Announcement of Classes: Fall 2005

All-Courses Lists
Reading and Composition
Lower Division
Upper Division
Graduate

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
R1A/1 Reading and Composition: Metaphysical Literature MWF 10-11	"Many works in literature have been said to have a ?metaphysical? quality; in this class we will examine some of those works, paying special attention to the claims of imaginative literature upon philosophy. During the course of the semester, our read...(read more)	Paul Hurh	Reading and Composition
R1A/2 Reading and Composition: TBA MWF 12-1	TBA...(read more)	Len von Morze	Reading and Composition
R1A/3 Reading and Composition: Comparing Asian American and African American Literature MWF 1-2	"This course will examine Asian American and African American literature and ask what might be gained in a comparative approach to ethnic literature. While texts produced by a specific ethnic group are usually read apart from both the dominant white E...(read more)	Janice Tanemura	Reading and Composition
R1A/4 Reading and Composition: TBA MWF 3-4	TBA...(read more)	Katie Simon	Reading and Composition
R1A/5 Reading and Composition: TBA TTh 8-9:30	TBA...(read more)	Avilah Getzler	Reading and Composition
R1A/6 Reading and Composition: Ralph Ellison and Double-Consciousness TTh 8-9:30	"In this class we will read Ralph Ellison?s two novels, Invisible Man and the recently compiled reader?s edition of his magisterial forty-year work-in-progress, Juneteenth. We will also read sizable excerpts from his collection of essays, Shadow and A...(read more)	Joel Nickels	Reading and Composition
R1A/7 Reading and Composition: Improper Love in the Renaissance TTh 9:30-11	"A story of forbidden love can compel a reader through both sympathy and repulsion. We hope the frustrated lovers can somehow overcome the unjust exigencies preventing their happy union. We fear they will not demonstrate self-control if consummating t...(read more)	Alan Drosdick	Reading and Composition
R1A/8 Reading and Composition: Modern Theater of Attractions TTh 9:30-11	Theater historians of Shakespeare?s London often observe the intense demand for innovation and novelty a diverse but sophisticated playgoing public exerted on rival theater companies vying for its interest. Confined to the frontier zone of the suburbs...(read more)	Joseph Ring	Reading and Composition
R1A/9 Reading and Composition: The Novel and Revolution TTh 11-12:30	"In this course we will consider the relationship between two phenomena closely associated with modernity: the novel and political revolution. How do novels represent?or fail to represent?the revolutionary event? In what ways do they seek to promulgat...(read more)	Mark Allison	Reading and Composition
R1A/10 Reading and Composition: Adapting the Nineteenth Century TTh 12:30-2	This course seeks to refine composition skills (thesis building, argumentation, processes of analysis, use of evidence, and mechanics) while also introducing students to the discipline of literary study. Students will be responsible for 32 pages of wr...(read more)	Leslie Walton	Reading and Composition
R1A/12 Reading and Composition: TBA TTh 2-3:30	TBA...(read more)	Ben Graves	Reading and Composition
R1A/13 Reading and Composition: Mocked with Art TTh 2:00-3:30	"In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Leontes, astonished by the seemingly lifelike rendering of his wife, exclaims, ?The fixure of her eye has motion in 't, / As we are mocked with art? (V.iii.67). Leontes's words provide the thematic prompt for our c...(read more)	Dori Takata	Reading and Composition
R1A/14 Reading and Composition: TBA TTh 3:30-5	TBA...(read more)	Rae Greiner	Reading and Composition
R1B/1 Reading and Composition: Poetic Richness MWF 11-12	"Literature as art and, more specifically, poetry and poetic drama as art will be our main concern in this class. We will be reading some of the most famous plays and poems in the language and talking about the ways they give their readers the experie...(read more)	Vitaliy Eyber	Reading and Composition
R1B/2 Reading and Composition: V-Chips and Codpieces: Intersexions of Early Modern and Modern Texts MWF 1-2	"What relationships can we discover between the Elizabethan sonnet sequence and the contemporary hip-hop record? How have debates about marriage and the domestic scene been transformed and re-shaped into debates about homosexuality and the ?sanctity? ...(read more)	Brendan Prawdzik	Reading and Composition
R1B/3 Reading and Composition: TBA MWF 3-4	TBA...(read more)	Arthur Bahr	Reading and Composition
R1B/4 Reading and Composition: Myth, Fable, and History TTh 8-9:30	"In this course, we will examine the works of a handful of authors and filmmakers who utilize myth in the 20th century. ?Myth? is difficult to define convincingly, but the assumption for this course will be that myths tell us how to think about oursel...(read more)	Jesse Constantino	Reading and Composition
