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ENGLISH MAJORS: The areas of concentration for each upper-division course are typed right above the book list for the class. In addition, see the page right after the description of English H195B/3 (the last undergraduate course) for a list of all the courses that fall under each area of concentration.
100/1 This section has been cancelled.
100/2
Junior Seminar: Detective Fiction
M. Breitwieser
MW 2-4
109 Wheeler
Note to students: Though the official time of this class is 2-4, on most days it may end by 3:30.
Area of Concentration: 3
Book List: Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe; Arthur Conan Doyle: The Sign of Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Dorothy Sayers: The Nine Tailors; Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon; Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely; Stanislaw Lem: The Investigation; Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo: The Locked Room; Ian Rankin: Mortal Causes; Janwillem Van De Wetering: Outsider in Amsterdam
Course Description: I will emphasize the detective rather than the mystery—what motivates the detective? What binds him to the pursuit of the criminal? On what ground can he be differentiated from the criminal? What is the character of his desire? How is his task, the repair of social order, affected by the prevailing politics of that order? Beginning with the origin of the genre in Poe and Doyle, we will watch it split into genteel (Christie, Sayers) and hardboiled (Hammett, Chandler) strands, then consider its growing international appeal: the final four novels are by Polish, Swedish, Dutch and Scottish writers. Regular attendance and verbal participation, and two ten-page essays are required.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/3
Junior Seminar: Romantic Collaboration and Conversations
K. Goodman
MW 4-5:30
109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1C or 1D; 3
Book List (subject to minor alterations): Coleridge, S.T.: Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Major Works (ed. Jackson); Shelley, M.: Frankenstein; Wordsworth, D.: The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals; Wordsworth, W. and S.T. Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads, 1798 (ed. Owen); Wordsworth, W.: Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850; plus a Course Reader
Course Description: What happens when one author puts pen to paper and a version of someone else’s work comes out? Romanticism may often be associated with solitary geniuses and lonely imaginations, but in fact the movement was characterized by an unusual amount of literary collaboration, influence, and (some have said) subtle acts of plagiarism. This course will focus on the work of three intimately-linked authors and friends—William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and Samuel Coleridge-with particular emphasis on the vexed relations of authorship, incorporation, love, friendship, and rejection that went into forming a literary movement.
We will consider questions of literary property and possession: What would William Wordsworth's poetry look like if his sister, Dorothy, had not kept her journal ("to please William," as she recorded)? How do William Wordsworth's and Coleridge's writings bear witness to a common endeavor, and how can we understand the intellectual significance of their falling out? What, moreover, is the relationship between the idea of a "conversation poem" (a term coined by Coleridge) and the collaborative context in which such poems were generated? The course will intersperse readings of our primary texts with a sampling of critical interventions in "collaboration theory," and in this way it will double as a selective introduction to one area of literary theory. It will culminate in a study of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a well-known later Romantic novel, as a commentary on collaboration, or, more accurately, as a critique of the dangers of solitary authorship and the failure to collaborate.
Students will write two papers, plus a required revision of the first essay (following collaborative advice and criticism among class members), and everyone will do one oral presentation. Since class style will imitate its subject, regular attendance and participation will be an important portion of your work for the course.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
Note-Newly added section:
100/4
Junior Seminar: Identity Politics and Gendered Subjectivity in Feminist Diasporic Fiction
A. Nanda
TTh 2-3:30
305 Wheeler
Course Control #: 28720
Area of Concentration: 1E; 2; 4
Books: Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine(New York: Groove Weidenfield, 1989); Sunetra Gupta, Moonlight into Marzipan(London: Phoenix House, 1995); Chitra Divakaruni, The Vine of Desire(New York:Doubleday,2002);Sky Lee, Disappearing Moon Cafe: A Novel(Washington: The Seal Press, 1990);Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Joss and Gold(New York: The Feminist Press,2001);Fiona Cheong, Shadow Theatre: A Novel(New York: Soho Press,2002); course reader.
Course description: The course attempts to problematize the diasporic "gendered" identity constructs by analyzing prose narratives by Indian-American and Chinese-American women writers. Do these identity constructs depend on shifting positionalities that take into cognizance origin, movement, gender, class and race? Are these texts merely narratives of exclusion and exploitation, still working within the situated binaries of the Self and the Other, the First and the Third world? Or are they narratives that seek to cut across cultures and contexts? And in their feminist renderings give form or trans-form identity politics, gendered subjectivity and female agency that attempt to invest the politics of survival in "between" worlds with a new meaning.
