We will read some of the best writers on childhood and adolescence: Sandra Cisnero�s House on Mango Street and stories from Woman Hollering Creek, Gary Soto�s Living Up the Street, and other material I will either copy or order before the term opens. We will also discuss the films �and the earth did not devour him,� based on the story by Tomas Rivera, �Mi Vida Loca,� directed by Allison Anders, �Real Women Have Curves,� and possibly �Mi Familia,� directed by Gregory Nava.
We will read a small group of narratives about growing up Chicano/Latino. I believe that this is a particularly difficult time for all children as they face sexual pressure, violence, discouraging schools. By focusing on Chicano youth we will glimpse their experience as they come into sexuality and gender identity, the early formations of social identity, as they work through personal aspirations over against familial expectations and peer pressure, and how they see themselves coming into their own lives.
T.B.A.
In addition to the novels for which she is most famous, Virginia Woolf produced a voluminous body of short prose, with more than 500 essays and reviews on a dazzling array of topics, including, but far from limited to, peace and war, consciousness and selfhood, modernity and urban experience, national and class identity, Shakespeare, and women writers. In this class, we will take the opportunity to read slowly and with great attention to stylistic and rhetorical detail, some of Woolf's most brilliant and influential essays, in order to understand more not only about the author's own views and experiences, but also how she crafted her luminous and compelling prose. Assigned work will include in-class presentations of selected passages and short written responses to the readings, and will culminate with an attempt at a short essay of your own, with revision guided by a peer-group writing workshop.
Joyce, J.: Dubliners
James Joyce�s Dubliners (1914) is a collection of short stories about the inhabitants of his native city. Joyce helps invent the modern short story as he tries to evoke the mood or atmosphere of Dublin as it manifests itself in the behavior of Dublin men and women. When Joyce wrote, Ireland was still ruled from London both politically and culturally. Joyce�s book is a declaration of cultural independence, as he makes his subject matter the muted lives of middle class Dubliners. His characters are protagonists of their own dramas, but at the same time are shaped by their environment and so part of the larger Dublin story.
Because we�ll be examining a number of passages closely each time, going quickly form passage to passage, we�ll need to locate these quickly by page number. For that reason it�s important that everyone have the same text of the two novels. I have chosen two paperback editions that are well-edited and easily available: Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey (both Oxford World�s Classics editions).
"This seminar is meant to be an interesting and pleasant introduction to the study of a great novelist: Jane Austen. We�ll read and discuss two novels: Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. We�ll approach the novels from a number of different perspectives, including (but not limited to): the roles of class and gender, Austen�s language, plot structure, �point of view,� the thematization of moral concerns, and the interplay of her fiction and the history of her time. We�ll also discuss various critical approaches to these two works.
Your responsibilities will be 1) to attend regularly, bringing with you the assigned texts (see the note about the specific editions, above); 2) to participate in discussion; 3) to make a 15-minute (not longer) presentation; and 4) to write a short essay (about 1500 words, 7-8 double-spaced pages) on a subject of your own choice, due at the last seminar meeting. I�ll be glad to read rough drafts of your essays in advance.
At our first meeting we�ll consider a number of possible presentation subjects for you to choose from, and of course you may also suggest your own. Each of you will have a meeting with me during my office hours to help prepare for this. Some of you may wish to collaborate on presentations. In the latter part of the term, conferences on choosing an essay topic will be encouraged.
I�ll begin by providing an introduction to the early Austen, using some passages from her early prose works, and we�ll talk about Pride and Prejudice. Please bring your copy of the Oxford World�s Classics edition and be prepared to discuss the first 100 or so pages."
W. Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
Our seminar will concentrate on one of Shakespeare's best and most beloved comedies, Twelfth Night. We will read every word of the play as a group, and do trial readings and enactments of various scenes. Members of the seminar will give at least two oral reports each, covering various aspects of plot, character, action, gender representation (and confusion) and, most particularly, language and poetry.
T.B.A.
This is a seminar in writing poetry, conducted as a workshop and intended for lower-division students.
Chaucer, W.: The Canterbury Tales; Marlowe, C.: Dr. Faustus; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost; Spenser, E.: Edmund Spenser�s Poetry
This course is an introduction to major works by Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, with supplemental poetry from a class reader. In each case I will ask you to consider both the strangeness and the odd familiarity of these works, so far away from us in time and yet so close to many of our contemporary concerns. I am particularly interested in the power of representational resources available to these authors and now lost to us. My general approach to literature is feminist and psychoanalytic; I hope that you will be able to develop your own approach to these texts in your section meetings and on your papers. Requirements for the course include the writing of three papers, possibly a mid-term exam, and definitely a final exam, as well as participation in section meetings.