R1B/5 Reading and Composition: Translators, Interpreters, and Go-Betweens TTh 8-9:30	"This course brings together a series of literary texts which focus around acts of translation or interpretation in some fashion. We will begin the course thinking about linguistic translation and will use that as a foundation for discussion of other ...(read more)	Sarah Townsend	Reading and Composition
R1B/6 Reading and Composition: Shipwreck'd: How to Survive (with a little help) TTh 9:30-11:00	"Two of the most famous survival stories are Shakespeare?s The Tempest and Daniel Defoe?s Robinson Crusoe. However, these are not just simply grand adventure stories. These narratives, which celebrate the self-made (English) man, demonstrate that his ...(read more)	Kimberly Tsau	Reading and Composition
R1B/7 Reading and Composition: The Making of Evil TTh 11-12:30	"Evil is a shifting, nebulous notion. The conception of it has differed between time periods, cultures and nationalities. And, of course, its conception can differ between contemporaneous social and political groups ? that the phrase ?Axis of Evil? ca...(read more)	Simon Huynh	Reading and Composition
R1B/8 Reading and Composition: Female Fantasy and the Gothic TuTh 12:30-2	"This class is designed to help you develop your essay writing skills as we read and view our way through some classics of the Female Gothic genre. The most famous canonical text in this genre is Charlotte Bront?s Jane Eyre, while non-canonical exampl...(read more)	Monica Soare	Reading and Composition
R1B/9 Reading and Composition: Mobile Americans: Travel, Literature, Belonging TTh 2-3:30	"Ralph Waldo Emerson described traveling as ?a fool?s paradise.? In this course, we will work on refining critical reading and writing skills by examining and discussing the role of travel in literature, particularly in what Gertrude Stein called ?the...(read more)	Carlo Arreglo	Reading and Composition
R1B/10 Reading and Composition: Asian American Literature and the Rhetorics of Nation and Transnation TTh 3:30-5:00	"In recent years, Asian American studies has been influenced by postcolonial critiques of nationalism and the New American Studies? focus on American imperialism. This course is, in part, a comparative study of the framings of nation and transnation i...(read more)	Audrey Wu Clark	Reading and Composition
R1B/11 Reading and Composition: Thematics and Forms of Obsession in Literature TTh 3:30-5	"This course will focus on literature and the craft of critical writing through an exploration of obsession as a principle of narration. We will begin in the late Middle Ages with selections from Chaucer and will finish off over 600 years later with N...(read more)	Eleanor Johnson	Reading and Composition

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
24/1 Freshman Seminar: Children, Families and Disability Tues. 10-11	This course will explore how disability, gender and race intersect in the lives of people with disabilities across the early lifespan (from birth to age 18), primarily in the United States. The questions we'll address are fundamental disability issues...(read more)	Schweik, Susan Schweik, Susan and O'Toole, Corbett Joan	Freshman Seminars
24/2 Freshman Seminar: Visual Culture and Autobiography W 10-11	"Visual culture is not just about pictures, but the (post)""modern tendency to picture or visualize experience""--what W.J.T. Mitchell calls ""the pictorial turn."" Not surprisingly, as contemporary writers and artists struggle to find forms that conv...(read more)	Wong, Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Hertha Sweet	Freshman Seminars
24/3 Freshman Seminar: Growing Up Chicano/Latino W 4:30-5:30	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 ...(read more)	Padilla, Genaro M. Padilla, Genaro	Freshman Seminars
24/4 Freshman Seminar: Two Novels by Jane Austen Fri. 10-12	"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: : Sense and Sensibility and Emma a. We'll approach the novels from a number of different perspectiv...(read more)	Paley, Morton D. Paley, Morton	Freshman Seminars
24/5 Freshman Seminar: Reading Robert Frost Mon. 4-5	"In a letter to a publisher friend, Robert Frost offered the following engaging definition of poetry: �A poem starts with a lump in the throat, a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching out toward expression, an effort to find fulfillment. A ...(read more)	McQuade, Donald McQuade, Don	Freshman Seminars
24/6 Freshman Seminar: Contemporary Irish Theater-The Plays of Brian Friel Mon. 3:30-5:30	Brian Friel (b. 1928) is the most prominent playwright of the contemporary Irish theater, best known for Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa. In a series of innovative plays, he has examined some of the stories the Irish tell themselves about their p...(read more)	Tracy, Robert Tracy, Robert	Freshman Seminars