Note-Newly added section:
100/5
Junior Seminar: Western American Literature
G. Starr
MWF 2-3
203 Wheeler
Course Control #: 29339
Areas of Concentration: 1D or 1E; 6
Book List: Austin, M. The Land of Little Rain; Clemens, S L. Roughing It; Harte, B. The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches; Norris, F. McTeague; Stegner, W. The Angle of Repose. A course reader will contain selections from: Browne, J. R. A Peep at Washoe and Washoe Revisited; Muir, J. The Yosemite; Ridge, J. R. The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta; Stevenson, R. L. The Silverado Squatters + Jeffers, R., Gunn, Th., Hass, R.
Course Description: Reading, discussion, and writing about fiction, poetry, memoirs and essays that have western settings, or that try to describe or account for western experience in "regional" terms-emphasizing, for example, the formative influence of the natural landscape, or of racial, economic, and social groups in distinctive, defining relationships with their surroundings (and with one another).
This section is open to junior and senior English majors, as well as to juniors and seniors in other Letters and Science majors.
100/7
Junior Seminar: Comedy, Carnival, and Folly
J. Altman
TTh 11-12:30
109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Erasmus, D.: The Praise of Folly; Jonson, B.: Bartholomew Fair; Rabelais, F.: Gargantua and Pantagruel; Shakespeare, W.: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Shakespeare, W.: Twelfth Night; Course Reader
Course Description: "License": what does it mean? It refers to permission, and the authority that grants it. It also refers to what one enjoys or indulges--one’s liberty--and hence to behavior that might become licentious or libertine, thereby threatening the authority of those who grant license in the first place. Is license then a social fiction--devised to maintain an imagined but necessary distinction between order and disorder, moral and immoral, rational and irrational--that always threatens to collapse and must always be renewed? Renaissance writers and institutions often seemed more willing to entertain this insight than we are, in their festivals celebrating the inversions of power, their licensed fools, their notions of holy folly, their provision of "liberties" where the subversive potential of theater enjoyed relatively free play. This central, ambiguous, proliferating term will govern our study of the rich intersections of classical comedy, humanist learning, folk ritual, and native traditions of folly, madness, and the grotesque in Renaissance culture and their relation to social stability. Planned readings include Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, George Gascoigne’s The Supposes, the anonymous commedia dell’ arte play The Three Cuckolds, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Robert Armin’s Foole Upon Foole, Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and a selection of critical and theoretical essays in a Course Reader. Students are expected to participate actively in discussion and to write three essays and a final exam.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/8
Junior Seminar: California as Pacific Rim
C. Lye
TTh 12:30-2
109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 2; 4; 6
Book List: Bulosan, C.: America is in the Heart; Chan, S. C.: Asian Americans: An Interpretive History; Chu, L: Eat a Bowl of Tea; Hagedorn, J.: Dogeaters; Kim, R.: Clay Walls; Lee, C. R.: A Gesture Lif; Ng, F. M.: Bone; a course reader
Course Description: This course will explore the invention of Asian Americans as a race, with a specific focus on three topics in Asian American literature: the gendering of Chinatown by state policies of reproduction; the intimacy between minority identity and national identity in the case of Korean-Americans; the representation of Philippine modernity as necessarily a critique of American colonialism. Besides the literary texts listed above, we will also be reading sociological, historical and legal material that will help us situate those texts in evolving debates about the relationship between race, nation and colonialism, and attend to how class and gender are constitutive of those categories. Exposure to contemporary works in cultural criticism and theory will also be part of the semester’s agenda.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/9
Junior Seminar: (topic unknown)
A. Banfield
TTh 3:30-5
221 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration, Book List, and Course Description: For more information on this course, please email the professor at banfield@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
Note-Newly added section:
100/10
Junior Seminar: Poetry, Autobiography, and Contemporary Indian Literature in English
S. Dutta-Roy
TTh 2-3:30
204 Wheeler
Course Control #: 28729
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 2; 3; 5
