Announcement of Classes: Fall 2019

All-Courses Lists
Reading and Composition
Lower Division
Upper Division
Graduate
Berkeley Connect
DeCals
Independent Study

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
R1A/1 Reading and Composition: Human Resources: Problems in the American Workplace MWF 9-10	Fiction has provided a means for workers to re-imagine or even escape their everyday issues from the dawn of the labor movement to the heyday of the tech startup. Across a long history of media about work—including the muckraking of Upton Sinclair, th...(read more)	Ramm, Gerard	Reading and Composition
R1A/2 Reading and Composition: The Making of Americans MWF 10-11	Americans are not born but made, and who they become is bound up with what they make. This course explores the long and varied history of these linked assumptions, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century. It was in this period that a broad f...(read more)	de Stefano, Jason	Reading and Composition
R1A/3 Reading and Composition: Inscribing Fear: Written Horror, Living Flesh, and the Cultures that Produce Both MWF 11-12	The horror genre—whose very purpose is to let us experience that which frightens, startles, or disgusts through a fictional lens—is capable of inciting a wide range of visceral responses. What will be the particular focus of this class, however, is th...(read more)	Tomasula y Garcia, Alba	Reading and Composition
R1A/4 Reading and Composition: (Un)Belonging Bodies & Citizenship MWF 12-1	Our bodies—even if we might claim them as our own—are far from neutral, as they carry embedded signals, texts, and even silences that reflect our multiple social positionings. This course explores narratives of embodiment, considering how bodies can r...(read more)	Cho, Jennifer	Reading and Composition
R1A/5 Reading and Composition: Theorizing Race and Space in Asian American Studies MWF 1-2	How does an understanding of space and the built environment inflect our understanding of ethnicized forms of belonging? My course charts the development of Asian American identity and literature through four sites in the Bay Area: Angel Island, the S...(read more)	Su, Amanda Jennifer	Reading and Composition
R1A/6 Reading and Composition: (Un)Belonging Bodies & Citizenship MWF 1-2	Our bodies—even if we might claim them as our own—are far from neutral, as they carry embedded signals, texts, and even silences that reflect our multiple social positionings. This course explores narratives of embodiment, considering how bodies can r...(read more)	Cho, Jennifer	Reading and Composition
R1A/7 Reading and Composition: Energy Fictions MWF 2-3	This course explores literary and scientific perspectives on energy and its fictions from the early 19th century to the present, from the origins of carbon modernity and petroculture in the age of steam to contemporary 21st-century attempts to reckon ...(read more)	No instructor assigned yet.	Reading and Composition
R1A/8 Reading and Composition: Identity as Performance MW 5-6:30	"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."—As You Like It, Act II sc. VII We often hear people say that actions speak louder than words. We express our identities, who we are, through our actions, our performances, our liv...(read more)	Ghosh, Srijani	Reading and Composition
R1A/9 Reading and Composition: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age MWF 9-10	In this course, we will survey the production, consumption, and study of literary texts in the digital age. Starting with a unit on writers' relationships to their writing technologies across time, we will engage experiments in making tdigital literat...(read more)	Zeavin, Hannah	Reading and Composition
R1B/1 Reading and Composition: Gothic Trash MWF 9-10	Gothic horror has never gone out of style. From the ominous castles of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe in the eighteenth century to contemporary TV hits such as American Horror Story or The Haunting of Hill House (itself vaguely inspired by Shirley J...(read more)	Hobbs, Katherine	Reading and Composition
R1B/2 Reading and Composition: Some Hard-Boiled Detectives MWF 10-11	"It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in. . . ." So Raymond Chandler characterizes the world out of joint painted by "the realist in murder." The tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction offers (arguably) some of the most si...(read more)	O'Brien, Garreth	Reading and Composition
R1B/3 Reading and Composition: Novel Spaces: Contemporary Fiction and the Internet MWF 10-11	In 1981, Kraftwerk released their landmark album Computer World. Since the time they recorded it, politicians, economists and journalists have suggested that the digitization of society would change everything, producing a world of infinite informatio...(read more)	D'Silva, Eliot	Reading and Composition
