadas por la extracción del litio. Estas narrativas exponen la sombra colonial de la nueva economía verde. Los estudiantes deberán escribir “response papers” semanales, un trabajo de medio semestre y un trabajo final.

LTSP 174 Spanish

This course will introduce students to the relationship between literature and systems of power in Greek and Roman culture. We’ll tackle foundation myths, xenophobia, imperialist literatures, satire, and propaganda, among other topics. Authors covered will include Herodotus, Thucydides, Horace, Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, and Juvenal. The class will include a final essay-based exam and a short essay on the continuation of these themes in contemporary graphic novels, film, tv, or video games. 

The seminar considers what movie goers do at the movies. Why do some viewers escape into the world of the film while others resist and challenge what they see? Why do some audiences "talk back" at the screen while other audiences sit in rapt silence? This quarter’s focus will be on “body genres”: comedy, melodrama, pornography, and horror. Films may include Modern Times (1936), Imitation of Life (1959), Deep Throat (1972), and Titane (2021). Students will learn foundational skills in film analysis.

Among the amazing stories we will read are myths of creation, of the female divine, of male gods and heroes, of tricksters, and of sacred places. We will read the myths, that is, the ancient stories, of much of the world, from ancient Greece and Rome to Norse, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese, Aztec, Maya, and Pacific Islander accounts, the stories of peoples from Europe, Africa, Asia--West and South and East--and all the Americas. Attention will be paid to anthropological and historical context, collection and reception of myths, colonialism and resistance, indigenous peoples’ claims to their land, as well as the great diversity of story-telling among human beings. 

LTWL 100

This course examines the narration of history and historical time in the Arabic novel. In other words, what is history in, and the history of, the novel in Arabic. This course will follow the multiple strands of this question. We will start by examining the emergence of the modern Arabic novel, followed by the politico-historical forces shaping its form and content and, ultimately examining how the Arab novel constructs (or departs from the construction of) chronological historical time.  In this class we will think about the genre of the novel by examining its historical relationship to colonialism, Empire and an indigenous Arab literary heritage.

In this course, we will begin by studying the European Age of Enlightenment (1685-1815) and discern the key ideas, values, and transformations that emerged from this crucial period in history. We will then trace how these ideas “traveled” around the world and took root in the United States, Japan, and China. In order to accomplish this, we will study American Enlightenment Thought before turning to the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) and the Chinese May Fourth Movement (1917-1921), which is often called “The Chinese Enlightenment.” Throughout, we will use an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, comparative approach to see how these diverse cultural contexts are interconnected with one another. We will also read a variety of literary texts to think about how Japanese and Chinese intellectuals, writers, artists, and filmmakers responded to modern Western ideas while simultaneously initiating unique modernist literary, aesthetic, and cinematic responses. Finally, we will conclude by studying the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which was one of the great disasters of the modern era. By exploring Chinese avant-garde fiction and film of the contemporary period since the 1980’s, we will discover how today’s writers and filmmakers are looking back to the modern past while engaging in new forms of (post) modernist innovation, experimentation, and imaginative cultural creation.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTWL 157

This course introduces students to literary texts written by African women from the 19th to the 21st century. In this class, we will explore how African women intellectuals re-write Africa in their narrative fiction, poetry, and drama. How do they challenge the colonial patriarchal hold on the African imagination? We will reflect on this question by examining how women writers critique the representation of women in colonial literature and early African writing. We will also examine how they engender African feminist discourses on power and culture in their intersectional imagination of gender, sexuality, race, class, and nation. Our readings will focus on representative literary texts by African women writers from a variety of cultural and linguistic geographies. They may include texts by Nana Asma’u, Adelaide and Gladys Casely-Hayford, Alda Espírito Santo, Noémia de Sousa, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Abena Busia, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Bessie Head, Mariama Bâ, Werewere Liking, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Micere Mugo, Koleka Putuma, and Chimamanda Adichie, among others. In this class, students will learn how African women use their literary writing to reinterpret history, reimagine culture, critique power structures, and deconstruct social identities.

LTWL 160 Africa

'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are' (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)

Food, cooking, and eating are often used as powerful metaphors for our existence, and lend themselves to narratives that represent life, growth, creativity, and more.

In this "book club-style" course we will read 7 texts and watch 2 films in which food is a powerful element of both the narrative and its meaning, and we will see how they do not only reflect the work of a particular creator, but also of the society that produced it.

2 quizzes, mini presentations, and a final paper.  For further questions, please contact me at demarchi@ucsd.edu.

Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu acquired rapidly an international stature – from the Semaine de la Critique’s prize in Cannes for Amores Perros (2000) to multiple Oscars awards for two of his most recent films. His work displays a mastery of film narrative and of film form, along with a personal film style. In the unfolding of his films, he enjoys playing at the cutting edge of intersecting lives and intersecting narrative accounts. He investigates cross-geographies, intermedialities, existential life-and-death struggles, interpersonal and meta-historical violence, trauma and loss, grieving and depression. In so doing, he also manifests a keen search for his characters’ motivations (helped by a few prominent actors of our times) and a specific philosophical vision about persistent struggle. We shall focus on an in depth study of Babel (2006), 21 Grams (2003), and Birdman (2014) which earned four Oscars (director, film, screenplay, DP), wherein the philosophical aspects of postmodernism are underscored, (perhaps also Biutiful 2010). Excerpts and clips from his first film, Amores Perros (2000) and The Revenant (2015, – which also earned Oscars for director and screenplay), will provide bookends to the class discussions.

As usual, precise methods of film analysis – frame and shot composition, shot-by-shot analysis, narrative programs, filmic figures and filmic poetics, film genre, deep structure, integration of specific films into the history of cinema, and philosophy-through-cinema —will be emphasized during the first weeks of the term, along with research in the PoMo Zeitgeist. Students will explore the case of the compelling effect and style of Iñárritu’s films.

“Veteran” students will be asked for work building upon their previous research.

LTWL 183

Psycho! Aliens! Exorcist! Wizard!  

Hollywood is often called the Dream Factory. Yet, it has also created nightmares. Especially since the 1960s, the heightened awareness to socio-political issues in the American society prepared the emergence of the so-called New Hollywood Cinema. New directors were not shy depicting the deep-rooted problems in realistic, or even hyper-realistic, manners. This course closely examines the styles and the motifs of films as well as the historical and socio-cultural contexts of them to understand what it meant to make and watch films in the late twentieth century. The primary goal of this course is to learn how to read formal and historical aspects of films and develop the ability to talk about films in critical terms.

LTWL 184

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This poetry workshop will focus on the poetic line. At the center of our conversation will be ways to understand the line’s meaningful effects and its potentials for engaging with our world and helping us toward insight. Working with the poems of contemporary poets, we will explore various approaches to versification and begin to build a vocabulary to help us think about and discuss the technology of the poetic line. Through readings and writing prompts, class members will have the chance to experiment with the poetic line, including traditional forms like the abecedarian, ghazal, and sestina as well as free verse techniques and practices.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course will read contemporary literary texts that experiment in both verse and prose forms within a single collection. We will consider literary traditions, strategies, and methods such as the zuihitsu, haibun, serial poetics, (un)documentary poetics, autoethnography, and erasure as a prosimetric practice. Looking at what Fred Moten describes as the “little edges” between lyric and discourse, our conversations will focus on the intersections of critical theory, non- fiction, and poetry, as we engage both with the lyric essay and essaying in verse. Speaking of such hybrid forms, Cole Swenson writes, “any mixing of forms presumes that the interaction of disparities is a positive thing—that unalikes ignite, that they create sparks that illuminate all their parts...” We will attend to these frictions, these sparks, these provocations, in hopes of lighting fires within our own work. Course participants will have the opportunity to generate new work in forms that model our readings, as well as to present on a specific book from our required texts. You’ll also have the opportunity to attend readings by contemporary writers, participating in a larger literary community outside of the classroom. Incorporating seminar style discussion, student presentations, and small peer-group workshops, this course will require your attendance, participation, and collaboration.

This class introduces creative writers to the craft of writing about the self. Memoir has become the genre of our time. Self-expression and self-definition have provoked ways of developing narrative technique, imagistic effect, and personal voice that, in the past, had largely emerged through novelistic fiction. Learning to write about oneself enables a level of creative reflection that raises questions about memory’s relationship to truth, history’s relationship to personal life, and society’s relationship to the individual. We will be reading selections from several memoirists who have redefined the genre over the past generation (as well as a couple of originating “classics”). Each week of class will try to balance creative reading with creative writing: that is, discussing a text, learning from its techniques, and responding through writing assignments that will be workshopped by the class as a whole.

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. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course investigates technoscience, as the long-standing global human production of technologies and sciences, and its relations with religion. We will examine a range of literary and cinematic works from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner to unravel overlapping influences of technology, science and religion in defining, challenging and expanding the concept of human personhood.

Please contact instructor for course description.