Class Archive

135AC/1

Literature of American Cultures:
American Hustle

Lectures TTh 4-5 in 140 Barrows + one hour of discussion section per week in 305 Wheeler (sec. 101: F 12-1; sec. 102: F 1-2)

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 cours...(read more)

165AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Ethnicity, Religion and Literature

TTh 11-12:30

This class will explore how 20^th- and 21^st-century American prose fictions have imagined the relationship between religion and ethnicity. Our first questions will be formal: How do different formal choices allow these writers ...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
The Literature & Art of Incarceration

MWF 11-12

This is a course on the literature of incarceration variously defined and experienced across a range of control systems that attempt to stunt the entire human being. I want to think about the forms of suppression, confinement, and the humiliations ...(read more)

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 t...(read more)

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 pol...(read more)

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-...(read more)

166/5

Special Topics:
Asian American Literature - World, Nation, Locality

MWF 1-2

This class provides a foundation for reading Asian American literature at three levels of scale: world, nation, and locality. At the world scale, we will discuss the political origins of the phrase “Asian American” in the late 1960...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Literatures of the Asian Diaspora in America

MWF 1-2

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...(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)

31AC/1

Literature of American Cultures:
Immigrant Inscriptions

TTh 11-12:30

In this course we will consider a variety of texts—contemporary fiction, classic and new film, journalism, history, and cultural criticism—that help us explore the possibilities for writing the migrant self and experience. The shifting...(read more)

31AC/1

Literature of American Cultures:
Immigrant Inscriptions

TTh 9:30-11

A few miles from UC Berkeley’s campus, positioned in the San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz, sits Angel Island, site of a California State Park and one-time “processing center” (1910-1940) for migrants crossing the Pacific into the ...(read more)

190/13

Research Seminar

N31AC/1

Literature of American Cultures:
Democracy and Division

MTuTh 2-4

The United States Constitution refers to “We, the People,” as if it’s obvious who’s included in – and excluded from – that “we.” In fact, though, the reality has always been much messier. Fights over...(read more)

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)

180A/1

Autobiography:
American Autobiography: Race, Gender, Culture

TTh 11-12:30

We will take a group of texts--conventional memoir, poetry, painting, photography, and I-focused new media--to explore what American auto/bio/graphy really means.  We will start in the 18th century with Benjamin Franklin and close with a...(read more)