R1B/4 Reading and Composition: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age MWF 11-12	(Note the changes in the instructor and content of this section of English R1B as of early June.) In this course, we will survey the production, consumption, and study of literary texts in the digital age. Starting with a unit on writers' relations...(read more)	Zeavin, Hannah	Reading and Composition
R1B/5 Reading and Composition: The Monstrous Renaissance MWF 11-12	This class ventures into Renaissance texts in search of the many monsters that dwell there. We will encounter eerily human beasts, snaky-haired Gorgons, monstrous births, and fierce cannibals. We will get to know those monsters through critical analys...(read more)	Rice, Sarah Sands	Reading and Composition
R1B/6 Reading and Composition: Drama and Disability MWF 12-1	It is a critical truism that the disabled body is always already a theatrical body—alternatively passing and masquerading. This course will interrogate the terms of this truism by examining how both disability and theatre have been historically unders...(read more)	Drawdy, Miles	Reading and Composition
R1B/7 Reading and Composition: The Literature of Aotearoa/New Zealand MWF 12-1	This course will focus first and foremost on the practice of academic writing and the skills needed to research, plan, draft and revise writing at a college level. More specifically, it stages the problem of scholarly research through an encounter wit...(read more)	Sutton, Emily	Reading and Composition
R1B/8 Reading and Composition: On Happiness MWF 12-1	In contemporary popular culture, "happiness" is often pictured as an object just beyond our reach. We try to organize our future life-paths to be "happy," tend to collectively agree that happiness is a worthwhile pursuit, and develop whole industries ...(read more)	Ritland, Laura	Reading and Composition
R1B/9 Reading and Composition: The Information Society MWF 1-2	What is an information society? How do we read and think in a world of information? Numerous publications in recent years, both inside and outside the academy, have identified the late twentieth and twenty-first centures as an age of information, an a...(read more)	Hinojosa, Bernardo S.	Reading and Composition
R1B/10 Reading and Composition: Staging Desire: Sex and Sexuality in Renaissance Drama MWF 1-2	The drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries offers a fascinating site for the analysis of gender and sexuality as historical and theoretical constructs, rather than as the timeless and universal 'facts' of human experience which they are often ass...(read more)	Scott, Mark JR	Reading and Composition
R1B/11 Reading and Composition: Re-Visioning the 1960s MWF 1-2	This Reading and Composition course will explore selected works of literature, music, and visual art produced during the 1960s. Our theme places emphasis on the relationship between artistic experimentation and the emancipatory social movements of the...(read more)	Koerner, Michelle	Reading and Composition
R1B/12 Reading and Composition: Re-Visioning the 1960s MWF 2-3	This Reading and Composition course will explore selected works of literature, music, and visual art produced during the 1960s. Our theme places emphasis on the relationship between artistic experimentation and the emancipatory social movements of the...(read more)	Koerner, Michelle	Reading and Composition
R1B/14 Reading and Composition: (Im)personal Essays MW 5-6:30	What does it mean to give your writing "personality"? In this course we will consider varying kinds of nonfiction (travel writing, reportage, Netflix comedy specials, autobiographical games, autotheory, and the classic "personal essay") to think about...(read more)	Khan, Mehak Faisal	Reading and Composition
R1B/15 Reading and Composition: Don't Go There! Fairy Tales TTh 8-9:30	There is almost nothing more familiar than a fairy tale, yet they all address unfamiliarity, danger, and risk. For children, young women and everyone else, the world is full of mysterious knowledge and dreadful ordeals. So how do fairy tales configure...(read more)	Baker-Gibbs, Ariel	Reading and Composition
R1B/16 Reading and Composition: Queer I TTh 5-6:30	This course asks how writers use the stories of individual lives to negotiate what it means to be "queer," in the widest possible sense of the term. Most of what we read will be pieces written by authors describing their own lived experiences, but giv...(read more)	Stevenson, Max	Reading and Composition

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
17/1 Shakespeare Lectures MW 11-12 in 106 Stanley + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 9-10; sec. 103: F 11-12; sec. 104: F 11-12)	English 17 offers an introduction to the study of Shakespeare that is intended for students new to the Berkeley English Department. Incoming transfer students, future majors, and non-majors are especially welcome. The premise of our class is that S...(read more)	Landreth, David	Shakespeare Drama
