Berkeley English: Courses: Upper Division
Spring 2006
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; a list of Spring 2006 courses that satisfy the pre-1800 requirement for the English major is listed there, as well.
100/1
Junior Seminar: American Writers in Paris
Porter, Carolyn
MW 10:30-12
305 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 3
Book List: Beach, Sylvia: Shakespeare and Company; Bricktop: Bricktop; Cowley, Malcolm: Exile's Return; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender is the Night; Flanner, Janet: Paris Was Yesterday; Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises; Hughes, Langston: The Big Sea; James, Henry: The American; McAlmon, Robert & Kay Boyle: Being Geniuses Together; Stein, Gertrude: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Course Description: We will primarily address American writers who found themselves in Paris and environs during the 1920's, with a brief look backward to their main precursor in the late 19th century, Henry James. The ex-patriots, as these writers and artists were called, wrote both fiction and non-fiction, and sometimes something in between, or even -- as the case of Gertrude Stein demonstrates -- something else entirely. We will be exploring their lives and their fictions in relation both to Paris and to the modernist movements to which it contributed.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/2
Junior Seminar: Introduction to Narrative Theory
Hutson, Richard
MWF 11-12
109 Wheeler
Area of Concentration: 5
Book List: Aristotle: Poetics; Bakhtin, M.: The Dialogic Imagination; Barthes, R.: S/Z; Propp, V.: The Morphology of the Folktale; Sophocles I.: Three Tragedies; plus a Course Reader
Course Description: This is an introduction to some classics in the theory of narrative. We will look also at a number of, mainly, short narratives and analyze them closely, slowly. Theorists as early as Aristotle always used an exemplary narrative for their analyses, and so we shall have to read the narratives of the theorists along with the theories. We shall strive to listen to stories, to see how plots are composed, organized.
There will be a number of exercises, many of them un-graded but required. And I project that there will be required about five papers that will be graded.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/3
Junior Seminar: Home Invasions--Domestic Transgressions in 19th-Century Britain
Chevalier, Antoinette
Note New Time: TTh 2-3:30
Note New Room: 204 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 2; 3; 5; 6
Book List: Forster, E.M.: Howards End; Bronte, C.: Jane Eyre; Stoker, B.: Dracula; Collins, W.: The Moonstone; Dickens, C.: Bleak House; Stevenson, R.L.: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; plus a Course Reader containing contemporary literary criticism
Course Description: This class will analyze discourses of "home" in the Victorian and Edwardian eras (ex: the degeneration vs. purity of the house) and how issues of crime and criminality are variously constructed in a cultural context of growing unease regarding the security of domestic spaces, national borders, and bodily integrity.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/4
Junior Seminar: Mark Twain
Starr, George
MWF 1-2
Note New Room: 109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 3
Book List: See course description below
Course Description: Reading, discussion, and writing about the works, life and times of Mark Twain. The primary texts will include a selection of short stories and sketches by Mark Twain and earlier humorists of the "Old Southwest" and the West; The Innocents Abroad; Roughing It; the first half of Life on the Mississippi; Huckleberry Finn; A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court; Pudd'nhead Wilson; and Number 44 The Mysterious Stranger. Writing will normally consist of midterm and final essays of 6-8 pp. each, although under some circumstances a single term paper of 12-16 pages will be possible. Depending on enrollment, each student will be responsible for organizing and leading class discussion (probably teamed with another student) once during the semester. There will be no quizzes or exams, but seminar attendance and participation will be expected, and will affect grades.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/5
Junior Seminar: Modernism--Theory and Practice
Liu, Sarah
MW 4-5:30
109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 5
Book List: Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness; Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land and Other Poems; Forster, E.M.: Howards End; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; James, Henry: Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw; Stevens, Wallace: The Palm at the End of the Mind; Yeats, W.B.: Selected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Course Description: "What are Master-pieces and why are there so few of them?" asked Gertrude Stein in 1936. These basic questions of how to define literature, what it is for, what its function is, find new answers over time. This course follows the development of an Anglo-American Modernist aesthetic through the work of artist-critics, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens. What is the relationship between theory and practice, as demonstrated by these practitioners of both arts? How do ideas about literature influence form, characterization, imagery, genre, voice? How does new literary expression responding to cultural change influence our concept of literature? The selected texts also raise questions about identity, desire, race, gender, memory, culture, and the nature of modernity itself, illustrating how a discourse on poetics inevitably leads to a discourse on how we see ourselves and experience the world.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/6
Junior Seminar: Mapping the Atlantic–Slavery and its Afterlife
Hartman, Saidiya
TTh 9:30-11
109 Wheeler
Area of Concentration: 2
Book List: David Bradley: The Chaneysville Incident; Dionne Brand: A Map to the Door of No Return; Octavia Butler: Kindred; Maryse Conde: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem; Eduoard Glissant: The Fourth Century; Caribbean Discourse; Gayl Jones: Corregidora; Jamaica Kincaid: Autobiography of My Mother; Toni Morrison: Beloved; Yambo Ologuem: Bound to Violence; Caryl Phillips: Cambridge, Crossing the River; Michel Rolph-Truillot: Silencing the Past
Course Description: This course focuses on issues of history and memory in contemporary novels of slavery. In particular, the course grapples with issues of literary representation and historical responsibility in African American letters, the complex interaction of master narratives of history and oppositional sites of memory, and the ethical and political stakes of remembrance. The questions to be considered are: Why does slavery continue to be an important theme in American literature over one hundred years after the abolition of slavery? How do contemporary novels revision eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave narratives, intervene in historical debates, and transform the popular imagination of slavery? How does the return to the past illuminate the present? How do narratives shape our understanding of reality?
