Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales: The Canterbury Tales (London; Penguin Edition, 2005); ISBN-13: 978-0140422344;
Recommended: Bowers, John M.: The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth-Century Continuations and Additions (TEAMS Middle English Texts) (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992); Herd, David and Pincus, Anna: Refugee Tales (Manchester, UK: Comma Press, 2016)
Note: Please buy the specific editions listed.
In this course we will study The Canterbury Tales and its continuations, paying special attention to the topics of imitation, innovation, and literary influence. As we learn about the literary traditions Chaucer so deftly passes over and the literary tradition that he in turn engenders, we’ll have the chance to reconsider several assumptions about the relationship between originality and aesthetic value. Is the so-called “father” of English literature as original as we’ve been led to believe? Is imitation really so bad after all?
We begin by reading the Canterbury Tales in detail, asking what Chaucer’s collection of tales can teach us about violence, gender, religion, laughter, race, love, sex, class, and language in the fourteenth century. All topics and themes are up for grabs in this course, but we will pay special attention to how Chaucer draws on and departs from previous literary traditions. We then set out to discern Chaucer’s influence among a variety of fifteenth-century authors. We conclude by considering Chaucer’s influence now. Modern readings will include the Refugee Tales (2016) and the digital humanities Global Chaucers Project, which will allow us to explore the non-Anglophone translation history of Chaucer’s works.
The majority of the readings will be in Middle English but no previous experience is required. In addition to two literary-critical essays, you will also have the chance to craft your own continuation of the Canterbury Tales.
NOTE: We discovered belatedly that a glitch in the enrollment system was preventing students from enrolling in this class, but that problem has now been fixed, so please try again if you were previously blocked from enrolling.
This course satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major.
Greenblatt, S., ed.: The Norton Shakespeare
Additional materials will be distributed through bCourses.
This class focuses on a selection of works from Shakespeare's entire career. We'll be reading a limited number of plays and some of the poetry. One of the main issues we'd like to focus on is the oscillation between "regular" and "irregular." What is the rule, and what is the exception in Shakespeare's works? How is a comedy supposed to end? How does it end? What makes a tragic hero? Is Lear a tragic hero? What are the rules of theater? What are the rules of literature? Who creates them and why? When do they get transgressed, and why? A tentative list of the plays includes A Midsummer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Cymbeline,and The Tempest, as well as some of the sonnets. Two short assignments and a final essay in lieu of a final examination.
This course satisfies the Shakespeare requirement for the English major.
This course, which constitutes a survey of ethnic American literature, asks about the desires, imagination, and labor that go into the American dream. What is the relationship between immigration and dreams of upward mobility in America? This course will examine films, novels, and short stories in which the American dream comes apart at the seams to think about the fantasies of belonging and prosperity that fuel immigration and its effect on how we think about race, class, and citizenship.
Texts may include: America Is in the Heart, Invisible Man, Hunger of Memory, The New Jim Crow, and Ragged Dick.
This course satisfies UC Berkeley's American Cultures requirement.
The Literary Magazine and the Short Story as Genre. This course will be both a short fiction workshop and a craft class studying the literary short story as a genre. Rather than approach literary fiction as the norm from which genre fiction departs, this course will examine the short story as a genre onto itself. We will read contemporary literary magazines and the seminal anthologies establishing the history of the genre, identifying its central conventions, forms and hallmarks. During this investigation, participants will also try their hand at the literary short fiction genre. Students will write literary short stories of their own and we will workshop these as a group. Each participant will be required to workshop one story and a revision.
Note that while during fall and spring semesters admission to 143A requires an application process, no application is needed to register for the summer version of the course.
Note the new instructor (as of 5/10/2019).
Gay, Roxane: Best American Short Stories 2018; Harbach, Chad: MFA vs. NYC
In this eight-week course, we will focus on two things: learning about contemporary publishing venues for short fiction—both traditional journals and online platforms—and workshopping the participants' fiction. Together, we will read stories from print magazines (Paris Review, Tin House, Kenyon Review, Zyzzyva, n+1), anthologies (Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories), and online journals (Electric Literature, Narrative Magazine [PANK], failbetter) in order to discuss how journals articulate a coherent aesthetic for the short story form. Via readings like Mark McGurl's The Program Era and Chad Harbach's MFA vs. NYC, we will also consider this form alongside the rise of the MFA program in order to think about how aesthetic forms both emerge from and push against institutional support/constraints. Each student will draft and revise two short stories; each student will respond to the work of other students in workshop and through a short written response. The final assignment is the submission of the two revised short stories workshopped over the course of the class. Students will be graded on the rigor with which they approach their own fiction and their care in responding to the work of their peers.
