Fall 2015

Lower Division Courses

Comparative Literature 001. Major Books of Western Culture: The Ancient World (4 units)

  Click on each instructor's name to learn more about the course section the instructor is teaching

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Navid Saberi-Najafi

MW 2:10-4:00P

107 Wellman Hall

47289

02

Sayyeda Razvi

TR 10:00-11:50A

290 Hickey Gym

47290

03 Linda Matheson MW 10:00-11:50A 90 Soc Sci Building

73809

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 The Confessions. This course may be counted toward satisfaction of the English Composition Requirement in all three undergraduate colleges. Limited to 25 students per section; pre-enrollment is strongly advised. Emphasis is on classroom discussion of the readings, supplemented by occasional lectures. Students write papers and take a final examination.

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.
(Note: This course cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Sample Readings (vary from section to section):
The New Oxford Annotated Bible; Homer, The Odyssey; Virgil, The Aeneid; Plato, The SymposiumThe Epic of Gilgamesh; St. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions; Sophocles, Antigone; Salvatore Alloso, A Short Handbook for Writing Essays about Literature.


Comparative Literature 002. Major Books of Western Culture: From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (4 units)

  Click on each instructor's name to learn more about the course section the instructor is teaching

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Celine Piser

MW 12:10-2:00P

229 Wellman Hall

47291

02

Jeff Weiner

TR 2:10-4:00P

101 Olson Hall

47292

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

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.
(Note: This course cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Sample Readings (vary from section to section):
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method; William Shakespeare, Othello; Dante, The InfernoBeowulf ; Salvatore Alloso, A Short Handbook for Writing Essays about Literature.


Comparative Literature 003. Major Books of Western Culture: The Modern Crisis (4 units)

  Click on each instructor's name to learn more about the course section the instructor is teaching

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Sean Sell

MW 10:00-11:50A

229 Wellman Hall

47294

02

James Straub

TR 12:10-2:00P

159 Olson Hall

47295

03 Noha Radwan TR 2:10-4:00P 103 Wellman Hall

73648

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

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.
(Note: This course cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Sample Readings (vary from section to section):
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Part One); Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents; Franz Kafka, The Trial; Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment ; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own; Salvatore Alloso, A Short Handbook for Writing Essays about Literature.


Comparative Literature 004. Major Books of the Contemporary World (4 units)

  Click on each instructor's name to learn more about the course section the instructor is teaching

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Deborah Young

MW 2:10-4:00P

229 Wellman Hall

47296

02

Amy Riddle

MW 4:10-6:00P

167 Olson Hall

47297

04 Pat Cabell TR 10:00-11:50A 130 Physics Building

47299

Course Description: Comparative study of selected major Western and non-Western texts composed in the period from 1945 to the present. Limited to 25 students per section; pre-enrollment is strongly advised. Emphasis is on classroom discussion of the readings, supplemented by occasional lectures. Students write short papers and take a final examination.

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Domestic Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Visual Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.
(Note: This course cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Sample Readings (vary from section to section):
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Jhumpa Lahari, The Namesake; J.M. Coetzee, Foe: A Novel; Elfriede Jelinek, Women As Lovers; Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North; Jose Saramago, The Cave; Alice Notley, Descent of Alette.


Comparative Literature 005. Fairy Tales, Fables and Parables (4 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

Lecture:
TR 10:30-11:50A
180 MedSci Rm C

Discussion Sections:

Disc. Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Jeremy Konick‐Seese

W 4:10-5:00P

115 Wellman Hall

47300

02

Jeremy Konick‐Seese

W 5:10-6:00P

115 Wellman Hall

47301

03

Leonardo Giorgetti

R 4:10-5:00P

151 Olson Hall

47302

04

Leonardo Giorgetti

R 5:10-6:00P 151 Olson Hall

47303

05

Magnus Snaebjoernsson

F 10:00-10:50A 166 Chemistry Building

47304

06

Magnus Snaebjoernsson

F 11:00-11:50A 166 Chemistry Building

47305

Course Description: This course investigates the genres of fables, fairy tales, and parables from the ancient to the modern world. Traversing the globe, this course is a "genre" course that discusses the origin and development of the popular (or folk) genres of fables, fairy tales, and parables, and follows their development and evolution into their modern forms. The class surveys the social, political, anthropological, psychological, and literary elements of these genres in their various incarnations throughout time and space primarily as literature that would result in the modern novel.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity, and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures, and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion - 1 hour.

Textbooks:

  • Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories  (Penguin Books, 1991)
  • Giambattista Basile, Pentamerone: English Stories from the Pentamerone  (Hard Press, 2006)
  • J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan: Peter and Wendy and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens  (Penguin Classics, 2004)
  • Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio, translated by Geoffrey Brock  (NYRB Classics, 2008)
  • Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales  (Bantam Classics, 1982)
  • L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  (HarperCollins, 2001)
     

Comparative Literature 006. Myths and Legends (4 units)
Cheri Ross

Lecture:
MWF 12:10-1:00P
1322 Storer Hall

Discussion Sections:

Disc. Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Nicholas Talbott

M 4:10-5:00P

101 Olson Hall

72999

02

Nicholas Talbott

M 5:10-6:00P

101 Olson Hall

73000

03

Tianya Wang

R 4:10-5:00P

101 Olson Hall

73001

04

Tianya Wang

R 5:10-6:00P

101 Olson Hall

73002

05

Jamianessa Davis

W 4:10-5:00P

101 Olson Hall

73003

06

Jamianessa Davis

W 5:10-6:00P

101 Olson Hall

73004

Course Description: This course explores how communities have used myth and legend to explore different perspectives on identity and ethical values. Myth and legend express ideas about conflicting obligations, insiders and outsiders, and humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world and the supernatural. We will also analyze how these issues are inflected by history, politics and law, economic development, and gender and the family.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity, and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures, and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion - 1 hour.

