Lower-Division Courses (24 - 84)
Spring 2008
24
Freshman Seminar: Visual Culture and Autobiography
Wong, Hertha
W 5-8 P.M.
300 Wheeler
1 unit
Note: This class will meet from Jan. 23 through Feb. 20 only
Book List: Momaday , N.S. : The Way to Rainy Mountain; Spiegelman, A.: Maus(Parts 1 & 2)
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. Please bring your journal to each class.
This course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required to complete the English major.
25
English as a Language
Hanson, Kristin
TTh 11-12:3
210 Wheeler (as of 2/12)
Book List: Pinker, S: The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, and possibly The Stuff of Thought; various printed problem sets
Course Description: This course examines the English language as a particular instance of the general phenomenon of human language. We will consider aspects of its phonology (sound structure), morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure) and semantics (linguistic meaning), as well as some pragmatics (contextual meaning) and usage issues. No previous background in linguistics is required.
Requirements: Three quizzes and a (likely take-home) final exam.
31AC
Literature of American Cultures: Passing
Giscombe, Cecil S.
TTh 12:30-2
110 Barrows
Book List: Students should come to class before buying books. The following list is tentative. But, that said, it will likely include most of these books: Karen Brodkin: How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America; John Howard Griffin: Black Like Me; Nella Larsen: Passing; Sinclair Lewis: Kingsblood Royal; Philip Roth: The Human Stain; James Weldon Johnson: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; Kenji Yoshino: Covering. Also: readings from Noel Ignatiev’s journal Race Traitor and from his book How the Irish Became White; some films (Imitation of Life, the 4th Alien film); excerpts from Michael D. Harris’s Colored Pictures (on the paintings of Archibald Motley, one of which appears on the cover of Larsen’s Passing); Cecilia Cutler’s essay on “White Teens, Hip-Hop, and African-American English,” etc.
Course Description: A passing narrative is an account—fiction or nonfiction—of a person or group claiming a racial or ethnic identity that they do not "possess." Such narratives speak—directly, indirectly, and very uneasily—to the authenticity, the ambiguity, and the performance of racial or ethnic identity; they also speak to issues of official and traditional categorization. The passing
narrative—the narrative that accounts for making the “different” claim—necessarily unsettles notions of belonging and underscores that race can be viewed as a construction.
This semester we’ll examine a number of such narratives and we’ll read in the material beyond the narratives themselves in order to better understand the contexts and arguments to which theses stories refer. We’ll discuss the impact of passing on American literature.
This course satisfies UC Berkeley’s American Cultures requirement.
43B
Introduction to the Writing of Verse
Fisher, Jessica
TTh 11-12:30
301 Wheeler
Book List: Lehman, D.: The Oxford Book of American Verse
Course Description: This workshop will teach various approaches toward the writing of verse. In addition to weekly writing assignments, students will read a range of poetry and essays, and will be encouraged to attend local poetry readings.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 5 photocopied pages of your poems, along with an application form, to Jessica Fisher’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler Hall, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 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
Adelman, Janet
Lectures MW 12-1 in 2 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 12-1)
Book List: Chaucer, W.: The Canterbury Tales; Marlowe, C.: Dr. Faustus; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost; Spenser, E.: Edmund Spenser’s Poetry
Course Description: This course is an introduction to major works by Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, with supplemental poetry 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.
45A/2
Literature in English: Through Milton
Justice, Steven
Lectures MW 2-3 in 60 Evans, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 2-3)
Book List: Chaucer, G.: Canterbury Tales; Spenser, E.: Edmund Spenser’s Poetry; Marlowe, C.: Doctor Faustus ; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost
Course Description: This class introduces students to the production of poetic narrative in English through the close study of major works in that tradition: The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, Doctor Faustus, and Paradise Lost. Each of these texts reflects differently on the ambition of national, epic poetry to enfold the range of a culture’s experience. We will focus particularly, therefore, on the relationships of different genres to different kinds of knowledge, to see how different ways of expressing things make possible new things to express, as English culture and English poetry transform each other from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
45B/1
Literature in English: Late-17 th Through the Mid-19 th Century
Blanton, Dan
Lectures MW 1-2 in 141 McCone, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 1-2)
Book List: Brontë, E.: Wuthering Heights ;Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. C:The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century;Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. D: The Romantic Period; Shelley, M.: Frankenstein
Course Description: This course traces the expansion and transformation of English literature, from an insular cultural form to an incipient global fact, from a writing produced in England to a writing produced in English. We will begin in the wake of one civil war, in England , and end on the threshold of another, in the United States . Along the way, we will pass through the Enlightenment and though the turmoil produced by several revolutions: English, Glorious, mercantile, bourgeois, American, French, and industrial, among others. Through it all, we will attend to some of the ways in which poetic and other literary forms revise and readapt older traditions of English writing to new historical circumstances, both at home and across the Atlantic , often constructing the forms and categories that shape our own situation in the process. Our reading will include some of the major figures of the Augustan age, the eighteenth century, the Romantic movement, the early Victorian period, and a nascent American literature.
45B/2
Literature in English: Late-17 th Through the Mid-19 th Century
Breitwieser, Mitchell
Lectures MW 3-4 in 3 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)
Book List: Mary Rowlandson: Sovereignty and Goodness of God; Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe; Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography; Alexander Pope: Essay on Man and Other Poems; Jane Austen: Emma; William Wordsworth: The Major Works: Including The Prelude; Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights ; Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
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.
