Please contact instructor for course description.

LTAM 110 The Americas

The course looks at the relationship between love and time in contemporary romantic comedies. It examines movie couplings that follow traditional life courses and those that reject straight chronology altogether. We will consider the rom-com’s privileging of heterosexual courtship and explore alternative intimacies, such as adultery and gay relationships. Films may include Pillow Talk, I Give It A Year, 50 First Dates, Weekend, The Lovers, and Ðể Mai Tính (Fool for Love).

How do we define the sea? As a resource, a global commons, a route? Maritime networks have served as catalysts for individual mobility, cultural and economic exchange, exploration and colonization throughout history. In this course, we will consider the sea as a subject and a conceptual space in contemporary world literature and film. At the crosscurrents of maritime studies, multilingualism, and postcolonial theory, we will examine topics such as language politics, border spaces, and alternative histories of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

This course asks, “What can the theories of globalization, transnationalism, and diaspora contribute to the study of same-sex eroticisms in the cinema?” To help us answer this question, we will base our investigation on a corpus of films drawn from across the globe(mostly from non-US contexts) that deal with non-normative sexualities. In doing so, the course disrupts the developmental model of Euro-American queer studies and politics and their concomitant privileging of media visibility as the sign of political progress. By drawing attention to other in/visible modalities of difference that invariably inflect sexuality—such as race/ethnicity, class, gender, region, and nationality, the course aims to offer a more expansive framework for understanding the transnational circulation of images, bodies, and ideologies. Directors may include Deepa Mehta, Pratibha Parmar, Frances Negrón Muntaner, Lino Brocka, Eytan Fox, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Zero Chou, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

LTCS 172

This course will explore representations of violence, and violent representations, in American art: film, photography, performance, sculpture, music, and literature, with an emphasis on visual culture. Class discussions will revolve around the relationship between ethics, politics, and art, with special attention paid to the following questions: What historical instantiations of violence—such as colonialism and slavery—inform the heterogeneous practices of artistic creation in the Americas? Is violence an inherent part of the act of creation? Does art thematize, enact, or subvert violence?

LTCS 173

In this course we will read a number of representative short stories from the Han dynasty to the late Qing, to examine ways in which “small talks” and tall tales shape Chinese novelistic discourses and cultural imaginaries.  We shall consider how these stories help constitute the essential components of human capabilities development in the pursuit of happiness, drawing on a set of traditional values and concept metaphors like “loyalty,” “filial piety,” “compassion,” and “justice” as the norms. In addition to reading most stories as selected by Ma and Lau in their remarkable anthology, we shall go over a great number of ghost stories as put forth by Pu Songlin.  Stories will be in Chinese original and in English translation.

LTEA 110A

LTEA 110A Asia

What makes a woman a “bad girl”? This course focuses on cinematic and media representations of rebellious women and feminist movements in Japan during the twentieth and twenty-first century and their interactions with political philosophy, Marxist theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, and gender studies. Particular attention will be given to strategies for reading media representations, film theory, and philosophical texts by women in the twentieth century. 

LTEA 138

LTEA 138 Asia

This course examines various popular cultural productions such as films, music and music videos, and TV dramas, from modern Korea, including colonial Korea under the Japanese rule and North and South Koreas from the post-1945 era.  It is a survey of the key events and issues of the Korean peninsula in the modern era as represented by popular culture. We will pay attention to the following issues: Japanese imperialism and war mobilization, the national division and the Korean War, labor and democratization movement, family and gender relations, multiethicization of South Korea, and the Korean Wave. We will also include a few North Korean films as well as South Korean and American representations of North Korea in popular culture. 

LTEA 142

LTEA 142 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEA 152B 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?

