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 include social and cultural paradigms 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 aesthetic strategies have Caribbean artists used to creatively engage their environments? Primary literary texts will be complemented by music and visual art workshops.

LTAM 111 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTCH 101 Chinese

LTCH 101 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this course we will discuss the power dynamics that affect the way we view language in society and the resulting portrayal of language in popular culture. We will place a large emphasis on minority culture and language in the context of the US, but will also explore these relationships on a global scale.

This course presents a survey of the most important movements and developments in modern and contemporary Chinese poetry. We begin by studying Chinese New Poetry, which emerged during the Literary Revolution (1917-1922) that was a key component of the May Fourth Movement. We then trace the modernist masters of the 20th century, seeking to delineate what precisely “modernism” means, and how Chinese poets engendered unique forms of Chinese poetic modernism. Throughout, we will consider these themes and important questions: Why is poetry in particular so fundamentally important to Chinese literature, culture, and history? How do modern and contemporary poets remain connected and indebted to classical Chinese poetics and thought, even while they are also strongly influenced by Western texts and ideas? What role does poetry play in the 20th century, a time that was marked by the arrival of modernity, revolution, as well as the experience of trauma on a large scale? Can we hear the voices of women poets, and how are they distinct from their male peers? And finally, how does the art of poetry intersect with calligraphy, visual art, photography, film, and other forms of media in oftentimes remarkable and revealing ways?

LTEA 100B Asia

This course surveys the rich tradition of science fiction from China, exploring how authors have used the genre to speculate on society, technology, and the future. Beginning with authors such as Ye Yonglie and Tong Enzheng, who wrote science fiction during the socialist period, the course will primarily focus on contemporary Chinese sci-fi works produced in the 21st century by writers like Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang, Han Song, and Chen Qiufan. Their stories fuse scientific imagination with Chinese politics, offering critical views on technological development, environmental crises, social transformations, and the fate of humanity.

LTEA 110C Asia

In this course we will view Chinese-language films from Greater China covering a wide range of historical periods and subjects. The films screened in this class will be studied as reflections of their respective social realities as well as the filmmakers’ comments on and interventions of such realities. In addition, we will study these films within the general cinematic tradition and analyze them as examples of an art form with its own unique language. We will familiarize ourselves with cinematic concepts, techniques and film theories, and try to use them to “read” those Chinese films like an expert. The goal of this course is therefore threefold: to equip students with basic knowledge of the rich body of Chinese cinema, to learn about Chinese history and culture as reflected through these films, and to analyze Chinese cinema as an aesthetic form and a social practice.

LTEA 120A

LTEA 120A Asia

Against the Enlightenment - This period (1660 - 1832) is often half-facetiously said to be the start of a lot of issues we face today: systemic racism, global capitalism, industrialization and climate change, to name a few. Typically, this era of literature is taught as the one that formulated the individualized narratorial “I” subject, reflecting and constructing the idea of the western liberal individual. Yet, the literature itself is complex and not streamlined in this understanding and construction of self. In this course, we will ask: how did this period conceive of or understand “the self”? How did it construct the self in relation to “the Other”? How did the British (or perhaps, English) individual understand themself in relation to the racialized “Other”? Were there any authors who challenge these narratives? How do these literary constructions connect to the sociopolitical and ideological climate of the time—and how do these questions relate to our present day?

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?

In this seminar, we shall study a selection of Renaissance poets celebrated for their depiction of complex human emotions. Our enduring goal will be to understand how the poetry moves—on its own poetic feet, but also us, across the centuries. We shall explore how words, lines, associations, prosody, metre, and matter make layered meaning.

Previous study of early modern poetry is welcome but not required.

Authors considered include Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, John Donne, George Herbert, Anne Bradstreet, and John Milton.

