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Course Description: The history of imperialism is one of eviction and exile, exploitation and expansion, erasure and exploration. The occupation of stolen land, the establishment of alternative institutions in which subject populations have little or no representation, the development of new histories in which empires are beneficent and democratizing all meet with resistance - material as well as literary. We will explore how the experience of empire and the resistance to it was and continues to be narrated. The voices are varied - South African, Nigerian, Indian, Palestinian, Puerto Rican - and so literary materials will be supplemented with historical and political readings and lectures about the history of these regions.
This 1A course offers students frequent practice in a variety of forms of discourse leading toward exposition and argumentation in common standard English. The course aims at developing student’s practical fluency with sentence, paragraph and thesis-development skills but with increasingly complex applications. Students will be assigned several short essays (3 to 5 pages) and several revisions.
Texts: Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Sidney Lens, Forging of the American Empire; Lenin, Imperialism; Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth; Martin Espada, Alabanza; Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions; J.M. Coetzee, Dusklands; Emile Habiby, The Secret Life of Saeed; Raja Rao, Kanthapura; Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible.
Course: R1A
Section: 2
Topic: Writing the Everyday
Instructor: Talissa Ford
Time: MWF 11-12
Location: 45 Evans
CC#: 28406
Course Description:When asked by a "girl college student" for a one sentence answer to the question "What is reality?," science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick replied: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away." This is a course, then, on what doesn’t go away.
To start with what we know: graffiti, newspapers, eating, walking.. The everyday is everywhere, and everyone is an expert. Getting to that expertise is a matter only of attention and critical distance, of enduring what "doesn’t go away" with the care that any unavoidable deserves. This is a course about noticing and articulating what we already have to live with, and live in; it’s about finding a language for the things and practices that are so surface as to be rendered transparent. In addition to Seeing & Writing, we’ll be using newspapers, television, advertisements, magazines- anything we can find, in fact- as our texts. Learning how to read "better" will mean learning to see the things we otherwise see through, and learning to be "good writers" will be a matter of getting across what we get out of the everyday. Writing Requirements: several formal essays, weekly writing assignments, peer review workshops.
Book List: Lunsford, A.: The Everyday Writer; McQuade, D. and McQuade, C.: Seeing & Writing 2; Course Reader
Course: R1A
Section: 3
Topic: Binding Illusions: Knowledge, Understanding, and the Imagination in Literature and Theory
Instructor: Judith Goldman
Time: MWF 1-2
Location: 80 Barrows
CC#: 28409
Course Description: This class will focus on the construction and circulation of knowledge in the space/world of narrative and lyric, as well as on theories of knowledge offered by short expository works. Starting from the premise that the reader helps to constitute the text s/he reads simply by making sense of it, we will explore the myriad ways in which the facts always say more and/or less than just the facts. How do facts of nature differ from social facts, private facts from public ones? Are there facts, or only telltale signs, clues, forms of evidence/proof, etc.? Is there room for uncertainty in knowledge, or, conversely, any knowledge immune from doubt? We will discuss how interpretation and context shape and mediatewhat we know; we will also attend to the differences among the knowledges of the author, reader, narrator, and character of a story, and the author, speaker, and reader of a poem, and to the positions of authority consolidated by essayists’ arguments and voices. Does producing knowledge require imagination, and if so, how much of knowledge is imagined or imaginary? When readers or characters (or other personae) jump to conclusions, what kinds of assumptions permit them to make such leaps in logic-and which are vindicated and which debunked? When do essayists allow images, narratives, or suggestive vagueness to take over their arguments? Our inquiry will also address abuses and failures of knowledge, such as lying, miscommunication, and sensory error, as well as fuzzier kinds of unevenness in understanding and knowing involving dynamics of secrecy and disclosure, disavowal and acknowledgment. While we often assume there is power in knowledge, is it possible there is also power in ignorance? What is the role of knowledge in forms of social exclusion/inclusion? What are the ethical aspects of knowing and how we use what we know? Students themselves will become imaginative theorists of knowledge, beginning by writing focused, developed paragraphs daily and working up to 2-3pp. sustained arguments. We will discuss student writing in class, with particular attention to sentence structure and to cogent elaboration of an insight through the critical reading of a text. Main texts for the course: William Shakespeare, Othello; Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Course: R1A
Section: 4
Topic: Interpretations and Arguments
Instructor: Misa Oyama
Time: MWF 3-4
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28412
Why do our interpretations matter? Do we have a stake in the arguments we make? For the characters in these books and films, the interpretation of a small detail can make or break a career, or create or destroy a relationship. Just as the writers and characters of these works struggle to make sense of unusual or difficult circumstances, students in this course will develop their own interpretations of these works. Hopefully these interpretations will help students formulate arguments about the common concerns of these texts, such as power, ethics, money, love, work, art, and family.
Students will practice their writing skills by analyzing passages from the books and scenes from the films in close detail. In addition to short homework assignments, there will be a series of essays with three rewrites. Films will be screened at an alternate time in the late afternoon or evening. Students who cannot make the screening can see the films on their own at the Media Center in Moffitt.
Book List: Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not Getting By in America); Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis: Urinetown: The Musical; Steve Martin: Shopgirl; Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet; Michael Ruhlman: The Soul of a Chef (Part 1); Course reader of selected essays and short stories
Film List: James L. Brooks: Broadcast News; Tom DiCillo: Living in Oblivion; Charles Herman-Wurmfeld: Kissing Jessica Stein; Roman Polanski: The Tenant; Julia Sweeney: God Said, Ha!; Billy Wilder: The Apartment
(Frederick C. Crews: The Random House Handbook--recommended)
Course: R1A
Section: 5
Topic: Heroes & Heroines and How We Redefine Them
Instructor: Els Anderson
Time: T Th 8-9:30
Location: 103 Wheeler
CC#: 28415
What does it mean to be a hero? What a heroine? In this class we will study the heroism of the epic hero and of the ordinary man -- and woman -- in the street as presented in four closely linked texts.