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/7
Junior Seminar: Comedy, Carnival, and Folly
Altman, Joel
TTh 11-12:30
106 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Erasmus: The Praise of Folly; Jonson, B.: Bartholomew Fair; Rabelais, F.: Gargantua and Pantagruel; Shakespeare, W.: A Midsummer Night's Dream, 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 and A Midsummer Night's Dream, 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: William Faulkner and American Literary Criticism
Hale, Dorothy
TTh 11-12:30
221 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 3; 5
Book List: Faulkner, W.: The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!
Course Description: How and why has William Faulkner been elevated into the pantheon of great American writers? To answer this question, we will study Faulkner's work in relation to the American literary critics who have significantly fashioned--and regularly revised--the terms in which Faulkner's success has been measured. On the one hand we will investigate the salient social issues that influenced both Faulkner's literary production and his critical reception; on the other hand, we will consider general theoretical topics such as the role of the academy in creating literary reputation, the rise of the novel and film as high art forms, the problem of aesthetic value, and the issue of authorial intention. We will read--closely--four Faulkner novels as well as some of his interviews, speeches, letters, and essays. A required course reader provides a selection of criticism on Faulkner. The film adaptation of Intruder in the Dust will give us a sense of where Hollywood thought Faulkner's mass appeal might lie.
The written work for the course includes one close-reading essay (5-7 pages) and one research essay (12-15 pages). There is no midterm or final exam.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/9
Junior Seminar: The 1960s
Blanton, Dan
TTh 12:30-2
106 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 6
Book List: Antonioni, M.: Blow-Up; Alvarez, A.: The New Poetry; Beckett, S.: Texts for Nothing; Breath; Bond, E.: Saved; Brook, P.: Marat/Sade; Heaney, S.: Death of a Naturalist; Hughes, T.: Crow; Johnson, B.: The Unfortunates; Kubrick, S.: Dr. Strangelove; Larkin, P.: The Whitsun Weddings; Lessing, D.: The Golden Notebook; Monty Python's Flying Circus, First Series; Orton, J.: Loot; Pinter, H.: The Birthday Party; Spark, M.: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; Stoppard, T.: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Course Description: This course will explore the literature and the culture of the 1960s, focusing primarily on fiction, poetry, drama (and some film) in Britain. What can we make of a moment suspended somewhere between the modern and the postmodern, one that has now receded into a mixture of memory (for some), myth (for others), and history (for all)? Our readings will follow the transformation of post-war British society, investigating the forms produced by apparent economic decline, the emergence of an increasingly pluralistic culture, and the consolidation of a welfare state. We will also trace the expansion of the idea of culture itself, investigating Britain's place in a world reshaped by Cold War antagonisms, decolonization, the reinvention of Europe, and the global rise of libratory movements. What connections can be drawn between the 1960s as they occur in Britain and the decade as it happens elsewhere, in Paris or Prague, the United States or the new 'Third World'? Finally, we will pose questions of periodization: Is the idea of a decade anything more than a convenient historical shorthand? Is there something that links these works--often so wildly disparate--together formally?