20/1 Modern British and American Literature: The Handmaid's Tale in Adaptation TTh 12:30-2	With the advent of the Trump presidency (2016-present), Margaret Atwood’s dystopian, feminist masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale, has gained new relevance. And with the popular and critical success of its Hulu TV series adaptation (2017-present), this p...(read more)	Snyder, Katherine	Novel Special Topics
24/1 Freshman Seminar: Walt Whitman Tues. 2-3	We will read and discuss extraordinary poems by Walt Whitman. This 1-unit course may not be counted as one of the twelve courses required to complete the English major. ...(read more)	Wagner, Bryan	Freshman Seminars
24/2 Freshman Seminar: Here Here in Tommy Orange's There There Tues. 12:30-1:30	Tommy Orange's story cycle, There There, depicts the lives of contemporary indigenous people in Oakland, California. Shaped by a transgenerational trauma, Orange's characters nonetheless survive. Countering romantic stereotypes of the Noble Red Man, c...(read more)	Wong, Hertha D. Sweet	Freshman Seminars Native American Literature
31AC/1 Literature of American Cultures: Growing Up Funny MWF 9-10	America, we are told, is a nation of immigrants—of people from other lands who travel here and “become” American. That's a tall order. But what of those who can never quite belong—the misfits, outliers and strangers in this land that claims to welcome...(read more)	Saha, Poulomi	American Cultures American Literature African American Literature Asian American Literature Chicanx and/or Latinx Native American Literature
43A/1 Introduction to the Writing of Short Fiction TTh 12:30-2	(Note: This course was added on April 26.) The aim of this course is to introduce students to the study of short fiction—to explore the elements that make up the genre, and to enable students to talk critically about short stories and begin to feel...(read more)	Abrams, Melanie	Creative Writing Workshops
45A/1 Literature in English: Through Milton Lectures MW 12-1 in 159 Mulford + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 11-12; sec. 102: F 11-12; sec. 103: F 12-1; sec. 104: F 12-1; sec. 105: Th 1-2; sec. 107: Th 2-3)	What is the English literary tradition? Where did it come from? What are its distinctive habits, questions, styles, obsessions? This course will answer these and other questions by focusing on five key writers from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance:...(read more)	Nolan, Maura	Introductory Surveys
45B/1 Literature in English: Late-17th Through Mid-19th Centuries Lectures MW 2-3 in 101 Morgan + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 1-2; sec. 102: F 1-2; sec. 103: F 2-3; sec. 104: F 2-3; sec. 105: Th 9-10; sec. 107: Th 10-11)	Do written words cause revolutions, and how might literature aid, absorb, or elude transformations of the social world? This course surveys the revolutionary middle of literary history in English, from 1688 to1848: a period driven and riven by politic...(read more)	Goldstein, Amanda Jo	Introductory Surveys
45C/1 Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century Lectures MW 10-11 in 159 Mulford + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 9-10; sec. 103: F 10-11; sec. 104: F 10-11; sec. 105: Th 11-12; sec. 107: Th 1-2)	This course will survey British, American, and global Anglophone literature from the end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 21st. Moving across a number of genres and movements, this course will examine the ways 20th- and 21st-century wr...(read more)	Gang, Joshua	Introductory Surveys
53/1 Asian American Literature and Culture: Voice, Text, Image MWF 1-2	This is a brand-new lecture and discussion course that provides a survey of early to contemporary Asian American literary and cultural production. We'll study the broad range of forms that have served as vehicles of Asian American political and cultur...(read more)	Leong, Andrew Way	Introductory Surveys American Literature Asian American Literature
84/1 Sophomore Seminar: The Coen Brothers Tues. 9-12	We will concentrate on the high and low cultural elements in the noir comedies of the Coen brothers, discusing their use of Hollywood genres, parodies of classic conventions, and representation of arbitrariness. We will also read some fiction and atte...(read more)	Bader, Julia	Sophomore Seminars

Course #		Instructor	Course Area
111/1 Chaucer MWF 2-3	For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu. This class satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. ...(read more)	Miller, Jennifer	Pre-1800 Requirement Middle English
115A/1 The English Renaissance (through the 16th Century) MWF 12-1	For more information on this course, please contact Professor Miller at j_miller@berkeley.edu. This class satisfies the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. ...(read more)	Miller, Jennifer	Pre-1800 Requirement Renaissance and Early Modern
