Lower Division Courses
Fall 2005
24/1
Freshman Seminar: Children, Families and Disability
Schweik, Susan and O'Toole, Corbett Joan
Tues. 10-11
121 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: Waters, M., ed.: Bigger Than the Sky: Disabled Women on Parenting; course reader
Course Description: This course will explore how disability, gender and race intersect in the lives of people with disabilities across the early lifespan (from birth to age 18), primarily in the United States. The questions we'll address are fundamental disability issues: What is the value of a disabled life? Do children with disabilities belong in the mainstream world of schools and communities? Who, under what circumstances, should make decisions that concern young adults with disabilities? Through the lens of families we will examine important and cutting-edge topics such as prenatal testing, issues concerning disabled babies and disabled parents, mainstreaming, personal assistance services, and playground politics. Class speakers will include disabled teens, parents of disabled children, parents who chose to have a disabled child (both biological and adoptive parents), educators, and artists. This class is geared to freshmen who want a small, interactive experience of exploring disability from both nondisabled and disabled perspectives while building an academic base in disability studies. Frequent informal short assignments, many of which will take you outside of the classroom into the worlds of children, families and advocates dealing with disability. The class will be co-taught by two instructors. Corbett Joan O'Toole, a longtime, internationally influential disability rights activist, is a writer, a filmmaker and director of the Disabled Women's Alliance, an organization that focuses on networking and advocacy for women with disabilities around the world. Susan Schweik is associate professor of English and co-coordinator of the disability studies minor at Berkeley.
24/2
Freshman Seminar: Visual Culture and Autobiography
Wong, Hertha Sweet
W 10-11
205 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: Momaday, N.S.: The Way to Rainy Mountain; Speigelman, A.: Maus I and II
Course Description: Visual culture is not just about pictures, but the (post)"modern tendency to picture or visualize experience"--what W.J.T. Mitchell calls "the pictorial turn." Not surprisingly, as contemporary writers and artists struggle to find forms that convey postmodern individual identities in multicultural, often urban, social landscapes, they experiment with visual/verbal forms of self-representation and self-narration: story quilts, family photo albums, letters, comic books (co-mix), artists' books, photo-biographies, video and film, performance art, home pages, "zines," and more. Course requirements include attendance, participation, completion of in-class activities, and a short course journal.
24/3
Freshman Seminar: Growing Up Chicano/Latino
Padilla, Genaro
W 4:30-5:30
305 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: We will read some of the best writers on childhood and adolescence: Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street and stories from Woman Hollering Creek, Gary Soto's Living Up the Street, and other material I will either copy or order before the term opens. We will also discuss the films "and the earth did not devour him," based on the story by Tomas Rivera, "Mi Vida Loca," directed by Allison Anders, "Real Women Have Curves," and possibly "Mi Familia," directed by Gregory Nava.
Course Description: We will read a small group of narratives about growing up Chicano/Latino. I believe that this is a particularly difficult time for all children as they face sexual pressure, violence, discouraging schools. By focusing on Chicano youth we will glimpse their experience as they come into sexuality and gender identity, the early formations of social identity, as they work through personal aspirations over against familial expectations and peer pressure, and how they see themselves coming into their own lives.
24/4
Freshman Seminar: Two Novels by Jane Austen
Paley, Morton
Fri. 10-12
305 Wheeler
1 unit
Note that this section of English 24 will meet for just 8 weeks, not starting until Sept. 9 and running through Nov. 4 (no class on Oct. 28).
Book List: Because we'll be examining a number of passages closely each time, going quickly from passage to passage, we'll need to locate these quickly by page number. For that reason it's important that everyone have the same text of the two novels. I have chosen two paperback editions that are well edited and easily available: Austen, J: Sense and Sensibility (ed. James Kinsley, Oxford World' Classics edition) and Emma (ed. R. Blythe, Penguin Classics edition).
Course Description: This seminar is meant to be an interesting and pleasant introduction to the study of a great novelist: Jane Austen. We'll read and discuss two novels: : Sense and Sensibility and Emma a. We'll approach the novels from a number of different perspectives, including (but not limited to): the roles of class and gender, Austen's language, plot structure, "point of view," the thematization of moral concerns, and the interplay of her fiction and the history of her time. We'll also discuss various critical approaches to these two works.
Your responsibilities will be 1) to attend regularly, bringing with you the assigned texts (see the note about the specific editions, above); 2) to participate in discussion; 3) to make a 15-minute (not longer) presentation, and 4) to write a short essay (about 1500 words, 7-8 double-spaced pages) on a subject of your own choice, due at the last seminar meeting. I'll be glad to read rough drafts of your essays in advance.