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/10
Junior Seminar:
Miller, Jennifer
TTh 12:30-2
24 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1A
Book List and Course Description: For more information on this class, please email the professor at j_miller@berkeley.edu.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/11
Junior Seminar: 19th-Century American Women Writers--Women and Style
Beam, Dorri
TTh 2-3:30
109 Wheeler
Area of Concentration: 1A
Book List: poetry by F. Osgood and E. Dickinson; Fern, F.: Ruth Hall; Stowe, H. B.: Uncle Tom's Cabin; Keckley, E.: Behind the Scenes; Spofford, H.: The Amber Gods; Alcott, L. M.: "A Pair of Eyes" and "The Marble Woman;" Wharton, E.: The House of Mirth; Gilman, C. P.: The Yellow Wallpaper
Course Description: This course will focus specifically on women and style while covering a diverse range of texts. We will be interested in the way women writers styled themselves--in what manner they present themselves as authors and artists in the literary marketplace, how they encode textual self-presences, and the way women and art are represented in their texts. The course will also look at the way women's texts are styled, and how those texts are positioned in relation to specific aesthetic, formal, and literary values, especially as these construct the feminine. All of the texts will confront issues of gender and style through the formal qualities of the work, and many will feature a central female figure who herself practices a literary, fine, domestic, plastic, or dramatic art. Attention will be paid to the larger cultural context and aesthetic debates that these arts reference, and especially to Stowe's, Spofford's, Wharton's and Gilman's books on decorative style.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/12
Junior Seminar: History and the Postcolonial
Jones, Donna
TTh 3:30-5
109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 2
Book List:
Aimè Cèsaire Discourse on Colonialism
David Scott Conscripts of Modernity
Augusto Roa Bastos I the Supreme
Mario Vargas Llosa The War of the End of the World
Ben Okri The Famished Road
Hayden White Metahistory
Hegel, Philosophy of History
Ranajit Guha, History at the Limit of World-History
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
T. Adorno & M. Horkheimer Dialectic of Enlightenment
Course Description: This class will examine the question of history and the conceptualization of the modern in postcolonial literature and theory. It is only at death, when the possibility of future action for an individual is foreclosed, that we are able to begin to give final significance to what he has done in life. After the implosion of the West in the Great War, colonial intellectuals concluded that the history of the West could be finally written because it had come to an end not in the eternal present of the Hegelian triumph but in suicidal despair not in spite of but because of the very achievements of the Hegelian Geist. The key moments in Hegel's triumphant narrative of the Geist in its advance to the Prussian state were also re-evaluated and different aspects of the past became important. Once explored at the margins of European literature in the period of pan-European pacifism, colonial violence for example proved itself altogether more fateful. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, reason itself was revealed to be based on the partial assumptions of the technologist who aimed to master, control and use matter. Descartes became a key figure in the emergence of the Western ideology that had led to auto-destruction. Also coming under scrutiny was the dialectical theory of history which implied that past gains are preserved in the higher stages, so that no progress is lost, and progress is cumulative. Anything worth preserving is sublated. The crisis of the West then lead to a revaluation of what had to be negatively dismissed because it had not been preserved and intensive study of what had been ignored or stood outside the march of progress. The texts chosen for this course are both the classic articulations of the Western narratives of progress and postcolonial works which place the mechanics of progress under rigorous scrutiny.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/13
Junior Seminar: Criminal Literature-Writing Against the Law
Fielding, John
TTh 3:30-5
Note New Room: 283 Dwinelle
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 3; 6
Book List: Jack Black: You Can't Win; William S. Burroughs: Junky; Jim Thompson: Savage Night; James Carr: Bad; Iceberg Slim: Trick Baby; Edward Bunker: No Beast So Fierce; Course Reader
Films: Panic in Needle Park; The Killing; House of Games; Sweet Sweetback's Bad Asssss Song; Pulp Fiction
Course Description: This course will focus on a selection of twentieth-century American crime novels (as well as upon a few films). Throughout the course we will consider why America, a nation founded by puritan zealots and known infamously as the policeman of the world, is also a violent and crime-riddled country, and produces a steady stream of crime fiction gems. Why does the American outlaw draw more admiration than repugnance, or inspire a tendency to heroicize as much as vilify criminal behavior? As the course title suggests, the focus will be on the point of view of those living outside of the law, rather than the pursuits of those attempting to reign them in, on robbers rather than cops. Through such a perspective we will consider what it is about the American myth of individualism coupled with rapacious capitalism that fuels the criminal response. Specifically, we will explore the cultural, social, economic, existential and racial aspects of crime as they are artistically rendered in the texts listed. Thus, above all, we will explore the art of crime by analyzing the different aesthetic forms through which such deviance is represented.