This course presents a survey of American literature from the pre-colonial period to the years leading up to the Civil War.  We focus on the conflict and collaborations of several “national” cultures, as warring British, French and Spanish settlers fought for control over the continent in what would become the United States. From Puritan and Native American oratory, to captivity and travel narratives, to early poetry, novels and periodicals, we engage questions about the very nature of how “literature” and “American” were defined during the period. Texts are supplemented with early maps, and visual images.  Special attention is paid to the historical contexts of the revolutionary period, the rise of slavery, gender roles, and forced Native American removals in a hemispheric context. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course introduces students to the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, the great medieval English writer of both comic and spiritual narrative. We will focus on selections from The Canterbury Tales, read in Middle English, the form of the language in which Chaucer wrote at the end of the fourteenth century. We will spend some time learning this form of English, and we will spend some time with Chaucer's verbal style. But Chaucer is hard to teach these days: his stories sometimes hinge on sexual exploits, male prowess, female subservience, and explicit bodily functions. We will try to explore this kind of material in the historical context of Chaucer's time: views of women, men, God, politics, and what people thought was funny. Nonetheless, Chaucer is also a writer of great spiritual devotion. How can we hold these two features of his work together? That is our challenge. The course welcomes students from all backgrounds. There are no prerequisites other than an openness to a literature that will test our own sensibilities. Requirements: two short papers, take-home final essay exam.

LTEN 107

From our morning coffee or tea to our chocolate desserts, the food we consume every day is imported from all over the world, and bears centuries of global history. This course examines the cultural meaning of food—from its production to its consumption—in the context of the early history of the British Empire. We’ll learn about some of the most important economic forces of this period, tracing the roots of modern finance back to the 17th-century spice trade, contemporary concerns about sustainable food production back to the human and ecological devastation of early colonial agriculture, and the phenomenon of consumer boycotts to their early history in abolitionist campaigns against sugar. At the same time, we’ll consider how literary texts engage with the aesthetic properties of taste: how did writers develop new aesthetic strategies to describe sensory experiences—from the taste of a fresh pineapple to the high of opium—that circulated globally in unprecedented ways? How did the Chinese import of tea become so central to the idea of Englishness? How can the history of food shed light on the histories of race and gender? How might we read the textual records of food for traces of the lives and experiences of people who grew and made the food, people who were displaced by colonial agriculture, or people who fought back against the violence at the root of this global food system?

LTEN 120

In this course we will read some of the more strange, scary, and weird examples of early U.S. literature and discuss how gothic narratives of haunting, murder, sleepwalking, and the uncanny might help us to better understand U.S. politics and culture of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. Our discussion will be driven by three main questions: What might the gothic tell us about the fears and anxieties of a nineteenth-century U.S. reading public? How does the gothic as a literary genre contend with the real-life horrors of slavery and colonization? And finally, why does early U.S. gothic literature continue to have an enduring influence on popular culture?

LTEN 152 The Americas

This course will explore representations of pandemics in modern American fiction, including work by Don DeLillo, Colson Whitehead, Louise Erdrich, and Ling Ma. We will explore how these authors use the conceit of an imagined pandemic in order to highlight the fault lines that run through contemporary understandings of race, place, and capitalism, and to get us to consider ways of imagining life outside these systems.

LTEN 159 The Americas

This course examines Chicanx engagement with travel and mobility that provides a critical map for ascertaining everyday power relations. We will focus on how Chicanx expressive culture reveals the function of space, place, national borders, and social practices. The purpose of this course is to provide a survey of Chicanx travel literature and to analyze how Chicanx mobility charts terrains of struggle and new strategies for change. Over the course of the quarter we will address some of the following questions: What is the travel genre? How does Chicanx mobility align with this tradition? How is mobility tied to ideas of race, class, gender, and sexuality? What does it mean to be a good mobile citizen? 

LTEN 180 The Americas

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTEN 185 The Americas

This course seeks to give an overview of the some of the key concepts, debates, and aesthetic practices of concern to Indigenous Pacific communities—particularly those in Hawai‘i, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Guam, and the Marshall Islands. This class will cover texts that address how Indigenous political and poetic practices engage the gendered and racialized dynamics of settler colonialism in the Pacific, decolonial articulations of space and place, and intersections between environmental justice and sovereignty movements. By the end of this course, you should be able to recognize a range of Pacific aesthetic and discursive practices, and understand the ways that these diverse texts both respond to ongoing histories of colonialism while also articulating future visions of a “new Oceania.”