Book List: Seth, V.: Mappings; Ali, A. S.: The Half Inch Himalayas; Kolatkar, A.: Jejuri; Roy, A.: The God of Small Things; Mishra, P.: The Romantics; Dattani, M.: "Dance Like a Man" and "Tara" (from Collected Plays); Karnad, G.: "Hayavadana" (from Modern Indian Drama); Olney, J.: (chapter 1 of) Metaphors of Self, (chapter 1 of) Memory and Narrative; Adams, H.: (chapter 1 of) The Book of Yeat’s Poems; Das, M.M.: "The Other Truth of Religion and Literature" (from Education and Values)
There will also be selections from the following: Tagore, R.: The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, I Won’t Let You Go: Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore; Whitman, W.: Leaves of Grass; Yeats., W.B.: Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats; Eliot, T.S.: Collected Poems; Lahiri, J.: Interpreter of Maladies; Neruda, P.: Isla Negra; Dutta-Roy, S.: (Re)Constructing the Poetic Self; Adams, H.: (from) "Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic" in Critical Theory Since 1965; Sharma, T.R.S., ed.: Ancient Indian Literature: An Anthology, Vol. 2; Jain, J., ed.: Creating Theory; Dev, A., ed.: Narrative: A Seminar; Marathe, S. and M. Mukherjee, eds.: Narrative: Forms and Transformations
Course Description: I will begin by examining specific theories of Autobiography and Poetry. Through these theories I read the autobiographical impulse and the poetic act as the creators of the two fundamental models of language-the poetic and the historical-that have proliferated into various forms but nevertheless are still central. I will move on to reconcile these two seemingly contrary forces of language by reading texts of some major poetic voices of the last century: Tagore, Whitman, Yeats, Eliot, Neruda. Then I move on to the study of implicit and explicit narrative strategies which have a close connection with the two fundamental models of language. I will explore the use of these strategies in some Classical and some contemporary Indian texts (in English or available in good English translations) including Poetry, Drama (Theatre) and Fiction. Through this exercise I plan to start a dialogue and explore the various contemporary issues ranging from displacement, diaspora, longing for cultural roots, traditions, rituals; dissolving of traditions and creation of globalised identities; the problems of language (mother tongue and the other tongue); the longstanding effects of colonization.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
Note-Newly added section:
100/11
Junior Seminar: The New York School Goes to the Movies-Classic American Film as Poetic Thought
D. Searls
Seminars TTh 9:30-11 in 305 Wheeler, plus film screenings ("discussion section") M 5-8 P.M. in 242 Dwinelle
Course Control # for seminar: 29333
Course Control # for "discussion section": 29336
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 3; 6
Book List: John Ashbery: Selected Poems, Flow Chart, Your Name Here; Joe Brainard: I Remember; Stanley Cavell: Pursuits of Happiness; Russell Ferguson: In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art; Barbara Guest: Selected Poems, The Confetti Trees; Constance Lewallen, ed.: Joe Brainard: A Retrospective; Frank O’Hara: Collected Poems; a course reader (available at University Copy, in the passageway between Durant and Channing just west of Telegraph Ave.)
Required Films: In addition to the twice-weekly class meetings, there will be mandatory weekly film screenings.
[Films to be determined. But something like the following:]
It Happened One Night; Bringing Up Baby; Ziegfield Girls; To Be Or Not To Be [dir. Ernst Lubitsch]; Double Indemnity; Imitation of Life; Sunset Boulevard; The Misfits; Giant; The Last Clean Shirt [dir. Alfred Leslie, subtitles by Frank O’Hara]
Course Description: "Mothers of America," opens a great Frank O’Hara poem, "let your kids go to the movies!" Many of his poems are about icons of cinema (James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner); more importantly, his best work as a whole is a "motion picture" of modern life. Likewise, John Ashbery-for decades the most-read living poet in America, and considered by many to be its greatest-has made extensive use of film quotes, references, titles, and sensibilities throughout his career. And one of Barbara Guest’s most recent books of poetry is a collection of what she calls "Motion Picture Stories," dedicated to the World War II emigrés who arrived in the Hollywood of her childhood and to "THE VISION OF THESE ARTISTS venturing upon [her] untutored horizon."
Ashbery, Guest, and O’Hara are the three most important poets of the "New York School," a term itself taken from the visual arts (the New York School painters of the 1950s and ’60s, with whom the poets often collaborated). They were friends, wrote poems with and to and about each other, and revitalized American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century; this seminar will study their work in the context of an earlier, even more revitalizing, American genre: the movies.
