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Fall 2008 Courses

• Lower Division Courses
  
• Upper Division Courses
  
• Graduate Courses

Lower Division Courses

COM 1: Great Books of Western Civilization: The Ancient World
4 units

Prerequisite: Completion of Subject A requirement.

Course Description: An introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the great books of western civilization from the Epic of Gilgamesh to St. Augustine's Confessions. This course may be counted toward satisfaction of the English Composition Requirement in all three undergraduate colleges.

Course Format: Lecture/discussion. Limited to 25 students per section: pre-enrollment strongly advised. Emphasis is on classroom discussion of the readings, supplemented. May be counted toward satisfaction of the English Composition requirement in all three undergraduate colleges. Students write frequent short papers and take a final examination.

Texts (may vary from section to section): The Bible; The Odyssey, Homer; The Aeneid, Virgil; The Symposium, Plato; The Confessions, Augustine; OedipusRex, Sophocles; The Bacchae, Euripides.

COM 2: Great Books of Western Civilization: From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment
4 units

Prerequisite: Completion of Subject A requirement.

Course Description: An introduction to some major works from the medieval period to the "Enlightenment"; close readings and discussion, supplemented with short lectures to provide cultural and generic contextsrongly advised. Emphasis is on classroom discussion of the readings, supplemented by occasional lectures. Students write frequent short papers and take a final examination.

Texts (may vary from section to section): Beowulf or Song of Roland; Inferno by Dante; Hamlet by Shakespeare; Don Quixote by Cervantes; Discourse on Method by Descartes; Candide and Other Stories by Voltaire or Gulliver's Travels by Swift; El Cid trs. by Merwin; A Short Handbook for Writing about Literature by Allosso.

COM 3: The Modern Crisis
4 units

Prerequisite: Completion of Subject A requirement.

Course Description: An introduction, through class discussion and the writing of short papers, to some of the great books of the modern age, from Goethe's Faust to Beckett's Waiting for Godot. This course may be counted toward satisfaction of the English Composition Requirement in all three undergraduate colleges. Recommended for General Education (ArtHum?, Wrt).

Course Format: Lecture/discussion. Limited to 15 students per section: pre-enrollment strongly advised. Emphasis is on classroom discussion of the readings, supplemented by occasional lectures. Students write frequent short papers and take a final examination.

Texts (may vary from section to section): Faust by Goethe (tr. by Kaufmann); Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Civilization and its Discontents by Freud (tr. Strachey); Mrs. Dalloway by Woolf; Waiting for Godot by Beckett; A Short Handbook for Writing about Literature by Allosso; and, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

COM 4: Major Books of the Contemporary World
4 units

Prerequisite: Completion of Subject A requirement.

Course Description:
Comparative study of selected major Western and non-Western texts composed in the period from 1945 to the present. May be counted towards satisfaction of the English Compositionrequirement in all three undergraduate colleges.

Course Format:
Lecture/discussion. Limited to 25 students per section: pre-enrollment strongly advised. Emphasis is on classroom discussion of the readings, supplemented by occasional lectures. Students write frequent short papers and take a final examination.

Texts (may vary from section to section): The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera; Hardboiled Wonderland and the Edge of the World by Murakami; Maus I and Maus II by Spiegelman; Cosmicomics by Calvino; M. Butterfly by Huang; The Woman Warrior by Kingston; The Crazy Isis by Kenzaburo; Love in the Time of Cholera by Márquez; Blues for Mister Charlie by Baldwin; The Assault by Mulisch; A Sport of Nature by Gordimer; Things Fall Apart by Achebe; The Songlines by Chatwin.

COM 5: Fairy Tales, Parables and Fables
John Boe
4 units
Prerequisite: Completion of Subject A requirement.

Course Description:
Exploring the genres of fables, wonder tale, and parable, the course traces the development of the art of telling tales from the ancient to the modern world. Attention is drawn to oral origins, to collecting and transmitting, to translation, and to transformation of the genres and the themes they convey into modern forms.

Texts:
Fables of Aesop, Ed. Handford
The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare
The Arabian Nights, tr. Haddaway
Fairy Tales and Fables, Boe
The Golden Ass, Apuleius
Goblin Market, Rossetti

COM 6: Myths and Legends
Brenda Schildgen
4 units

Course Description:
This course is an introduction to the comparative study of myths and legends, especially Near Eastern, Teutonic, Celtic, Indian, Central American, and African, but excluding Greco-Roman myths. The course will discuss the genesis of myths, their various functions, and both shared and conflicting features, from a worldwide perspective. Attention will be drawn to the growth, dissemination, and reception of myths and legends and the literary and social developments that support them. The readings, lectures, and discussions will focus on working definitions of "myth" and "legend" and on the material and social circumstances in which myths operate.

Texts:
The Epic of Gilgamesh, tr. Maureen Gallery Kovacs
Ramayana, tr. R.K. Narayan
The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, tr. Patrick K. Ford
Popol Vuh, tr. Dennis Tedlock
The Saga of the Volsungs, tr. Jesse L. Byock
The Mwindo Epic, tr. Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene
Arthurian Romances, Chretien de Troyes

COM 10N: Master Authors in World Literature
Natalie Strobach
3 units

Course Description: Designed primarily to acquaint the non-literature major with a cross-section of writings by the world's most important authors; readings in English translation.

Texts: Nathalie Sarraute, The Planetarium; Gabriel Barcia Marquez, Memories of my Melancholy Whores; Jean Genet, The Balcony; Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape; Camus, The Stranger; Helene Cixous, Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory.