24/7 Freshman Seminar: Reading Walden Carefully 222 Wheeler	"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 hear...(read more)	Breitwieser, Mitchell Breitwieser, Mitchell	Freshman Seminars
43A/1 Lower Division Coursework: Introduction to the Writing of Short Fiction MW 3-4:30	In this course, students will learn the basic elements of fiction writing. Students will be expected to write two short stories during the semester. The course will be organized as a workshop. All stories will be edited and critiqued by the instructor...(read more)	Abrams, Melanie	Creative Writing Workshops
43A/2 Lower Division Coursework: Introduction to the Writing of Short Fiction TTh 2-3:30	This is a workshop course intended for students who have recently begun to write fiction or who have not previously taken a course in creative writing. ...(read more)	Chandra, Vikram Chandra, Vikram	Creative Writing Workshops
43B/1 Lower Division Coursework: Introduction to the Writing of Verse Thurs. 3:30-6:30	The purpose of this class will be to produce a mobile, surprising, unfinished language in which to treat poetry. Writing poems will be a part of this task, but only a part. There will also be a modest amount of critical writing and reading, short writ...(read more)	O'Brien, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Geoffrey	Creative Writing Workshops
45A/1 Literature in English: Through Milton MW 11-12 in 2 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 11-12)	For more information on this section of English 45A, please email the professor at j_miller@berkeley.edu. ...(read more)	Miller, Jennifer Miller, Jennifer	Introductory Surveys
45A/2 Literature in English: Through Milton MW 1-2 in 2 LeConte, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 1-2)	This course is an introduction to major works by Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, with occasional supplements 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...(read more)	Adelman, Janet Adelman, Janet	Introductory Surveys
45B/1 Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century MW 10-11 in 50 Birge (NOTE NEW CLASSROOM), plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 10-11)	I will lecture on the cataclysmic rise of bourgeois modernity as it registers in English and American literature during the period 1660-1860. I will emphasize the mixture of euphoria, wonder, deprivation, and anxiety that this transformation provokes,...(read more)	Breitwieser, Mitchell Breitwieser, Mitchell	Introductory Surveys
45B/2 Literature in English: Late-17th through Mid-19th Century MW 3-4 in 390 Hearst Mining, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 3-4)	Readings in English, Scottish, Irish and American literature from 1688 through 1848: a century and a half that sees the formation of a new, multinational British state, with the political incorporation of Scotland and Ireland; the massive expansion of...(read more)	Duncan, Ian Duncan, Ian	Introductory Surveys
45C/1 Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century MW 12-1 in 277 Cory, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 12-1)	"In this course we will begin with a Victorian text and end with a postmodern one, but we will focus primarily on the intervening period of literary modernism. Topics for discussion will include the status of high art and artists in an era of mass cul...(read more)	Snyder, Katherine Snyder, Katherine	Introductory Surveys
45C/2 Literature in English: Mid-19th through the 20th Century MW 2-3 in 101 Morgan, plus one hour of discussion section per week (all sections F 2-3)	"In surveying British and American literature from 1865-1965, this course will focus on what may be called the modernist tradition of innovation. We will study authors--such as Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett--whose revolut...(read more)	Hale, Dorothy J. Hale, Dorothy	Introductory Surveys
C77/1 Lower Division Coursework: Introduction to Environmental Studies TTh 12:30-2 in 159 Mulford, plus 1_ hours of discussion section per week	This is an innovative team-taught course that surveys global environmental issues at the beginning of the twenty-first century and that introduces students to the basic intellectual tools of environmental science and to the history of environmental th...(read more)	Hass, Robert L. Hass, Robert and Sposito, Gary	Special Topics
84/1 Sophomore Seminar: High Culture/Low Culture--The Coen Brothers and the Arts M 2-5	Using film, fiction, and cultural events, the course will focus on the work of the Coen brothers and the stories of J. Lahiri to discuss the representation of sexuality, domesticity, and violence. ...(read more)	Bader, Julia Bader, Julia	Sophomore Seminars

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
