Class Archive

117S/1

Shakespeare

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

What makes Shakespeare Shakespeare?  We’ll search for answers to that question through the astonishing variety of Shakespeare’s plays.  We’ll explore the ways that Shakespeare develops plot and character in his drama, as...(read more)

165/5

Special Topics:
Alrish

TTh 2-3:30

This course will use both traditional and digital humanities methods to explore Irish drama from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Working through a series of historical periods, we will consider individual plays in their own right and ...(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)

117S/1

Shakespeare

TWTh 5-7:30

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 irregu...(read more)

180C/1

Comedy:
Stand-up and Sit-com

TWTh 9:30-12

“I went into a room and saw one person standing up and one person sitting down.” Harold Pinter’s wry description of his playwriting process will serve as a guide in this course for exploring the various positions afforded by stand...(read more)

117S/1

Shakespeare

Lectures TTh 2-3 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 10-11; sec. 103: F 1-2; sec. 104: F 12-1; sec. 105: F 12-1; sec. 106: F 1-2)

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 I'd like to focus on is the oscillation between "regular"...(read more)

170/1

Literature and the Arts:
Opera and Literary Form

TTh 12:30-2

Opera and Literary Form

"An exotic and irrational entertainment" (Samuel Johnson). Invented i...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability

TTh 2-3:30

We will read drama, poetry  and short fiction by contemporary authors with disabilities. Requirements will include two analytical essays, a group presentation project and a take-home final exam. 

This is a core course for the di...(read more)

28/1

Introduction to the Study of Drama

TTh 9:30-11

The work of this class will be to understand the drama as literature in company. Lots of other literary forms make claims about what social life is like, and strive to act upon the social life of their readers beyond the reading experience...(read more)

180T/1

Tragedy

MWF 12-1

An ancient (if not foundational) genre in the western literary tradition, tragedy is the one most closely linked with key religious and philosophical questions, due to its concern with catastrophic misfortune, suffering and fatality in human life. ...(read more)

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 o...(read more)

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 pr...(read more)

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 Euro...(read more)

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 vario...(read more)

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...(read more)

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 an...(read more)

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 ...(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)

17/1

Shakespeare

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

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...(read more)

126/1

British Literature, 1900-1945

MWF 2-3

How did British and Irish literature change over the first half of the twentieth-century? Was “modernism” a historical moment, an aesthetic movement, or a critical attitude—or some combination of the three? How did write...(read more)

165/3

Special Topics:
Literature and Media Theory

TTh 9:30-11

This course will consider literature in relation to media theory.  Is literature made obsolete by new media?  What happens when we consider print literature in re...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability

TTh 3:30-5

We will examine the ways disability is represented in a variety of works of fiction and drama.  Sometimes disability is used as a metaphor or symbol of something else.  In other cases, texts explore disability as a lived experience. ...(read more)

117S/1

Shakespeare

Lectures MW 2-3 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 11-12; sec. 102: F 2-3)

I am mostly interested in having the class appreciate how capacious, complex, humane, and Intelligent Shakespeare's plays can be.  So I will concentrate on the plays themselves rather than on any talk about context or political assessment....(read more)

117S/2

Shakespeare

TTh 12:30-2

Focusing on a selection of Shakespeare's many astonishing plays, we’ll consider the range of his dramaturgy and why this range was important to him.  We’ll also explore how the variety of dramatic genres in which he w...(read more)

134/1

Contemporary Literature

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

This course will survey Irish and British writing since World War II.  As we dig into the formal and generic workings of a range of texts, we will also think through the political and cultural contexts from which they emerge.  Along ...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Comedy & Violence

MWF 2-3

What relation does comedy have to violence? Can humor be a gauge of political freedom? How does it resist violence or ally itself with it? In this class, we will consider various styles of humor—wit, buffoonery, satire, parody, nonsense, absu...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
Classical & Renaissance Drama