We begin with the ancient Greek tale of the ideal hero, a man who filled all the important roles in life: father, son, husband, and lover; warrior and pacifist; wily outlaw and respected leader. Next we will see how Joyce resurrects the figure in his Modernist novel Ulysses, in which we follow an ordinary man through an ordinary day in Dublin and come to see him as heroic. A second landmark Modernist text, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, similarly follows an ordinary woman through a single day of ordinary life in London. She too is heroic, though Woolf is keenly aware of the limitations her society has placed on women's roles in life. We will finish the course with a recently published novel that riffs on Mrs. Dalloway, presenting three heroic/ordinary women whose lives have been touched by Woolf's novel.
What heroism means to readers and to writers of both genders, and how stories reflect and shape our ideals of what it means to be heroic, form the focus of the course. We will also see how writers reshape past narratives to suit their own purposes, and how we ourselves reshape ideas as we write and edit and rewrite.
The course is designed to give students the critical reading skills they need to analyze and interpret the work of accomplished writers, and the writing skills they need to present their own ideas with grammatical competence, scholarly authority, and wit.
Students will write about a dozen short (2-4 page) papers. In the process they will learn how to copyedit both their peers' work and their own to produce more polished, articulate essays.
Readings:
R. Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer (0-06-093195-7)
James Joyce, Ulysses (0-375-50794-9)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (0-15-662870-8)
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Strunk & White, The Elements of Style (4th edition)
COURSE READER will include short readings related to the major texts. We will also see the recent film "The Hours."
Course: R1A
Section: 6
Topic: Arthur, King of the Britons? Some Medieval and Modern Views
Instructor: Sharon Goetz
Time: T Th 9:30-11
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28418
Reinvented repeatedly to fulfill dreams of empire and schemes for doomed romance, King Arthur has inspired the imagination for over a thousand years. In this course, we will examine snapshots of "the once and future king" from his first (and very brief) appearance in a sixth-century text to the somewhat romanticized renditions of recent writers. Instead of trying to build a linear trajectory to the present, however, we will investigate some ways in which our texts negotiate this ambiguous hero: what kinds of emphases do texts from specific times and places give to kingship? How has Arthur come to be "king of the Britons" (as Monty Python has it), and what does that tag mean for different writers? How do portrayals of women and men shift over time in these narratives? Why does Arthur seem useful as a traditional hero to so many writers, such that contemporary readers can have access to many different (and equally valid) versions of a single character? And, especially pertinent to the texts we will read, how do we interpret these versions through the veil of translation, since few of them originated in modern English? These questions and others will serve as points of departure for class discussion as well as for the written component of this course. In a series of five short essays, we will address the argumentative thesis, issues of sentence and paragraph structure, use of textual evidence, and the process of revision. In addition, please be aware that active participation in class discussion is vital to your success in this course.
Texts:
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
T. H. White, The Once and Future King
a course reader including Gildas, The Ruin of Britain (excerpt);
Nennius, History of the Britons (excerpt); Chretien de Troyes, The
Knight of the Cart; Thomas Malory, Works (excerpt); Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, Idylls of the King (excerpt); William Morris, "The Defence
of Guenevere"; John M. Ford, "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"
Note: Please do not purchase any texts until after the first day of class.
Course: R1A
Section: 7
Topic: "Sneaky" Perspectives
Instructor: Matthew Ritchie
Time: T Th 11-12:30
Location: 41 Evans
CC#: 28421
Following the usual pattern, this course offers a fairly dedicated analysis of various literatures through a critical mechanism that ultimately amounts to writing a lot of essays. The assigned literature revolves loosely around the topic of perspective and subjectivity, exploring the role of point-of-view and (for want of a better term) "direction" in literature. This course also offers a greater-than-usual emphasis on essential essay-writing and grammar skills; by the end of this course you should know exactly what a good university paper looks like, and how to produce one yourself. At the very, very least, you'll know exactly how to use "whom'" correctly, and what a stranded preposition is. There will be a very heavy group-work component in this course, supporting both the composition and literature material: if you can learn to help other people with their analyses and writing, then you can learn to do it for yourself.
Course Texts:
Selected short stories (from the course reader)
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard
Kindred, Octavia Butler
Maus, Art Spiegelman
And one of the following
Inside Out, James Tyman
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
Final Fantasy X, Squaresoft (yes, this is the video game)
Course: R1A
Section: 8
Topic: Absurd Narratives
Instructor: Michael Kuo
Time: TTh 12:30-2
Location: 250 Dwinelle
CC#: 28424
What do the distinctions between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘surreal’ signify in the context of the ordinary chaos, and chaotic ordinariness, of everyday twentieth-century life? Our readings will focus on the fictional depictions of antiheroes compelled to use limited investigative skills to interpret the modern world. In the works that we will examine, the main characters’ failed attempts to unravel the mysteries and confusions of ‘external’ reality become mirrored in the reader’s struggles to make sense of demanding, dark, and often disturbing narratives. You will be invited to refine your analytical skills in order to respond fully to complex issues and to write critically and persuasively about a range of literary and expository texts. You are required to complete three argumentative essays and several short writing assignments, as well as weekly one-page responses to class topics. Three quizzes will assess how closely you follow the reading assignments. In addition to participating actively in class and peer editing, each student must take part in leading class discussion on the readings at least twice during the semester.
Required Texts:
Auster, P., The New York Trilogy
Bazerman, C., Involved: Writing for College, Writing for Your Self
Beckett, S., Watt
Beckett, S., Stories and Texts for Nothing
Robbe-Grillet, A., The Voyeur
Sarraute, N., Martereau
Williams, D., Sin Boldly
Note New Instructor:
Course: R1A
Section: 9
Topic: You
Instructor: Chris Weinberger
Time: T Th 2-3:30
Location: 221 Wheeler
CC#: 28427
This class will be all about you. Who are you? How are you? We are going to read writers who address you in ways that might change your answers to these questions.
This “you,” however, might not be who you think it is. Effective writers often construct their readers, using language in ways that ask you to adopt certain ideas or perspectives you might not normally accept. In this course we will be looking at the implied “you” of the texts we read. We will think about how these writers figure your role as reader, why they do so, and what kind of response they elicit from you. In the process we will talk about the relation of writing and identity, as well as how literary language works in contrast to the other forms of discourse we practice. We’re going to spend most of our time thinking about the way we interpret the world and others, what role literature plays in shaping our interpretive habits, and to what degree those habits make us who we are. Finally, we’re going to focus on how you construct your readers in your own writing.