Our two starting points will be (1) Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness, which convincingly reads seven beloved screwball comedies of the ’30s and ’40s as significant works of American philosophical thought, and (2) Wallace Stevens’s and Elizabeth Bishop’s reflections about how poetry "portray[s], not a thought, but a mind thinking." With these approaches in mind, we will read and see a wide range of New York School poems and classic American movies, and investigate the "thinking" which both kinds of work enact. (In the movies, we tend to have "a couple talking" instead of "a mind thinking," but the distinction is less important than one might expect-especially given the multi-voiced, colloquial, improvisational "thinking" in the New York School poets’ work.) We will conclude by looking at some of these three poets’ visual and cinematic collaborations, and the verbal/visual spirit embodied in the varied works (paintings, collaborative comic books, a book of flashbacks) by a younger New York School figure, Joe Brainard.
I hope that Guest herself, who lives in the Bay Area, will agree to visit the seminar.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
101
History of the English Language
N. Howe
TTh 11-12:30
122 Wheeler
Area of Concentration: 7
Book List: Baugh, A.C. and Cable, T.: A History of the English Language (5th ed. only)
Course Description: This course will trace the history of the English language from its roots in Indo-European through to the many varieties of English spoken around the world today. Topics of recurrent concern during the course will include the phonology, morphology, syntax, dialects and lexicon of the language in Old, Middle and Modern English. Considerable attention will be paid to the external factors (political, social, religious, economic) that led to internal changes in the English language. Requirements will include several exercises and a research paper as well as a final examination. No prior knowledge of linguistics is expected or required. Students who have questions about this course should email the instructor at nhowe@socrates.berkeley.edu.
105
Anglo-Saxon England
J. Niles
TTh 8-9:30
30 Wheeler
Area of Concentration: 1A
Book List: Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People; Hamer, R.: A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse; Heaney, S.: Beowulf; Keynes, S., and M. Lapidge: Alfred the Great; Swanton, M.: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Whitelock, D.: The Beginnings of English Society
Recommended Texts: Godden, M, and M. Lapidge: The Cambridge Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature; Graham-Campbell, J.: The Anglo-Saxons; Liuzza, R.: Beowulf
Course Description: This is a course in the earliest literature of England, read in translation. Literary texts will be read in conjunction with historical ones relating to the period 450 -1100 AD, and in general, the validity of firm distinctions between literature, history, and myth will be questioned.
Readings will include the whole of Beowulf, substantial selections from historical sources written in both Latin and English, a cluster of lyric, elegiac, and heroic poems, and a miscellany of other texts including legal documents, charms, and riddles. Passing attention will be given to prehistoric archaeology, material culture, and social history. Some attention will be paid to the Old English language, chiefly via our use of dual-language texts, but this is not a course in language per se. The main themes to be addressed in lecture will include the Anglo-Saxons’ view of their own origins, the evidences for the nature of Germanic paganism, Roman versus Irish influences in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, the beginnings of recorded literature in English in both poetry and prose, the interplay of orality and literacy, the merging of heroic and Christian modes of thought in mature literary forms, the gradual formation of an English nation out of a set of independent tribes, and the impact of the Vikings on Britain. The Norman conquest of 1066 will also be explored, with attention to its causes as well as to its impact on the continuity of English language, literature, and institutions.
Regular attendance will be expected. There will be two short take-home essays, a midterm exam, and a final exam.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
112
Middle English Literature
S. Justice
TTh 9:30-11
110 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1A; 7
Book List: Burrow and Turville-Petre: A Book of Middle English; Langland, W.: Vision of Piers Plowman; Andrew and Waldron, eds.: Poems of the Pearl Manuscript
Course Description: This course will study middle English as a language and as a period of literary production. The first third of the course will introduce the language-its structure, vocabulary, and dialectal varieties, as well as the linguistic history that both created what we call "Middle English" and brought it to an end-and some of its characteristic literary idioms. During these first weeks, we will be reading passages from several Middle English texts, starting with the most familiar (Chaucer), then moving through weirder and more challenging works. The rest of the semester will be given to reading the work of Chaucer's two greatest contemporaries: William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and the anonymous author of four poems surviving in a single manuscript ("the Pearl-poet"). There will be quizzes, an in-class midterm, a take-home midterm, and a final exam.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
117B
Shakespeare
J. Adelman
MW 2-4
160 Kroeber
Note to students: Though the official time of this class is 2-4, on most days it may end by 3:30.