45C/1
Literature in English: Mid-19 th Through the 20 th Century
Wong, Hertha
Lectures MW 9-10 in 141 McCone, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 9-10)
Book List: Achebe, C.: Things Fall Apart; Conrad, J.: Heart of Darkness; Hosseini, K.: The Kite Runner; Morrison, T.: Beloved; Ramazani, J., et al: The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (Volume I): Modern Poetry; Silko, L.M.: Ceremony; Woolf, V: Mrs. Dalloway; Course Reader
Course Description: This survey course of literature in English from the mid-nineteenth century to the present will consider a variety of literary forms and movements in their historical and cultural contexts. We’ll read literature in English not only by English and European American writers, but by Irish, African, Native American, African American, and Afghanistan American writers. We’ll consider the literature of colonization and imperialism and the counter literature that it inspires. We’ll examine recurrent transcultural themes: the relationship between past and present, surviving historical trauma, the transmission of oral traditions and indigenous epistemologies, and the influence of notions of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and gender on subject formation. We’ll also do close readings. There will be three two 5-page essays, a midterm, and a final examination.
45C/2
Literature in English: Mid-19 th Through the 20 th Century
Lye, Colleen
Lectures MW 11-12 in 160 Kroeber, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 11-12)
Book List: Conrad, J.: Lord Jim; Faulkner, W.: Absalom, Absalom!; Kingston, M. H.: The Woman Warrior; Naipaul, V.S.: The Mimic Men; Morrison, T.: Beloved; Woolf, V.: Mrs. Dalloway; there will also be a course reader containing selected works by W.E.B. Dubois, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and others.
Course Description: This course is an introduction to literature written in English mainly between the late 19 th century and the late 20 th century. There will be two kinds of emphases running through the course—one paid to the formal innovations credited to the significant authors of this period, the other paid to the socio-political conditions surrounding their aesthetic achievements. In particular, we will consider the development of English literature in the context of competing British and American empires and the globalization of English.
R50/1
Freshman and Sophomore Studies: Visions and Revisions Goodwin, Peter
TTh 2-3:30
225 Wheeler
Book List: Bronte, C.: Jane Eyre; Rhys, J.: Wide Sargasso Sea ; Poe, E.: Selected Writings; Auster, P.: City of Glass ; Jacobs, H.: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Butler , O.: Kindred; Hacker, D.: A Writer’s Reference
Course Description: This course begins with the premise that literary texts make their meanings in dialogue with one another and in engagement with their social and cultural contexts. We will be reading three nineteenth-century works alongside late-twentieth-century adaptations of these works, noting elements of homage, critique, parody, revisionism, and formal innovation in the later works. In addition, the course will introduce students to various critical approaches to literary study, including structuralism and poststructuralism, queer and feminist literary theory, and new historicism. One of the primary goals of the course is to develop students’ expertise in writing a literary research paper. In addition to writing essays of literary close reading, students will learn how to conduct and present research on a related topic of their own design.
English R50 is intended for students who are planning to be English majors and who have already taken English R1A. It satisfies the College’s R1B requirement.
This course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required for the English major.
R50/2
Freshman and Sophomore Studies: Short & Sweet
Bartlett, Jami
TTh 5-6:30
225 Wheeler
Book List: Carroll, L.: Through the Looking-Glass; Coppola, S.: Marie Antoinette; Eggers, D.: The Best American Nonrequired Reading , 2007 ; Lodge, D.: Modern Criticism and Theory; Nabokov, V.: The Enchanter; Stuart, M.: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; Voltaire: Candide; Wilde, O.: The Picture of Dorian Gray; Course Reader
Course Description: This course continues your R1A training in the systematic practice of reading and writing, with the aim of developing your fluency through longer expository papers and the incorporation of research into argumentation. You will be responsible for writing and revising 3 papers (two 6-8 pages in length, and a final research paper of 8-10 pages), two in-class essays, three rounds of peer editing, and weekly responses to required reading.
Berkeley ’s Reading and Composition sequence features courses designed to create a community of writers across the university curriculum: students read interdisciplinary texts, interact with peers from other departments, and write for many different audiences. “Short & Sweet” was designed with this end in mind: we will read many different kinds of writing, from your own essays, to poetry, graphic novels, travel-writing, non-fiction and short fiction, journalism, literary criticism and film, in an effort to make sense of formal constraints. All of our readings will be short, all of our writings will be specific, and all of our focus will be on the forms that we use to contain and express ourselves.
English R50 is intended for students who are planning to be English majors and who have already taken English R1A. It satisfies the College’s R1B requirement.
This course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required for the English major.
80K
Children’s Literature
Wright, Katharine
TTh 9:30-11
126 Barrows
Book List: Possible titles may include The Princess and the Goblin, White Fang, Harriet the Spy and The Golden Compass
Course Description: This course will explore the complex and controversial issues that arise around a literature defined by its audience. We'll read British and American children's books from the 19th century to the present as well as a wide range of critical commentary. Students should be prepared to question everything.
84
High Culture / Low Culture: Comedy and the Films of Woody Allen
Bader, Julia
Thurs. 2-5
300 Wheeler
2 units
Book List: Allen, W.: Without Feathers,Side Effects,Four Films,Getting Even,Non-Being and Somethingness; Girgus: The Films of Woody Allen; Hirsch: Love, Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life; Perlman: Seven Types of Ambiguity
Course Description: We will examine the films and writings of Woody Allen in terms of themes, narration, comic and visual inventiveness and ideology. The course will also include a consideration of cultural contexts and events at Cal Performances and the Pacific Film Archive.
This course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required to complete the English major.
Last modified: February 05, 2008