Spring 2008 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 by
occasional lectures. 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 contexts. May be counted toward satisfaction of the English Composition requirement in all three undergraduate colleges.
Course Format: 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): 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 themodern 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 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 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 6: Myths and Legends
Scott McLean
4 units
Course Description: Introduction to the comparative study of myths and legends, excluding those of Greece and Rome, with readings from Near Eastern, Teutonic, Celtic,
Indian, Japanese, Chinces, African and Central American literary sources.
Texts:
COM 7: Literature of Fantasy
Patricia Mackinnon
4 units
Prerequisite:
Course Description:
Texts:
COM 10M: Master Authors in World Literature
2 units: One 2-hour session/week
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.
Upper Division Courses
COM 152: Literature of the Americas
Elizabeth Wing-Paz
4 units
| CRN |
Days/Time |
Location |
| 67019 |
TR 12:10-1:30 |
101 Olson |
Course Description: By analyzing novels and memoirs from the Caribbean, North, and South America, written during the second half of the twentieth century, we will explore
various issues and themes that are central to the modern and contemporary experience in the Americas. As these texts grapple with the history of peoples who have been marginalized in
various ways and with the consequences of colonialism and modernization, they attempt to reimagine cultural history and identity. Thus, we will look at the ways in which
self-perception and cultural representation affect one's understanding of home, belonging, and cultural identity. The spirit and significance of place is central in all of these texts;
therefore, we will also address location, migration, and displacement. Finally, our analysis will focus on storytelling and the different narrative approaches these authors take.
Taking these texts together, we will try to determine what stylistic,historical, social, and cultural factors contribute to a hemispheric vision of American literature.
Required Readings:
The Lost Steps (1953) by Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)
The Hour of the Star (1977) by Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
The Autobiography of My Mother (1997) by Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua)
School Days (1997) by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique)
Hunger of Memory (1983) by Richard Rodríguez (U.S.A.)
Storyteller (1989) by Leslie Marmon Silko (U.S.A.)
COM 152 Reader and Film
COM 161A: Tragedy
Gail Finney
4 units
| CRN |
Days/Time |
Location |
| 66634 |
TR 12:10-1:30pm |
103 Wellman |
Course Description: Persistent and changing aspects of the tragic vision in literature from ancient times to the present.
The course will study the formal features of tragic drama as well as perennial concerns of the tragic, such as the tension between individual will and fate/divine power/sociohistorical
forces; guilt and redemption; and the role of family relationships.
Plays treated, which will be complemented by historical and critical readings,will include the following:
Euripides (Greek), Medea (5th century B.C.E.)
Classical
Japanese drama: a 14th-century Noh play and an 18th-century Kabuki play
William Shakespeare (English), Hamlet (1602)
Jean Racine (French), Phaedre (1677)
August
Strindberg (Swedish), Miss Julie (1888)
Bertolt Brecht (German), Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)
Arthur Miller (American), Death of a Salesman (1949)
Samuel Beckett (Irish), Endgame (1957)
Wole Soyinka (Nigerian), Death and the King's Horseman (1975)
Heiner Muller (German) Hamletmachine (1979)
Suzan Lori-Parks (American), Topdog/Underdog (2001)
COM 167: Comparative Study of Major Authors
Brenda Schildgen
4 units
| CRN |
Days/Time |
Location |
| 66636 |
TR 10:30-11:50 |
1116 Hart |
Course Description: The major author studied in this course will be Dante, with selected readings in his early works (Vita Nuova and Monarchia) and focus on the Divine Comedy. We will
also read parts of Virgil's Aeneid (Book 4 and 6), parts of the Song of Songs from the Hebrew Bible and the Apocalypse of John from the New Testament, and selections
from St. Augustine's On the Trinity.
Books:
Robert Durling, trans. Inferno (New York: Oxford, 1996). ISBN 0-19-508744-5
Robert Durling, trans. Purgatorio (New York: Oxford, 2003). ISBN 0-19-508745-3
Allen Mandelbaum, trans. Paradiso (New York: Bantam, l984). ISBN0- 553-21204-4
COM 195: The Myth of Dionysus
Kari Lokke
4 units
| CRN |
Days/Time |
Location |
| 66642 |
W 2:10-5pm |
263 Olson |
Course Description:
In this seminar, we will study the interrelations of myth and literature, paying special attention to literary manifestations of the myth of Dionysus. We will survey major
twentieth-century theories of the cultural, religious and political significance of myth and then turn our attention to poetic and fictional representations of Dionysus. Students will
be responsible for an oral presentation, a short 3-5 page essay, and a 10-12 page final paper.
Readings may include:
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo
Carl Jung, "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious"
Claude Levi-Strauss "The Sorcerer and his Magic," "The
Effectiveness of Symbols" and "The Structural Study of Myth" from Structural Anthropology
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
Yves Bonnefoy, Roman
and European Mythologies
Luce Irigaray, Estella Lauter.
Selected Readings:
The Myth of Dionysus
Euripides, The Bacchae
Friedrich Schiller, Naive and Sentimental Poetry
Samuel T. Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"
Friedrich Holderlin, "Bread and Wine"
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Thomas Mann, "Death in Venice"
Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales
Flannery
O'Connor, "Greenleaf"
Wole Soyinka, The Bacchae
Eddie Campbell, Bacchus I: Immortality Isn't Forever
Graduate Courses
COM 210: Translation: History, Politics, Theory, and Practice
Seth Schein
4 units
| CRN |
Days/Time |
Location |
| 40477 |
T 1:10-4pm |
422 Sproul |
Course Description: The subject of this course is "Translation: history, politics, theory, and practice." Taking as a point of departure Lawrence Venuti's distinction between
"domesticating" and "foreignizing" translations, we shall read and critique selected brief discussions of translation by such writers as St. Jerome, F. Schleiermacher, F. Nietzsche,
W. Benjamin, E. Pound, R. Jakobson, K. Reiss, G. Steiner, I. Evn-Zohar, A. Lefevere, A. Berman, L. Chamberlain, G.C. Spivak, K.A. Appiah, J. Derrida, and S. Sontag. We shall pay
particular attention to linguistic, political, cultural, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions of translation, especially in our current age of globalization. Toward the end of the
course, each student will translate and present to the class a short passage of poetry or prose from her/his language of specialization.
Some books on which we shall draw:
Lawrence Venuti (ed.). The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd edition. Routledge: New York and London, 2004
Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation. Routlege: New York and London, 1998
Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (eds.). Translation/History/Culture: a Sourcebook. Routledge: London and New York, 1992
Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood (eds.). Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2005
Emily Apter. The Translation Zone: A new Comparative Literature. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2005