This course will be WRITING INTENSIVE. You will keep a checked but ungraded
journal of your responses to each assignment, write many short (2-3 pages) pieces,
and produce one medium (4-6) and one longer (8-10 pages) critical/theoretical
paper. One out of every three classes will be devoted to writing workshops,
which will tie into the readings for that day.
Required Texts: You
if, on a winter's night, a traveler by Italo Calvino
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldúa
A Reader full of poetry, the beginnings of
novels, and excerpts from essays and books, including:
Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson
The Implied Reader, by Wolfgang Iser
Reading for the Plot, by Peter Brooks
The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
The Rhetoric of Fiction, by Wayne Booth
"The Death of the Author," by Roland Barthes
Confessions, by Rousseau
poems by Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche, and others
Course: English R1A
Section: 10
Topic: A Short History of the Short Story
Instructor: Jessica Fisher Clowes
Time: TTh 3:30-5:00
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28430
This course will trace the international development of the short story over the past century and a half, paying special attention to the role of narrative form in the creation of meaning. We will read works from a wide range of authors, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Jamaica Kincaid, tracing inheritance and innovation as we work toward an understanding of the history of the form. In addition to developing critical reading and active participation skills, students will engage in weekly writing assignments designed to increase their facility with the process of composition. Although the primary focus will be on writing analytic and expository essays, you will also be asked to participate in creative writing projects that will allow you to put your understanding of the short story into practice.
Book List:
Cassill, R.V. and Richard Bausch, eds. The Norton Anthology of Short
Fiction.
Gordon, K. E. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of
Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed.
A course reader
NEW SECTION ADDED 1/28/04:
Course: R1A
Section: 11
Topic: Filipino-American Writing
Instructor: Carlos Reyes
Time: MWF 10-11
Location: 344 Campbell
CC#: 28432
Course Description: Reading Filipino-American stories, poetry, a novel, a memoir, and a graphic novel, we shall consider the question, "to whom does minority writing matter and why?" At one extreme, some might argue that it only matters to the group with whom the writer identifies. On the other extreme are those who assert that everybody has something to learn from the experiences of marginalized groups. In the course of the semester, we shall attempt to develop a more precise conception of the uses and significance of minority writing in particular, and of literature more generally. To this end, we shall ask questions like: What does the Filipino-American experience tell us (if anything) about the problems and potentials of American society? Do non-Filipino Americans have anything to learn from the experiences of Filipino-Americans? How does literature give events and experiences from particular times and places wider significance? Does the whole notion of minority writing contradict literature's universalizing tendencies? Or does minority writing provide a much needed corrective to canonical literature's erasure of differences between diverse social groups?
Book List:
Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories, Peter Bacho
Names above Houses, Oliver de la Paz
Fixer Chao, Han Ong
America Is in the Heart, Carlos Bulosan
One Hundred Demons, Lynda Barry
The Bedford Handbook (6th Edition), Diana Hacker
Film:
The Debut, Dante Basco
Course: R1B
Section: 1
Topic: Sex and Materialism
Instructor: Joon Lee
Time: MWF 9-10
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28433
"We’re all whores, darlin.’"
Gina Gershon as Crystal in Showgirls (1996).
Taking the above epitaph as an intuitive truth, this class will explore the cultural representations and ramifications of prostitution. In particular, we will engage with the persona of the "whore" as it resonates with the person who must grapple emotionally and politically with the work of turning sexuality into commerce. We will go beyond the traditional, stereotypical narratives about prostitution that portray whores as irredeemably pathetic and promiscuous, or, even more insidiously, fairy tale princesses-in-disguise: Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Instead, using feminist and queer theories, we will complicate the role and broaden the very definition of prostitution beyond that of simply sex work performed by females. Encountering these texts, we will understand how sex work has been used by society to oppress the marginalized, but more importantly, how it’s then been taken up by women and gay men themselves to transform and challenge society’s understanding of power, sexuality, and the means by which we all survive.
required texts:
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Honoré de Balzac, Nana
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Gayl Jones, Corregidora
Nora Okja Keller, Comfort Woman
J.T. Leroy, Sarah
Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Pandora’s Box (film)
Scandal (film)
Course: R1B
Section: 2
Topic: Literature of Internment
Instructor: Christine Hong
Time: MWF 10-11
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28436
In Shoah, Claude Lanzmann’s influential documentary on Holocaust testimony, Raul Hilberg, an American Holocaust historian, condenses (too pithily, one could argue) what he perceives to have been a chronological continuum of European attitudes, spanning one and a half millennia, toward Jews. In the following three-part statement, Hilberg addresses the varying positions of the Jewish diasporic subject--You--within the context of a hostile host culture:
a. "You may not live among us as Jews" (i.e., conversion),
b. "You may not live among us" (i.e., segregation or expulsion),
c. "You may not live" (i.e., extermination or the "Final Solution").
Whatever our critical reservations about this stripped down, rather too linear, retrospective account of the history of Jews in Europe that would have the "Final Solution" a culminating, inevitable punctuation point to a long history of racialized identification, Hilberg’s statement nonetheless speaks poignantly to a deep-seated crisis, within a transhistorical European milieu, in hospitality. Targeted, in the first instance, for conversion; in the second, for systematic dislodgment and segregation; and in the "final" historical chapter, so to speak, for annihilation, the Jewish addressee of these increasingly more dire imperatives is crucially denied, in all cases, an assured symbolic and territorial inclusion-in short, a right-of-place.