100/1 Junior Seminar: Work in the Mid-Victorian Novel-- Elisabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens MWF 1-2	"In this course we will read novels by two of Victorian England's most brilliant writers of social fiction, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens. Focusing on theme of work, we will discuss central questions of Victorian social, economic and political...(read more)	Ben-Yishai, Ayelet	Junior Seminars
100/2 Junior Seminar: Zora Neale Hurston MW 3-4:30	"The two-volume Library of America edition of Hurston's major works will provide the foundation for our exploration of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant, elusive and contradictory writers. Our goal will be to understand how Hurston used he...(read more)	Kramer, Eliza	Junior Seminars
100/4 Junior Seminar: The End of the Poem MW 4-5:30	"This class addresses an inevitable feature of all poems, the last line: the position from which the poem's entire form is, for the first time, apprehended. This focus will require attention to all the formal and thematic principles by which a poem ge...(read more)	O'Brien, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Geoffrey	Junior Seminars
100/5 Junior Seminar: Diasporic Identities TTh 9:30-11	This course examines representations of the African diaspora in contemporary literature by black writers in the U.S., Africa and the Caribbean. Through an engagement with literature, film and theories of diaspora, the class will consider a range of qu...(read more)	Hartman, Saidiya V. Hartman, Saidiya	Junior Seminars
100/6 Junior Seminar: Christopher Marlowe TTh 9:30-11	"Marlowe invented the modern theater, unleashing a power of spectacle, dialogue, and oratory that instantly addicted much of the teeming city of London and horrified the rest. This seminar will use the unbounded, amoral ambition of Marlowe's staged pr...(read more)	Landreth, David Landreth, David	Junior Seminars
100/7 Junior Seminar: Criminal Literature--Writing Against the Law TTh 9:30-11	"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...(read more)	Fielding, John David Fielding, John	Junior Seminars
100/8 Junior Seminar: Ventriloquism and the Novel TTh 11-12:30	Our topic is the curious relation of identification-and-dissociation between a novel's implied author and its given protagonist. We will concentrate on specific formal features that structure this relation: narration, focalization, and, most important...(read more)	Miller, D. A.	Junior Seminars
100/9 Junior Seminar: Holocaust Literature TTh 11-12:30	The German philosopher Theodor Adorno made the famous comment that to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric--but not to produce it even more barbarous. In this class we will focus on how literary art responds to this paradoxical injunction. How ca...(read more)	Liu, Sarah	Junior Seminars
100/10 Junior Seminar: Darkest London--Exploring the Post-1945 Metropolis TTh 12:30-2	"Throw away your A to Z Street Atlas--we'll find our way around London this semester with a different set of guides. Our reading will foreground a series of narratives of colonial and postcolonial figures at loose in twentieth-century London. We'll co...(read more)	Premnath, Gautam Premnath, Gautam	Junior Seminars
100/11 Junior Seminar: Literature and Psychoanalysis TTh 12:30-2	What do literature and psychoanalysis have in common? For one, both are usually about two or more of the following: sex, death, love, hate, work, jealousy, obsession, parents, children, anxiety, and loss. Seemingly made for each other, literature and ...(read more)	Puckett, Kent Puckett, Kent	Junior Seminars
100/12 Junior Seminar: Literature of California and the West TTh 12:30-2	"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...(read more)	Starr, George A. Starr, George	Junior Seminars
100/13 Junior Seminar: Tragedy, Agony, Vision, and Death TTh 2-3:30	"In this course, we will explore the dramatic genre of tragedy as it has manifested itself at three different times in history: Athens in the 5th century, B.C.; late 16th- and early 17th-century England, and 20th-century France and America. All the pl...(read more)	Altman, Joel B. Altman, Joel	Junior Seminars
100/15 Junior Seminar: Gender, Sexuality, and Modernism TTh 3:30-5	Gender norms and literary forms both exploded at the turn of the twentieth century. These paired crises in social and literary narratives were perceived on the one hand as the stuttering end of western culture's story, the drying up of libidinal fuel;...(read more)	Abel, Elizabeth Abel, Elizabeth	Junior Seminars
100/16 Junior Seminar: William Carlos Williams TTh 3:30-5	"This course will introduce you to one of the most prolific, most daringly experimental, most influential, and most passionately autobiographical American writers of the 20th century. William Carlos Williams is primarily known, anthologized, and taugh...(read more)	Buck, Chansonette	Junior Seminars