LTEN 110

This course interrogates the very idea of the “Victorian”—who is a Victorian? by which logics? to what benefit or at what cost? and to what ends?—with the help of a plurality of poets and poems, as well as theories and anthologies of poetry. We’ll read widely and adventurously across the works of (among many others) Toru Dutt and Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Sarojini Naidu. We’ll explore the Victorian obsession with classical poets like Lucretius and Sappho the excavation of Gilgamesh the popularity of translations such as Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám the legacies of abolitionist poetries the emergence of rebel verse traditions and the proliferation of experimental forms and genres (such as the dramatic monologue and the verse-novel). Who, or what, is “Victorian” in this context? What does it mean to claim a particular poet or poem as “Victorian”? What’s at stake in such claims? These are some of the questions we’ll answer with help from galaxies of personae, monsters, abandoned gardens, krakens, sunken ships and so much more that inhabit Victorian poetries.

Over the past few years, the genre of “dark academia” has emerged as a popular literary and aesthetic trope emphasizing the legacies of violence that haunt the hallowed halls of elite educational institutions. In this class, we will explore recent literary works in this genre to explore the ways they engage these tropes alongside considerations of race, class, gender, and colonial histories.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Over the past decade Asian American Media Studies have pointed out that “Asian American” as both an identity category and a genre of cinema are politically necessary fictions. To understand this is to grasp the changing subjectivities of our globalized era and the different struggles for representation that various people of color have engaged in from the very beginnings of cinema. In this class we will grapple with the history of American cinema through the history of Asian American migration. Oceanic corridors and the ocean as the contact zone of racial identities are crucial to this film history. We will watch a wide range of films that engage with the complex juridico-racial meanings of being American, from the earliest available transpacific film to some of the recent Asian American journey films. Concepts and methods of film history — stardom, transnational, performance, genre, archive — inform racial passing, immigration, diaspora, gendered racialism, postcolonialism, and memory — the conceptual concerns of the course. We will explore the transoceanic corridors of film to offer recognition of both shared and differing human subjectivities in the era of globalization of culture and influx of new migrants to ultimately decenter American cinema’s outdated and persistent whiteness.

LTEN 181 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEN 183 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEN 185 The Americas

This course will explore the literature of European Romanticism, with a particular focus on German-language writers. We will read fairy tales and works inspired by them, consider new attitudes toward nature and the course of human history, encounter characters swept away in reckless passion or drawn toward darkness and death. Readings (all in English translation) will include a mix of poetry, prose, and the first part of Goethe’s Faust, his most famous work and one that best captures the spirit of Romanticism.

Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio and Paradiso -While most students are familiar with Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso are not as widely known in the US, because of an undeserved reputation of being less approachable and more doctrinal. In fact, Purgatorio and Paradiso are very creative, poetic, emotional, and extremely accessible in a contemporary translation by Robert M. Durling. In this course we will explore the two canticles that follow Inferno, accompanying Dante on the uphill part of his otherworldly journey. There will be 2 quizzes and a final project.

LTEU 140 The Mediterranean

LTEU 140 Europe

This course focuses on Russian-language literature, film, art and culture in the new millennium (from the early 2000s to the present day), incorporating a crucial discussion of the late Soviet period and the 1990s. Beginning with the collapse of the USSR, cultural life in Russia has been characterized by ceaseless change, but also the reemergence of familiar patterns, tendencies and problems. Much contemporary Russian literature and art is caught up in complicated negotiations with the Soviet past and its social, cultural and political institutions, while also looking ahead to an uncertain, often menacing future. In an effort to better understand Russia today, we will examine the stories that Russia tells about itself—to itself and the outside world—as well as stories others tell about Russia. We will read novels, short stories, plays and poetry, watch films and discuss visual and performance art that engages with gender and sex, politics, activism and violence, family and national identity, internet communication and other language problems.

LTEU 154 Russian

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, comic strips 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. Attendance is required 4 times a week. 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 films 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.

 Dans ce cours, nous étudierons la fiction spéculative de langue française. Nous lirons quelques romans (d’auteurs comme Jules Verne, Rosny aîné, Waberi…) et visionnerons quelques films. Ce travail nous permettra de réfléchir sur quelques-unes des dimensions de la fiction spéculative: la fiction philosophique, la science-fiction, la distopie, l’afrofuturisme…

LTFR 141 French

LTFR 141 The Mediterranean

LTFR 141 Europe

LTFR 141 Africa

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.