Though enforced dislocation and large-scale population removal cannot be said to be in any way exclusive to modernity and modernity alone, it cannot be denied that the twentieth century has borne witness to events that, in their critically considered aftermath, have contributed remarkably-across a wide cultural spectrum-to an ever-expanding lexicon intended to identify those places, those "gray zones," if you will, whose function it is and has been to house racialized subjects who have been forcibly, and in many instances, fatally and finally displaced: waystation, detention center, refugee camp, comfort station, internment camp, gulag, concentration camp. All these euphemistic terms denote transitional, often makeshift, frequently extra-national sites that paradoxically-not to mention, perversely-signify both refuge and the impossibility of refuge, a place of belonging in a context of not belonging. What this course thus aims to examine, via a consideration of a culturally varied, mid-to-late twentieth-century cross-section of literature of internment, is the modern phenomenon of mass-detention and its determination by a governing logic of racial exclusion. With due attention to historical particularity, we will explore the question of the function of the camp as a particularly complex site-intended, as it has been, to contain and detain those pushed, quoting from Walter Benjamin, to the "back of beyond"-vis-à-vis the workings of a nation in a self-perceived state of crisis. We will read a broad array of literary selections, all written originally in or translated into English, which depict both allegorized and historical examples of internment, from authors such as Primo Levi, Imre Kertész, Joy Ogawa, J. M. Coetzee, and Chang-rae Lee. We will also turn, to a lesser yet still significant degree, our critical attention to cinematic treatments of the internment experience.
Requirements for the Course:
This course is intended, above all, to give you the opportunity to hone your critical thinking skills as well as to strengthen and to refine the quality of your written expression. With literature of internment as our collective textual interest, we will focus our attention on developing attentive reading skills; staking interpretative, insightful claims based on foundational observations of each text; and crafting written arguments (with, it should be added, a strong emphasis on substantial revisions of your original drafts). In addition to short responses, group journal-keeping, presentations, and participation (including one field-outing), you will write three papers (each with at least one revision). The last paper will have a research component.
Texts: (Texts can be purchased at Eastwind Books, 2066 University Ave. (cross-street: Shattuck), tel. 549-2335)
1. J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1982)
2. Chang-rae Lee, A Gesture Life (1999)
3. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (English translation 1988)
4. Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1982)
5. Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl (1992)
Course: R1B
Section: 3
Topic: Marginal Characters
Instructor: Mai-Lin Cheng
Time: MWF 11-12
Location: 2032 Valley LSB
CC#: 28439
In this course, we will read a range of texts about characters living on the boundaries between, for example, the human and the monstrous, the city and the country, the East and the West. We will also pay attention to characters who seem to slip away from the author's-and the reader's-focus in order to think about what function such seemingly "marginal" characters serve. We will begin our tour in nineteenth-century England and end up in Los Angeles. We will pay particular attention to the role of the city, the importance of place, and the idea of home. Along the way, we will consider how constructions of gender, race, and sexuality are deployed to reinforce or subvert the idea of the marginal.
Students should be prepared to read and write attentively and rigorously. This class is designed to help you improve skills developed in English 1A (or its equivalent). Frequent short writing assignments as well as at least two longer critical papers, including 1 research paper, are required. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussion and approach the writing process with intellectual honesty. Additional requirements include an oral presentation and in-class essays.
NOTE: PLEASE ATTEND THE FIRST CLASS MEETING BEFORE PURCHASING BOOKS.
Book List:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
David Henry Hwang M. Butterfly (1989)
Helena Maria Viramontes, Selections from The Moths and Other Stories (1985)
Diane Hacker, A Writer's Reference
Course: R1B
Section: 4
Topic: Art as Necessity/Writing for Survival
Instructor: Liza Kramer
Time: MWF 12-1
Location: 287 Dwinelle
CC#: 28442
In this course we will be reading a series of texts that illustrate Audre Lorde's assertion that "poetry is not a luxury. . . .[It] is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought." All of these authors are in some way writing about experiences so difficult that they had not been fully named before. My hope is that they will provide models and inspiration for the writers in the class to articulate new thoughts as well.
Texts: D. Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure; J. Hagedorn, Dogeaters; L. Cervantes, Emplumada; L.M. Silko, Storyteller; A. Spiegelman, Maus; Z.N. Hurston, Mules and Men.
Course: R1B
Section: 5
Topic: You Call That Funny? American Humor Writing
Instructor: Maggie Trapp
Time: MWF 1-2
Location: 221 Wheeler
CC#: 28445
Humor writing has traditionally been seen as light, as not quite literary, as more accidental, topical, and temporary than other forms of serious fiction. This course will examine the genre of humor writing in American in the 19th and 20th centuries, questioning what it might mean to take comedy seriously. Some possible questions we will try to answer as a class are: What makes humor writing funny (or not)? Is humor the same as irony or satire? Is being clever or witty the same as being funny? Can we recognize humorous writing as funny even if it doesn't proclaim itself as humorous writing? Does humor need to seem spontaneous or uncrafted to work as humor? What is the role of gender in humor writing (i.e., why are there so many more men than women writing humor pieces in this period?)? What is the role of form in humor writing (i.e., why are most humor pieces in this period short essays or sketches?)? What, if anything, can humorous writing bring us in addition to entertainment? Is humor writing worth taking seriously?
Students will focus on their own (not necessarily comic!) writing and rewriting in response to the course readings, both individually and as a class, paying close attention to thesis formation and overall essay organization.
Course readings:
Course: R1B
Section: 6
Topic: Literary Maximalism
Instructor: Nick Nace
Time: MWF 2-3
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28448
This is a course about paying attention--to our own words and to the words of others. We will learn to read literature deliberately, attentively and with a great deal of respect for the author. And, what’s harder, we will learn to read our own writing in much the same way. The chief business of this class, then, is for us to work on getting our expository writing to the stage--grammatically, analytically, stylistically--where we no longer want to disown it. We will learn to value the written word not only for what it says, but how it chooses to say what it says. The works we will read, while not excessively large in size, are never in a hurry to tell us what they have to say. And, more often than not, they say a lot more than seems necessary. The course’s thematic focus, therefore, will be on writing that’s out of all proportion to its slender, sometimes feeble themes or ideas--writing that we will call maximalist. Such excessive writing is a natural but enjoyable byproduct of a recurring artistic obsession with a hard-edged, essence-seeking minimalism (to be defined along the way). But because the maximalist mode of writing is studied far less than its astringent minimalist counterpart, our topic will require a fair amount of trail-blazing library work to help define the field and contextualize the close analytic work we’ll be doing together. Our collective scrutiny of the maximalist mismatch between theme and proliferation should help us understand the relation between our own theses and the critical arguments they drive. To that end, we will be exploring such related compositional concerns as "having enough to say" in our final 9- to 10-page research papers.