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3; 4
Book List: Shakespeare, W.: The Norton Shakespeare
Course Description: In this course we will read all the plays conventionally attributed to the second half of Shakespeare’s career, beginning with Hamlet and ending with The Tempest. This period includes all the so-called great tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth) and some others that are sometimes considered not quite tragedies or not quite great (Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus), the so-called problem plays (Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure) and the so-called late romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest); it does not include Romeo and Juliet, the history plays, and the comedies (for those you need 117A or 117S). My lectures will tend to emphasize Shakespeare’s reworking of race, gender, sexuality, and the family in these plays, but I hope that the classroom will be a place of lively exchange, in which you feel free to challenge my ideas and to develop your own interests. In addition to a final exam, probably a midterm exam, and several required papers of varying lengths, you may be asked to work on a speech and a short scene in small groups to help you understand some aspects of Shakespeare’s verse and his theatrical medium.
117S
Shakespeare
C. Altieri
Lectures MW 1-2 in 50 Birge, plus one hour of discussion section per week (secs. 101-104: F 1-2; secs. 105-108: F 3-4)
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Shakespeare, W.: The Riverside Shakespeare; Cavell, S.: Disowning Knowledge
Course Description: This will be a survey of about 10 Shakespeare plays. The emphasis will be on close reading so that we can characterize the complexity of the dramatic action and the structural means by which that complexity is controlled and intensified. The instructor has a tendency to speak abstractly and to get interested in philosophical questions. There will be two papers and students will have to participate in one dramatic scene in class. Plays will include Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Richard the Second, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Winter's Tale and The Tempest.
117T
Shakespeare in the Theater: Comedy
J. Altman
Lectures TTh 2-3:30 in 109 Morgan, plus rehearsals TTh 3:30-5, also in 109 Morgan
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Shakespeare, W.: Much Ado About Nothing
Course Description: Detailed study of a single Shakespeare play, in this case Much Ado About Nothing, working toward a full public production in late April or early May. Members of the class will participate as student-director(s), actors, extras, musicians, costume designers, prop-hands, stage-hands, publicists, etc. The 2-3:30 sessions will be devoted to close study of the text scene-by-scene; the 3:30-5 sessions will be devoted to class readings, auditions for parts, and rehearsals. Students must be willing to participate fully in both the academic and the theatrical part of the class with the realization that not everyone can play a lead role in the production.
Each student will submit an academic paper, 4-8 pages in length, on some aspect of the play or its performance. Faithful attendance and active participation are mandatory. CAUTION: Because this course concentrates on one play only, it will not satisfy the Shakespeare requirement.
118
Milton
J. Turner
MW 10-12
3108 Etcheverry
Note to students: Though the official time of this class is 10-12, on most days it may end by 11:30.
Areas of Concentration: 1B or 1C
Book List: Milton, J.: The Riverside Milton
Course Description: Intensive reading in the poetry and prose of John Milton, written during a period of dramatic historical change, and including the most influential single poem in the English language, Paradise Lost. Our goal is to get under the skin of this great but troublesome writer, examining not only the major poems but the controversial writings that made his reputation as a political and sexual radical.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
121
The Romantic Period
C. Langan
MWF 1-2
170 Barrows
Areas of Concentration: 1C or D; 3
Book List: Perkins, D. English Romantic Writers; Shelley, M., Frankenstein; Shelley, P.B., The Cenci; a course reader.
Course Description: In 1796, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a poem in the Monthly Magazine with an odd subtitle: "A Poem which affects not to be Poetry." Literature since that time has been in conversation with the experimental poetry of Coleridge and the Romantic period. This course will focus on key Romantic writers--Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, as well as Coleridge--to give some historical shape to the contested terms "poem" and "Poetry." Is a poem merely a peculiar form of information storage, as in "thirty days hath September"? Or (as Shelley put it) "the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth"? Why do so many writers of the period assign greater value to poetry, despite the increasing popularity of prose fiction? In what ways are Romantic poetical experiments related to the "great national events"--the American and French revolutions, the rise of industrial manufacture and global capitalism--that were transforming social and political relations? To answer these and other questions we will read the work of the period's "major" poets (Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, as well as Coleridge) as well as some popular prose of the same period (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and Thomas Paine's response, The Rights of Man).