102/1 Upper Division Coursework: Topics in the English Language: English Phonology MWF 2-3	Phonology is the part of grammar which involves the structure of sound in language. It has three principal components: melody, the qualitative aspects of sounds which distinguish for example a [p] from an [f], or an [i] from a [u]; rhythm, the organiz...(read more)	Hanson, Kristin Hanson, Kristin	English Language and Linguistics
114A/1 Upper Division Coursework: English Drama to 1603 MWF 2-3	For more information on this class, please email the professor at j_miller@berkeley.edu....(read more)	Miller, Jennifer Miller, Jennifer	Renaissance and Early Modern
114B/1 Upper Division Coursework: English Drama from 1603 to 1700 TTh 11-12:30	In the first three decades of the seventeenth century, an extraordinary burst of energy and talent was visible and audible on the London stage. Socially aspiring dramatists satirized the pretensions of the upwardly mobile, revealed the tragic, sometim...(read more)	Altman, Joel B. Altman, Joel	Renaissance and Early Modern
117A/1 Upper Division Coursework: Shakespeare TTh 2-3:30	"We'll read six plays from the chronological first half of Shakespeare's output, considered loosely to allow us to end with a reading of Hamlet. Our approach will be to consider Shakespeare's plays as they shaped and were shaped by a lively theatrical...(read more)	Koory, Mary Ann	Shakespeare
117S/1 Upper Division Coursework: Shakespeare MW 4-5:30	"In this course we will analyze a selection of Shakespeare's plays, arranged both by genre and chronologically, in order to explore not only what is peculiar to each play but also what links the plays to each other and to the culture and the psyche th...(read more)	Adelman, Janet Adelman, Janet	Shakespeare
118/1 Upper Division Coursework: Milton MWF 1-2	An introduction to the poetry and prose of one of the greatest writers in English literature. Sexual radical, political revolutionary, and literary genius, Milton is a one-man introduction to the cultural ferment of the English Renaissance, the Reform...(read more)	Kahn, Victoria Kahn, Victoria	Renaissance and Early Modern
122/1 Upper Division Coursework: The Victorian Period TTh 9:30-11	This course is an introduction to the literature and culture of the Victorian period. Victorian poets, novelists, and critics responded to rapid industrial growth, colonial expansion, and profound developments in science, technology, and social life w...(read more)	Puckett, Kent Puckett, Kent	British 19th-Century
125A/1 Upper Division Coursework: The English Novel: Defoe through Scott TTh 3:30-5	The English Novel, 1660-1800. ...(read more)	Starr, George A. Starr, George	British 18th-Century
125C/1 Upper Division Coursework: The European Novel TTh 11-12:30	Focusing on key texts from English, French, and Russian literatures, this course traces the development of the novel as a genre in 19th-century Europe. Our discussions will emphasize strategies of close reading and literary analysis and elements of th...(read more)	Paperno, Irene	Novel
125D/1 Upper Division Coursework: The 20th-Century Novel MWF 12-1	"Novels take a really long time to read, and they are filled with lies, or, more politely, fictions. Why write novels? Why read them? If you can ask these questions, and at the same time and without hesitation look forward to reading novels, then this...(read more)	Rubenstein, Michae	Novel
125E/1 Upper Division Coursework: The Contemporary Novel TTh 12:30-2	An exploration of the novels listed above, all of them written in the second half of the twentieth century. The course will move through these texts inductively, without any particular preconceptions or thematic axes to grind, in an effort both to und...(read more)	Bishop, John Bishop, John	Novel
126/1 Upper Division Coursework: British Literature: 1900-1945 TTh 3:30-5	A survey of early modern British literature, treating representative works of major figures (see book list) in their literary, historical, and cultural contexts. There will be two midterm papers and a final exam. ...(read more)	Bishop, John Bishop, John	British 20th- and 21st-Century
127/1 Upper Division Coursework: Modern Poetry MWF 11-12	British and American poetry: 1860 to the present...(read more)	Blanton, Dan	Poetry
133A/1 Upper Division Coursework: African American Literature and Culture Before 1917 TTh 2-3:30	"African American expressive culture has been driven by an affinity for the oral in the form of sermons, speeches, work songs, slave songs, spirituals, and the blues. At the same time, African American literary culture has displayed a manifest propens...(read more)	Best, Stephen M. Best, Stephen	African American Literature
135AC/1 Upper Division Coursework: Literature of American Cultures: Literature of Resistance and Repression MWF 11-12	In this course we will analyze representations of repression and resistance in the fiction of three cultural groups: Chicanos, African Americans, and European Americans. We will seek answers to the following kinds of questions: What is the relation be...(read more)	Gonzalez, Marcial Gonzalez, Marcial	American Cultures
