Instructions "pages 1-3"

Concentration Areas

Announcement of Classes

R1A/1B Courses

24/1
Freshman Seminar: Writing the High Sierra
S. Schweik
M 10-11
103 Wheeler
1 unit

Book List: A xeroxed course reader, with short excerpts from (among others) the following texts: California's High Sierra, by Gary Snyder and Tom Killion; History of the Sierra Nevada by Francis Farquhar; Sierra Nevada Natural History by Tracy I. Storer and Robert L. Usinger; A Treasury of the Sierra Nevada, An Anthology, edited by Robert L. Leonard; Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, by Clarence King; My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir; The Mountains of California;, by John Muir; and Ramblings in the Sierra Nevada, by Joseph L. LeConte.

Course Description: This course will explore two things: 1) how the "High Sierra" has been represented in nineteenth and twentieth century "nature writing," "outdoor adventure writing," "environmental writing," "conservationist writing" and "wilderness writing"; 2) various aspects of the Sierra Nevada, including human and natural history, geology, trails and flora and fauna. English Professor Susan Schweik will co-teach the course with the veteran outdoorsman/writer Gene Rose, whose many books on the Sierra Nevada include Sierra Centennial, Magic Yosemite Winters: A Century of Winter Sports, and High Odyssey: The First Solo Winter Assault of Mt. Whitney and the Muir Trail Area. In class, we will work from (and with) the writer’s notebook you develop, a journal in which you respond to the readings and to the natural world of the Sierra Nevada. To take this course you must be able to attend a 3 day (Friday through Sunday) weekend field trip to King’s Canyon National Park, where we will camp, hike, and meet with naturalists and area historians. Visitors to the class in Berkeley will include speakers on Native Americans in the area and on the politics of disability access in the National Parks.

24/2
Freshman Seminar: The Third Man: Novel Into Movie
M. Breitwieser
M 3-4
203 Wheeler
1 unit

Book List: Graham Greene, The Third Man and the Fallen Idol; Charles Drazin, In Search of The Third Man

Course Description: The Third Man is commonly ranked among the greatest films of the twentieth century, a meditation on disappointment and betrayal in friendship and in international politics, an intertwining of personal and historical experience that will be the main concern of the class. The Third Man is also one of the few cases where the script and the novel from which it was adapted were written by the same person, in this case, Graham Greene. We will watch the film until we feel we know it well, then read the novel until we know it equally well, then study the changes Greene made in order to ascertain what was lost and what was gained. I think that the members of the class will be surprised by the way what seem to be small alterations turn out to be quite important once we get them in close focus. The first few classes will be spent viewing the movie, but I would suggest that those enrolling in the class get their own copies on VHS or DVD in advance. The novel will be the only required text, along with Drazin’s history of the film: but it would be helpful if everyone had read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which was on Greene’s mind while writing the novel and the script. Regular attendance and participation will be required, along with a five-page essay at the end of the semester.

24/3
Freshman Seminar: Aesthetic Theory and the Arts on Campus
C. Altieri
Weds. 12-1
203 Wheeler
1 unit

Book List: Townsend, D.: Aesthetics: Classic Readings from the Western Tradition

Course Description: In this seminar we will read and discuss some classic ideas in aesthetics and test them in relation to museum shows and performances in dance and theatre. Most weeks we will attend either the museum or a performance event on campus, then discuss that in class. The class usually gets 75% discounts for Cal Performance events.

24/4
Freshman Seminar: Visual Culture and Autobiography
H. Wong
Tues. 5-7
305 Wheeler
1 unit

Note that this section will meet Aug. 26-Oct. 14 only.

Book List: Momaday, N. S.: The Way to Rainy Mountain; Spiegelman, A.: Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Part I: My Father Bleeds History. and Part II: . . . And Here My Troubles Began

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.

24/5
Freshman Seminar: Contemporary Irish Theater-The Plays of Brian Friel
R. Tracy
M 3-5
Residence Unit III (the library)
1 unit

Note that this section will meet Sept. 15-Nov. 3 only.

Book List: Friel, B.: Selected Plays, Dancing at Lughnasa

Course Description: Brian Friel (b. 1928) is the most prominent playwright of the contemporary Irish theater, best known for Translations (1981) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1991). 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.

Newly added section:

24/6
Freshman Seminar: Reading Medieval English
S. Justice
W 3-4
262 Dwinelle
1 unit

Course Control #: 28510

Book List: See below

Course Description: This will be an introduction to the English language, and the literature written in it, before about 1500. In the first five weeks, students will learn how to pronounce Old English, and to read simple sentences in it (Old English is virtually and foreign language to speakers of Modern English). For the rest of the semester, we will study the development of Middle English (the language of Chaucer), learn to pronounce and read it, and gain some acquaintance with the variety of writing from the period. We'll spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the sound and workings of Old and Middle English by reading aloud.

Newly added section:

24/7
Freshman Seminar: LGBT Studies
C. Nealon
Mon. 6-7 P.M.
Foothill (Dorm) Classroom B
1 unit

Course Control #: 28513

Course Description: We will look at LGBT coming-of-age narratives in literature and film, and develop a comparative understanding of the forms the narratives take. I will try to arrange for at least one guest speaker.

43A This course has been cancelled.

43B This course has been cancelled.