In Italy, food is culture, it is history, identity, and it is art. To thoroughly understand Italians, it is important to understand their connection to their cuisine. In the third phase of 2nd year Italian we will work with grammar points (conditional, subjunctive, hypothesis), we will practice Italian conversation, watch and discuss a long film about an Italian family over almost 40 years, and continue our conversations about food. Two quizzes, 2 oral presentations, and a final project.

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.

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, 130F and 130W 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 130P Korean

LTKO 130P Asia

Students in this course will learn advanced and superior level Sino-Korean vocabulary and characters, skills in reading and understanding advanced and superior level Korean reading materials, and expand their understanding of Korean culture. Upon completion of this course, students are expected to have acquired an expanded vocabulary, knowledge of various expressions using Sino-Korean vocabulary and characters.
Sino-Korean vocabulary and characters necessary for advanced and superior level of knowledge in Korean. Sino-Korean characters are used differently from same Chinese characters used in contemporary China in terms of pronunciation, meaning, and word formation.
Sino-Korean words represent over 70% of Korean vocabulary in advanced and superior level. Since most modern Korean is written phonetically in hangul however, the semantic connections between related words are not readily transparent to most learners without Chinese character instruction. This course can help students retain new Sino-Korean vocabulary over a short period of time.

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

LTKO 135 Korean

LTKO 135 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

This course focuses on Russian-language literature, film, art and culture in the new millennium (from the early 2000s to the present day), incorporating a crucial discussion of the late Soviet period and the 1990s. Beginning with the collapse of the USSR, cultural life in Russia has been characterized by ceaseless change, but also the reemergence of familiar patterns, tendencies and problems. Much contemporary Russian literature and art is caught up in complicated negotiations with the Soviet past and its social, cultural and political institutions, while also looking ahead to an uncertain, often menacing future. In an effort to understand Russia today, we will examine the stories that Russia tells about itself—to itself and the outside world—as well as stories others tell about Russia. We will read novels, short stories, plays and poetry, watch films and discuss visual and performance art that engages with gender and sex, politics, activism and violence, family and national identity, internet communication and other language problems.

LTRU 150 Russian

LTRU 150 Europe

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

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

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

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

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

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

For students who learned Spanish at home and/or who went to school in a Spanish speaking country. This course allows students to expand their oral, reading, and writing academic proficiency in Spanish and, through class discussions, promotes critical thinking in a relevant cultural context for Latinx Students. Additionally, students will explore a variety of cultural, literary, and writing genres. This course has the purpose of preparing students to work in a professional context in Spanish.

LTSP 100F Spanish

Este curso se propone abordar la historia y la cultura brasileña desde una perspectiva genealógica. Pone especial atención en las trayectorias teóricas y críticas que se han desarrollado en esta importante región de América Latina desde el siglo XIX hasta el presente. Asimismo, se hace cargo de situar diversas textualidades creativas en las formaciones culturales características de cada periodo histórico. El objetivo es analizar las condiciones de posibilidad de un campo de saberes conflictivo y heterogéneo cruzado por las tensiones propias de una sociedad poscolonial y posesclavista.
Se espera que lxs estudiantes adquieran una visión introductoria, pero no por eso menos compleja, que les permita reflexionar de manera crítica y descolonizadora en torno a la producción estética y cultural de Brasil.

LTSP 134 Spanish

LTSP 134 The Americas

Asia, Latinoamérica, y el Transpacífico. This course is designed for students with advanced proficiency in Spanish, but English will be used for some readings and parts of our discussions. “Asia, Latinoamérica, y el Transpacífico” offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Transpacific Studies through a focus on the historical and sociopolitical contexts that bring literary, intellectual, and media productions in Latin America and Asia into contact and tension.

Este curso ofrece una introducción al campo interdisciplinario de “Estudios Transpacíficos” con respecto a los contextos históricos y sociopolíticos que relacionan a producciones literarias, intelectuales, y mediáticas entre Latinoamérica y Asia a través de sus puntos de contacto y tensión.

