No texts
The goal of this course is to help students to feel confident in talking about the arts and to take pleasure in that confidence, as well as to feel at home in the various venues that exhibit art and performance at Berkeley. We will discuss how best to look at and interpret works of visual arts exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum; we will attend dance and theater events at Cal Performances, and we may include something in the City. Most weeks we will attend either the museum or a performance event on campus, then discuss that in class. The class usually gets 75% discounts for Cal Performance events. But they will have to pay in other ways by providing occasional one-page reviews that will be the basis for class discussion.
Thoreau, H.D.: Walden
"Course Description: We will read Thoreau's Walden in small chunks, probably about thirty pages per week. This will allow us time to dwell upon the complexities of a book that is much more mysterious than those who have read the book casually, or those who have only heard about it, realize. We will also try to work some with online versions of the book, using the wordsearch command to identify words such as ""woodchuck"" or ""root"" that reappear frequently, in order to speculate on patterns Thoreau is trying to establish. Regular attendance and participation, along with a loose five-page essay at the end, are required."
Lehman, D.: The Oxford Book of American Verse
This workshop will teach various approaches toward the writing of verse. In addition to weekly writing assignments, students will read a range of poetry and essays, and will be encouraged to attend local poetry readings.
Heaney S., trans.: Beowulf; Donaldson, E., trans.: Beowulf; Chaucer, G.: The Canterbury Tales; Marlowe, C.: Dr. Faustus; Spenser, E.: The Faerie Queene; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost
This course will focus on the central works of the early English literary tradition, beginning with Beowulf and ending with Paradise Lost. We will examine the texts in light of the cultures in which they were produced, asking ourselves why these works were written when they were written, and what the unfamiliar cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance have to say to us now. We will also focus on developing reading skills and on understanding the literary tradition as a set of interrelated texts and problems that recur over the course of centuries. We will examine these works as formal artifacts as well as historical documents. Students will work on close readings, on literary language, and on understanding generic distinctions as they functioned in the past and function now. Expect to write three papers, to take a midterm, and a final exam.
Chaucer, G.: Canterbury Tales; Spenser, E.: Edmund Spenser?s Poetry; Marlowe, C.: Doctor Faustus; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost
This class introduces students to the production of poetic narrative in English through the close study of major works in that tradition: the Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, Doctor Faustus, and Paradise Lost. Each of these texts reflects differently on the ambition of national, epic poetry to enfold the range of a culture?s experience. We will focus particularly, therefore, on the relationships of different genres to different kinds of knowledge, to see how different ways of expressing things make possible new things to express, as English culture and English poetry transform each other from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
To be arranged
On the face of it, English 45B seems like a ?neither/nor? course; neither a course in the great English authors (Chaucer, Spenser, Milton) nor a course in ?modern? literature. It represents neither the supposed ?origin? nor the putative ?end? of literature in English; it?s only the middle, and a peculiarly defined middle at that: from the ?Glorious Revolution? that legitimated an extra-national monarch for Great Britain to the end of a Civil War in that former British colony, ?America.? But students electing to take this course will discover that the writers in this period defined or redefined?in their practices as well as in their prefaces?virtually every idea that governs our attitudes toward ?literature.? At once functioning as the expression of ?private? feelings and as a ?national? discourse, Anglophone literature of the 18th and 19th centuries also partly invented what we mean by the ?individual,? the literate subject. We?ll watch how Alexander Pope makes English into an artificial language that ?belongs? to no particular class; we?ll see how letters are the means by which former ?nobodies??women and slaves?exercise a measure of freedom and autonomy. But we?ll also see the supposedly liberatory, democratizing power of letters and of literature challenged?by Dickens, in Bleak House, and Melville, in ?Bartleby the Scrivener.? As we consider Wordsworth and Coleridge?s attempt to redefine poetry and Emerson?s and Thoreau?s attempt to write new kinds of prose, we?ll also ask a more general question: what constitutes the ?novelty? of literature, and?if novelty or ?originality? is a value, what is the point of reading literature of the past?
Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights; Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations; Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Franklin, Benjamin: Autobiography; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Scarlet Letter; Thoreau, Henry: Walden; Wordsworth, William: Prelude; Course Reader
An introduction to literature in English from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, including works by Pope, Franklin, Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, Douglass, Hawthorne, Dickens, Browning, and Whitman. (It is strongly recommended that you take English 45A before enrolling in this course).
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Wilde, O.: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings; James, H.: The Portrait of a Lady; Joyce, J.: Dubliners; Woolf, V.: To the Lighthouse; Faulkner, W.: The Sound and the Fury; Achebe, C.: Things Fall Apart; Welty, E.: Golden Apples
This course will provide a survey of major works and stylistic experiments that have come to characterize modernism in Anglo-American literature. We will try to understand the pressures to which the writers were responding and we will explore how their experiments can be said to make a difference in cultural life. Lectures will be devoted primarily to close reading, although there will be considerable concern for trends within the intellectual ferment of the period. There will be a mid-term and final as well as three five-page papers. The pace of this class will be intense and the discourse somewhat demanding.