Dante (and we, his readers) awaken in the dark wood of Inferno. We know that we are lost, that we cannot ignore the "beasts" we encounter, but must experience suffering, hopelessness, alienation, deceit, and betrayal within ourselves.  We are overcome by suffering and a fear "so bitter it is close to death" (Tant’è amara che poco è più morte). We will journey with Dante through Inferno and sections of Purgatorio and Paradiso, exploring the meaning his journey holds for us, enduring the pain of gruesome suffering and hopelessness, savoring the grace involved in hard work, finally experiencing the “curved space” of a universe in which concepts and words no longer serve. 

Dante died in 1321. Creative work in celebration of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death will be encouraged. 

We will use bilingual texts.  No previous knowledge of Italian is necessary.

LTEU 105

LTEU 105 The Mediterranean

LTEU 105 Europe

Beginning with a brief review of Italian emigration after the establishment of the nation (1861), we will move to imagine expanded contexts for the unresolved questions and problems that have lingered into our contemporary era. A cursory reading of Antonio Gramsci's The Southern Question, heralded by Edward Said as a fundamental text, will give us some basic instruments through which to then consider aspects of what has come to be termed the "global south." For example, Ben Jelloun's "Where there is not state," on migrants living in the Italian south, represents a realigned perspective that might assist one in reading cross mediterranean relations. This is particularly important given the migratory influx of populations from both the North-African coast and sub-Saharan Africa (but not only). Not unexpectedly, film has come to form a large component of the continuing discourse on meridian thought. As a result, we will view and discuss both fiction and non-fiction films concerned with new migrations across the Mediterranean in order to possibly also begin to assess the differences or similarities between the written word and the filmic image in successfully representing the cultures of meridian thought. Films will include Mohsen Melitti's I, the other and Dagmawi Yimer's Va’ pensiero.

LTEU 140 The Mediterranean

LTEU 140 Europe

Plays from the 19th and 20th centuries as well as movies are studied to strengthen the skills developed in LTFR 2A. Includes a grammar review. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Prerequisite:  LTFR 2A or equivalent or a score of 4 on the AP French language exam.

Emphasizes the development of effective communication in writing and speaking. Includes a grammar review. A contemporary novel and a film are studied to explore cultural and social issues in France today. Taught entirely in French. May be applied towards a minor in French literature or towards fulfilling the secondary literature requirement. Students who have completed 2C can register in upper-level courses (115 or 116). Prerequisite: LTFR 2B or equivalent or a score of 5 on the AP French language exam.

une introduction à la littérature de langue française du 19e au 21e siècle à partir de textes représentatifs situés dans leur contexte historique. Le cours est entièrement en français.

Prerequisite: LTFR 2C or equivalent or consent of instructor 

LTFR 116 French

LTFR 116 The Mediterranean

LTFR 116 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

2B is an intermediate-level course conducted entirely in German. The course provides a review and an expansion of the four German language skills. 2B emphasizes reading authentic literature, culture texts and discussions of current events and films. Another focus is the review of grammar and gaining more communication skills in the target language. 

Who are you? Do you think of yourself as American, Chinese, or Bolivian? As Chinese-American or Mexican-American? Or perhaps more in terms of your age group, sexuality, religion, politics, or sports loyalties? Or even all of the above? The question of national identity has become increasingly fraught in recent years, as, on the one hand, people have become more mobile (or at least they were, before the pandemic struck) and identities more fluid, and, on the other, nativist movements have sought to sharpen distinctions between ethnic groups and build barriers to prevent movement across national borders.  

This course focuses on modern Germany, where questions of national belonging have been particularly charged. In recent years, Germany has liberalized citizenship laws and been particularly receptive to new waves of immigrants. At the same time, incidents of xenophobic and anti-Semitic violence have been on the rise. Present events unfold under the shadow of the Nazi past, during which millions were persecuted and murdered because they failed to conform to a racially-defined concept of national identity.  

LTGM 101 German

LTGM 101 Europe

Dal pesto al ragú: il viaggio continua!

Il nostro viaggio gastronomico-culturale continua, con fermate a Genova (pesto), Napoli (pizza), Milano (risotto), Bologna (ragú) e Puglia.
Studieremo avverbi, pronomi, verbi, comparativi, nuove ricette, e tanto lessico "culinario."
4 quiz, presentazioni orali, un esame finale, e mini quiz in relazione a film.