LTSP 155 Spanish

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 169 Spanish

Este curso tiene por objetivo caracterizar la plural articulación de los feminismos en América Latina desde 1990 en adelante, especialmente en la región andina, el Cono Sur y Brasil. Se analiza cómo en este ciclo se trama el deseo de una nueva politicidad despatriarcalizadora, anticapitalista, antirracista, anticolonial y disidente (cuir/queer) que pone en jaque la posibilidad de Estados coloniales neoliberales o “posneoliberales” con perspectiva de género.
Se espera que lxs estudiantes adquieran una visión panorámica sobre la teoría crítica feminista, sus modalidades y políticas del texto en la región. Esto en el marco de un diálogo con las corpo-prácticas desplegadas en la calle, el video experimental, el cine, la fotografía, la literatura, y otras luchas feministas por el sentido en el campo de batalla de la cultura y la política.
Los métodos de evaluación combinan formas tradicionales (quizzes y ensayos académicos) con otras que exploran lenguajes creativos.

LTSP 175 Spanish

This course delves into the narratives of US-Mexico-Central American migration and borderlands throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. We will conduct a panoramic analysis to understand how Central American civil conflicts, the NAFTA agreement, the ‘drug war’, and post 9/11 policies, among other political disputes, have forced migration, exile, and diaspora. Issues to be explored include geographies used to deter mobility (transboundary rivers, forests, seas, deserts) racial politics as subtle forms of exclusion bureaucratic apparatuses governing irregular temporalities rhetorical tropes regarding how the figure of the migrant is portrayed migrant communities challenging notions of nation, law, citizenship, nationalism, identity and belonging while confronting colonial acts of violence, dispossession, and expulsion.
By drawing on an interdisciplinary approach that combines cultural studies, feminist/decolonial theory, and ethnography, students will not only analyze a wide range of contemporary literary and non-literary productions but also gain practical skills in critical analysis and cultural understanding. The course will be conducted in English/Spanish, and readings will be in Spanish and English as well. Some primary materials include Claudia Hernández, Claudia Morales, Yuri Herrera, Tatiana Huezo, Óscar Martínez, Olga Chacón, Regina Galindo, Marcela Zamora, Sergio González Rodríguez, Vicky Funari, Jennifer de León, Maya Chinchilla, Javier Zamora, Cinthya Santos Briones, Marco Saavedra, Ivan Mona Lisa Ojeda, and Myriam Gurba. A public orientation in the syllabus will also allow students to establish connections with local activists and transborder artists working with community-based projects, providing them with real-world applications of their learning.

This course will introduce students to Roman literature, which we’ll approach via two interrelated themes. First, the relationship between literature and systems of power in Roman culture. We’ll tackle foundation myths, xenophobia, imperialist literatures, satire, and propaganda, among other topics. Second, we’ll discuss Roman accounts of gods, myths, heroes, and the universe. We will ask how mythology and philosophy helped Romans make sense of their place in the world. Authors covered will include Horace, Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Apuleius, and more!

Who were the Egyptians? What was life like in ancient Egypt? How did they view themselves and the world around them? To answer these questions, this course will take a whirlwind tour covering some 4,000 years. To break up our historical tour de force we will often pause to look at themes that make Egyptian civilization so worth our collective attention. This includes mythology, language and literature, the afterlife, and the legacy of ancient Egypt today. May be taken for credit up to three times as topics vary.

This course introduces the study of children’s literature from a “grown-up” scholarly perspective through a selective survey of cultural production for children over the course of the twentieth century in Europe and the Soviet Union. We will focus on children’s literature through the lens of politics and society in the USSR, interwar and post-WWII Germany and the Eastern bloc countries. By reading children’s books and theoretical writings about children and childhood, we will follow political trends including nationalism and internationalism, national socialism and fascism, socialism and communism and even back to capitalism and nationalism again. Some of our guiding questions include: what counts as children’s literature? How do different societies and political formations (including “the state” and “the family”) conceive of “the child”? Who is children’s literature for? What is the relationship between children’s literature and propaganda? Materials will include picturebooks, plays, YA-level fiction, poems and films. As a culminating assignment, students will produce their own children’s book.

How do we compare our analysis of our own everyday dreams with the dreams represented in film? Our readings in film interpretation will run the gamut from Freud’s foundational Interpretation of Dreams, —which may be considered a major semiotic open system— to today’s psychoanalytic theories and research done in neuroscience. 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, e.g. in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Chris Nolan’s complex dream-within-dreams in Inception (2010), Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers, or Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) —whose main protagonist may not be dreaming though her lived experience is nightmarish, —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/or therapist/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, M Solms.) 