Ellmann, R., R. O'Clair, and J. Ramazani: The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Vol. I; Faulkner, W: Absalom, Absalom!; Hemingway, E.: The Sun Also Rises; Nabokov, V.: Lolita; Toomer, J.: Cane; Woolf, V.: Mrs. Dalloway
"A survey of English and American literature from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, with attention given both to conceptions of literature intrinsically claimed by the texts assigned and to the historical and cultural grounds out of which they emerged. The course will inevitably investigate the emergence and rise of modernism and also, in passing, the value and nature of such constructions as ""the author,"" ""literature,"" ""literary history,"" and ""period."" Active participation in discussion sections will be essential. There will be two short papers, a final exam, and possibly a midterm."
Melville, Benito Cereno; F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby; Gloria Anzaldua: Borderlands; Chang Rae-Lee, Native Speaker; a course reader including essays and short stories
"The American historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued in 1893 that the United States was essentially born on the frontier, that it had forged its unique national, legislative, social, and intellectual identity upon the ?hither edge of free land.? To study the frontier, Turner argued, was to study the ?really American part of our history.? We?ll start off the semester with Turner?s now famous essay and then borrow the questions it raises as launch points for our own investigations: What is ?really American? about America? What defines American character, American culture, American-ness? How does one ?study? America? Where and with whom does its meaning lie? Turner approached these questions as an historian, but the topic of ?America? has fueled the writings of travelers, poets, novelists, journalists and others. Our readings from these sources will be necessarily selective, and our goal not to settle the question of what defines ?America,? but rather to explore some of the different ways this country has been represented and theorized. Your project for the semester will be to immerse yourself in this debate, and to discover therein something that interests, inspires, disturbs, tickles, infuriates or otherwise affects you sufficiently to make you want to find out more about it!
Taking ?America? as our central point of reference, this course will serve as an introduction to the wide world of scholarly research and writing, as well as to the more specific realm of literary study. You will learn how to read texts critically, generate original questions out of these readings, develop these questions into research projects, seek out and assess relevant published essays and books, and make new contributions to a scholarly debate. If this all sounds overwhelming, don?t despair! We will break down the writing process into manageable steps, and much of our energy and attention will focus upon strategies for inspiring, crafting and delivering strong critical writing. The ultimate purpose of this class is less to bequeath you with a predetermined body of knowledge than to embolden you to generate and pursue your own ideas. Students who choose to enroll should therefore bring an open mind and a willingness to engage in class discussion.
Writing Requirements: Students will complete informal weekly assignments targeting specific reading, writing and research skills, and then apply these skills toward three formal essays of increasing length and complexity. The final project for the course will require students to generate their own topic and conduct independent library research. "
Fitzgerald, S.: The Great Gatsby; Ondaatje, M.: In the Skin of a Lion; James, H.: The American; Hacker, D.: Rules for Writers, Fifth Edition. A required course reader will contain shorter works and excerpts. Some films will also be shown.
"This course topic is meant to refigure, in more pedestrian terms, the intersection of sexual desire and socioeconomic status in the literary domain. In familiarizing those academic terms, we will chart the difference, if any, between ?love? and ?sexual desire? and between ?money? and ?class,? for our materials will employ all four terms. The texts for this course will represent both writers interested in capitalism?s effect on the affections of the heart and writers interested in the romantic possibilities of wealth and poverty. The course is intended to give a wide variety of materials for writing purposes, and will range from ?high literature? through popular culture and romantic comedies.
Our analyses will be performed in writing, and the primary goal of the class, beyond an appreciation for the material, is to teach the mechanics and technology of writing in college. To that end, students will write several short essays, three of which will be substantial revisions of prior work. "
Carver, R.: Where I?m Calling From; Silver & Ursini, eds.: Film Noir Reader 4
The course will focus on analyzing the films of the Coen brothers and earlier noir classics, and the stories of Carver in relation to issues of representation, genre and gender. We will make use of University Art Museum exhibits, Cal Performances and Pacific Film Archive films to extend our range of cultural experiences.
A Course Reader
This course will introduce students to the work currently being undertaken by both Berkeley faculty and local artists in issues of race and class, gender and ethnicity, and the formations of minority discourse. Each week a different scholar or writer will lecture on literary study that reflects cultural and racial concerns. Upper-division undergraduates will lead discussion groups focusing on the methods advocated in the lecture and on various readings. Attendance is required at both the one-hour lecture and the one-hour discussion. Discussion sections will be limited to 15 students. A six-to-ten-page term paper will be due the final week of class, and during the semester there will be regular, short, ungraded writing assignments in preparation for the term paper.