Per informazioni, per favore contattare Adriana De Marchi Gherini a demarchi@ucsd.edu

Dante (and we, his readers) awaken in the dark wood of Inferno. We know that we are lost, that we cannot ignore the "beasts" we encounter, but must experience suffering, hopelessness, alienation, deceit, and betrayal within ourselves.  We are overcome by suffering and a fear "so bitter it is close to death" (Tant’è amara che poco è più morte). We will journey with Dante through Inferno and sections of Purgatorio and Paradiso, exploring the meaning his journey holds for us, enduring the pain of gruesome suffering and hopelessness, savoring the grace involved in hard work, finally experiencing the “curved space” of a universe in which concepts and words no longer serve. 

LTIT 115

LTIT 115 Italian

LTIT 115 The Mediterranean

LTIT 115 Europe

First Year Korean 1B (5 units) is the second part of the Beginning Korean series. This course is designed to assist students to develop mid-beginning level skills in the Korean language. These skills are speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as cultural understanding. LTKO 1B is designed for students who have already mastered the materials covered in LTKO 1A 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 the 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 be able to do the following in Korean: 

Speaking: Students are able to handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations. Conversation is generally limited to those predictable and concrete exchange necessary for survival in the target culture. They are capable of asking a variety of questions when necessary to obtain simple information to satisfy basic needs.

Listening: Students are able to understand simple, sentence-length speech, one utterance at a time, in variety of basic personal and social contexts. Comprehension is most often accurate with highly familiar and predictable topics although a few misunderstandings may occur.

Reading: Students are able to understand short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with basic personal and social topics to which they bring personal interest or knowledge, although some misunderstandings may occur. They may get some meaning from short connected texts featuring description and narration, dealing with familiar topics.

Writing: Students are able to meet a number of practical writing needs. They can write short, simple communications, compositions, and requests for information in loosely connected texts about personal preferences, daily routines, common events, and other personal topics.

Same as LTKO 1A (A00) above.

Same as LTKO 1A (A00) above.

Second Year Korean 2B (5 units) is the second 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, and 2A courses. Students in this course will learn mid-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 become able to do the following in Korean: 

Speaking: Students are able to handle with ease and confidence a large number of communicative tasks. They participate actively in most informal and some formal exchanges on a variety of concrete topics relating to work, school, home, and leisure activities, as well as topics relating to events of current, public, and personal interest or individual relevance.

Listening: Students are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts, such as extended descriptions of persons, places, and things, and narrations about past, present, and future events. The speech is predominantly in familiar target-language patterns. They understand the main facts and many supporting details.

Reading: Students are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts, such as extended descriptions of persons, places, and things and narrations about past, present, and future events. They understand the main ideas, facts and many supporting details. Students may derive some meaning from texts that are structurally and/or conceptually more complex.

Writing: Students are able to meet a range of work and/or academic writing needs. They are able to write straightforward summaries on topics of general interest. There is good control of the most frequently used target-language syntactic structure and a range of general vocabulary.

This course is a survey of literary works from the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). We will read major authors from the period, such as Yŏm Sang-sŏp, Ch’oe Sŏ-hae, Kim Yu-jŏng, Yi T’ae-jun, and Yi Kwang-su, among others, situating their work in relation to the changing colonial state policies, the ideological struggle between bourgeois nationalists and Marxists, and the import of diverse literary trends from the West. This course is designed both as an advanced reading class and as an introduction to Korean literature, history and culture of the colonial period. Students who have completed three years of Korean at the college level as well as those who have an equivalent level of literacy in Korean through both formal and/or informal training and exposure should qualify to take the class.  The level of difficulty of the reading materials and class discussion will be adjusted to the linguistic capabilities of the participants.

LTKO 100 Korean

LTKO 100 Asia

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this class, humans will become animals, bandits will kidnap donkeys, and all roads will lead to Rome. We’ll read two texts, the Metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius. These two Metamorphoses take stories of transformation in very different directions: Ovid’s interwoven narrative creates an epic poem entirely unlike Vergil’s. Apuleius, a North African of Berber descent, writes an “ancient novel” that moves between the bawdy and the profound and between the Greek and Roman worlds. Assignments will include presentations on scholarship on these two authors and an essay on a subject of the student’s choosing.