This course introduces the foundations of East Asian ethical and philosophical thought. Examining human ethics from different, sometimes mutually opposing perspectives, we will read and discuss key thinkers of the Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Legalist and Neo-Confucian traditions. In addition, we will also learn about Shintō, Japan’s native tradition Zen (Chan) Buddhism and Bushidō, the way of the Japanese samurai. We will read primary sources of classical texts from China, Japan and Korea, as well as secondary scholarship that will help us to understand these texts and their continued importance to culture, life, literature, and thought today. In addition, we will critically evaluate key philosophical-moral ideas with respect to our own lives and concerns of our contemporary world, such as government, education, the environment, and human rights. Comparisons to Western thought are encouraged, as are discussions of current events and students’ own values and approaches to life.

The 1970s and 1980s were decades filled with unease and rage among the youth of urban India. Bollywood mobilized the anger of the masses and gave them an "Angry Young Man," who manifested their anger on-screen while fighting against enemies: state and feudalism. The specific nexus of anger and subaltern politics showcase how dissatisfactions and resentments of India's many minoritized groups have often ignited movements for social change and progress. This course closely examines the styles and the motifs of the "angry films" of Bollywood and beyond, 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 in postcolonial India, a period marked by a crisis of governmentality. 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 180

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) made more than 50 films, was much admired by his peers, Kubrick, Scorsese, Antonioni, Allen, et al., and is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema. The films selected for this course focus on his mise-en-scènes of psychological introspection, self/other conflict, and metaphysical themes, often backgrounded by situations of solitude or war, with representations of anxiety, sexual identity, faith, crisis, trauma, alienation and depression, and attempts at the mastery thereof.

Several of his best known films will be studied in close analysis so as to assay the power of his creative work and his iconography today in the history of international cinema, e.g.:

- The Seventh Seal, which features the iconic predicament of a medieval knight who plays chess with Death during the XIVth-century Black Plague

- Bergman’s masterpiece study of the elusive psyche in Persona

- The exploration of a character’s disintegration and descent into madness in Through a Glass Darkly

and The Silence

- Wild Strawberries, whose conflicted protagonist’s dreams and flashbacks highlight his struggle with loneliness and alienation

-  The rise of fascism in Germany in The Serpent’s Egg, and wartime humiliations and trauma in Shame.

Along with clips from other Bergman films —such as The Virgin Spring, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander — to synthesize Bergman’s philosophy and film philosophy and his affinity with the psychoanalytic realm in his continuous exploration of his characters’ psyche, (and his own.) At the end of this course, students should be able to define Bergman’s style, to debate the influence of Bergman on contemporary issues and to situate the director within the history of international cinema.

LTWL 184

Please contact instructor for course description.

Creative non-fiction 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 on the one hand that it is "not untrue,” it is also "creative," which suggests that there is more than one way to be "not untrue." This course will be an introduction to varied approaches to creatively communicating the “not untrue” through readings, generative writing exercises, and peer-critique in a writing workshop format.

A workshop for students with some experience and special interest in writing fiction. This workshop is designed to encourage regular writing in the short forms of prose fiction and to permit students to experiment with various forms. There will be discussion of student work, together with analysis and discussion of representative examples of short fiction from the present and previous ages.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this workshop, students will practice skills of narration, characterization, and style with particular attention to the demands of nonrealistic genres, especially the challenge of suspending disbelief in fictional environments that defy conventional logic. Readings and lectures will accompany writing exercises.

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Intercultural Poetics  -“Living in a multicultural society, we cross into each other’s worlds all the time,” observes the writer, scholar, and activist Gloria Anzaldúa. Complicating the notion of multiculturalism while also foregrounding border art and culture, the writer and performance artist Guillermo Gómez Peña argues, “Whenever and wherever two or more cultures meet—peacefully or violently—there is a border experience.” He goes on to assert, “In order to describe the trans-, inter- and multicultural processes that are at the core of our contemporary border experience as Latino artists in the United States, we need to find a new terminology, a new iconography and a new set of categories and definitions.”