45A/1
Literature in English: Through Milton
J. Miller

Lectures MW 1-2 in 101 Morgan, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 1-2)

For additional information on this course, please contact Prof. Jennifer Miller via email at j_miller@uclink4.berkeley.edu

45A/2
Literature in English: Through Milton
N. Howe

Lectures MW 3-4 in 141 McCone, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)

Book List: Liuzza, R.M.: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation; Chaucer, G.: The Canterbury Tales; Spenser, E.: Edmund Spenser’s Poetry; Milton, J.:Paradise Lost

Course Description: An introduction to English literary history starting with the Old English Beowulf and running through the late seventeenth century. Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queen and Paradise Lost will make up the reading for the semester. We will pay particular attention to the narrative design of these long poems as well as to the historical and cultural conditions under which each was produced. Some attention will also be given to the ways in which these four works reflect changes and developments in the English language from c. 1000 to 1700.

45B/1
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century
I. Duncan

Lectures MW 9-10 in 1 Le Conte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 9-10)

Book List: Not yet determined, but it will include some of the following: Behn, A.: Oroonoko; Swift, J., Gulliver’s Travels; Defoe, D., Robinson Crusoe; Wordsworth, W., and Coleridge, S.T., Lyrical Ballads; Edgeworth, M., Castle Rackrent; Austen, J., Persuasion; Scott, W., Rob Roy; Bronte, E., Wuthering Heights; Dickens, C., Great Expectations; Sayre, G., ed.,American Captivity Narratives; a course reader containing 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 Behn, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Macpherson, Gray, Rowlandson, Equiano, Burns, Burney, Edgeworth, Austen, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, E. Bronte, Poe, Hawthorne, Dickens.

45B/2
Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century
K. Puckett

Lectures MW 2-3 in 105 North Gate, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 2-3)

Book List: The book list has yet to be determined but may include the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II; Austen, J.: Pride and Prejudice; Franklin, B.: Autobiography; Gates, H.: Classic Slave Narratives; Melville, H.: Bartleby and Benito Cereno; Sterne, L.: A Sentimental Journey

Course Description: This course is an introduction to English and American literature from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century. We'll read works from that period (by Pope, Sterne, Franklin, Equiano, Wordsworth, Austen, Melville, Browning, Dickinson, Whitman, and others) and think about how politics, the everyday, race, gender, and identity all find expression in a number of different literary forms. We'll especially consider the material and symbolic roles played by the idea and practice of revolution in the period.

45C/1
Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century
Note new instructor: J. Bishop

Lectures MW 11-12 in 277 Cory, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 11-12)

Book List: Ellmann, R. and R. O’Clair, eds.: The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Ellison, R.: Invisible Man; Faulkner, W.: Absalom, Absalom!; Hemingway, E.: The Sun Also Rises; Woof, V.: Mrs. Dalloway

Course Description: A survey of English and American literature from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, with attention given both to conceptions of literature intrinsically claimed by the texts assigned and to the historical and cultural grounds out of which they emerged. The course will inevitably investigate the emergence and rise of modernism and also, in passing, the value and nature of such constructions as "the author," "literature," "literary history," and "period." Active participation in discussion sections will be essential. There will be two short papers, a final exam, and possibly a midterm.

45C/2
Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century
C. Altieri

Lectures MW 3-4 in 3 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)

Book List: Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Wilde, O.: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings; James, H.: The Portrait of a Lady; Joyce, J.: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Woolf, V.: To the Lighthouse; Faulkner, W.: The Sound and the Fury; Achebe, C.: Things Fall Apart; and a course reader with among other things poems by Langston Hughes and George Oppen

Course Description: This course will provide a survey of major works and stylistic experiments that have come to characterize modernism in Anglo-American literature. We will try to understand the pressures to which the writers were responding and we will explore how their experiments can be said to make a difference in cultural life. Lectures will be devoted primarily to close reading, although there will be considerable concern for trends within the intellectual ferment of the period. There will be a mid-term and final as well as three five-page papers. The pace of this class will be intense and the discourse somewhat demanding. But there will be the considerable reward that Lyn Hejinian will be sharing the lecturing because she is doing a writing course, 143B, in conjunction with the class. Students willing to take an additional four units can request admission to her workshop which will consist largely in encouraging modes of writing that engage what the writers in the course were attempting.

C77
Introduction to Environmental Studies
R. Hass and G. Sposito

Lectures TTh 12:30-2 in 105 North Gate, plus 1½ hours of discussion section per week (sec. 101: Tues. 2-3:30; sec. 102: Thurs. 11-12:30; sec. 103: Tues. 3:30-5; sec 104: Thurs. 2-3:30; sec. 105: Thurs. 8-9:30; sec. 106: Thurs. 9:30-11)

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; 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.

Newly added course:

84
Sophomore Seminar: Culture, Pop Culture
J. Bader
Thurs. 3:30-5:30
305 Wheeler
1 unit

Course Control #: 28612

Book List: Carver, R.: Where I’m Calling From

Recommended: Smith, S.: Hitchcock; Chion, M.: Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey; Pointon, D.: Framed; Paglia, C.: The Birds; Barr, C.: Vertigo; Elsaesser, T.: Studying Contemporary American Film; Kaplan, E.: Feminism and Film

Course Description: We will analyze some films by Kubrick and Hitchcock through various scholarly and critical approaches, and discuss the concepts of popular and high culture in relation to them as well as to some Cal Performances. We will also critique some Carver short stories and Altman’s Shortcuts about them.

This one-unit course must taken on a Pass/Not Pass basis and is open only to sophomore Letters & Science students; it is intended for prospective English majors.

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