LTLA 105

LTLA 105 Latin

LTLA 105 The Mediterranean

LTLA 105 Europe

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTRU 104C Russian

LTRU 104C Europe

LTSP 2B is an intermediate-level language course that reinforces and enhances the development of the communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and the intercultural competency of the student. Class activities are designed so that students can build up these skills and function at an intermediate language level. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this class will provide students with ample opportunity to work in small groups and in pairs while gaining confidence communicating in Spanish. As language does not exist outside of culture, the class also assumes that the teaching of Spanish cannot be decoupled from the countries and cultures where that language is spoken, including the United States. Therefore, we will learn the language in the cultural contexts in which it is produced, using a variety of formats (film, literature, journalism, songs, etc.) and registers from most formal to more colloquial to each of the regional variations of the language. 

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

This course is the second quarter of a sequence of classes (2D/E) designed for students who are heritage speakers of Spanish, that is, students who speak Spanish at home or in their daily lives but may have not received “formal education” in Spanish. The course will emphasize reading and academic writing skills, although all four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) will be considered. The course adheres to the following premise: Languages do not operate on a vacuum rather they function through dynamics of power. For instance, norms in Spanish (and English) are not based on an arbitrary or neutral set of rules, but rather are the product of a history of colonial and cultural domination disseminated from the former metropole and its entities, such as the Real Academia Española. With this in mind, in this class we will learn formal and normative Spanish writing practices but always in the context of the historical transformations that produced a variant of Spanish as the “norm.” In other words, we will question the production of linguistic hierarchies while we learn about the different registers and uses of Spanish. Students will learn grammatical structures, and linguistic registers with texts, films, music and articles from Spanish-speaking regions.

Please contact instructor for course description.

LTSP 135B Spanish

LTSP 135B The Americas

El "encuentro" en las Américas da origen a todo un corpus de textos sobre el "indio". Así, el "indio" es un tropo constante en los discursos literarios, políticos y culturales latinoamericanos. En la primera parte del curso nos centraremos en un movimiento heterogéneo acuñado como “indigenismo” que tiene sus raíces en el encuentro colonial pero que se manifiesta de varias formas a lo largo del siglo XX. Este discurso político, literario y cultural es particular porque proviene de una perspectiva externa a las diversas comunidades indígenas. A finales del siglo veinte, surgen varios cambios políticos y culturales que representan una  nueva fase histórica donde el indígena surge como sujeto y no objeto en los discursos culturales. Leeremos textos indigenistas y textos indígenas claves para entender mejor ambas corrientes.

LTSP 172 Spanish

LTSP 172 The Americas

En esta clase nos enfocaremos en la producción, clasificación y teorización de la mujer como género subordinado dentro de las normas sociales. Nos enfocaremos en textos representativos de autoras latinoamericanas y la narración de su propia subjetividad en el siglo veinte.  Indagaremos en cuestiones de revolución, izquierdas, feminicidio, la violencia, sexualidad y el cuerpo. Las preguntas que nos guiarán son las siguientes. ¿Cuál es la relación entre la mujer y el estado?  ¿Existe una sola categoría de la mujer en Latinoamérica?  ¿Qué nos dicen algunos textos de la relación entre ser minoría y ser mujer dentro del conjunto de países que llamamos Latinoamérica?

LTSP 174 Spanish

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

This course will examine a broad range of Latinx cultural expressions from a variety of methodological standpoints including cultural studies, critical race theory, borderlands theory, and feminist theory. We will examine television, film, theater, music, and literature, among other cultural production to consider the role of US Latinx popular culture as a site of contemporary social practice and cultural politics in both local and global contexts. In our exploration of these texts, we will discuss how writers and artists have historically rethought notions of citizenship, identity, and culture to create more fluid spaces of representation through the social uses of popular culture.

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

LTWL 124 The Mediterranean

ECO-CINEMA: CHANGING THE CLIMATE OF ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS 

Heroes and Villains, from Homer to Pokémon (and Beyond).