117B/1 Shakespeare TTh 9:30-11	A survey of the second half of Shakespeare's working life, including the later "problem" comedies, the major tragedies and the magical romances, his final works. Lectures will touch upon the complete writings and present sample scenes (with a selectio...(read more)	Turner, James Grantham	Shakespeare Drama
120/1 Literature of the Later 18th Century W 3-6	We’ll investigate the relationship of literature to other arts in the period, particularly painting and landscape design. Our focus will be on engagements with “nature,” understood as the non-human world and the ground of culture. In this period, natu...(read more)	Picciotto, Joanna M	Pre-1800 Requirement British 18th-Century
122/1 The Victorian Period TTh 9:30-11	The Victorian period (1837 - 1901) is a notoriously arbitrary periodic designation, tied to the reign of one particular woman, Victoria Alexandrina Hanover, otherwise known as Queen Victoria I. The period is not self-evidently defined by any generic o...(read more)	Lavery, Grace	British 19th-Century Novel Poetry
125D/1 The 20th-Century Novel MWF 11-12	This course is a survey of the 20th-century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these three thema...(read more)	Jones, Donna V.	World Literature Novel
128/1 Modern Drama MW 3-4:30	This course will trace the theater's itinerary as form and idea across the twentieth century, attending to the stage as both a writerly medium and a space that contests received literary ideas. We will begin in the Europe of the fin-de-siècle, with la...(read more)	Blanton, C. D.	British 20th- and 21st-Century Drama
130B/1 American Literature: 1800-1865 TTh 12:30-2	We will read the extraordinary fiction, poetry, essays, and speeches of this period, including works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Fanny Fern, Herman Melvi...(read more)	Otter, Samuel	American Literature
130D/1 American Literature: 1900-1945: Class, Race, Critique, Rewound MW 5-6:30	This course is a retrospective or "rewound" survey of American literature and criticism from 1945 to 1900. We'll begin in the 1940s, working our way back in time, not only through key works in prose and poetry, but also through contemporaneous works o...(read more)	Leong, Andrew Way	American Literature African American Literature Literary Theory
134/1 Contemporary Literature Lectures MW 12-1 in 141 McCone + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 10-11; sec. 102: F 12-1; sec. 103: Th 11-12; sec. 104: Th 1-2)	In this course we will look at examples of very recently published literary works across a range of genres. We’ll explore some of the many ways that writerly innovation is challenging aesthetic norms (including those of “the novel,” “the poem,” and “t...(read more)	Falci, Eric Hejinian, Lyn	British 20th- and 21st-Century American Literature
C136/1 Topics in American Studies: Harlem Renaissance TTh 3:30-5	The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement of black artists and writers in the 1920s. Centered in the Harlem neighborhood in Manhattan, the movement extended outward through international collaboration. We will be reading works by writers includin...(read more)	Wagner, Bryan	American Literature African American Literature
137B/1 Chicana/o Literature and Culture Since 1910: Riding Chicanx Literature's First Wave and Beyond, c/s TTh 11-12:30	"The student of Chicano literature will look back at this group and this first period as the foundation of whatever is to come, even if only as the generation against whom those to come rebel. The best of the best will survive—but then survival is an ...(read more)	Reyes, Robert L	American Literature Chicanx and/or Latinx Novel
141/1 Modes of Writing (Exposition, Fiction, Verse, etc.) TTh 9:30-11	This course will introduce students to the study of creative writing—fiction and poetry (with a brief dip into playwriting). Students will learn to talk critically about these forms and begin to feel comfortable and confident writing within these genr...(read more)	Abrams, Melanie	Creative Writing Lecture Courses
143A/1 Short Fiction TTh 12:30-2	A short fiction workshop with a focus on the craft of writing. In this course, we will be readers, writers, and editors of short fiction. We'll read a range of published short stories in order to discover the technical ways in which a short story is c...(read more)	McFarlane, Fiona	Creative Writing Workshops
143A/2 Short Fiction	This section of English 143A has been canceled (June 4, 2019). ...(read more)	Chandra, Vikram	Creative Writing Workshops
143B/1 Verse MW 12-1:30	The question is whether or not poetry can be more than a series of successful gestures, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it rather long ago, or arrive at something other than the statement or restatement of an emotional truth or idea. Can poetry intervene? ...(read more)	Giscombe, Cecil S.	Creative Writing Workshops
143N/1 Prose Nonfiction: Creative Nonfiction: Our Culture, Our Lives TTh 11-12:30	This course is a creative nonfiction workshop in which you'll learn to write about many different types of art and culture, from TV and film to music and the built environment, while developing your own voice as a writer and reflecting on what has sha...(read more)	Saul, Scott	Creative Writing Workshops