Finally, because most, if not all, of these texts fall well outside the traditional academic canon, we will use this anomaly to explore the parameters of high art from the outside. That is, we will inquire how these texts are both similar to and different from the paragons of American literature.
Be warned: Many of these works depict a disturbing depravity in jarring violent and sexual detail.
Be sure to read the paragraph starting on page 1 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 100!
100/14 This class has been cancelled.
105
Anglo-Saxon England
Nolan, Maura
TTh 12:30-2
122 Barrows
Area of Concentration: 1A
Book List: Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People; Campbell, J., ed.: The Anglo-Saxons; Crossley-Holland, K., ed.: The Anglo-Saxon World; Donoghue, D., ed. and Heaney, S., trans.: Beowulf: A Verse Translation; Howe, N., ed. and Donaldson, E., trans.: Beowulf: A Prose Translation; Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M., eds.: Alfred the Great; Webb, J. F. and Farmer, D. H., eds.: The Age of Bede
Course Description: This course will introduce students to the rich literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England, focusing particularly on the heroic poem Beowulf and its modern translations, but also exploring a wide variety of cultural forms: chronicle writing, charms, riddles, laws, histories, visual images and more. Students will write short papers and contribute to an online discussion. No prior knowledge of the Middle Ages or Old English is necessary.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
110
Medieval Literature
Miller, Jennifer
TTh 9:30-11
3108 Etcheverry
Area of Concentration: 1A
Book List and Course Description: For more information on this class, please email the professor at j_miller@berkeley.edu.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
115A
The English Renaissance: Literature of the 16th Century
Booth, Stephen
TTh 2-3:30
213 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Shakespeare's Narrative poems (use EITHER The Poems, ed., D. Bevington et al. [Bantam books] OR The Narrative Poems, ed., J. Crewe [Penguin] OR one of the one-volume complete Shakespeares assigned in English 117J or 117S or 117A or 117B); Marlowe's Hero and Leander (use EITHER Complete Poems and Translations, ed., S. Orgel [Penguin] OR The Norton Anthology of English Lit, ed. Abrams et al., Volume 1 OR The Norton Anthology of Poetry, ed., Ferguson et.al.); Spenser's Faerie Queene (use EITHER The Faerie Queene, ed., T. Roche [Penguin] OR any other annotated, post-1970 edition of the whole poem)
Course Description: This will be a survey course, but a highly selective one. Although I plan to look at the best and/or most interesting work of several lesser sixteenth-century writers--for instance, some lyrics by Wyatt and some by Sidney, and Surrey's blank verse--I mean to give over the bulk of class time to the verse of Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, particularly their narrative verse.
I think I can teach you more about the sixteenth-century works I don't discuss in class by looking in detail at a few works than I could by scurrying through a handful of anthologies or by generalizing at length about either the particular qualities of particular authors or schools or by focusing on the particular qualities that characterize the culture that sixteenth-century literature reflects. I'm not good at categorizing, and I deeply mistrust categorization as an intellectual tool.
Three papers, each of a length determined by how much you have to say and how efficient you are in saying it. The third paper will take the place of a final examination and will be due in my box in 322 Wheeler Hall any time between the last class meeting and 3:30 p.m. on the day assigned this course for a final exam.
I advise against buying books for 115A until after the first class meeting.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
117B
Shakespeare
Altieri, Charles
MWF 11-12
213 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Shakespeare, W.: Signet editions of the following plays: Richard II, Midsummer Night's Dream, As you Like it, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, All's Well That Ends Well, A Winter's Tale, The Tempest
Course Description: We will read a basic set of Shakespeare plays exploring all his major genres. The primary focus for the class will be on close-reading the plays to analyze character and appreciate dramatic structure. Instructor is proudly ignorant of race, class, and gender issues in the academy. He is somewhat less proud of his penchant for abstraction. Efforts to correct that will be made by emphasizing student acting. I plan every Friday to have one or two student groups put on a scene; then we will discuss the actors' interpretations and possible alternatives. For those who act, there will be two papers, mid-term and final. Those who do not act will be asked for another paper. Since acting requires audiences and the instructor is an actor wannabe, attendance has to be mandatory.