What is a hero? How does a hero's character evolve? Why is there often so much in common between a hero and a villain? Is there really such a thing as a villain? Fascinating patterns are found through different cultures, and in this course we will talk about works of literature and less traditional narratives, including animé, video games, film, and folk legends.

From the Classics, to Pokémon, via Star Wars, The Legend of Zelda and other texts we will try to identify the traits that Joseph Campbell saw as essential to the identity of the hero figure in all cultures.

"Mini" presentations, a longer presentation, and a final paper.

For more info, contact Adriana De Marchi Gherini: demarchi@ucsd.edu

The 13 films Stanley Kubrick directed over his lifetime never involve the same genres genres of cinema, as they convoke us to 13 different filmic universes. Six of his films will be studied in depth, along with clips of the seven others. All of them underscore the continuity of Kubrick’s engagement with the most pertinent issues of our times. Vetting them in this course will illuminate how much Kubrick (1929-1999) is a towering figure of US and international cinema whose work may also be viewed as that of a creative philosopher (albeit with a camera and a sound-lab).

Kubrick’s films address war and aggression in very different ways and with different wars: WWI (Paths of Glory), the Cold War (Dr Strangelove), the Vietnam War (Full Metal Jacket), and allusions to WWII (A Clockwork Orange). Using a series of film and clips, part of our inquiry will evoke Kubrick’s impeccable style and success in creating a series of unique and yet clearly defined cultural icons: e.g. the hypersensitive supercomputer and the space-time warps in 2001 A Space Odyssey (along with Kubrick’s lifelong interest in artificial intelligence) or his anticipatory controversial questions regarding the elusive psychology and aesthetics of violence in A Clockwork Orange (1971) with the chilling Alex and his droogs. Kubrick had time to investigate many other concerns: he explored the intricacies of fantasies, dreams and the emotional storms of sexual jealousy in the stylish treatment of his last work, Eyes Wide Shut. The period piece Barry Lyndon (1975) illustrates the interweave of art history and cinema’s painterly style. The Shining (1980) (his own favorite film) is a classic for its myriad possible interpretations, as is the forceful jagged narrative of The Killing (1956) one of his early (already postmodern) films, not to mention Peter Sellers’s dazzling triple performance(s) in Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Precise methods of film analysis (e.g. frame composition, shot-by-shot analysis, narrative programs, film breakdowns, filmic poetics, film genres, integration of specific films as they relate to the history of cinema) will be presented to lead into the interweave between history and the history of cinema as they relate to the minute details of every single shot or sequence – from film technique to the deep structure of music, sex, gender, ethics and politics in relation to Kubrick’s visual philosophy. Note: Veterans from previous courses and advanced students may also wish to study technical questions of text-into-film transpositions (from Clark, Burgess, King, Nabokov, or Schnitzler) which may be addressed with illustrations from specific literary and film excerpts. 

LTWL 184

LTWL 184

This is a craft-based course in which we will read and write fiction. We will discuss published work in class, and we will discuss student work in workshop. We will aim to develop fluency in craft as we explore the process of writing, approaching our work as an act of discovery and inquiry. Our discussions will be grounded in craft—the primary methodology of workshop—and we will read always with an eye toward technique and execution. The course will build on the skills to advance and refine an understanding of how fiction works to create both dramatic effect and meaning. 

Freedom song. Stump speech. Manifesto. Position paper. Letter to self/other. Testimonio. Sermon. Persuasive essay. Memoir. Un/documentary. Blog. Podcast. In this course, we will address the historical and formal links between (creative) nonfiction and struggles for social justice in the United States and beyond. In the process, you’ll try your hand at mobilizing the logos, pathos, and ethos of language in a series of short exercises that you’ll revisit at the quarter’s close for your final portfolio. Possible course texts include excerpts from Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Henry David Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience,” James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Adrienne Rich’s “Notes toward a Politics of Location,” Toni Morrison’s “The Site of Memory,” and excerpts from Susan Briante’s Defacing the Monument. 