143N/2 Prose Nonfiction: Food Writing TTh 3:30-5	This is a creative nonfiction writing workshop focused on the topic of food. Food writing encompasses more than snooty restaurant reviews or poetic descriptions of the taste of wine, coffee, and chocolate. Food writing can include memoir, cultural c...(read more)	Kleege, Georgina	Creative Writing Workshops
161/1 Introduction to Literary Theory TTh 12:30-2	In this course we will study how literary theory developed as a field in the twentieth century, even as it regularly drew its principles, methods, and inspiration from other academic disciplines and social discourses. Our focus will be on the major t...(read more)	Hale, Dorothy J.	Literary Theory
165/1 Special Topics: Utopian and (mostly) Dystopian Movies W 5-8 PM (note slight change in time; ends at 8:00 rather than 8:30)	Most utopian and dystopian authors are more concerned with persuading readers of the merits of their ideas than with the "merely" literary qualities of their writing. Although utopian writing has sometimes made converts, inspiring readers to try to re...(read more)	Bader, Julia	Film Special Topics
165/2 Special Topics: The Pleasures of Allegory MWF 12-1	If you want to understand both how stories are put together and how we experience stories, allegory is not a bad place to start. Broadly speaking, an allegory is a story that demands to be read on more than one level. One version of this—maybe the mos...(read more)	Wilson, Evan	Pre-1800 Requirement Old English Middle English Renaissance and Early Modern Special Topics
166/1 Special Topics: Getting Global: Literature & Film of an Expanding & Unequal World MWF 12-1	This is a course about literature and cinema in our increasingly global world. We will look at some of the most exciting pieces of fiction and film, most of them centered on the theme of travel and human relationships forged across continents. What d...(read more)	Saha, Poulomi	World Literature Film Special Topics
166/2 Special Topics: Literature in the Century of Film MWF 1-2	This course examines various intersections between literature and visual media in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on texts concerned with film and its cultural influence. We will read novels, stories, poetry, and essays which not only h...(read more)	Goble, Mark	Film Special Topics
166/3 Special Topics: Writing as Social Practice MW 3-4:30	One of the ideas behind this course offering is that poetry and essays (life-writing, creative nonfiction, "essaying," etc.) have similar aims or field-marks—both are literary vehicles of exploration and documentation; both value experimental approach...(read more)	Giscombe, Cecil S.	Special Topics
166/4 Special Topics: Literatures of the Asian Diaspora in America TTh 9:30-11	This aim of this survey is two-fold: First, to interrogate the concept of nationhood and, particularly, what it means to be American. Focusing on writings by and about peoples of Asian descent across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, w...(read more)	Lee, Steven S.	American Literature Asian American Literature Novel Special Topics
166/7 Special Topics: Charles Dickens TTh 2-3:30	Close readings of several of Charles Dickens's major works. Grading will be based on two eight-page essays, on-time completion of all assigned reading, and attendance and participation in discussion. Please purchase the indicated specific editio...(read more)	Breitwieser, Mitchell	British 19th-Century Novel Special Topics
166/8 Special Topics: Green Thought in a Green Shade TTh 2-3:30	The natural world and the non-urban environment have inspired writers and artists, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, but they have also provoked intense critical debate, from the “politics of landscape” in the 1970s to ecological readings of ...(read more)	Turner, James Grantham	Pre-1800 Requirement Renaissance and Early Modern British 18th-Century Special Topics
166/9 Special Topics: New Orleans TTh 5-6:30	We will be thinking about the culture and history of New Orleans as represented in fiction, folklore, and documentary cinema. We will also engage with the current controversy over monuments and memorialization in the city. Two comprehensive exams, one...(read more)	Wagner, Bryan	American Literature African American Literature Special Topics
166/11 Special Topics: The Works of Vladimir Nabokov TTh 11-12:30	We will study the work of Nabokov as a novelist on two continents over a period of nearly sixty years. The course will be structured (more or less) chronologically and divided between novels translated from Russian and written in English. After beginn...(read more)	Naiman, Eric	Novel Special Topics