At our first meeting we'll consider a number of possible presentation subjects for you to choose from, and of course you may also suggest your own. Each of you will have a meeting with me during my office hours to help prepare for this. Some of you may wish to collaborate on presentations. In the latter part of the term, conferences on choosing an essay topic will be encouraged.
I'll begin by providing an introduction to the early Austen, using some passages from her early prose works, and we'll talk about Sense and Sensibility. Please bring your copy of the Oxford World's Classics edition and be prepared to discuss pp. 1-94.
Please note that our first meeting is on the Friday after Labor Day.
24/5
Freshman Seminar:
Reading Robert Frost
McQuade, Don
Mon. 4-5
109 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: Lanthem, E.C., ed.: Poetry of Robert Frost
Course Description: In a letter to a publisher friend, Robert Frost offered the following engaging definition of poetry: “A poem starts with a lump in the throat, a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching out toward expression, an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words… My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds.
This course will explore the satisfactions and the challenges of reading—carefully and pleasurably—selected poems and essays by Robert Frost, one of America’s most widely read and least understood and appreciated poets. He was widely regarded for decades as America’s most popular representative of poetry, and Frost deliberately cultivated his public image as a “rustic sage” and a rural wit in his numerous public readings and in his role as a good will ambassador. Frost was a poet who promoted an aura of bucolic dignity in his work and in his readings, and the surface features of his poems often lull readers into thinking they understand his work. Yet reading Frost’s poetry more carefully—to read him, as he says, with our “hearing imagination,” listening for “sentence sounds”—reveals a tough-minded and often skeptical attitude towards experience.
Students will be expected to write two short analytical essays (2-3 pages each) or—for those who are venturesome—perhaps a few poems. In addition, regular attendance and participation in class discussions will be required to pass the course.
24/6
Freshman Seminar: Contemporary Irish Theater-The Plays of Brian Friel
Tracy, Robert
Mon. 3:30-5:30
Unit II Academic Center, room L20
1 unit
NOTE: This class will meet September 12 through November 7 only. There will most likely be no class on October 17, but if there is, the final class meeting will be on October 31.
Book List: Friel, B.: Selected Plays (of Brian Friel), Dancing at Lughnasa
Course Description: Brian Friel (b. 1928) is the most prominent playwright of the contemporary Irish theater, best known for Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa. In a series of innovative plays, he has examined some of the stories the Irish tell themselves about their past and present. He uses the theater to examine issues of role-playing, story-telling, and self-delusion, that is, the nature of theatricality. While he explores Ireland's national and personal myths, Friel is saying something about us all and the parts we cast ourselves in when rehearsing our own dramas. This is a seminar, not a lecture course, so I will expect you all to contribute to discussions. Students will also be paired to lead discussions.
24/7
Freshman Seminar: Reading Walden Carefully
Breitwieser, Mitchell
222 Wheeler
M 3-4
1 unit
Book List: Thoreau, H. D.: Walden
Course Description: We will read Thoreau's Walden in small chunks, probably about thirty pages per week. This will allow us time to dwell upon the complexities of a book that is much more mysterious than those who have read the book casually, or those who have only heard about it, realize. We will also try to work some with online versions of the book, using the wordsearch command to identify words such as "woodchuck" or "root" that reappear frequently, in order to speculate on patterns Thoreau is trying to establish.
Regular attendance and participation, along with a loose five-page essay at the end, are required.
43A/1
Introduction to the Writing of Short Fiction
Note new instructor: Abrams, Melanie
MW 3-4:30
301 Wheeler
Book List: Burroway, J.: Writing Fiction
Course Description: In this course, students will learn the basic elements of fiction writing. Students will be expected to write two short stories during the semester. The course will be organized as a workshop. All stories will be edited and critiqued by the instructor and by other students in the class. We will also read and discuss selected short stories.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 5 photocopied pages of your fiction (prose fiction only, please), along with an application form, to the professor's mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, APRIL 19, AT THE LATEST.
Be sure to read the paragraph concerning creative writing courses on page 2 of this Announcement of Classes for further information regarding enrollment in such courses!
43A/2
Introduction to the Writing of Short Fiction
Chandra, Vikram
TTh 2-3:30
305 Wheeler
Book List: T.B.A.
Course Description: This is a workshop course intended for students who have recently begun to write fiction or who have not previously taken a course in creative writing.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 5 photocopied pages of your fiction (prose fiction only, please), along with an application form, to the box labeled "submissions for English 43A section 2" in 322 Wheeler Hall, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, APRIL 19, AT THE LATEST.
Be sure to read the paragraph concerning creative writing courses on page 2 of this Announcement of Classes for further information regarding enrollment in such courses!
43B
Introduction to the Writing of Verse
O'Brien, Geoffrey
Thurs. 3:30-6:30
305 Wheeler
Book List: Gioia, Mason, Schoerke, eds.: Twentieth-Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry; a reader containing further essays and poems.
Note: The required text will be available only through Cody's Books (www.codysbooks.org)
2454 Telegraph Avenue
510-845-7852
Course Description: The purpose of this class will be to produce a mobile, surprising, unfinished language in which to treat poetry. Writing poems will be a part of this task, but only a part. There will also be a modest amount of critical writing and reading, short written commentaries on other students' work, and a review of a poetry reading; these efforts will all be gathered in a final portfolio of revised work to be handed in at semester's end. In addition to regular discussion, class participation will include memorization and recitation of other writers' poems.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit photocopies of 5 to 8 of your poems (up to 10 pages), along with an application form, to Professor O'Brien's mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, APRIL 19, AT THE LATEST. Be sure to read the paragraph concerning creative writing courses on page 2 of this Announcement of Classes for further information regarding enrollment in such courses!
45A/1
Literature in English: Through Milton
Miller, Jennifer
Lectures MW 11-12 in 2 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 11-12)
Book List: A course reader
Course Description: For more information on this section of English 45A, please email the professor at j_miller@berkeley.edu.
45A/2
Literature in English: Through Milton
Adelman, Janet
Lectures MW 1-2 in 2 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 1-2)
Book List: Chaucer, W.: The Canterbury Tales; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost; Spenser, E.: Edmund Spenser's Poetry
Course Description: This course is an introduction to major works by Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, with occasional supplements from a class reader. In each case I will ask you to consider both the strangeness and the odd familiarity of these works, so far away from us in time and yet so close to many of our contemporary concerns. I am particularly interested in the power of representational resources available to these authors and now lost to us. My general approach to literature is feminist and psychoanalytic; I hope that you will be able to develop your own approach to these texts in your section meetings and on your papers. Requirements for the course include the writing of three papers, possibly a mid-term exam, and definitely a final exam, as well as participation in section meetings.
45B/1
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century
Breitwieser, Mitchell
Lectures MW 10-11 in 50 Birge (NOTE NEW CLASSROOM), plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 10-11)
Book List: Rowlandson, M.: Sovereignty and Goodness of God; Franklin, B.: Autobiography;;Defoe, D.: Robinson Crusoe;; Austen, J.: Emma; ; Wordsworth, W. and S.T. Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads and Related Writings;; Bronte, E.: Wuthering Heights;; Whitman, W.: Leaves of Grass: His Original Edition;; Douglass, F. and H. Jacobs: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave;, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl;
Course Description: I will lecture on the cataclysmic rise of bourgeois modernity as it registers in English and American literature during the period 1660-1860. I will emphasize the mixture of euphoria, wonder, deprivation, and anxiety that this transformation provokes, and I will concentrate on the Enlightenment and Romanticism as attempts to exploit historical opportunity while compensating for history's deficiencies. Two five-page essays, a final exam, and regular participation in lecture and discussion section will be required.
45B/2
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century
Duncan, Ian
Lectures MW 3-4 in 390 Hearst Mining, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)
Book List: Sayre, G., ed.: American Captivity Narratives;; Behn, A.: Oroonoko;; Swift, J.: Gulliver's Travels;; Defoe, D.: Robinson Crusoe;; Austen, J.: Persuasion;; Hogg, J.: Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner;; Bronte, E.: Wuthering Heights;; Melville, H.: Benito Cereno; course reader will contain selected poems and short fiction
Course Description: Readings in English, Scottish, Irish and American literature from 1688 through 1848: a century and a half that sees the formation of a new, multinational British state, with the political incorporation of Scotland and Ireland; the massive expansion of an overseas empire; and the revolt of the American colonies. Our readings will explore the relations between home and the world in writings preoccupied with journeys outward and back--not all of which are undertaken voluntarily. Authors include Rowlandson, Behn, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Macpherson, Collins, Gray, Equiano, Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Austen, Scott, Hogg, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville.