125A
The English Novel
G. Starr
Note new time: MWF 12-1
Note new location: 141 McCone
Areas of Concentration: 1C; 3
Book List: Beckford, W.: Vathek; Behn, A.: Oroonoko; Burney, F.: Evelina; Defoe, D.: Moll Flanders; Fielding, S.: David Simple; Godwin, W.: Caleb Williams; Goldsmith, O.: Vicar of Wakefield; Johnson, S.: Rasselas; Smollett, T.: Humphry Clinker
Course Description: The English Novel, 1660-1800.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
125C
The European Novel: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and the English Novel
L. Knapp
TTh 9:30-11
166 Barrows
This course is cross-listed with Slavic 132.
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 3; 4
Book List: Bronte, C.: Jane Eyre; Dostoevsky, F.: Netochka Nezvanova; Tolstoy, L.: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; Dostoevsky, F.: The Idiot; Eliot, G.: Middlemarch; Tolstoy, L.: Anna Karenina; Dostoevsky, F.: Great Short Works; Tolstoy, L.: Great Short Works
Course Description: A close reading of works by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in conjunction with two English novels. In "The Russian Point of View," Virginia Woolf notes that whereas an English novelist feels a "constant pressure" to recognize barriers, both ideological and formal, a Russian novelist appears to feel less restraint. The English novelist is "inclined to satire," the Russian to "compassion," the English to "scrutiny of society," and the Russian to "understanding of individuals themselves." As we read, we will look for both affinities and differences between nineteenth-century English and Russian novels.
The course consists of three units:
1. Coming of Age in Russia and England: We begin with three fictional coming-of-age narratives, written in the first person: Tolstoy’s trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; Dostoevsky’s unfinished early novel, Netochka Nezvanova; and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. These works have a striking number of common morphological and thematic features.
2. Love and Death in the Russian and English Novel: We will read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Particular attention will be given to stylistic and formal features of these complex novels and to their treatment of philosophical questions and social issues, especially the status of women.
3. The Russian Point of View: Interior Monologue and Innovations in Poetics: We end with two short stories, Dostoevsky’s "A Gentle Creature" and Tolstoy’s "The Kreutzer Sonata," which are remarkable for their narrative style, as well as what they say about love and marriage. These stories are used to highlight the contrasts between Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and to characterize the Russian point of view.
Workload: one paper, short assignments, midterm, final exam.
127 This course has been cancelled. (Professor Hass will be on leave in the spring.)
130C
American Literature: 1865-1900
R. Hutson
Lectures MW 2-3 in 141 McCone, plus one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 12-1; secs. 102-103: F 2-3, sec. 104: F 4-5)
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 3; 6
Book List: Alcott, Louisa May: Hospital Sketche; Chopin, Kate: The Awakening; Crane, Stephen: Maggie; Harper, Frances: Iola Leroy; Howells, William Dean: The Rise of Silas Lapham; James, Henry: Daisy Miller; Tourgee, Albion: A Fool’s Errand; Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Whitman, Walt: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose
Course Description: This is a survey of some of the major texts of the American post-Civil War era, roughly 1865 to 1900. It is a period of extraordinary changes in the American economy, politics and culture. On the whole, most literate Americans had difficulty understanding what was going on, and in the literature of the period we can observe the struggles to understand and accommodate the changes in the culture. Student attendance is mandatory especially in the discussion sections.
130D
American Literature: 1900-1945
C. Porter
Lectures MW 3-4 in 390 Hearst Mining, plus one hour of discussion section per week (secs. 101-103: F 1-2; secs. 104-106: F 3-4)
Area of Concentration: 1E
Book List: Cather, W.: TheProfessor’s House; Dos Passos, J.: The 42nd Parallel; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby; Hemingway, E.: The Sun Also Rises; Faulkner, W.: Absalom, Absalom!; Stein, G.: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Wright, R.: Native Son; The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. D
Course Description: A survey of American literature, roughly that produced between WWI and WWII. One mid-term, one paper, one final.