166AC/1 Special Topics in American Cultures: Race and Revision in Early America Lectures MW 1-2 in 50 Birge + one hour of discussion section per week in various locations (sec. 101: F 1-2; sec. 102: F 2-3; sec. 104: Th 10-11; sec. 105: Th 2-3; sec. 106: Th 4-5)	In this course, we will read both historical and literary texts to explore how racial categories came into being in New World cultures, and how these categories were tested, inhabited, and re-imagined by the people they sought to define. Our study wil...(read more)	Donegan, Kathleen	Pre-1800 Requirement American Cultures American Literature African American Literature Native American Literature
175/1 Literature and Disability TTh 3:30-5	This course will allow students to explore theories and representations of disability. We’ll wonder whether it’s possible to develop an inclusive, common “theory” adequate to various disability categories (sensory, cognitive, motor; illness/injury; u...(read more)	Langan, Celeste	British 20th- and 21st-Century American Literature Novel Drama Film Poetry
177/1 Literature and Philosophy MWF 1-2	This class will be organized around two questions that have been of perennial concern to literary writers and philosophers: who are we? How should we live? We’ll read a wide range of texts that respond to these questions in different ways, addressing ...(read more)	Zhang, Dora	Special Topics
180C/1 Comedy TTh 12:30-2	Tragedy has been deemed dead almost for almost as long as it has existed; for some, it gave up its soul when philosophy appeared in ancient Greece, for others, it's capitalism and action movies that killed it in the twentieth century. But while traged...(read more)	Marno, David	Drama
180H/1 The Short Story	This course has been canceled (June 4, 2019). ...(read more)	Chandra, Vikram	World Literature Special Topics
190/1 Research Seminar: Creative Sentences MW 9-10:30	Samuel Taylor Coleridge once praised a sentence of his own, noting that it was 241 words long and that the main verb didn’t appear until the 216th word. Is that wait for a verb too long? Gertrude Stein wrote this sentence: “Very little daisies and ver...(read more)	Hejinian, Lyn Falci, Eric	Research Seminars
190/2 Research Seminar: Shakespeare and Company MW 1:30-3	In this research seminar, we'll be considering Shakespeare, his playwriting rivals, his actorly partners, and their audiences as participants in the burgeoning entertainment industry of early modern London. We'll attend to the conditions and possibili...(read more)	Landreth, David	Pre-1800 Requirement Renaissance and Early Modern Drama Research Seminars
190/3 Research Seminar: American Transcendentalism TTh 9:30-11	We will immerse ourselves in the literary, political, philosophical, and aesthetic thought of the influential mid-nineteenth-century movement in the United States known as Transcendentalism. We will read fiction, essays, autobiographies, and poems by ...(read more)	Otter, Samuel	American Literature Research Seminars
190/4 Research Seminar: Cli Fi (Climate Change Fiction) TTh 9:30-11	How do we imagine the unimaginable? When it comes to global climate change, we have for the most part avoided imagining it altogether. But contemporary fiction writers are increasingly turning their gaze, and ours, toward the impact and meanings of th...(read more)	Snyder, Katherine	World Literature Novel Research Seminars
190/5 Research Seminar: The Urban Postcolonial TTh 11-12:30	An intensive research seminar exploring the relationship between urban landscapes and postcolonial literary cultures. Readings in theories of postcoloniality and diaspora as well as studies in city planning and architecture will accompany close examin...(read more)	Ellis, Nadia	American Literature African American Literature World Literature Novel Film Research Seminars
190/6 Research Seminar: Literature on Trial: Romanticism, Law, Justice TTh 11-12:30	This course will introduce students to “law and literature” studies, focusing on the way literature imagines the relation between law and justice. We’ll concentrate on literature of the Romantic period, which often foregrounds the injustice of laws, ...(read more)	Langan, Celeste	British 19th-Century Novel Drama Poetry Film Literary Theory Research Seminars
190/8 Research Seminar: Ideology TTh 2-3:30	This research seminar will focus on how the concept of ideology historically has been employed by literary and cultural critics. During the first half of the semester, the reading material will include major theoretical statements on the meaning and s...(read more)	Gonzalez, Marcial	Literary Theory Research Seminars
190/10 Research Seminar: Inventing Nature and Constructing Race TTh 3:30-5	Scholars have recently argued that race and nature were "invented" around the turn of the nineteenth century. We'll begin by unpacking their counterintuitive arguments: what does it mean to argue that fundamental conceptual categories exist only becau...(read more)	McWilliams, Ryan	American Literature African American Literature Native American Literature Novel Research Seminars