COM 53A: Literature of China and Japan
Jing Nie (MWF: 10:00 - 10:50am, Bainer 1132) CRN: 83233
3 units

Course Description: This course provides an overview of Chinese and Japanese literature in the modern period. We will read short stories, poems, novels, and plays written by some well-known Chinese and Japanese writers. Some key questions that the course focuses on are: What is Modern Chinese or Japanese literature? What recurrent themes can we observe from these literary works? What do they tell us about the cultural, social, psychological, and historical changes that take place in late nineteenth and twentieth century China and Japan? GE credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Texts: Yu Hua, To Live; Donald Keene, Modern Japanese Literature; Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature; Shimazaki Toson, Broken Commandment.

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UPPER DIVISION COURSES

COM 120: Writing Nature
Scott McLean
4 units
Prerequisite: completion of Subject A requirement and at least one course in literature.

Course Description: begins with readings in poems from the mid-17th century. All literature read concerns how we perceive the natural world, and how that world shapes us. We conclude our readings with a Jacquetta Hawkes' little-known A Land, and Norman Maclean's reflections on the Mann Gulch Fire (1948) in Montana, a blow-up fire in which 13 smokejumpers lost their lives.

Texts: TBA.

COM 152: Literature of the Americas
Marc Blanchard
4 units
Prerequisite: completion of Subject A requirement and at least one course in literature.

Course Description: Study in the various stylistic, historical, economic, social and cultural factors that contribute to a hemispheric vision of American literature, encompassing works by Canadian, United States, Caribbean, Brazilian, and Spanish-American writers.  This exciting course is taught by Professor Marc Blanchard. No books required. Texts available on line. Students may not cut classes and must actively engage in class work.  No tourists please! Enroll early.

Course Format: Lecture/discussion-3 hours; term paper.

Texts: A course reader.

COM 153: Forms of Asian Literature
Sheldon Lu
4 units

Course Description: This course is a comparative study of modern Chinese and Japanese literature from early twentieth century to the present. Students will read short stories, novels, and poems written by leading East Asian writers. The class will analyze recurrent themes and topics in modern East Asian literature such as romantic love, death, revolution, war, tradition, modernity, and globalization. Literary developments in Asia throughout the long twentieth century will be examined in broad international contexts.

Texts: Joseph S. M. Lau, Howard Goldblatt, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature; Donald Keene, Modern Japanese Literature.

COM 164B: The Renaissance
Juliana Schiesari
4 units

Course Description: In this course, we will study key texts from the Renaissance and their relation to the construction of the humanist ideal of "Renaissance Man." We will consider this intellectual development from the perspective of what it means to be human, a category that allows for the notion of individual self-fashioning (Greenblatt). To what extent does this new insistence of human individuality affect affect the relations between different people (i.e. between humans of different genders, races, classes and religions) or for that matter between human beings and other creatures. We will study this emerging notion of the human qua Renaissance Man through an analysis of gender, philosophy, politics and literature. GE credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Texts: The Renaissance Philosophy of Man; Machiavelli's The Prince; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso; Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing; Montaigne's Essays; Descartes's Discourse on Method; The poems of Gaspara Stampa and Louise Labe: The Celestina, considered to be the first European novel.

COM 167: Comparative Study of Major Authors
Seth Schein
4 units

Course Description: This term's COM 167 is devoted to a comparative study of Aeschylus' Oresteia and Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth. We'll focus on the plays in their historical, social, cultural, and theatrical contexts, with particular attention to how they represent (and invite audiences and readers to consider critically) revenge, gender and generational roles and conflicts, and personal and institutional morality and politics. GE credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Texts: Aeschylus, Oresteia; Aeschylus, Oresteia Complete Greek Tragedy; Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623; W.C. Carroll, Macbeth: Texts and Contexts; A. Thompson and N. Taylor Hamlet - Arden Shakespeare: Third Series.

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Graduate Courses

COM 210: Past and Present
Brenda Schildgen and Marc Blanchard
4 units
Prerequisite: graduate standing in Comparative Literature, English, or a foreign language literature, or consent of the instructor.

Course Description: This seminar examines the place of Virgil's Aeneid in world literature and the fundamental role played by Virgil's work in the growth of Western literary, cultural and philosophical tradition. In this seminar we accomplish three things. First, we begin by reading the epic and comparing the original Latin with its Greek original in Homer. We will review its critical tradition (from Ovid to Dryden to Auerbach to Ziolkowski to Spivak), translations and adaptations into the major European languages. Second, we read selected works and excerpts of works in the European tradition directly inspired by the reading of Virgil: Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Divine Comedy, Ariosto's Orlando, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil, Coetzee's Age of Iron. Third, we examine the contribution of the Aeneid to the various mythologies of the hero, the nation, the state, and the Empire in Western civilization, (Johnson, Darkness Visible) as well as its use by counter-traditions (Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage). Latin and Greek useful, but not required. Students with an interest in the Western literary tradition, the formation of canon, and counter canon, as well as the dynamics of empire, nation, and transnation will benefit from this course. Co-taught. Seminar format, Group research.

Required Books: Virgil, Aeneid trans. Robert Fitzgerald;The Death of Virgil; Coetzee, Age of Iron; Reader avialable at Navin's. Includes, selections from Saint Augustine, Confessions; City of God; Dante, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage; Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, and others.

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