133B
African American Literature and Culture Since 1917: Fiction
A. JanMohamed
MWF 9-10
30 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 2; 3
Book List: Beatty, Paul: The White Boy Shuffle; Jones, Edwards P.: The Known World; Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Morrison, Toni: Beloved; Walker, Alice: The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Wideman, John Edgar: Sent For You Yesterday; Williams, Sherley Anne: Dessa Rose; Wright, Richard: Native Son
Course Description: An examination of some of the major African-American novels of the second half of the 20th century.
135AC
Literature of American Cultures: Native American, African American, and European American Literature, 1865-1917
R. Hutson
MWF 10-11
22 Warren
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 2; 3; 6
Book List: Callahan, Alice: Wynema; Chesnutt, Charles: The House Behind the Cedars; Chopin, Kate: The Awakening; Crane, Stephen: Maggie; Eastman, Charles: From the Deep Woods to Civilization; Harper, Frances: Iola Leroy; Hopkins, Sarah W.: Life Among the Piutes; James, Henry: Daisy Miller; Washington, Booker T.: Up From Slavery
Course Description: This is a course on Native American, African American and European American writers in the Gilded Age, roughly from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I. I am especially interested in these writers’ responses to the extensive and pervasive economic, political and cultural transformations of the period, a period of massive dislocation and disorientation for almost any ethnic group. I am going to present these authors chronologically rather than thematically or as ethnic groups, so that there will be constant interweaving of themes and ideas. I am planning on two in-class midterms and a final exam.
This course satisfies U.C. Berkeley’s American Cultures requirement.
C136
Worlding the Asia Pacific
C. Lye
TTh 3:30-5
4 Le Conte
This class is cross-listed with American Studies C111E.
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 2; 6
Book List: Bulosan, C.: America Is in the Heart; Conrad, J.: Lord Jim; Greene, G.: The Quiet American; Ishiguro, K.: When We Were Orphans; Kingston, M. H.: Chinamen; Lederer, W. and Burdick, E.: The Ugly American; London, J.: The Sea-Wolf; Lee, C. R.: Native Speaker; Ondaatje, M.: The English Patient; Steinbeck, J.: Cannery Row; Yamanaka, Y. A.: Blu’s Hanging; a course reader
Course Description: To which world or worlds does the Asia Pacific belong: First, Second, or Third? To what kinds of literary modes does the subject of Asia lend itself? This course brings together literature’s imaginative geography and world systems theory. We will explore the historical contexts in which Asia has been imagined by British versus American cultures of empire, and various figural forms of regional, national, and racial identity that "Asia" takes. What does it mean to describe Asian literature in English as postcolonial? What is the form taken by Western colonialism in the Pacific islands, East Asia, and South and Southeast Asia? Diasporic Asian texts will be placed in dialogue with selected works of British and American literature.
143A/1
Short Fiction
G. Kleege
TTh 12:30-2
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: Furman, L. ed.: The O’Henry Prize Stories 2003
Course Description: This class will be conducted as a writing workshop where students will submit and discuss their own short fiction. We will also closely examine the work of published writers. Students will complete 3 short writing assignments and approximately 40 pages of new fiction.
To be considered for admission in this course, please submit 12-15 photocopied pages of your fiction (no poetry, plays, or academic writing), along with an application form, to Professor Kleege’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28 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!
143A/2
Short Fiction
B. Blaise (Mukherjee)
TTh 2-3:30
201 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction; Mukherjee, B.: The Middleman and Other Stories
Course Description: This is a course on the form, theory and practice of short fiction. It will be conducted as a workshop. Students are required to fulfill assignments on specific aspects of craft, to analyze aesthetic strategies in selected short stories by published authors, and to write approximately 45 pages of original fiction. Students are also required to participate in workshop discussions of peers' manuscripts.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 15 photocopied pages of your fiction (no poems, plays, or academic writing), along with an application form, to Professor Mukherjee’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!
143A/3
Short Fiction
T. Farber
W 3-6
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Recommended Text: Farber, T.: A Lover’s Question: Selected Stories
Course Description: A short fiction workshop open to students from any department. Students will write two short stories, generally 10-20 pages in length. Each week, students will also turn in one-page written critiques of student stories being workshopped as well as a 3-page journal entry. Probable semester total of written pages, including critiques: 70-80. Class attendance mandatory.
Students not admitted or late in applying can come to office hours the first week of class to speak with me or email tfar@uclink.4
(Any students admitted who have worked with me before must contact me in November about bringing their first new story, with xeroxes, to the first class meeting.)