A course reader including stories from literary journals and excerpts from The Pogram Era will be made available.
Note that while during fall and spring semesters admission to 143A requires an application process, no application is needed to register for the summer version of the course.
Cheng, Jennifer S.: Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems; Hejinian, Lyn: Positions of the Sun; Reyes, Barbara Jane: Invocation to Daughters; Trevino, Wendy: Cruel Fiction; White, Arisa: You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Ever Happened
This course is a poetry writing workshop. Students will submit new drafts of poems weekly, and we will read and discuss these together, supporting each other's growth as writers. We will also study contemporary examples focusing on poetry of the Bay Area. At the conclusion of the term, students will revise their work, produce chapbooks of poems, and present them at a public reading.
Note that while during fall and spring semesters, admission to 143B requires an application process, no application is needed to register for the summer version of the course.
Reichl, Ruth: The Best American Food Writing 2018
This eight-week summer class centers on workshopping your own literary nonfiction, helping you draw on the distinctive forms and techniques of the personal essay, memoir, travel writing, cultural criticism, and journalistic reportage to speak to, on, about, through, or with food.
Writing thoughtfully about eating presents several peculiar challenges, from the basic difficulty of representing taste through language to the subtle trick of using the ubiquitous and quotidian to shape a distinct and individual voice. In addition to our assigned text (The Best American Food Writing 2018, edited by Ruth Reichl), readings that will help you meet those challenges in your own prose will include pieces by M. F. K. Fisher, Chang-rae Lee, Anthony Bourdain, Jhumpa Lahiri, Fuchsia Dunlop, Gabrielle Hamilton, John McPhee, and a range of other classic and contemporary writers who’ve worked in the genre. Berkeley itself occupies a special place in the history of American food culture, and so we will also draw on its gastronomic resources (read: restaurants, markets, and kitchens) when and wherever possible.
Assignments will include workshopped and revised essays, a series of more informal written exercises, and careful and considered feedback on the work of your peers.
Note that while during fall and spring semesters admission to 143N requires an application process, no application is needed to register for the summer version of the course.
Austen, Jane: Emma; Austen, Jane: Mansfield Park; Austen, Jane: Persuasion; Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice; Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility
In this course we will read—closely and deeply—a handful of novels by Jane Austen, considering them in terms of their historical context, their stylistic sophistication and innovation, and their enduring popular appeal. Accordingly, we will also explore the cult of Jane Austen that arose in the nineteenth century—when critic George Saintsbury coined the term "Janeite" to describe her proliferating devotees—and that remains alive today in a range of guises, from popular Austen biographies, film and television adaptations, and book clubs, to literary tourism and more. In this way, we will connect our reading experience of Austen with broader questions about popular authorship, mass readerships, and the pleasures and rigors of reading.
Note the change in the instructor. There has been no change in the class time or location.
An introduction to critical thinking about race and ethnicity, focused on films produced in Hollywood between the 1920s and 1960s and independent cinema from the 1980s that responds to these classical precedents. Themes include law and violence, kinship and miscegenation, captivity and rescue, passing and racial impersonation.
Films: Broken Blossoms; The Sheik; The Jazz Singer; Bordertown; Salt of the Earth; The Searchers; Touch of Evil; Imitation of LIfe; West Side Story; El Norte; Chan Is Missing; Do the Right Thing
This course satisfies UC Berkeley's American Cultures requirement.
NOTE: Until March 20, this course was listed as English 31AC, but on that date the course was changed to English 166AC; nothing except the course number and the Class Number (which is now 15972) has changed.
This class considers the capacious genre of the rom-com by examining a range of its concerns (gender & sexuality, feminism, race, romance, narrative closure). We will not only watch films (from classic Hollywood rom-com to more contemporary iterations) but explore the rise of the “rom-com” plot in TV as well (SATC, Mindy Project, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, to name a few). In addition to essays, students will keep film journals. Readings may include those by Cavell, D.A. Miller, Modleski, Radway, Spigel, Sklar, Schatz, and Mellencamp.
This course will examine the historical development of the horror genre in both film and literature. Horror is a notoriously comprehensive genre, borrowing from numerous story-telling and literary traditions. In this class we will address the heterodox nature of this genre, while examining the socio-historical underpinnings of popular works of horror stories and films, paying close attention to representations of race, gender and sexuality.