REQUIRED
Baker, Nicholson. A Box of Matches
Coover, Robert. Spanking the Maid
Calvino, Italo. If on a winter’s night a traveler
Doty, Mark. Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
Haywood, Eliza. Love in Excess
RECOMMENDED
Levis, Samuel R. Shades of Meaning: Reflections on the Use, Misuse, and
Abuse of English
Robins, Stephen. The World’s Worst Poetry: An Anthology
Strunk and White. The Elements of Style
Trimmer, Joseph F. A Guide to MLA Documentation
Course: R1B
Section: 7
Topic: The Language of Literature
Instructor: Jeremy Ecke
Time: MWF 3-4
Location: 78 Barrows
CC#: 28451
In this course we will address the unconscious grammatical knowledge of writers, readers, and speakers of English, exploring "difficult" texts, both Modern and Medieval, which foreground the malleability and productivity of language, engaging us in the process of reading as an act of (re)writing. In doing so, we will take up questions of translation, tone, genre, dialect, and idiom, grounding ourselves in the modern linguistic notions of "competence and performance." In addition to the required texts, we may explore alternative reading, drawing on texts as enigmatic as Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, the Old-English Exeter Book Riddles, modern advertising campaigns, and political slogans.
In keeping with the idea that reading is a form of writing, we will take up three small assignments that will explore the various forms and structures that we encounter in our reading. We will start at the level of the word, with an assignment that will treat etymology. We will then move to the phrasal level, with an assignment that will explore the relation between noun phrases, prepositional phrases, and idiomatic phrases. Finally, we will take up a creative project intended to encourage you to further explore dialect, tone, and idiom. In addition to these smaller projects, you will have two larger writing assignments, one of which will involve outside research on a particular aspect of grammar and literary style in one of the texts from the course. A strong emphasis will be placed on revision for both of these papers.
Required Texts:
The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker.
Dubliners, James Joyce.
Nohow On, Samuel Beckett.
Stories, Katherine Mansfield.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, MS Cotton Nero A.x., Art. 3.
Course Reader.
Course: R1B
Section: 8
Topic: Literature and Influence
Instructor: Joel Slotkin
Time: MWF 3-4
Location: 50 Barrows
CC#: 28454
English 1B is intended to develop students’ skills in constructing sustained and researched arguments. The texts for this course present different viewpoints (often fantastic) on the abilities and purpose of artistic representation, and the ways in which artful language can influence people. The reading list encompasses literature from a wide variety of periods (Renaissance to the present) and genres (poetry, drama, short stories, novels, and science fiction), in an effort to demonstrate some of the diversity of effects possible in literary art. Poetry, as consciously patterned writing, highlights many of the powers inherent in language. Therefore, we will spend some time on the formal aspects of poetry and their contribution to meaning. This emphasis on understanding how form serves content will extend to our work on essays and their argumentative structure. The major writing assignments for this class one short essay and two progressively longer ones will involve extensive pre-writing and rewriting, as well as some library research.
Required Texts:
Course: R1B
Section: 9
Topic: Women on the Verge: Bodies at the Intersection of Gender, Race, and the State
Instructor: Marissa Lopez
Time: T Th 8-9:30
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28457
In his 1961 essay "The Labyrinth of Solitude," the Nobel Prize winning author Octavio Paz famously traced what he saw as Mexican passivity and incapacity in the face of enormous national problems to the sexual transgression of one woman, Malinal Tenepal, Hernan Cortés’ Aztec translator and mistress. Paz uses Malinal to illustrate the Mexican self-understanding as an hijo de la chingada (son of the violated mother), identifying the original chingada as Malinal, also known as La Malinche, mother of the mestizo (mixed Indian and Spanish) race. While Paz’s understanding of Malinal Tenepal’s sex life as the root of all evil might seem a little harsh to us in 2003, he was writing within a Western philosophical tradition that had very clear cultural roles and values for women. As much as we might like to think of ourselves as more enlightened than Paz the fact remains that even today most nations’ and cultures’ understanding of themselves is very much tied up in how they understand and imagine the women in their communities.
In this class we will read Paz’s essay and one or two other similar short works in order to understand how Paz and other thinkers imagined the role of women in what we will call the "national imaginary," that is, the story that a nation tells itself about its origins, values, and beliefs. Against Paz we will read three novels by women about women who transgress the sexual roles their communities have set for them. We will be looking at the ways these stories of interracial romances engage with the "national imaginary." Ultimately, through reading these novels and some poems and short stories by men and women, we will be trying to understand how the interactions of race, gender, and nation affect men and women, and how writers at various times and in various places have tried to redefine that relationship through writing.
The emphasis in this class will be on developing your ability to write a solid, well argued, well researched essay. We will spend considerable time in class at the beginning of the semester learning how to analyze other people¹s arguments by thoroughly analyzing, evaluating, and comparing Paz and several others who have written about race, gender, and nationalism. We will then turn our piercing, analytic gaze to the literature on the syllabus focusing on what sorts of political claims and interventions the literature seeks to make and how literary writing differs from the other kinds of writing we will have been dealing with. Your final project for the semester will be a long (8 -10) page paper in which you will develop your own argument about one or two of either the literary or the critical (or a combination of the two) texts that we will have read together, or that you might have discovered on your own as a result of one of the several research assignments you will have completed during the semester. You should expect to revise this essay, and most of your writing in the class, throughout the semester.
Course: R1B
Section: 10
Topic: Deviance, Homosexuality, and Victorian Literature
Instructor: Ryan McDermott
Time: T Th 9:30-11
Location: Note New Room: 72 Evans
CC#: 28460
In Victorian England, homosexuality became known as "the love that dare not speak its name" in the latter half of the nineteenth century-which is to say that it was never spoken about directly, but always in relation to something else. Until Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for homosexual practices in 1895, this "something else" included a range of what the Victorian middle class relegated to the realm of cultural deviance: medical and scientific theories of perversion; social forms of dissidence; and the growing popularity of the Aesthetes and the Decadents. Since none of the texts in this course actually mention the word "homosexual," "gay", or "queer," how-one might ask-does one read for or look for homosexuality? In other words, what are the signs of homosexuality in a literary text? Finally, what might the differences be between-say-the homoerotic and the homosexual? The texts for this course have been carefully chosen to allow us to chart the development of representations of homosexuality in Victorian literature. In doing so, we will pay close attention to the larger social, cultural, and political forces accompanying this literary development, especially the late-Victorian anxiety over social forms of deviance.