117J
Shakespeare
Booth, Stephen
TTh 5-6:30
109 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: ONE--or, better--two OF THE FOLLOWING ONE-VOLUME SHAKESPEARES: William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Alfred Harbage et al. [The old Pelican Shakespeare] (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969); The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, ed., S. Orgel and A.R.Branmuller [The New Pelican] (New York, 2002); The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. B. Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974 (old edition) or 1998 (new edition); The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington (new ed. Longmans) OR old (I don't remember who published it); The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, ed. Sylvan Barnet et al. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972). [Only the one-volume version of the Signet Shakespeare will be practical for classroom purposes. It's out of print, I think, but there should be second-hand copies around.]; The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: Norton, 1997); AND Russ McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996 [2nd edition, 2001 or a later edition, if there is one]).
Course Description: I expect the course to do all the basic work of a Shakespeare survey and also to have seminar-like intellectual crossfire. I will take up all the topics that concern Shakespeare scholars, but I will not take them up systematically. I find that presenting a topic like "Establishing Shakespeare's Texts" causes people to try to memorize a lot of distinguished guesswork and understand nothing. Instead of organizing the communal and active ignorance of the last 300 years of scholarship, I will wait for particulars of classroom discussion to invite comment and background on printing-house practices, Shakespeare's stage, the composition of his audience, and stuff like that. If we work from stray particulars, you are less likely than you might otherwise be to come away with "knowledge" of matters about which we have--and have only evidence enough for--pure but immensely detailed guesses.
I don't yet know how I will want to use in-class time, but I will certainly concentrate on Shakespeare's language and on the plays as plays--experiences for audiences--and on what it is about them that has caused the western world and much of the eastern to value them so highly.
When I gave a small Shakespeare course I usually ask people to read Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Love's Labor's Lost, All's Well That Ends Well, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, The Tempest, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and The Winter's Tale; the order given here will not be the--or much like the--order in which I will ask that you read the plays. Moreover, I may substitute one or another play for something in the old list; for instance, I am currently improbably interested in King John.
I will give spot passage quizzes daily--or almost daily. Their purpose will be to make certain that you keep up with the reading and that you understand the surface sense and the syntactic physics of all the sentences you read.
Three papers, each of a length determined by how much you have to say and how efficient you are in saying it. The third paper will be in lieu of a final examination.
Enrollment is limited and a written application is due BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25; be sure to read the paragraph on page 2 of this Announcement of Classes regarding enrollment in English 117J (and 150).
117S
Shakespeare
Landreth, David
TTh 11-12:30
Note New Room: 2040 Valley LSB
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Shakespeare, W.: The Riverside Shakespeare
Course Description: This class is a single-semester introduction to the scope of Shakespeare's dramatic career, taught in lecture format. Our readings will range across different genres, from early plays to late, and from some of the greatest hits to some more unfamiliar--even disquieting--works, in order to see what relations we may draw across this diverse early modern production, and what relation the texts bear in turn to the monolithic institution of 'Shakespeare' in contemporary culture.
NB: I have ordered the Riverside Shakespeare at the bookstore. You may use any scholarly edition of each play, however, as is convenient to you ('scholarly'= published after 1960; has annotations, line numbers, and an introduction; and says who edited the text).
117T
Shakespeare in the Theater
Altman, Joel
Note New Room:
Lectures TTh 2-3:30 in 200 Wheeler, plus rehearsals TTh 3:30-5 (also in 200 Wheeler)
Areas of Concentration: 1B; 3
Book List: Shakespeare, W.: As You Like It, ed. Agnes Latham (ISBN 1903436044), As You Like It, ed. Fran Dolan (ISBN 0140714715)
Course Description: Detailed study and presentation of a single Shakespeare play--this semester the witty, wistful, clownish, and musical romantic comedy of country copulatives As You Like It, to be crafted into a full-scale public production for performance in late April. Members of the class will participate in a variety of capacities--as actors, extras, musicians, costume designers, prop builders, stage-hands, publicists, etc. After auditions, meetings will be devoted to close readings and discussions of the text--line by line and scene by scene--and intense rehearsals, indoors and out. If you enroll in this class, you must be willing to join whole-heartedly in both its academic and theatrical activities, understanding that not everyone can play a lead role. There are lots of interesting parts, and much enjoyable work whatever your function in the production.
Each student will submit an academic paper, 5-8 pages in length, on an aspect of the play or on the production process. Faithful attendance and participation are mandatory, as is cooperative support of everyone in the company.
NOTE: Because this course concentrates on one play only, it will not satisfy the Shakespeare requirement for English majors.