TTh 3:30-5

In a poem for the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays in 1623, his fellow playwright Ben Jonson expressed a characteristic ambivalence about classical drama.  On the one hand, he praised it as the standard by which all subsequ...(read more)

190/1

Research Seminar:
Trials of Literature: Romanticism, Justice, and the Law

MW 9:30-11

This seminar will focus on the way literature imagines the relation between law and justice, concentrating on literature of the Romantic period. We’ll consider writers’ interest in persons (from beggars and trespassers to gods and sover...(read more)

190/8

Research Seminar:
Literary Theory and Its Objects

TTh 12:30-2

This course explores some ...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability

TTh 3:30-5

This course will have several components. An introductory section will provide students with a grounding in disability theory; we’ll wonder whether it’s possible to develop a common “theory” adequate to various disability ca...(read more)

190/3

Research Seminar:
Another Day in Purgatory: Irish Literature and the Afterlife

MW 3:30-5

Life is full of death; the steps of the living cannot press the earth without disturbing the ashes of the dead—we walk upon our ancestors—the globe itself is one vast churchyard.
(read more)

28/1

Introduction to the Study of Drama

MWF 10-11

The work of this class will be to understand the drama as literature in company. Lots of other literary forms make claims about what social life is like, and strive to act upon the social life of their readers beyond the reading experienc...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 12:30-2

In an age of commercial print expansion, men and women writers negotiated the possibilities, limits, and perceived dangers of publishing. In this class, we will explore the forms and strategies writers deployed in those negotiati...(read more)

166/5

Special Topics:
Modern Irish Literature

TTh 11-12:30

190/6

Research Seminar:
Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global

MWF 2-3

William Shakespeare's works have been staged all over the world, adapted as films, operas, musicals, ballets, and novels.  They have been transposed into diverse settings, from fascist Italy to the Wild West, medieval Japan to the fiction...(read more)

117T/1

Shakespeare in the Theater:
Performing Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida

TTh 2-3:30

Imagine that the play is an exquisite silk dress. In lectures, we look at it from many different angles; we consider the materials it’s made of; we imagine who created it and why; we listen to the sounds it makes as it moves. If you ever won...(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)

175/1

Literature and Disability

TTh 9:30-11

We will examine the ways disability is represented in a variety of works of fiction and drama.  Assignments will include two short (5-8 page) critical essays, a group performance project and a take-home final examination.  (This is a cor...(read more)

190/7

Research Seminar:
Note new topic: Troy and Tragedy

TTh 11-12:30

Note the new topic (and book list and instructor):

From the earliest moments of the western literary tradition, the story of the fall of Troy has been associated with the genre of tragedy. This course charts that association from Ancient Ro...(read more)

117S/1

Shakespeare

TTh 11-12:30

Shakespeare’s poems and plays are relentlessly unsettling, extravagantly beautiful, deeply moving, rigorously brilliant, and compulsively meaningful: they complicate everything, they simplify nothing, and for 400 years, they have been a touc...(read more)

117S/2

Shakespeare

MW 1-2; discussion sections F 1-2

Shakespeare wrote a massive number of plays.  Focusing on a selection of them, we’ll consider the range of Shakespeare's dramaturgy and why this range was important to him.  We’ll also explore how the variety of dram...(read more)

128/1

Modern Drama

MWF 2-3

This course will be a survey of Modern Drama, mostly in Europe and in the US from about 1880 to 2000.  We will read about 30 plays, and we will watch at least a couple of them.  Dramatists studied will include Ibsen, Chekhov, P...(read more)

190/6

Research Seminar:
Classical and Renaissance Drama

MW 4-5:30

In a poem for the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works, Ben Jonson expressed a characteristic ambivalence about classical drama.  On the one hand, he praised it as the standard by which all subsequent playwriting sh...(read more)

N117S/1

Shakespeare

MTTh 12-2

In his great book on Shakespearean Tragedy (1905), A. C. Bradley writes that, when we experience one of Shakespeare's tragic plays, "We seem to have before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact which extend...(read more)

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, poetry, and drama.  Students will learn to talk critically about these forms and begin to feel comfortable and confident writing within these genres.  Student...(read more)

141/2

Modes of Writing (Exposition, Fiction, Verse, etc.)