H195A/1 Honors Course MW 3:30-5	English H195A is the first part of a two-semester sequence for those English majors writing honors theses. We will read and discuss a range of texts that will provide grounding in contemporary critical methodologies, as well as various genres of liter...(read more)	Goble, Mark	Literary Theory Honors and Tutorial Courses
H195A/2 Honors Course TTh 11-12:30	H195A/B is a two-semester seminar that lays the groundwork for and guides you through the completion a 40-60 page Honors thesis on a subject of your choice. The first semester offers an inquiry into critical approaches, research methods, and theoretic...(read more)	Abel, Elizabeth	Literary Theory Honors and Tutorial Courses
198/9 Wheeler Connect: A Mentoring Program for Visiting Students Wednesday 6-7 p.m.	Wheeler Connect is designed to integrate visiting students into the life of Wheeler Hall, home of the English Department. Wheeler Connect is led by an advanced Ph.D. student, who will hold weekly office hours reserved exclusively for program participa...(read more)	Tamarkin, Elisa

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 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. Enrollment is limited to entering doctoral students in the English program. This course satisfies the Group 1 require...(read more)	Goldstein, Amanda Jo	Graduate Courses
203/1 Graduate Readings: On Interpretation MW 12-1:30	The last several decades have heard repeated, even rhythmic, calls to dispense with ‘interpretation’ as the model and indispensable methodological instrument of reading and critical reason, even within intellectual disciplines seemingly constituted by...(read more)	Blanton, C. D.	Graduate Courses
203/2 Graduate Readings: Prospectus Workshop Tues. 2-5	This will be a hands-on writing workshop intended to facilitate and accelerate the transition from qualifying exams to prospectus conference, from prospectus conference to first dissertation chapter, and from the status of student to that of scholar. ...(read more)	Abel, Elizabeth	Graduate Courses
203/3 Graduate Readings: Aesthetics and Politics: Kant and Beyond TTh 12:30-2	As an introduction to the political possibilities, problems, and questions raised by Kantian aesthetics, this class will navigate between two quotations: 1) Schiller: “If man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approa...(read more)	Goldsmith, Steven	Graduate Courses
212/1 Readings in Middle English M 3-6	This course will survey Middle English literature, excluding Chaucer, beginning with the earliest Middle English texts and ending with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We will focus on language, translation, and close reading to start, leading up to a...(read more)	Nolan, Maura	Graduate Courses
246F/1 Graduate Proseminar: The Later-Eighteenth Century W 3-6	The later eighteenth century has presented literary historians with more than the usual challenges to periodization and organization by author, movement, or genre. The years between (roughly) 1740-1800 witnessed the proliferation of new genres in vers...(read more)	Goodman, Kevis	Graduate Courses
246K/1 Literature in English, 1900-1945 MW 1:30-3	In this seminar, we will read a wide range of British and American novels from the first half of the twentieth century focusing on the intersections between modernism and theories of modernity. While we will pay considerable attention to modernism's d...(read more)	Jones, Donna V.	Graduate Courses
250/1 Research Seminar: The English Department Tues. 3:30-6:30	The English Department is one of the most curious developments in the history of human civilization. What do we study? The answer used to be, “literary texts of the English canon.” But then we questioned what belonged to the canon, what constituted a ...(read more)	Marno, David	Graduate Courses
250/2 Research Seminar: Transcendentalism Thurs. 3:30-6:30	This course considers Transcendentalism and its legacies with particular focus on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson from the publication of Nature (1836) through Letters and Social Aims (1875). Following Emerson's career in essays, lectures, and journ...(read more)	Tamarkin, Elisa	Graduate Courses
375/1 The Teaching of Composition and Literature Tues. 10:30-12:30	This course introduces new English Department GSIs to the theory and practice of teaching literature and writing, first for discussion sections of lecture courses, and second, for self-designed reading and composition (R&C) courses. By the end of ...(read more)	Serpell, C. Namwali Sirianni, Lucy	Graduate Courses

BERKELEY CONNECT: Would you like to get together with your peers to talk about literature and books? Are you wondering what to do with your English major once you graduate? Do you want to hear about the books that most influenced your English professors? Do you want expert advice about which courses to take? Would you like to see your favorite professors debating about a great work of literature? If so, please join Berkeley Connect!