118
Milton
Goodman, Kevis
TTh 9:30-11
50 Birge
Areas of Concentration: 1B or 1C
Book List: Milton, J.: Complete Poems and Major Prose (ed. Merritt Y. Hughes). There may also be a small Course Reader.
Course Description: The later poet William Blake imagined Milton "descending . . .clothed in black, severe and silent," and too often that is the image that has descended upon us as well. This course will offer a very different poet and political figure. As we read Milton's major poetry (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes and shorter verse) and selections from his controversial prose, we will study the Milton who witnessed and participated in two revolutions (one political, the other scientific); the radical polemicist who wrote a tract justifying regicide, several pamphlets justifying divorce, and a famously vehement argument against government licensing of the press; the magisterial poet who composed great epic, lyric, and dramatic verse. We will also think about Milton's ambivalent stances toward classical myth and Renaissance literature, the place of his unorthodox theology in relation to his political and his proto-psychological theory, his writings on love, his prescient "media theory," and his self-production as a major author.
While the exact proportion of essays to exams will depend in part on class size, students should be aware that attendance and careful, timely preparation of the reading assignments are both absolute requirements.
Note to students: Inexpensive copies of Merritt Hughes's major hardcover edition of Milton's Complete Poems and Major Prose are available on line at Amazon and similar booksellers. Those of you sure that you plan to take the course might order copies of this edition over break, in case there is a shortage at the beginning of the semester at the local bookstores (as has been the case in the past), or if you want to get the cheaper prices.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
120 This class has been cancelled.
125C
The European Novel
Banfield, Ann
TTh 3:30-5
213 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 3
Book List: Conrad, J.: Under Western Eyes; Flaubert, G.: Sentimental Education; Fontane, T.: Effie Briest; Mann, T.: The Magic Mountain; Stendhal: The Charterhouse of Parma; Tolstoy, L.: War and Peace; Turgenev, I.: Fathers and Children. (One book may be dropped from the reading list.)
Course Description: This course focuses on the European novel of education or formation (Bildungsroman), the novel whose protagonist is a student. We will be interested, among other things, in the meeting between the student and history, usually in the form of a revolutionary movement.
125D
The 20th-Century Novel
Bernstein, Michael
TTh 12:30-2
213 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 3
Book List: Proust, M.: Remembrance of Things Past (translated by Moncrieff and Kilmartin), 3 volumes, Random House/Vintage paperbacks
Course Description: By reading one of the most significant 20th-century novels in detail, the course will attempt to answer questions about the thematic concerns and formal techniques of modernism. The relationships between changing conceptions of language and desire, of the individual subject, and of the pressures of history, as these are figured in the particular rhetorics and structures of this paradigmatic novel, will provide the central axes of our investigation. Active in-class participation and a willingness to engage in both copious reading and regular dialogues are the only prerequisites for the course.
Please note that we will be reading all of Proust's novel, rather than, as is often the case, only the first and last chapters (volumes).
130C
American Literature--1865-1900:
The Making of Americans--U.S. Fiction from 1865 to 1914
Snyder, Katherine
TTh 11-12:30
213 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1D or 1E; 2; 3; 4
Book List: Readings for the course will include most if not all of the following (please wait until after the first class meeting to purchase your books): Twain, M.: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Gates, H, ed.: Three Negro Classics; James, H.: The Turn of the Screw; Chopin, K.: The Awakening; Wharton, E.: The House of Mirth; Crane, S.: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; plus a photocopied reader of shorter writings by Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Jessie Fauset, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jacob Riis, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Finley Peter Dunne, Bret Harte, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Sui Sin Far.
Course Description: We will read a diverse selection of writing, predominantly prose fiction, published in the U.S. between the Civil War and World War I, a period of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and (im)migration that gave rise to new cultural figures such as The New Negro, the New Woman, and the New Immigrant. The course will be organized into three thematic units: the so-called "Negro Problem" (concerning representations of African Americans in the Post-Reconstruction era); the "Woman Question" (concerning representations of elite, native-born, white women in the age of the New Woman); and the "New Immigration" (concerning representations of Irish and Chinese immigrants in a period of intense nativism). Each unit will include texts by writers who considered themselves members of these cultural groups as well as texts by those who did not. We will ask what plot trajectories and narrative stances were available and/or negotiable for mapping these cultural identities, both from within and without.
In addition to written essays, there will be frequent short pop quizzes testing knowledge of material from readings and lecture; regular attendance and active participation in discussions are required.