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

In this class, you will re-tell, that is, “Respin” popular fantastical tales as flash fiction and short fiction stories. You’ll write vibrant, high-impact lyrical fiction in 500-1500 words while learning a little about the contexts of classic international legends, fables and fairytales from a variety of cultures and about other contemporary retellings. Course Textbooks Excerpts from My Mother She Murdered Me, My Father He Ate of Me ed by Kate Bernheimer The Best Small Fictions 2018 Ed Aimee Bender, Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, and the textbook Wonderbook by Jeffrey Vandermeer All other course texts (mainly “original” tales and legends) will be available on Canvas. This course will allow students to: Experiment with several new drafting and revising techniques, Read new flash fiction, short fiction, and novel-length fiction to study craft techniques in action and historical content, Learn new terms related to fiction craft and practice using these craft tools in your own work, Get & give considerate, descriptive and proscriptive feedback on stories in weekly workshops from peers and instructor (or opt out of workshop, if preferred), Create a small collection of 3-5 new “Respun” stories based in fantastical, fabulist, and pedagogical folk literature, write about personal craft choices for individual stories, including course terminology to discuss one’s own draft.

This course will explore the use of narrative techniques drawn from Canadian First Nations traditional oral storytelling and contemporary writing as a way to open up possibilities for students own narrative writing, whether in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. The class will combine elements of literary and cultural study and traditional writing workshop.

In this class we’ll practice storytelling in comics made for the page. We will use found objects, pencil & ink, photos, and paper to make word that is uploaded to Canvas. You MAY create work using digital media, but that is not what I am teaching in this class. Please note, this is not a drawing class. This is a class to make comics in order to see how different aspects of this form might influence your other types of writing. No drawing experience is necessary, as we will be tracing, staging and collaging. You may use your drawing skill or continue to hone your cartooning, but this is a literature class that makes use of images in comics-formatted narrative works that emphasize the quality of writing.

Our main focus is on how this time-based literary form uniquely moves a reader between reading and seeing and aspects of complex narration.

This is a hybrid literary arts and literature study course, where you will practice designing stories in comics format, will make 2 finished short comics, and will look at other comics and secondary texts as models for making your comics and applying the ideas gained to your other sorts of writing. The course consists of comics-making techniques, in-class drawing, sharing work for comments, and discussion of narrative & artistic features of published comics and graphic novels.

Over the course, you will turn in 2 assignments for peer and instructor commentary. You will also receive instructions to do drawn, written, and analytical exercises in your sketchbook, which you will share in both small and large groups. Think of these exercises as “warm-ups” and “notes” rather than “assignments.” I’ll give short weekly presentations that refer to assigned readings, and these presentations will allow you to imagine using comics design strategies as a way to explore your other forms of story writing. You will display a knowledge of terms and methods from readings and presentations in our weekly discussions, activities, quizzes and workshops.

Course textbooks are Drawing Words & Writing Pictures by Matt Madden and Jessica Abel, . Shuri: The Search for Black Panther by Nnedi Okorofar, Leonardo Romero & Jordie Bellaire, Best American Comics 2018 ed. Phoebe Gloeckner, Skim by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, and selections from other how-to guides & essay collections.

Linguists define code-switching as a person’s ability to flow between languages. De-hyphenating “codeswitching,” in this seminar-workshop we will approach the practice as such but also metaphorically to consider intersections and circuits of the personal and political, fiction and memoir, prose and poetry, the written and spoken word, the verbal and visual. On the one hand, we will closely engage a growing 20th/21st century archive of literature, art, and cinema that shuttles between English and Spanish, between Englishes and Spanishes in the plural, including work by Gloria Anzaldúa, BAW/TAF, Cecilia Vicuña, Junot Díaz, and Urayoán Noel. On the other, we’ll turn to the yet-to-be-imagined — your interpretations of codeswitching as practice.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course closely examines the intersection of religion and race in America from the earliest colonial period to the present day. Close attention paid to the several forms of racial and religious exclusion that have been generated under the aegis of America as a Christian nation, a discourse of a unified national religious identity that has justified unconscionable forms of dominance as divinely sanctioned American exceptionalism—from white supremacy, slavery and settler colonialism, to military expansion and imperialism.