Berkeley Connect in English fosters community in the English Department and offers a space for “serious play”: small group discussions about ideas and texts, explorations of the many riches of the Berkeley campus, visits by department faculty and distinguished alumni, and one-on-one advice on courses and graduate programs from graduate students and professors.

Individual Berkeley Connect groups (each with about 15-20 students) meet every other week for one hour of “serious play.” On the off weeks, your graduate student mentor will hold office hours so that you can talk individually about issues important to you. Some of the small group meetings will be informal discussions of a range of literary issues, while others involve visits to places around campus (such as the Berkeley Art Museum and the Bancroft Library). On other weeks we will meet as a large group to hear from distinguished alumni, or to listen to Berkeley English professors talk about their own paths into literary study or debate key books in their field with other professors.

There are no essays, papers, exams, or outside reading for Berkeley Connect, just lots of good discussion, valuable advice, and all sorts of “serious play.” Although this is not a traditional course, each participant will enroll in and earn one unit for group independent study (as English 98BC or 198BC, on a Pass/NP basis). The program is not meant to offer extra help or tutoring on things like the mechanics of paper-writing or literary analysis; rather, it aims at providing a more relaxed and fun way to make the best of your Berkeley experience.

Berkeley Connect in English sections: English 98BC sections 1-2 are intended for lower-division (freshmen and sophomore) students. English 198BC sections 3, 4, and 6 are intended for new junior transfer students; sections 2, 5, and 7 are intended for continuing upper-division (junior and senior) students; and sections 1 and 8 are intended for both.

Though Berkeley Connect may be repeated for credit, students may enroll in no more than one section of Berkeley Connect in English in a given semester. Moreover, a Berkeley Connect class may not be taken in more than two departments in the same semester.

DE-CAL CLASSES: All proposals for Fall 2019 De-Cal courses must be submitted at the front desk in the English Department main office (322 Wheeler) BY 4:00 P.M., THURSDAY, APRIL 25. Please note that individual faculty members may sponsor only one De-Cal course per semester. Students wishing to offer a De-Cal course must provide, to the English Department office, the following for approval: 1) a carefully completed COCI Special Studies Course Proposal Form, available at: academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committee/coci/339, for 198 classes. Students must download and complete the newest version of this form (labeled v,10.2018 in the bottom right corner) and obtain the proposed faculty sponsor’s signature on it before submitting it, along with the other necessary paperwork; 2) a copy of the fully developed syllabus of the proposed course; 3) a copy of the course description, including the criteria for passing the course; 4) a completed Unit Value Worksheet; and 5) the faculty sponsor's letter of support. (Also make sure that you have completed the training requirement for student facilitators; the Undergraduate Course Faciliator Training & Resources [UCFTR] program hosts multiple trainings across each semester.) A few days after the April 25 submission deadline, the students whose proposals have been approved by the Department Chair will be notified that they need to see Laurie Kerr, in 322 Wheeler, in order to arrange for a classroom for their course and to work out a few other details before the submission of copies of their proposals to COCI (for its final approval) and to the De-Cal office.

INDEPENDENT STUDY COURSES: These are instructor-approved courses and require a written application, available from 319 Wheeler. Applications should be signed by the instructor and returned by the student to 319 Wheeler. Students will be emailed the class number that they will use to enroll in the class on Cal Central. Often students will elect to wait until fall courses have started to apply for independent study courses.