130D
American Literature: 1900-1945
Porter, Carolyn
Note New Room:
Lectures MW 3-4 in 3 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 3
Book List: Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. D.; Cather, Willa: The Professor's House; Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby; Hammett, Dashiell: Red Harvest; Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Stein, Gertrude: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Course Description: A survey of American literature between WWI and WWII, focusing on poetry and fiction, and with an emphasis on modernist innovations.
131
American Poetry
Hass, Robert
TTh 12:30-2
Note New Room: 50 Birge
Areas of Concentration: 1D or 1E; 3
Book List: Whitman, W.: Leaves of Grass; Dickinson, E.: Selected Poems; American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Vols. I-II; plus a Course Reader
Course Description: American Poetry is a lecture course that surveys the history of American poetry from its beginnings to the present. The course has different emphases in different years. This course will focus for the first third of the semester on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, for the second third on the modernist poets of the first half of the twentieth-century--probably Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore--and for the last third on poets on the Beat Generation to the present. Written work for the course includes three critical essays and a final exam.
133B
African-American Literature and Culture Since 1917:
20th-Century African-American Fiction
JanMohamed, Abdul
MWF 2-3
30 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1E; 2; 3
Book List: Wright, Richard: Native Son; Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man; Walker, Alice: The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Morrison, Toni: Beloved; Gayl Jones: Corregidora; Toni Cade Bambara: These Bones Are Not My Child; Beatty, Paul: The White Boy Shuffle; John Edger Wideman: The Lynchers.
Course Description: An examination of some of the major African-American novels of the second half of the 20th Century.
Each student will be required to write two papers (between 1250 and 1500 words each) and to take a final exam (which will either be a regularly scheduled exam or a take home exam).
133T
Topics in African American Literature and Culture: Black Writers in the Americas
Hartman, Saidiya
TTh 2-3:30
106 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 2; 6
Book List: Ottobah Cugoano: ¡§Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery,¡¨ in Pioneers of the Black Atlantic; James Ukawsaw Gronniosaw: ¡§A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars,¡¨ Pioneers; Olaudah Equiano: ¡§The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,¡¨ Pioneers; David Walker¡¦s Appeal & Henry Highland Garnet¡¦s Address; Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom; Moira Ferguson, ed.: The History of Mary Prince; Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Iola Leroy; W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folks; James Weldon Johnson: Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man; Jean Toomer: Cane.
Course Description: This introductory course examines eighteenth- , nineteenth- , and early twentieth-century literature written by black writers. The course is less a historical survey of African American literature than an extended engagement with questions of black letters and slavery, race and representation, and the politics of literary form. The themes to be considered are literacy and black humanity, dissent and strategies of subversion in black letters, autobiography and the fashioning of a public self, the quicksand of racial and sexual representation in the writing of the Harlem Renaissance, modernism and vernacular expression, and the question of a black aesthetic. The course materials include slave narratives, political pamphlets, essays, novels, and autobiographies.
135AC
This course has been cancelled.
137A
Chicana/o Literature and Culture to 1910
Gonzalez, Marcial
TTh 3:30-5
110 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: 1D; 2
Book List: Seguin, J.: A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Correspondence of Juan Seguin; Ruiz de Burton, M.: Who Would Have Thought It?, The Squatter and the Don, Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton; Paz, I.: Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit, Joaquín Murrieta; De Zavala, A.: History and Legends of the Alamo and Other San Antonio Missions; Paredes, A.: A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border; Montes, A. & A. Goldman: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives; Sánchez, R.: Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonials
Course Description: In this course, we will study major literary and cultural texts written by Mexican Americans from 1835 to 1910. We will concentrate mainly on prose: fiction, memoirs and essays. One section of the course, however, will be devoted to the study of folk songs and border ballads. We will pay special attention to the manner in which these works reflect the political concerns and anxieties of Mexican Americans living in the U.S. Southwest in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a period marked by rapid industrialization, increased class conflict, the proletarianization of Mexicans, recurring economic crises, imperialist expansion and war. We will also explore the ways in which these early Mexican American writings are linked thematically and formally to an emergent Chicana/o literary tradition in the twentieth century. All students will be expected to attend class regularly and participate actively in classroom discussions. Students will also be required to give an oral report in class, write two essays and pass an exam.
141
Modes of Writing (Exposition, Fiction, Verse, etc.)