Building from the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Gómez Peña, this writing course will explore how such crossings and meetings may inform, as well as find form within, our poems and poetic practice. The intercultural poetry that we will read for this course will focus on diasporic and transnational experiences—experiences that are influenced by multiple cultural spaces as well as exchanges across cultures and languages. Poetry assignments will ask students to draw upon their own memory as well as personal and family narratives to engage with cultures and cultural acts, to work critically and inclusively through experimental techniques, and to work across languages and translation. Students will have the opportunity to generate new poems from writing prompts, to participate in small group workshops—both giving and receiving critical feedback—and to present on one of our course’s required poetry books. Moreover, students will also be required to participate in UCSD’s larger literary community by attending and writing about New Writing Series events.

Angry women - In this advanced workshop, we will analyze experimental narratives by self-defined "angry women" in the late 20th century, submit responsive works-in-progress, and discuss revision and publication ideas for course participants' nonstandard narrative-based (or anti-narrative) literary art. Course readings include writing by Audre Lorde, Monique Wittig, Kathy Acker, Suzan-Lori Parks, Yoko Ono, Diamanda Galas, Kathleen Hanna, Bhanu Kapil, kari edwards, and others.

Writing for Performance is a craft course that explores artist writings, scripts, and scores for performance—that traveling, unstable, embodied, rehearsed, ritualistic, theatrical, ephemeral practice that functions as a “vital act of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity,” as performance studies scholar Diana Taylor has written.

Distinctions will be made between playwriting for theater histories of Poets Theater, performance art and artist video and conceptual approaches to devised, group theater-making. An overview of the field of performance studies, the closer study of events in the public sphere as performance, and cultural practice as a ‘way of knowing’ will guide us to avant-garde radical forms: happenings, installations, body art, dadaism/collage, cabaret. We will read Antonin Artaud, Michel de Certeau, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Kellie Jones, but also practice Pauline Oliveros’s concept of Deep Listening and consider the intersection of land art and performance as visualized in the work of Ana Mendieta, Cecilia Vicuña, Nancy Holt and others. Schools of thought will guide us as we study creative output, from histories of Black Mountain College and Judson Dance to feminist and queer theory to disability and embodiment studies, Black feminist and Latinx performance, and North American “experimental” playwriting.

The second half of the quarter will be treated as personalized tutorial, with each student devoting focus to 4-6 plays by one playwright, performer, collective, or theorist, depending on interests and instructor recommendation. Visits to performers' studios in UCSD Visual Arts and to the Archive for New Poetry in the library will supplement your own research, writing, and … performance! The stakes may be high! Come with a generous spirit.

Please contact instructor for course description.

A writing, reading, and critical-thinking workshop designed to produce nonfiction pieces that fall outside the limits of the essay form. Included are travel narratives, memoir, and information-based writing that transform their own materials into compelling literature.

Ekphrasis - This course will present one “history of writing,” vectored through the lens of ekphrasis—a summoning and summing up of actual or notational artworks and/or perceived experiences through language. Assigned texts will be far-ranging and include Homer’s “Shield of Achilles,” excerpts from John Hollander’s The Gazer’s Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art and W.J.T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory, John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” Page duBois’s “Reading the Writing on the Wall,” Monica Youn’s “Study of Two Figures (Pasiphaë/Sado),” Gregory Pardlo’s “Framing Our Ground,” Fred Moten’s “The Gramsci Monument,” and Brenda Cárdenas’s “Placa/Rollcall,” among other works. Additionally, we’ll turn to site-specific installations for ekphrastic inspiration. Specifically, students in this class will produce writing in dialogue with holdings in UCSD’s own Stuart Collection in anticipation of a final two-part mobile class reading.

Ecopoetics -This course will focus on the emerging field of ecopoetics. As a site of investigation of human and more-than-human interactions and an exploration of epistemology and ethics in a time of environmental emergency, the theorists and case studies we will read offer varied (and sometimes conflicting) approaches ranging from celebrations of language’s ability to connect us with a world beyond human culture to Juliana Spahr’s broadside that “nature writing [is] immoral.” We will supplement our theoretical readings with selected creative works to see how creative expression might harness and manifest these ideas.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.