45C/1
Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century
Snyder, Katherine
Lectures MW 12-1 in 277 Cory, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 12-1)
Book List: To be selected from the following (do not purchase these texts until you get the finalized syllabus):
Gilman, C. P.: "The Yellow Wallpaper"; James, H.: "The Figure in the Carpet"; Conrad, J.: "The Secret Sharer"; Faulkner, W.: The Sound and the Fury; Larsen, N.: Passing; Woolf, V.: Mrs. Dalloway; Dos Passos, J.: Manhattan Transfer;; DeLillo, D.: White Noise; as well as a course reader containing selected poetry, essays, and literary criticism by M. Arnold, Hecht, Pater, Wilde, Pound, H.D., Williams, Koch, T.S. Eliot, Hopkins, Frost, Macleish, Millay, cummings, G. Brooks, Cullen, H. Johnson, McKay, DuBois, G. Schuyler, and Langston Hughes, among others.
Course Description: In this course we will begin with a Victorian text and end with a postmodern one, but we will focus primarily on the intervening period of literary modernism. Topics for discussion will include the status of high art and artists in an era of mass culture; the interplay between formal innovation and ideological stance (is there any connection between "radical" stylistic experimentation and "radical" politics?); the rejection and/or acceptance of "tradition" and history; the implications of expatriatism and multiculturalism for national identity; and the politics of canon-formation, that is, which authors and texts are regularly read, how they are read, and by whom.
Written work for the course will consist of three 5- to 6-page essays; occasional pop quizzes given in lecture; and a final exam. Regular attendance at lecture and vigorous participation in section are also required.
45C/2
Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century
Hale, Dorothy
Lectures MW 2-3 in 101 Morgan, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 2-3)
Book List: James, H.: The Portrait of a Lady; Eliot, T.S: The Waste Land and Other Poems; Stevens, W.: The Palm at the End of the Mind; Woolf, V.: To the Lighthouse; Hurston, Z.: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Beckett, S.: Waiting for Godot; Plath, S.: Ariel; Pynchon, T.: The Crying of Lot 49; a Course reader (available from Odin Copy).
Recommended Text: Frye, Northrop, et al., eds.: The Harper Handbook to Literature
Course Description: In surveying British and American literature from 1865-1965, this course will focus on what may be called the modernist tradition of innovation. We will study authors--such as Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett--whose revolutionary experiments in form established a new orthodoxy of representation: the belief that to write literature is to reinvent literature. Our study of literary form will lead us to engage larger socio-literary issues such as the relationship between high art and mass culture; the redefinition of national identity entailed by expatriatism; the search by cultural minorities for their own literary traditions and "voices"; and the role of academic literary criticism in canon formation.
The written work required for the course includes two short essays and a final exam. Active participation in discussion sections is mandatory.
It is strongly recommended that students complete 45A and 45B before taking this particular 45C.
C77
Introduction to Environmental Studies
Hass, Robert and Sposito, Gary
Lectures TTh 12:30-2 in 159 Mulford, plus 1_ hours of discussion section per week (sec. 101: Tues. 2-3:30; sec. 102: Thurs. 11-12:30; sec. 103: Tues. 8-9:30; sec 104: Thurs. 2-3:30; sec. 105: Thurs. 8-9:30; sec. 106: Thurs. 2-3:30)
This course is cross-listed with E.S.P.M. C12 and U.G.I.S. C12.
Book List: Cunningham and Cunningham: Principles of Environmental Science; Gilbar, S, ed.: Natural State; Leopold, A.: A Sand County Almanac; Snyder, G.: No Nature; Williams, T. T.: Refuge; also a course reader
Course Description: This is an innovative team-taught course that surveys global environmental issues at the beginning of the twenty-first century and that introduces students to the basic intellectual tools of environmental science and to the history of environmental thought in American poetry, fiction, and the nature writing tradition. One instructor is a scientist specializing in the behavior of soils and ecosystems (Garrison Sposito); the other is a poet (Robert Hass). The aim of the course is to examine the ways in which the common tools of scientific and literary analysis, of scientific method and imaginative thinking, can clarify what is at stake in environmental issues and environmental citizenship.
84
Sophomore Seminar: High Culture/Low Culture--The Coen Brothers and the Arts
Bader, Julia
M 2-5
203 Wheeler
1 unit
Book List: Lahiri, J.: Interpreter of Maladies
Course Description: Using film, fiction, and cultural events, the course will focus on the work of the Coen brothers and the stories of J. Lahiri to discuss the representation of sexuality, domesticity, and violence.
Last modified: July 18, 2005