In this course, we will first and foremost be concerned with learning how to apply our close reading skills of literary texts to the writing of solid analytical prose. Our romp through the world of "exposition and argumentation" (two of the main foci of this course) will include re-visits to the following well-known destinations: grammar; sentence and paragraph construction; essay structure; thesis development; evidence; and style. The majority of class time will revolve around class discussions and in-class workshops that will allow us to practice and build upon our close reading skills, and then work to "translate" these ideas into writing. Once we have developed these more basic skills, we will work to develop and build upon our research skills and our ability to create lengthy, complex arguments that incorporate both primary and secondary texts.
Over the course of the semester, each student will be assigned three papers and a number of short take-home assignments. Class time will frequently be spent on group work and in-class writing. In general, the writing for this course will be geared towards the production of a final and longer research paper that will make use of multiple sources. Each paper will involve a primary draft, a peer editing phase, and then the revision and resubmission of a final draft to the instructor for a grade. Students can expect to receive a substantial amount of commentary from the instructor on all three essays.
Constant attendance, frequent in-class participation, and dedication to the reading are required for this course.
Book List:
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth: Lady Audley’s Secret
Hacker, Diana: Rules for Writers
Le Fanu, J. Sheridan: Carmilla
Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stoker, Bram: Dracula
Tennyson, Lord Alfred: "In Memoriam"
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
A xeroxed course reader (University Copy)
Course: R1B
Section: 11
Topic: The American Short Story
Instructor: Sophia Wang
Time: T Th 9:30-11
Location: 2525 Tolman
CC#: 28463
We will survey the development of the short story form in America, beginning with nineteenth century publications by Hawthorne and Poe in the first few American magazines, and concluding our course by examining an issue of McSweeney’s, a contemporary journal of short stories that challenges both the genre of short fiction and the form of the literary journal. Because the development of short stories in America is related to the development of mass media publications-magazines, journals, reviews and newspapers-this topic invites us to explore the historical, social, economic and political conditions which produce the short story. How does the literary work reflect and/or resist its medium of publication, its mode of distribution, and its readership? How do these conditions contribute to the aesthetic value of the genre and its reception in popular vs. Scholarly communities?
Our engagement with the literature will involve close reading and discussion of these texts, supplemental films and critical essays, independent and group research, two research papers, in-class presentations and writing exercises, and process-oriented work on your writing: peer editing, group work and office hour conferences. We will focus as much on becoming comfortable with literary analysis as with developing the skills of exposition, argumentation and investigative research central to a productive exchange of ideas.
Required Texts:
In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway (1925)
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor (1955)
Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1984)
McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Michael Chabon, ed. (2003)
The Everyday Writer, Andrea A. Lunsford (2003)
Course Reader & films TBA
Course: R1B
Section: 12
Topic: Gaps of Time and Space
Instructor: Ayse Agis
Time: T Th 11-12:30
Location: 104 Barrows
CC#: 28466
We have all had experience of different accounts/memories of the same event. These discrepancies in perspective can be due to differing cultural, geographical and political viewpoints, to temporal or historical distance, to problems of memory or perception. Also, sometimes people’s expression of their perception can be silenced by a higher authority; or, conversely, they may occupy a location which enables them to say the unsayable. Often such accounts are hard to fit into established forms/genres. We will be looking at some novels and plays where these disjunctions of perspective across time and space are structurally central.
The class will focus on developing the critical thinking and analytic writing skills of the students. To further this aim, class discussions and in-class workshops will be designed to foster skills in close reading and in structuring arguments. There will be a total of three papers which will be revised and resubmitted.
Primary Texts:
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Etal Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose
Anna Deavere Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles 1992
David Henry Hwang, M Butterfly
Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Films:
Kurosawa, Rashomon
Potter, Orlando
Duras/Resnais, Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Course: R1B
Section: 13
Topic: Representing Women in War
Instructor: Avilah Getzler
Time: T Th 11-12:30
Location: 103 Wheeler
CC#: 28469
This class will explore women’s representations of their war-time experiences, and the myths surrounding women and war. Concentrating on the twentieth-century, we will consider women’s contributions to war
(as warriors, nurses, and support staff), suffering in war (focusing on rape), and campaigns for peace (focusing on anti-nuclear war activists); reading poetry, autobiographical and fictional stories, propaganda and historical reports, and critical essays, we will compare and contrast different modes of representation. Students will be expected to conduct semester-long, independent research projects.
Readings:
Nora Okja Keller. Comfort Woman: A Novel
Rigoberta Menchu. I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala
David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans
Ed. Marjorie Agosin and Betty Jean Craige, To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11
John Trimble, Writing with Style: conversations on the Art of Writing
Course: English R1B
Section: 14
Topic: Cyborgs and the "Inclusive Embrace" of Media
Instructor: Suzie Park
Time: T Th 12:30-2
Location: 221 Wheeler
CC#: 28472
This course will examine representations of the "cyborg" or cybernetic organism in literature, critical studies, and film. In "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," Donna Haraway challenges us to think about the cyborg as a way of imagining what identity could look like: machine extensions of ourselves. Rather than think of the cyborg as something coined in the twentieth century, we will place the cyborg in the larger history of thinking about what it means to be human versus what it means to be machine-like, and how we represent that difference or overlapping in narratives and films today. The machine not only substitutes for human functions in work and play, but can perform beyond human capabilities (think Terminator or IBM’s super-chess-machine, Deep Blue). Yet there is always the feeling that machines "go bad." They can break, short-circuit, and turn bad on the observing subject. In particular, they can malfunction emotionally-that is, start to demand emotional returns, criticize the observers’ emotions or lack thereof, and perhaps worst of all, suggest that observers are themselves the machines. We will ask why the ability to deliver convincing narratives of feeling so often serves as the litmus test of the "human." We will examine several texts and films in which the protagonist wants to identify with one’s creator, but discovers that such identification is strongly forbidden or impossible. We will ask questions about how the term, machine-like, might be used to exclude or "embrace" certain groups. Why does the machine signal both hyper-fitness (the beyond human) and total inadequacy (the unfeeling and therefore definitely not human)? Is it paradoxical to say that machines feel or is it necessary to think about ourselves as machines that feel?