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 10-15 photocopied pages of your fiction, along with an application form, to Professor Farber’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!
143B/1
Verse
J. Shoptaw
TTh 11-12:30
108 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: Jahan Ramazani, ed.: The Norton Anthology of Modern & Contemporary Poetry, 2 vols.; Course Reader
Course Description: In this course you will conduct a progressive series of experiments in which you will explore the fundamental options for writing poetry today-aperture, partition, closure; rhythmic sound patterning; sentence & line; stanza; short & long-lined poems; image & figure; graphics & textual space; cultural translation; poetic forms (haibun, villanelle, sestina, pantoum, ghazal, etc.); the first, second, third, and no person (persona, address, drama, narrative, description); prose poetry. Our emphasis will be placed on recent possibilities, but with an eye & ear always to renovating traditions. I have no "house style" and only one precept: you can do anything, if you can do it. You will write a poem a week, and we’ll discuss six or so in rotation (I’ll respond to every poem you write). On alternate days, we’ll discuss pre-modern and modern exemplary poems drawn from the Norton Anthology and from our course reader. It will be delightful.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit five photocopied pages of your poems, along with an application form, to Professor Shoptaw’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!
143B/2
Verse
C. Nealon
TTh 12:30-2
305 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: A course reader
Course Description: A seminar in the writing of poetry.
To be considered for admission to this course, please submit five photocopied pages of your poems, along with an application form, to Professor Nealon’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!
143E
Playwriting
J. Fisher
M 3-6
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: Gillman, R.: Boy Gets Girl; Ludlam, C.: The Mystery of Irma Vep; Mamet, D.: The Boston Marriage; McLaughlin, B.: The Playwright’s Process. Also a course reader (available at Copy Central on Bancroft) containing Sherman, M.: Bent; Aristotle: The Poetics (selections); Kennedy, A.: Funnyhouse of a Negro; Mamet, D.: A Whore’s Profession (selections); Goldman, W.: Adventures in the Screen Trade (selections); Ludlam, C.: Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly (selections).
Course Description: In this course students learn the fundamentals of playwriting: structure, premise, characterization, action, dialogue, relationship, and environment. Students will write new work every week, hear their work read, and participate in discussions and in-class exercises. Readings include texts on playwriting and plays by contemporary playwrights. Special topics include writing for the screen and music theatre. By the end of the semester each student will have written a one-act play or one act of a longer work. Portions of these plays will be presented as a reading for an invited audience.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit a photocopy of a 2-page play that you wrote, along with an application form, to Professor Fisher’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!
143N/1
Prose Nonfiction: The Personal Essay
B. Blaise (Mukherjee)
TTh 11-12:30
305 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: The Best American Essays of the Century (eds. Joyce Carol Oates & Robert Atwan)
Course Description: This course concentrates on the practice of creative non-fiction, particularly on the writing of the personal essay. Students are required to fulfill specific assignments and to write approximately 45 pages of non-fictional narrative. Format of course: workshop. Participation in the twice-weekly workshops is mandatory.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 15 photocopied pages of your non-fiction writing (no academic essays), along with an application form, to Prof. Mukherjee’s box in 322 Wheeler Hall BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!
143N/2 This section has been cancelled. (Prof. Kingston is retiring as of the end of fall 2003.)
143N/3
Prose Nonfiction: Creative Nonfiction-Rooms and Lives
T. Farber
Tues. 3:30-6:30
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Recommended Text: Farber, T.: A Lover’s Quarrel: On Writing and the Writing Life
Course Description: A creative nonfiction workshop open to students from any department. Drawing on narrative strategies found in memoir, the diary, travel writing, and fiction, students will have workshopped in class two 10-20 page pieces. Each will take as point of departure detailed description of a real room one knows well, the piece then possibly expanding out from place to its occupants, past or present, including the authorial self. Each week, students will also turn in critiques of the writing being workshopped as well as a 3-page journal entry (these entries may comprise part of the longer pieces). Probable semester total of written pages, including critiques: 70-80. Class attendence mandatory.
Students not admitted or late in applying can come to office hours the first week of class to speak with me or email tfar@uclink.4
(Any students admitted who have worked with me before must contact me in November.)
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 10 to 15 photocopied pages of your nonfiction or fiction, along with an application form, to Prof. Farber’s box in 322 Wheeler Hall BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 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!