TTh 9:30-11

This course will introduce students to the study of creative writing--fiction, poetry, and drama.  Students will learn to talk critically about these forms and begin to feel comfortable and confident writing within these genres.  Student...(read more)

117B/1

Shakespeare

MW 10-11 + discussion sections F 10-11

English 117B is a course in the last ten years or so of Shakespeare's career. It is a chance to read the tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra; at least one of the problematic late comedies, Measure...(read more)

28/1

Introduction to the Study of Drama

MWF 2-3

The dramatic arts confound most of the certainties we generally hold about literary writing. Although there are playwrights, each performance is necessarily social and collaborative. Although the printed playscript can last indefinitely on the she...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration & the Early 18th Century

TTh 3:30-5

The period from the "Restoration" of Charles II (1660) to the death of Alexander Pope (1744) produced the last poems of Milton, the first English pornography and feminist polemic, the most devastating satires ever written, some of the mo...(read more)

141/1

Modes of Writing:
Writing Fiction, Poetry, and Plays

TTh 9:30-11

This course will introduce students to the study of creative writing--fiction, poetry, and drama.  Students will learn to talk critically about these forms and begin to feel comfortable and confident writing within these genres.  Student...(read more)

141/2

Modes of Writing:
Writing Fiction, Poetry, and Plays

TTh 9:30-11

This course will introduce students to the study of creative writing--fiction, poetry, and drama.  Students will learn to talk critically about these forms and begin to feel comfortable and confident writing within these genres.  Student...(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)

174/1

Literature and History:
The French Revolution

MWF 12-1

“The French Revolution did not take place.”

“The French Revolution is not yet over.”

These two sentences might seem not only counterfactual, but also contr...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability

MW 4-5:30

We will examine the ways disability is represented in a variety of works of fiction and drama.  Assignments will include two short (5-8 page) critical essays, a group presentation project, and a take-home final examination.  (This is a c...(read more)

190/4

Research Seminar:
Samuel Beckett

TTh 11-12:30

An intensive reading of the works of Samuel Beckett.

Please read the paragraph on page 2 of the instructions area of this Announcement of Classes for more details about enrolling in or wait-listing for this course.

166/2

Special Topics:
Engaging the Play--Being the Player

TTh 12:30-2

This course will explore inventive ways of engaging the theater text.

Students will read from a selection of plays and be expected to give presentations analyzing theme, story, as well as point of view of the playwright. This will be follow...(read more)

114B/1

English Drama from 1603 to 1700

TTh 11-12:30

This course will be a survey of some of the best seventeenth-century English drama. We will focus on the plays as plays – as series of actions upon the minds of audiences – and on ones first performed between 1603 and 1642, when the th...(read more)

119/1

Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 12:30-2

We will explore the relationship between literature and everyday life in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Areas of emphasis include popular periodical literature (England's first advice column, the first "women's m...(read more)

114A/1

English Drama to 1603

TTh 5-6:30

This course offers a wide-ranging survey of sixteenth-century drama up to and beyond the building of the first commercial theaters in London in the 1570s. After sampling the medieval mystery and morality traditions, we will consider the formal and...(read more)

117B/1

Shakespeare

TTh 11-12:30

English 117B is a course in the last ten years or so of Shakespeare's career. It is a chance to read the tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra; at least one of the problematic late comedies, Measure...(read more)

117S/1

Shakespeare:
Selected Plays

TTh 12:30-2

Shakespeare wrote a massive number of plays.  We'll consider the range of plays he wrote, and why this range was important to him.  We'll also explore how different dramatic genres affect Shakespeare's representation...(read more)

119/1

Augustan Age: Literature of the Restoration and the Early 18th Century

TTh 3:30-5

We will explore the relationship between literature and everyday life in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Areas of emphasis include popu...(read more)