This is a writing course designed to help students devise and put together longer research papers. To that end, we will extend the English 1A practices of developing strong theses and working through draft-and-feedback loops. In addition, we will learn the important skills of identifying, locating, understanding, and making judicious use of materials in supporting your ideas. We will begin with a three-page diagnostic essay and gradually make our way to a ten-page research essay.
Primary Texts:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Tomorrow’s Eve (1886)
H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man (1897)
Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You (1974)
William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (2002)
Films:
James Whale, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Ridley Scott, Bladerunner (1982)
John Lasseter, Toy Story (1995)
Bill Condon, Gods and Monsters (1998)
Steven Spielberg, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Course Reader will include short stories and selections from:
Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817)
E.T.A. Hoffman, The Tales of Hoffman (1817)
Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872)
E.M. Forster, "The Machine Stops" (1909)
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974)
Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" (1985)
Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines (1992)
Course: R1B
Section: 15
Topic: Romantic Comedy: The War of the Sexes
Instructor: Leslie Walton
Time: T Th 12:30-2
Location: 204 Wheeler
CC#: 28475
This course will trace a certain strain of romantic comedy that pits man against woman in a frequently staged and frequently settled but never truly concluded struggle for dominion-and love. Along with questions about the nature of this dominion and how it both threatens and provokes romantic love, we will investigate the romantic comedy as genre and attempt to understand its curiously self-cannibalizing history (why, for instance, do so many modern romantic comedies conspicuously borrow plots from past films, plays, and novels?). In addition to studying the required texts and films (four of which will also be "required"), we will be refining compositional skills learned in 1A and learning the process of literary research. Coursework will culminate in an 8-10 page library research paper on a course-related topic of your choosing.
Required Texts:
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare
The Way of the World, William Congreve
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Films:
It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934)
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940)
Adam’s Rib (Cukor, 1949)
When Harry Met Sally... (Reiner, 1989)
You’ve Got Mail (Ephron, 1998)
10 Things I Hate About You (Junger, 1999)
Course: R1B
Section: 16
Topic: Jews and Anti-Judaisms in Pre- and Post-Expulsion England
Instructor: Adrienne S. Williams
Time: TuTh 2-330
Location: 109 Wheeler
CC#: 28478
Course Description: It is almost universally granted that there were no Jews in England before the Norman Conquest (1066); in 1290, Edward I expelled the Jewish population from England; and not until 1660 was any official readmission granted. The 1290 Expulsion and the resulting short-lived existence of medieval Anglo-Jewry makes representation of the Jew in medieval English literature a particularly complicated and historically loaded area of inquiry, one that necessarily leads to study of the functions of anti-Jewish discourse and the interplay of religious identity and nationalism. In this course, we will read works written before and after the Expulsion, along with historical records and scholarship, to examine both "the Jew" as represented in literature and the impact of that representation on Jews (a much more difficult thing to assess).
N.B.: Our priority will always be the writing of expository and argumentative prose. You will write many short essays, read each other’s work and that of other scholars, and you will constantly use and improve your practical writing skills.
Book List: COURSE READER ONLY, available the first week of class and including: works by Aelfric, Thomas of Monmouth, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Mirk, along with anonymous popular legendary accounts, some historical documents, and scholarship (especially from Chaucer and the Jews, ed. Sheila Delany, 2002).
Course: R1B
Section: 17
Topic: Epistolary Fictions
Instructor: Fiona Murphy
Time: T Th 3:30-5
Location: 104 Barrows
CC#: 28481
In this course we will read a variety of epistolary fictions in order to explore the relationship between the artifact of the letter and the narrative. We will study actual letters from historical figures, novels in which the story is told through letters themselves, and works which prominently feature the study and interpretation of letters. This is a writing class, and as such the questions that arise through our course readings regarding the interpretation of evidence will inform our efforts to improve our own analytic skills.
Each student in this class will be required to write three papers and revise two of them. In addition, each student will make two oral presentations during the term.
Course Readings:
Bantock, Nick: Griffin and Sabine (Chronicle)
Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa (Abridged. Riverside Edition)
Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein (Norton Critical Edition)
Stoppard, Tom: Arcadia (Faber and Faber)
McEwan, Ian: Atonement (Nan Talese/ Doubleday)
Williams, Jospeh: Style: Towards Clarity and Grace (U. of Chicago Press)
Movies:
Dangerous Liaisons
Possession
Newly added section:
Course: R1B
Section: 18
Topic: See below.
Instructor: Flossie Lewis
Time: TTh 8-9:30
Location: 121 Wheeler
CC#: 28483
Digging allusions or the fun of reading some of the works of Tom Stoppard. The course will begin with a paper on the meaning and attraction of plagiarism, and we will move from there to observe how skillfully and joyfully Stoppard makes other works his own.
The plays:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Arcadia
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Waiting for Godot
The latest editions are cited above, but I don't mind an old copy of a work with the notes you once took. Just don't come to class with the collected works of any kind. There will be handouts, of course, but a lot of the assigned work will require you to visit the library and the art department, maybe a museum or two. Two research papers.
Note New Section Added 1/15/04
Course: R1B
Section: 19
Topic: Berkeley Writers at Work
Instructor: Steve Tollefson*
Time: MWF 9-10
Location: 305 Wheeler
CC#: 29342
Berkeley faculty produce an amazing number of wonderfully written, fascinating books. This course will focus on Berkeley faculty as writers. We will read a number of their books from a variety of disciplines and genres-journalism, poetry, linguistics, fiction, and satire-as well as articles by and about them. In addition, we will watch interviews with several of them about their writing process. Class discussions address both the content and the writing.