C136/1 Upper Division Coursework: Topics in American Studies: The 1950's TTh 2-3:30	"This class will explore the American 1950's through a sampling of history, literature, movies, and the popular culture of the decade, trying to understand some of its concerns and its contradictions. A period of massive conformity (""The Man in the G...(read more)	Loewinsohn, Ron Loewinsohn, Ron	Special Topics
137T/1 Upper Division Coursework: Topics in Chicana/o Literature and Culture: The Borderlands of Chicano/a Literature TTh 9:30-11	This course will explore the invention of a Chicano and Chicana sense of place. How do imaginative writers such as Am�rico Paredes, Gloria Anzald�a, and Sandra Cisneros negotiate the tension between the national and transnational forces at work in the...(read more)	Saldivar, Jose David Saldivar, Jose	Graduate Courses
139/1 Upper Division Coursework: The Cultures of English: Culture of the Great War--Art in the Age of Decline MWF 11-12	"The Great War set loose on the world an heretofore unimaginable scale of violence and destruction. In this five-year conflict 8.5 million people were killed and 20 million wounded--making a mockery of the now jejune anxieties of social degeneration a...(read more)	Jones, Donna V. Jones, Donna	World Literature
143A/1 Upper Division Coursework: Short Fiction TTh 9:30-11	T.B.A. ...(read more)	Chandra, Vikram Chandra, Vikram	Creative Writing Workshops
143A/2 Upper Division Coursework: Short Fiction TTh 12:30-2	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 a...(read more)	Blaise (Mukherjee), Bharati	Creative Writing Workshops
143B/1 Upper Division Coursework: Verse TTh 12:30-2	In this workshop/seminar, we will engage in hands-on investigations into a variety of possibilities inherent to poetic logic, and with an emphasis on inventions and experiments, we will attempt to employ those logics. Attention will also be paid to mo...(read more)	Hejinian, Lyn Hejinian, Lyn	Creative Writing Workshops
143B/2 Upper Division Coursework: Verse TTh 2-3:30	"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-lin...(read more)	Shoptaw, John Shoptaw, John	Creative Writing Workshops
143B/3 Upper Division Coursework: Verse Tues. 3:30-6:30	The advanced workshop in poetry will give students the opportunity to learn about their own capabilities as writers. We will stress poetry as an art of composition in language that differs from other uses of language (journal writing, letter writing, ...(read more)	McMorris, Mark	Creative Writing Workshops
143N/1 Upper Division Coursework: Prose Nonfiction TTh 3:30-5	"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...(read more)	Blaise (Mukherjee), Bharati	Creative Writing Workshops
150/1 Senior Seminar: Literature of the Americas--History, Narrative and Event MW 1:30-3	Examining a wide selection of texts from throughout the Americas, this class will look at the literary and historiographic methods of representing the discontinuous historical narratives of the New World. How does the way we narrate history influence ...(read more)	Jones, Donna V. Jones, Donna	Senior Seminars
150/2 Senior Seminar: Modernism/Postmodernism W 2-5	We will read an array of 20th-century novels which will stand as test cases for a baggy, theoretical construction which sometimes lumps together the modern and the postmodern, and sometimes sets them apart from each other. Topics for discussion will i...(read more)	Snyder, Katherine Snyder, Katherine	Senior Seminars
150/3 Senior Seminar: Nation and Narration MW 3-4:30	"Why does it seem so natural to study literary forms by breaking them up into distinct national literatures? Why do we persistently study ""American Literature"" or ""British Literature"" as opposed, say, to ""Literatures in English""? What is the cur...(read more)	Rubenstein, Michael Rubenstein, Michael	Senior Seminars
150/4 Senior Seminar: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group MW 4-5:30	"This course situates Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury Group, and British modernism within the social and historical context of the early 20th century, while also investigating ""Virginia Woolf"" and the ""Bloomsbury Group"" as categories still resonant...(read more)	Hollis, Catherine Hollis, Catherine	Senior Seminars
150/5 Senior Seminar: The Short Poem--Wyatt to the Present TTh 9:30-11	For more information on this class, please email the professor at bobhass@berkeley.edu. ...(read more)	Hass, Robert L. Hass, Robert	Senior Seminars
150/6 Senior Seminar: Asian American Novel TTh 11-12:30	"It is by now a commonplace to describe Asian American identity as impossibly heterogeneous and hybrid. At the same time, Asian American Studies is founded upon the strategic necessity of the pan-ethnic category. Can there be a textual basis for Asian...(read more)	Lye, Colleen Lye, Colleen	Senior Seminars