Abrams, Melanie
TTh 2-3:30
534 Davis
Area of Concentration: 3
Book List: Reader available at Copy Central
Course Description: This course will introduce students to the study of creative writing - fiction, poetry, drama, and memoir. Students will learn to talk critically about these genres and begin to feel comfortable and confident with their own writing of them. Students will write in each of these genres and will partake in class workshops where their work will be edited and critiqued by other students in the class.
(No application is required for this course.)
143A/1
Short Fiction
Chandra, Vikram
MW 12-1:30
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: Chabon, ed.: The Best American Short Stories, 2005; Smartt Bell, M.: Narrative Design; Brande, D.: Becoming a Writer
Course Description: A seminar in writing short stories.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit 10-15 photocopied pages of your fiction, along with an application form, to Professor Chandra's mailbox in 322 Wheeler, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 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
Farber, Thomas
Tues. 3:30-6:30
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: None
Course Description: A short fiction workshop open to students from any department. Students will write three short stories, 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 2-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 Professor Farber or email tfar@berkeley.edu.
(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 photocopies of 10-15 pages of your fiction, along with an application form, to Professor Farber’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 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
Shoptaw, John
MW 10:30-12
301 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 25, 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
O’Brien, Geoffrey
TTh 2-3:30
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: Course Reader
Course Description: The purpose of this class will be to produce an unfinished language in which to treat poetry. Writing your own poems will be a part of this task, but it will also require reading essays in poetics and sometimes writing under extreme formal constraints. In addition, there’ll be a very modest amount of critical writing on a contemporary book of poetry of your choice, short commentaries on other students’ work, and an informal review of a poetry reading.
To be considered for admission to this class, please submit five photocopied pages of your poems, along with an application form, to Professor O’Brien’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 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!
143D
This class has been cancelled.
143N/1
Prose Nonfiction: Creative Nonfiction—Writing Music, Dance & the Self
Farber, Thomas
W 3-6
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: None
Course Description: A nonfiction workshop open to students from any department. Drawing on narrative strategies of memoir, the diary, travel writing, and fiction, students will write and have workshopped in class two 10-20 page pieces. Each will emerge out of detailed description of something in the world of music or dance one has done or responded to (song, performance, club experience, etc) through which we’ll inevitably encounter the sensibility of the authorial self. Each week, students will turn in written critiques of the student papers being workshopped as well as a 3-page journal on assigned topics (these entries may be used in the longer pieces). I will also discuss my own methods in writing nonfiction meditations on oceans and the South Pacific as well my work-in-progress about salsa--dance and music. Probable semester total of written pages, including critiques: 80. Class attendance is mandatory.
Students not admitted or late in applying can come to office hours the first week of class to speak with Professor Farber or email tfar@berkeley.edu.
(Any students admitted who have worked with me before must contact me in November.)
To be considered for admission in this course, please submit 10-15 photocopied pages of your nonfiction or fiction, along with an application form, to Professor Farber’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 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
Prose Nonfiction: The Personal Essay
Kleege, Georgina
Thurs. 3:30-6:30
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: Lopate, P. ed.: The Art of the Personal Essay
Course Description: This class will be conducted as a writing workshop to explore the art and craft of the personal essay. We will closely examine the essays in Phillip Lopate’s anthology, as well as students’ exercises and essays. Writing assignments will include 3 short writing exercises (2 pages each) and two new essays (8-15 pages each). Since the class meets only once a week, attendance is mandatory.
To be considered for admission in this course, please submit 10-12 double-spaced, photocopied pages of your creative nonfiction (no fiction, 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 25, 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!
143T
Poetry Translation Workshop
Hass, Robert
TTh 9:30-11
301 Wheeler
Areas of Concentration: None
Book List: A Course Reader
Course Description: This is a workshop for the translation of poetry. Translators are expected to share their work and to participate in the criticism of the work of others. Discussion will range from the larger problems of the possibility of translation to the particular problems of a specific text in a specific language. Our task is to produce translations, but en route we will consider whether the “poetry” translates along with the “meaning”; the matter of music versus sense; the presence of the translator’s voice; intention; matters of form; the interplay of poet, translator, reader; and the like. Translators must work on poetry but may do so in any language.
Admission will be by permission of the instructor, based on (1) three pages of your own translations of poems into English, as well as the corresponding pages in the original language, (2) a one-paragraph statement of your interest in translation, and (3) an application form; all of the above is to be submitted to Professor Hass’s mailbox in 322 Wheeler, BY 4:00 P.M., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 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!
Last modified: Tuesday, 07-Feb-2006 11:11:04 PST