Chaucer, G.: Canterbury Tales; Spenser, E.: The Faerie Queen; Milton, J.: Paradise Lost; Donne, J.: John Donne's Poetry
An introduction to English literary history from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, and Paradise Lost will dominate the semester, as objects of study in themselves, of course, but also as occasions for considering issues of linguistic and cultural change, and of literary language, form, and innovation.
J. Austen: Pride and Prejudice; F. Douglass: The Narrative of the Life of FrederickDouglass; B. Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings; N. Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter; W. Irving: The Sketch-Book; A. Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose; M. Rowlandson: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God; C. Sedgwick: A New England Tale; J. Swift: Gulliver�s Travels; H. Walpole: The Castle of Otranto; W. Wordsworth: The Five-Book Prelude
This is a course in a few major works of English and American literature from the end of the 17 th century through the first half of the 19 th century. We will work our way from Puritanism through the Enlightenment and into Romanticism. There are some major intellectual transformations taking place in the course of this century and a half.
The list may include The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II; J. Austen: Pride and Prejudice; B. Franklin: Autobiography; H. Gates: Classic Slave Narratives; H. Melville: Bartleby and Benito Cereno; L. Sterne: A Sentimental Journey
This course is an introduction to British and American literature from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century. We'll read works from that period (by Pope, Sterne, Franklin, Equiano, Wordsworth, Austen, Melville, Dickinson, Whitman, and others) and think about how politics, the everyday, race, gender, and identity all find expression in a number of different literary forms. We'll especially consider the material and symbolic roles played by the idea and practice of revolution in the period.
(Please attend first day of class before purchasing): J.M. Coetzee: Disgrace; J. Conrad: Lord Jim; WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk; W. Faulkner: Absalom! Absalom!; H. James: Portrait of a Lady; M.H. Kingston: The Woman Warrior; V.S. Naipul: The Mimic Men; T. Morrison: Beloved; M. Ondaatje: The English Patient; V. Woolf: To the Lighthouse. There will also be a course reader containing selected poetry, essays, and short stories.
This course is an introduction to literature written in English mainly between the late 19 th century and the late 20 th century. There will be two kinds of emphases running through the course�one paid to the formal innovations credited to the significant authors of this period, the other paid to the socio-political conditions surrounding their aesthetic achievements. In particular, we will consider the development of English literature in the context of competing British and American empires and the globalization of English.
Ramazani, J., et al: The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (2 volumes); Stein, G.: Three Lives and Q.E.D; James, H.: Turn of the Screw; Freud, S.: Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria; Williams, W. C: Imaginations; Woolf, V.: Mrs. Dalloway; Shklovsky, V.: Third Factory; Mullen, H.: Sleeping with the Dictionary; Ngugi Wa Thiong�o: The River Between; Locke, A.., ed.: The New Negro. In addition to these texts, a required reader will be available at Copy Central on Bancroft.
Intended as a general survey of imaginative responses to the not always positive progress of modernity, this course will examine works produced by an array of prominent figures and representative of some of the principal Modernist and Postmodern movements and/or events. We will begin with the rise of Realism in the mid-19 th century and finish the course with works in experimental modes of the almost immediate present. The Armory Show, Imagism, Russian Formalism, Surrealism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Movement, the Black Arts Movement, and Language Writing are among the cultural moments we will experience along the way.
J. Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies; W. Helsby: Understanding Representation
The course will focus on films of the Coen Brothers and other contemporary directors (Lynch, Kieslovski, Wong Kar-Wai) and the stories of Lakiri in order to observe how cinematic/literary representations function. We will make use of UAM exhibits, Cal Performance shows, and PFA films to amplify our experience of the cultural context.
The assigned texts are Four Texts on Socrates and Plato�s Phaedo; these will be supplemented by a reader illustrating various historical interpretations of �know thyself� etc. and by e-mail attachments on occasion.
Socrates has often been compared to Jesus, an enigmatic yet somehow unmistakable figure who left nothing in writing yet decisively influenced the mind of his own and later ages. We will read the principal contemporary representations of Socrates�Aristophanes� comic send-up in Clouds and the Platonic dialogues purporting to tell the story of Socrates� trial and death�attempting to discern the historical Socrates and trace the construction of the Icon. Students will be asked to keep a journal assessing the relevance of issues which the trial and death of Socrates bring into focus to ones involved in our contemporary �culture wars,� e.g.: