Class Archive

133T/1

African American Literature and Culture:
The Art of Black Diaspora

MW 2-3

The black diaspora is, amongst other things, a literary tradition: a complex, cross-generic set of texts produced by black writers located in almost every nation across the globe, equal in complexity and variation to the modern concept of...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Literatures of Decolonization

TWTh 12-2:30

What do we mean by “decolonization,” really? Is it a political or economic process? Is it a psychological (or even spiritual) one? In this class, we will read works from...(read more)

125C/1

European Novel:
The Many Faces of the 19th-Century Novel

TTh 2-3:30

The novel emerged as the principal literary genre in 19^{t...(read more)}

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Postcolonial Fiction

TTh 8-9:30

Beginning with a preliminary study of the discussion and deba...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Writing Race: Faulkner and his Progeny

TTh 9:30-11

"The past is never dead," Faulkner famously said. &...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Burn it Down/Build it Up: Protest, Dissent, and the Politics of Resistance

TTh 11-12:30

This course takes up the question of protest and dissent &nda...(read more)

133T/2

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
The Art of the Black Diaspora

TTh 9:30-11

The black diaspora is, amongst other things, a literary tradition: a complex, cross-generic set of texts produced by black writers located in almost every nation across the globe, equal in complexity and variation to the modern concept of...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
(Post)Colonial Fiction

TTh 11-12:30

This course will examine some British colonial novels within the socio-political-economic context of late British colonialism and some (post-)colonial novels written after the devolution of formal British colonialism...(read more)

166/5

Special Topics:
Anton Chekhov

MWF 2-3

Anton Chekhov's (1860-1904) prominence in the English-speaking world is comparable only to Shakespeare's place in Russian culture. This course is devoted to Chekhov's fictional and dramatic writing, and to the lasting influence of his a...(read more)

180Z/1

Science Fiction

TTh 2-3:30

“Not real can tell us about real.” This is one of the fundamental lessons learned by a new race of genetically engineered trans-humans in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. It is also one of the fundamental principles of t...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Black Postcolonial Cultures: Real and Imagined Spaces

TTh 12:30-2

This research seminar explores black postcolonial cultures with an emphasis on texts that engage creatively with spatial constraint and possibility. Readings in theories of postcoloniality and diaspora as well as studies in questions of s...(read more)

138/2

Studies in World Literature in English:
Multi-Culty: Cults, Pop Culture, and Globalization

TTh 12:30-2

We are fascinated by cults. What is it about communities and groups that promise total belief and total enthrallment that so captures the imagination?

This course will look at a range of representations of cults in popular culture—f...(read more)

145/1

Writing Technology:
Utopian Futures

Lectures TTh 11-12 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 11-12; sec. 103: F 12-1; sec. 104: F 2-3)

Recent science fiction narratives tend toward the dystopian, perhaps in reaction to the grim realities of our time.  But science fiction writers have always imagined better futures made possible by technological advances.

In this int...(read more)

180H/1

The Short Story

TTh 12:30-2

This course will be a survey of the short story from the 19th century to the present: its historical and cultural contexts, its formal and stylistic properties. We'll consider the short story's predecessors, the work of its major practition...(read more)

190/1

Research Seminar:
Utopia and Anti-Utopia

MW 10:30-12

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.  And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail....(read more)

125C/2

The European Novel:
The Many Faces of the 19th-Century European Novel

TTh 2-3:30

The novel emerged as the principal literary genre in 19th-century Europe and has continued to dominate the literary market in Europe and North America ever since. What were the constitutive formal elements as well as social and psychological concer...(read more)

180H/1

The Short Story

TTh 11-12:30

This course will be a survey of the short story from the 19^th century to the present: its historical and cultural contexts, its formal and stylistic properties. We’ll consider the short story’s predecessors, the work of its m...(read more)

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 th...(read more)

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.&nbsp...(read more)

180H/1

The Short Story

This course has been canceled (June 4, 2019).

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...(read more)

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...(read more)

165/5

Special Topics:
Note: See English 165 section 6

On October 16 we canceled this section of English 165 because we ended up doubling the size of English 165 section 6 (on the same topic) instead. So if you are interested in this topic, please enroll in English 165 section 6.  Professors Danne...(read more)

165/6

Special Topics:
Nabokov and Naipaul

TTh 3:30-5

This is a team-taught course on two of the most controversial novelists of the 20th century and—some critics think—two of the greatest. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian emigre who wrote novels in both Russian and English,...(read more)

166/7

Special Topics:
Anton Chekhov

MWF 3-4

Anton Chekhov’s (1860-1904) prominence in the English-speaking world is comparable only to Shakespeare’s place in Russian culture. This course is devoted to Chekhov’s fictional and dramatic writing, and to the lasting influence of...(read more)

173/1

The Language and Literature of Films:
Postcolonial Film

MWF 10-11

This course will examine a series of films that focus on the nature and structure of Western colonialism and (post)colonialism.  We will study the different forms of colonialism, as depicted from various perspectives, as well as the social, po...(read more)

133T/1

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
The Art of Black Diaspora -- Do What You Gotta Do

TTh 9:30-11

Just find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back and see me when you can

– "Do What You Gotta Do," Clarence Carter (& Nina Simone & Roberta Flack, et al...)

The black diaspora is, amongs...(read more)

139/1

The Cultures of English:
Cultures of the Great War: Art in the Age of Decline

TTh 2-3:30

In the years following World War One, European intellectuals debated the implications of the new balance of power and the terms of the peace among the combatant nations, but they were haunted by the prospect of the decline of the West itself. A fou...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
The Urban Postcolonial

TTh 12:30-2

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...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Orphans, Feral Children, Runaways—Strange Childhood in World Literature

TTh 2-3:30

From Harry Potter to Oliver Twist, the figure of the orphan is a much beloved literary trope. Why do children have to be denuded of family ties in order to set off on self-making adventures? What in the traditional family form hinders our developme...(read more)

152/1

Women Writers: Studies in Prose Fiction: Isak Dinesen

TTh 11-12:30

This course will examine the works of the Danish author Karen Blixen (1885-1962), who also wrote under the pen name of Isak Dinesen. Dinesen is often seen as a modern-day Scheherazade, making storytelling into a matter of life and death. She famous...(read more)

177/1

Literature and Philosophy:
Surveillance, Paranoia, and State Power

TTh 9:30-11

This course examines the long, intimate relationship between technologies of surveillance and the making of British and American empires. While digital technology and state surveillance has been significant in the post-9/11 world, identifying, moni...(read more)

133T/1

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
Do What You Gotta Do: The Art of Black Diaspora

MWF 1-2

Just find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back and see me when you can

– Clarence Carter & Nina Simone & Roberta Flack, et al

The black diaspora is, of course and amongst other things, a litera...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Literature and Revolution

MW 5-6:30

This seminar will piece together a cross-regional, cross-linguistic genre that we will loosely call “the literature of revolution”—texts that try to capture (and, at times, direct) great historical and political upheaval.  Ou...(read more)

203/1

Graduate Readings:
Caribbean Literature and Culture

M 9-12

“and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” -Derek Walcott

Walcott’s mongrel regionalism is an apt invitation to consider a field of cultures whose richness comes, at least in part, from its provoking ...(read more)

125C/1

The European Novel:
The Many Faces of the 19th-Century European Novel

MWF 3-4

The novel emerged as the principal literary genre in 19^th-century Europe and has continued to dominate the literary market in Europe and North America ever since.  What were the constitutive formal elements as well as social and ps...(read more)

139/1

The Cultures of English:
(Post)colonial Fiction

TTh 11-12:30

This course will examine some British colonial novels within the socio-political-economic context of late British colonialism and some (post-)colonial novels written after the devolution of formal British colonialism.

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Global Cities

MWF 1-2

Globalization has given rise to a new kind of urban space, a nexus where the networks of capital, labor, and bodies meet: the global city. This course, a survey of contemporary Anglophone literature, considers the narratives—fictional and ot...(read more)

170/2

Literature and the Arts:
Opera and Literary Form

TTh 3:30-5

Together with the novel, opera became one of the characteristic European art forms of the long nineteenth century. Attending to the hybrid status of opera as a dramatic as well as a musical form, the course will focus on a series of major musical-...(read more)

250/2

Research Seminar:
Ethnic Modernisms

Tues. 3:30-6:30

This seminar will explore the convergence of modernist and ethnic cultures in twentieth-century America and Europe, placing race and ethnicity in dialogue with the modernist compulsion to "make it new" and the avant-gardist compulsion to...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Postcolonial Sex

TTh 9:30-11

This course will explore the intersection of theories of gender and sexuality and the postcolonial world. We will consider how gender and nation are shaped and represented in literature and film. Why are nations routinely imagined as women, and im...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic: Legends of Troy

TTh 2-3:30

Homer’s Iliad was composed in the eighth century BCE. Both the story that it narrated (the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans) and the particular form that the story took (the genre of the epic) would become foundational bu...(read more)

190/4

Research Seminar:
The Urban Postcolonial

MW 4-5:30

In this seminar we will explore recent issues in postcolonial studies by focusing on cities. Moving through a diverse set of texts and very different cities—London and Lagos, Kingston and Mumbai, New York and Johannesburg, New Orl...(read more)

190/11

Research Seminar

This section of English 190 has been canceled.

203/4

Graduate Readings:
What Does Critical Theory Have to Do with the Postcolonial?

TTh 12:30-2

This course considers the relationship between the development of critical theory and the colonized and postcolonial worlds. It will ask how and where histories, cultures, and philosophies of the global south appear and intersect with continental ...(read more)

139/1

The Cultures of English:
Literature of The Great War

MWF 11-12

In the years following World War One, European intellectuals debated the implications of the new balance of power and the terms of the peace among the combatant nations, but they were haunted by the prospect of the decline of the West itself. A fo...(read more)

165/1

Special Topics:
Contemporary Poetry

MW 4-5:30

In this class we will read seven books of (very) contemporary poetry, which highlight the multiple national and linguistic identities that characterize the poetic subject in an increasingly globalized world. We will investigate different poetic st...(read more)

165/4

Special Topics:
Longing and Belonging in Contemporary Writing

MW 3-4:30

This course will interrogate the possible relationships between desire and social position or identity (what I conceive myself to have and to lack) by reading contemporary literature in which (read more)

133T/1

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
Black Internationalism

TTh 3:30-5

Throughout the twentieth century, African American authors used international travel to see beyond the limits of racial discrimination in the U.S.  Traveling abroad allowed these authors to imagine new configurations of race, gender, and clas...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Scotland and Romanticism

MWF 11-12

Between 1760 and 1830 Scotland was one of the centers of the European-North Atlantic “Republic of Letters.” Here were invented the signature forms and discourses of the “Enlightenment” and “Romanticism” (terms f...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
The Works of Vladimir Nabokov

TTh 9:30-11

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. Aft...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Literature and Revolution

TTh 11-12:30

This course will piece together a cross-regional, cross-linguistic genre that we will loosely call “the literature of revolution”—texts that try to capture (and, at times, direct) great historical and political upheaval.  Ou...(read more)

133T/2

Topics in African American Literature and Culture

This section of English 133T has been canceled.

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Partitioned States/Partitioned Selves

note new time: TTh 2-3:30

Territorial division has long been used as a means of political reorganization, especially in the face of ethnic or ideological conflict. This course examines the relationship between territorial splitting, or partition, and empire in the twentiet...(read more)

165/3

Special Topics:
Greek Tragedy in Translation

TTh 12:30-2

The lectures, class discussions, readings, and writing assignments are intended to develop students' ability to analyze, understand, and evaluate a number of important ancient texts. The class will examine the deep implications of these early ...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
Black Science Fiction

TTh 2-3:30

This course considers two specific genres—black fiction and science fiction—to explore how they inflect each other when they blend. Under the umbrella “black,” we include fictions that issue out of and/or purport to describ...(read more)

166/4

Special Topics:
Global Cities

TTh 9:30-11

Globalization has given rise to a new kind of urban space, a nexus where the networks of capital, labor, and bodies meet: the global city. This course, a survey of contemporary Anglophone literature, considers the narratives--fictional and otherwi...(read more)

190/13

Research Seminar

250/1

Research Seminars:
Comintern Modernisms

W 3-6

It has long been common practice to see Western metropolises like Paris and New York as competing centers of global modernism, as capitals of a "world republic of letters."  The aim of this seminar is to posit an alternate mapping o...(read more)

165/3

Special Topics:
Modern Short Story Masters: James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, and Flannery O'Connor

TTh 2-3:30

The reading and writing assignments—linked with the lectures and class discussions—are intended to develop students’ ability to analyze, understand, and interpret four great masters of the short story: Joyce, Hemingway, Kafka (in...(read more)

180H/1

Short Story

MW 4-5:30

The lyf so short, the crafte so longe to lerne…

                          &nb...(read more)

250/2

Research Seminars:
Aesthetics and the Orient

Thurs. 3:30-6:30

The kinds of writing called “aesthetics” and “Orientalism” are usually studied in relative isolation from each other, but they share certain features. Both pull readers outside their comfort zones, towards an unfamiliar pla...(read more)

141/1

Modes of Writing (Exposition, Fiction, Verse, etc.):
Race, Creative Writing, and Difference

TTh 2-3:30

This course is an inquiry into the ways that race is constructed in literary texts and a look-by-doing at our own practices as people engaged in creative writing.

The purpose of writing in this course is, broadly stated, to engage public la...(read more)

143N/1

Prose Nonfiction:
Traveling, Thinking, Writing

Thurs. 3:30-6:30

Much of American literature has had to do with a sense of motion. Note the journeys, e.g., in the best known texts of Melville and Twain. But note also that Harlemite Langston Hughes’ autobiography, The Big Sea, begins on a boat and...(read more)

203/1

Graduate Readings:
Post-9/11 Fiction

M 1-4

Note: Those interested in taking the course, please email me (ksnyder@berkeley.edu) the first week of classes for the reading assignment required for our first seminar meeting on September 9.

For mo...(read more)

250/1

Research Seminar:
Critical and Peripheral Realisms

Tues. 3:30-6:30

To what extent has our tendency to measure aesthetic achievement within the terms set by the historical modernisms of 1890-1920 blocked our perception of twentieth century peripheral literatures? This course will entertain historical diagnoses of ...(read more)

133T/1

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
African Diaspora Literature: Conversations in Black

TTh 11-12:30

This course surveys 20th and 21st century texts by black writers in order to explore the making and meaning of African diaspora literature. Through attention to writers' citational practices, including their references to music, religion, visu...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
What Is South African Literature?

TTh 2-3:30

‘What is South African Literature?’ is an introduction to a broad range of storytellers who make up the country’s literature from the colonial period to the present day. Students will be exposed to a variety of voices in English ...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Readings for Fiction Writers

TTh 12:30-2

This course will focus on each novelist's invention of, or critique of, national identity myths in a time of national crisis.  Students will explore the intimate connection between choice of narrative strategy and construction of meaning....(read more)

139/1

The Cultures of English:
Literature of The Great War

MWF 2-3

In the years following World War One, European intellectuals debated the implications of the new balance of power and the terms of the peace among the combatant nations, but they were haunted by the prospect of the decline of the West itself. A fo...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Specters of the Atlantic

TTh 12:30-2

The large scale transportation of Africans to the Americas is a signal fact of modernity in the West. The trouble is that we both do and do not know this. One of the most salient, confounding aspects of life in the Caribbean and the United States,...(read more)

190/9

Research Seminar:
The Urban Postcolonial

TTh 9:30-11

For reasons to do with some of its most canonical texts (Achebe’s Things Fall Apart being the most proffered example), postcolonial literature is often thought to present a conflict between “tradition” and “moderni...(read more)

125C/1

The European Novel:
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and the English Novel

TTh 3:30-5

A close reading of works by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in conjunction with two English novels. We will focus on how the Russian and English novels respond to one another, resemble one another, and differ from one another, especially in their treatment...(read more)

143N/3

Prose Nonfiction:
Traveling, Thinking, Writing

TTh 2-3:30

Book List: Students should come to class before buying books. The list will likely include some of the following: Basho’s Back Roads to Far Towns (translated by Cid Corman); Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; Tete-Mic...(read more)

165/1

Special Topics:
The Pisan and Later Cantos of Ezra Pound

MW 1:30-3

This course will look at one of the most influential and controversial poets of the 20th century, Ezra Pound. Beginning with the Pisan, we'll study the rest of the Cantos of Ezra Pound during the course of a single semester. ...(read more)

180E/1

The Epic

MWF 2-3

This course will be team-taught by Professors Altieri and Nolan. Our primary concern is to read carefully and discuss intensely most of the major epics in Western European literature. We love these texts and we are convinced that students will fin...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
The Historical Novel

TTh 9:30-11

A survey of the historical novel.  This course covers a selection of major examples of the genre, focusing on its development in the nineteenth century in Great Britain, France, and Russia, and concluding with a contemporary Amer...(read more)

190/14

Research Seminar:
Cultures of Realism in Postwar Britain

Tues. 3:30-6:30

This course traces transformations in British literary culture in the two decades following the Second World War.  Toward that end we'll read a diverse set of writings, emphasizing prose narrative in genres including documentary, social c...(read more)

250/3

Research Seminar:
Everyday Postcoloniality

Thurs. 3:30-6:30

One of the defining preoccupations of literary realism is the precise, penetrating depiction of everyday life. This course will consider how this ambition is pursued in the context of postcolonial writing. Our primary reading will be a series of f...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Postcolonial Classics

MW 4-5:30

What is a classic? A perennial preoccupation for critics and lay readers, this question takes on a specific urgency in the context of postcolonial literature. This course will consider a series of postcolonial literary works now viewed as classic,...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Postcolonial Narrative

TTh 9:30-11

At the midpoint of the twentieth century much of the world was still ruled by a handful of European colonial powers. Today nearly all the world is comprised of formally independent nations. This course will consider the literature that has arisen ...(read more)

139/1

The Cultures of English:
Writing Diaspora

MW 4-5:30

This course will examine how literary art narrates the experience of diaspora and confronts its shaping histories of displacement, migration, and resettlement. We will read contemporary narratives addressing two prominent modern instances of diaspo...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
International Literature

TTh 9:30-11

139/1

The Cultures of English:
Irish Drama

TTh 11-12:30

139/1

The Cultures of English:
Empire & Global English

TTh 2-3:30

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Postcolonial Narrative

TTh 11-12:30

139/1

The Cultures of English:
The African Novel

TTh 2-3:30

138/1

Junior Coursework:
Studies in World Literature in English: Empire and Global English Literature

TTh 9:30-11

139/1

Upper Division Coursework:
The Cultures of English: Culture of the Great War�Art in the Age of Decline

TTh 12:30-2

139/1

Upper Division Coursework:
The Cultures of English: Culture of the Great War--Art in the Age of Decline

MWF 11-12