150/9 Senior Seminar: Emily Dickinson TTh 11-12:30	"This is an intensive course in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. We will read her poems, along with her letters and a biography, deeply but also broadly throughout her career. Topics include early poetry; musical poetics; figuration; definition and ridd...(read more)	Shoptaw, John Shoptaw, John	Senior Seminars
150/12 Senior Seminar: Underbelly-- Other Classes, Other Cultures in Victorian England TTh 12:30-2	"In this class we will explore the literature and culture surrounding Britain's poor, working classes, and racial outsiders in the Victorian era. Critical analysis of these marginalized classes and cultures will give us a more thorough and nuanced und...(read more)	Chevalier, Antoinette Chevalier, Antoinette	Senior Seminars
150/15 Senior Seminar: Homocinema TTh 2-3:30	"Under the assumption that male homosexual fantasy is not the peculiar coinage of a homosexual brain, but the common, even central daydream of the normal world, the course identifies three modes of broaching it in narrative cinema. In Hollywood classi...(read more)	Miller, D. A.	Senior Seminars
150/17 Senior Seminar: Fictions of Los Angeles TTh 3:30-5	"Los Angeles has been described, variously, as a ""circus without a tent"" (Carey McWilliams), ""seventy-two suburbs in search of a city"" (Dorothy Parker), ""the capital of the Third World"" (David Rieff), and ""the only place for me that never rains...(read more)	Saul, Scott Saul, Scott	Senior Seminars
150/18 Senior Seminar: Alfred Hitchcock TTh 5:30-7 P.M, plus film screenings Thursdays 7-10 P.M. in 140 Barrows	"The course focuses on Hitchcock, ""auteur"" and consummate craftsman, with a remarkably long and varied career. We will view most of his films, discuss them from a variety of critical perspectives, and examine the key critical writings about them. "...(read more)	Bader, Julia Bader, Julia	Senior Seminars
166/1 Special Topics: Race and Performance in the 20th-Century U.S. TTh 11-12:30	"This course takes as its point of departure an observation made by writer James Baldwin in 1953: ""The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new ...(read more)	Scott, Saul	Special Topics
176/1 Upper Division Coursework: "Literature and Popular Culture: The Western in Fiction and Film Hutson, Richard "	In this course, I plan to get us all thinking about the popular genre of the Western and its cultural background. The films each week are an important and integral part of the course, and the films are required viewing. It is in the films that we see ...(read more)	Seminars MWF 2-3. in 120 Latimer, plus film screenings Wednesdays 5-8 P.M. in 105 North Gate	Special Topics
180A/1 Upper Division Coursework: Disability Autobiography MWF 12-1	Autobiographies written by people with disabilities offer readers a glimpse into lives at the margins of mainstream culture, and thus can make disability seem less alien and frightening. Disability rights activists, however, often criticize these text...(read more)	Kleege, Georgina Kleege, Georgina	Special Topics
180N/1 Upper Division Coursework: The Novel MWF 11-12	"This course will consider the history and theory of the novel form, reading both novels and essays on the novel. (Theorists or critics of the novel may include Erich Auerbach, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Dorrit Cohn, Margaret Do...(read more)	Banfield, Ann Banfield, Ann	Novel
H195A/1 Upper Division Coursework: Honors Course M 5:30-8:30 P.M.	"Applying major critical theories to a number of genres, the course will lay the foundation for the theses to follow.Students who satisfactorily complete H195A-B (the Honors Course) may choose to waive the 150 (Senior Seminar) requirement. "...(read more)	Bader, Julia Bader, Julia	Honors and Tutorial Courses
H195A/2 Upper Division Coursework: Honors Course TTh 9:30-11	"The fall semester of this section of the honors course will be devoted to an examination of the theoretical paradigms that cast strong influences on contemporary critical practices. While the course will try to do justice to diverse theoretical appro...(read more)	JanMohamed, Abdul R. JanMohamed, Abdul	Honors and Tutorial Courses
H195A/3 Upper Division Coursework: Honors Course MWF 12-1	"In this honors seminar, we will become familiar with a wide range of theoretical approaches to literature. In addition, we�ll use Leslie Marmon Silko�s novel, Almanac of the Dead, to focus questions about literacy, history, memory, story, nation(alis...(read more)	Wong, Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Hertha Sweet	Honors and Tutorial Courses

Graduate students from other departments and exceptionally well-prepared undergraduates are welcome in English graduate courses (except for English 200 and 375) when space permits. Please contact the instructor if you have questions.