Much of the class will focus on learning from skills and techniques from these authors that we can apply to our own writing. We will work on close reading and critical analyses of the texts, developing a variety of writing strategies and honing critical thinking skills. Students will write a number of short papers of various kinds-analyses, arguments, and reviews-that will serve as background and preparatory writing for two longer papers: for one, students will seek out a Berkeley faculty member to interview about his or her writing process. For the last paper, students will develop a research topic based on one or more of the authors we cover in the course. All papers will go through multiple revisions during which writers will receive input from the instructor as well as from colleagues in the class.
Students will also attend the spring 2004 Berkeley Writers at Work Event featuring David Kirp of the Graduate School of Public Policy. The event is Tuesday, March 30 at noon. Arrangements will be made for those unable to attend because of class or work conflicts.
* Tollefson is a recipient of Berkeley's Distinguished Teacher Award.
Texts (all available in paperback):
Virtual Tibet: Orville Schell
Post-Modern Pooh: Frederick Crews
The Language War: Robin Tolmach Lakoff
Earth Abides: George R Stewart
Sun Under Wood: Robert Hass
Grammar Grams and Grammar Grams II: Stephen K. Tollefson (availability TBA)
Course Reader (availability TBA)
Note New Section Added 1/15/04
Course: R1B
Section: 20
Topic: Happy and Unhappy Families
Instructor: Kaya Oakes
Time: TT 2-3:30
Location: 224 Wheeler
CC#: 29345
In 2004, Americans still can't agree on what makes a family. The mythological "nuclear" family seems to exist only in sitcoms; gay marriage and single parent families remain at the heart of divisive debates, and "family values" remain undefined. Tolstoy posited that "all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way," which may be over generalizing things, but in this course, we'll begin by defining family life with the basic questions of what being a part of a family might mean in contemporary America. From there, we'll move into analyzing and examining fictional and factual depictions of contemporary American families, as well as families abroad. Our texts include a short story collection about family life on a Native American reservation; a case study of urban, single-parent families; a graphic novel about childhood during the fall of the Shah in Iran; a "fantasia" of a film about a family of geniuses, and numerous short essays, memoirs, poems and articles.
Your writing in this course will revolve around families as its main topic, but along the way, you will engage in a variety of writing tasks. We will begin by revisiting the basics of essay structure: crafting arguable theses, presenting provable claims, and adducing evidence. From there we'll move on to strengthening your close reading skills by focusing on methods for structuring and understanding argumentative essays.
You will write reading responses, as well as several essays--at least one of them an in-class work. The semester will culminate with a long-form research essay that will incorporate research skills learned during class workshops. There will be a large emphasis on writing as a process and revision, including a substantial amount of workshop time in class devoted to peer response.
Texts:
Red Ant House: Ann Cummins
Random Family: Love, Drugs Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Persepolis The Story of a Childhood: Marjane Satrapi
The Royal Tennenbaums (film and screenplay): Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson
FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research: Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie Slater
Course Reader: including readings from James Baldwin, David Sedaris, Chang-Rae Lee, Judith Ortiz-Cofer, and others.
Note New Section Added 1/15/04
Course: R1B
Section: 21
Topic: Story, History, Fact, Fiction: Doing Documentary Work
Instructor: Jane Hammons*
Time: TT 3:30-5
Place: 224 Wheeler
CCN: 29348
What happens when a college student chooses to make her family the subject of her honors project and heads into the backwoods of Appalachia to write an oral history? How does a small-time rustler with little verifiable history become Billy the Kid, the subject of histories, film, music, poetry and fiction? Why do Dorothea Lange's photographs from the American Depression still have such a powerful impact on us today?
In this writing course you will investigate written and visual texts of different genres-history , fiction, poetry, case study, photography and film-as you analyze and create a variety of texts that will require you to continue practicing and developing strategies and skills learned in R1A and other writing classes. In addition you will be asked to broaden your notion of the term documentary as you think about issues related to the use of evidence, the way you position yourself as a writer and critical thinker, and the rhetorical strategies you choose.
You will write several essays that will help develop your skills of analysis and persuasion, and you will design a project that will result in a research essay,
Required texts:
FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research: Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie Sunstein
Oral History: Lee Smith
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Michael Ondaatje
An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion: Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor
Course reader that includes essays by Robert Coles, Michelle Cliff, Pico Iyer and others.
* Hammons is a recipient of Berkeley's Distinguished Teacher Award.
NEW SECTION ADDED 1/28/04:
Course: R1B
Section: 22
Topic:
Instructor: Joy Viveros
Time: MWF 3-4
Location: 258 Dwinelle
CC#: 29351
Course Description: This course is designed to prepare you to compose college level essays that are superior in form and content. Our focus will be on acquiring strategies that enable you to develop your intuitions about what you read into viable, complex theses. We will work, among other things, on recognizing the difference between an opinion about a text and analysis of it, as well as on generating the kinds of questions that lead to analytic theses. We will also work to make sophisticated use of research in our writing.
Our readings center on storytelling and the problem of history. We will be examining the different narrative strategies postcolonial and postmodernist authors use to approach telling life stories and situating lives within the matrix of history. In addition, we will pursue the questions you bring to bear on our texts.
Readings include: Silko, Storyteller; DeLillo, White Noise and Mao II; Speigelman, Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II: Here My Troubles Began.
NEW SECTION ADDED 1/28/04:
Course: R1B
Section: 23
Topic:
Instructor: Joy Viveros
Time: MW 5-6:30
Location: 305 Wheeler
CC#: 29354
Course Description: This course is designed to prepare you to compose college level essays that are superior in form and content. Our focus will be on acquiring strategies that enable you to develop your intuitions about what you read into viable, complex theses. We will work, among other things, on recognizing the difference between an opinion about a text and analysis of it, as well as on generating the kinds of questions that lead to analytic theses. We will also work to make sophisticated use of research in our writing.
Our readings center on storytelling and the problem of history. We will be examining the different narrative strategies postcolonial and postmodernist authors use to approach telling life stories and situating lives within the matrix of history. In addition, we will pursue the questions you bring to bear on our texts.
Readings include: Silko, Storyteller; DeLillo, White Noise and Mao II; Speigelman, Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II: Here My Troubles Began.
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