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
200/1 Graduate course: Problems in the Study of Literature MW 10:30-12	Approaches to literary study, including textual analysis, scholarly methodology and bibliography, critical theory and practice. ...(read more)	Hale, Dorothy J. Hale, Dorothy	Graduate Courses
200/2 Graduate course: Problems in the Study of Literature MW 10:30-12	Approaches to literary study, including textual analysis, scholarly methodology and bibliography, critical theory and practice. ...(read more)	Hanson, Kristin Hanson, Kristin	Graduate Courses
203/1 Graduate Readings: Prospectus Workshop MW 12-1:30	Dissertation prospectus writing workshop ...(read more)	Breitwieser, Mitchell Breitwieser, Mitchell	Graduate Courses
203/2 Graduate Readings: Transnational Feminisms MW 1:30-3	This course will trace the emergence and vicissitudes of feminist theory, struggle, and literature in moments of national crisis--particularly decolonization and globalization. The focus of our work will be conversations and contestations among femini...(read more)	Ray, Kasturi	Graduate Courses
203/3 Graduate Readings: Coercion and Resistance in 20th-Century African American Fiction TTh 12:30-2	"Lying precisely at the intersection of hegemonic and violent forms of coercion as well as at the intersection of absolute power and absolute powerlessness, the threat of death (lynching, etc.) is arguably the most fundamental mode of coercion. The de...(read more)	JanMohamed, Abdul R. JanMohamed, Abdul	Graduate Courses
203/4 Graduate Readings: American Literature and the American Ugly Laws, 1881-1991 223 Wheeler	"""It is hereby prohibited for any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself to public view."" Between 1881 and the First World War, cities around the U.S. passe...(read more)	Schweik, Susan Schweik, Susan	Graduate Courses
203/5 Graduate Readings: The Contemporary Long Poem TTh 3:30-5	"It is often said that the fragmentation and disjuncture characteristic of postmodern poetry is a reflection (or symptom) of contemporary life--a speedy life of multiple distractions, constant interruptions, unconnected events. How then do we account ...(read more)	Hejinian, Lyn Hejinian, Lyn	Graduate Courses
211/1 Graduate Course: Chaucer TTh 2-3:30	This course will focus on Chaucer�s poetry, excluding the Canterbury Tales, and on its sources and intertexts. We will also be exploring the various critical approaches to Chaucer that have emerged in the last thirty years or so. Students will be resp...(read more)	Nolan, Maura Nolan, Maura	Graduate Courses
243A/1 Graduate Course: Fiction Writing Workshop TTh 11-12:30	This is a graduate level workshop course in writing fiction, intended for students who have already achieved the basic skills of characterization, plotting, etc. Qualified undergrad-uates will be eligible. This course has no prerequisites, but I'll ex...(read more)	Loewinsohn, Ron Loewinsohn, Ron	Creative Writing Workshops
246D/1 Graduate Pro-seminar: The Renaissance TTh 5-6:30	"Aside from Bacon's essays and, perhaps, Pilgrim's Progress, the course will concentrate on verse (because verse is what the seventeenth century did best and because I'm not worth listening to about seventeenth-century prose). We will read as much as ...(read more)	Booth, Stephen Booth, Stephen	Graduate Courses
246J/1 Graduate Pro-seminar: American Literature, 1855 to 1900 TTh 11-12:30	"In his 1987 ""Bicentennial Speech"" Justice Thurgood Marshall scandalized his audience (and much of the nation) when he proposed that ""[w]hile the Union survived the civil war, the Constitution did not""; the latter, he added, had been superceded by...(read more)	Best, Stephen M. Best, Stephen	Graduate Courses
250/1 Research Seminar: Modernism and the Novel Form M 3-6	"This course will examine the modernist novel and short story (or fiction in general) as perhaps the modernist genres par excellence. We will look at alternative views of ""modern fiction"" (to use Virginia Woolf's term) in its relation to nineteenth-...(read more)	Banfield, Ann Banfield, Ann	Graduate Courses
250/2 Research Seminar: William Blake M 3-6	" For in this Period the Poets Work is Done: and all the Great Events of Time start forth & are conceived in such a Period-- Within a Moment: a Pulsation of the Artery.What does Blake mean by ""the Poets Work,"" achieved ""Within a Moment"" tha...(read more)	Goldsmith, Steven Goldsmith, Steven	Graduate Courses
250/3 Research Seminar: Race as Method--Or, What Is Ethnic Literature? Tues. 3:30-6:30	This course will be concerned with the implications of recent research in racialization theory --in particular, historical/materialist approaches to conceptualizing race, racism, and racialization-- for how we might go about reconceptualizing what is ...(read more)	Lye, Colleen Lye, Colleen	Graduate Courses
250/4 Research Seminar: Tragic Realism--Tragedy and Revolution in Postcolonial Narrative Thurs. 3:30-6:30	This course will explore tragedy as a key site for coming to terms with the consequences of revolutionary politics in modernity. We'll focus in particular on the renewed interest in tragic modes among postcolonial literary practitioners and theorists,...(read more)	Premnath, Gautam Premnath, Gautam	Graduate Courses
310/1 Graduate Course: Field Studies in Tutoring Writing TBA	"Through seminars, discussions, and reading assignments, students are introduced to the language/writing/literacy needs of diverse college-age writers such as the developing, bi-dialectal, and non-native English-speaking (NNS) writer. The course will ...(read more)	Staff	Honors and Tutorial Courses