Textbooks:

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation, translated by W.S. Merwin  (Knopf, 2004)
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs  (Stanford University Press, 1989)
  • Homer, The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore  (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
  • The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic, retold by R.K. Narayan  (Penguin Classics, 2006)
     

Comparative Literature 010C. Master Authors in World Literature (2 units)
Young Hui

Section

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

M 2:10-4:00P      

290 Hickey Gym

73785

02

W 2:10-4:00P

290 Hickey Gym

73786

Course Description: In this course, we will read three epic tales written around 1000-1200. We will examine in particular to what extent these texts deal with topics such as virtues, wars, loves, and politics, in order to understand how their formulation according to different cultural contexts has reshaped the very notion of epic tale and its social function. All the readings will be in modern English translation.

This is a reading course primarily designed to acquaint the non-literature major with a cross-section of writings by the world’s most important authors.

This course does not fulfill the university writing requirement; therefore, no essays will be assigned.

Grading: PASS/NO PASS (P/NP) ONLY.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): None.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 2 hours.

Textbooks:

  • The Song of Roland, translated by Glyn S. Burgess  (Penguin Classics, 1990)
  • The Song of the Cid: A Dual Language Edition with Parallel Text, translated by Burton Raffel  (Penguin Classics, 2009)
     

Comparative Literature 024. Animals in Literature (4 units)
Juliana Schiesari

TR 12:10-1:30P
251 Olson Hall
CRN 73007

Course Description: Study of literary texts from various periods and cultures whose theme is the representation of animals.

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing Requirement (formerly Subject A Requirement).

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper or Discussion.

Textbooks:

  • Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil  (Spiegel and Grau, 2011)
  • Anna Sewell, Black Beauty  (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014)
  • J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace  (Penguin Books, 2008)
  • Patrice Nganang, Dog Days, translated by Amy Baram Reid  (University of Virginia Press, 2006)
  • Fred Gipson, Old Yeller  (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009)
  • Colette, Gigi and the Cat  (Vintage Classics, 2001)
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog, translated by Mirra Ginsburg  (Grove Press, 1994)
  • J.R. Ackerley, My Dog Tulip  (NYRB Classics, 2010)
  • J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals  (Princeton University Press, 2001)
  • J.R. Ackerley, We Think the World of You  (NYRB Classics, 2011)
  • Stacey O'Brien, Wesley the Owl  (Atria Books, 2009)
     

Upper Division Courses

Comparative Literature 139. Shakespeare in the Classical World (4 units)
Cheri Ross

MWF 10:00-10:50A
230 Wellman Hall
CRN 73009

Course Description: Shakespeare's representations of the classical world in the light of selected ancient texts and Renaissance conceptions of Antiquity, with special attention to the depiction of politics and history.

Prerequisite: At least one course in literature.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer's Night Dream  (Signet Classics, 1999)
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors  (Signet Classics, 2002)
  • William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens  (Signet Classics, 2005)
     

Comparative Literature 145. Representations of the City (4 units)
Noha Radwan

TR 12:10-1:30P
1128 Bainer Hall
CRN 73796

Course Description: Exploration of the representation of the city in major translated literary texts from a variety of literary traditions and periods. Emphasis on the diversity of urban experience in literature. Topics include public and private space, memory, and gender.

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities, Diversity and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 2 hours; Discussion - 1 hour; Writing.

Textbooks:

  • TBA
     

Comparative Literature 158. The Detective Story as Literature (4 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

TR 3:10-4:30P
167 Olson Hall
CRN 73685

Course Description: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word detective did not appear in the English language until 1842, so we can consider the detective novel a genre of the modern era. What we will do in this course is examine detective fiction, including its origins, stories by canonical mystery writers, as well as detective stories from abroad. Along the way, we shall be exploring the dark recesses of the modern city and the human personality. What fascinates about detective fiction is that as dark as it gets, it still persists in the idea that justice is possible, at least some of the time!

Prerequisite: None.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures, and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Paco Ignacio Taibo II, An Easy Thing  (Poisoned Pen Press, 2002)
  • Michael Stanley, Death of the Mantis  (Harper Perennial Books, 2011)
  • Qiu Xiaolong, Don't Cry Tai Lake  (Minotaur Books, 2012)
  • Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale  (NYRB Classics, 2011)
  • Leonardo Padura, Havana Red  (Bitter Lemon Press, 2005)
  • Edogawa Ramp, The Black Lizard  (Kurodahan Press, 2006)
  • Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl  (NYRB Classics, 2003)
  • Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, The Laughing Policeman  (Vintage Books, 2009)
  • Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon  (Vintage Books, 1989)
  • Andrea Camilleri, The Paper Moon  (Penguin Books, 2008)
     

Comparative Literature 164D. The Enlightenment (4 units)     [Click here to view the flyer!] 
Stefan Uhlig

TR 9:00-10:20A
90 Social Sciences Building
CRN 47321

Course Description: Was it the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that finally brought human beings to their senses – a revolt against authority which taught us to think for ourselves and to abandon prejudice and superstition? Or was its trust in reason, secular authority, and universal principles in fact misguided and oppressive, leading us to disregard the needs of individuals, specific cultural traditions, even the environment? Either way, this European transformation reimagined how the modern world might work. We will examine the key arguments and literary qualities of writers like Daniel Defoe, John Locke, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Jefferson, and end with Daniel Kehlmann’s best-selling Measuring the World – a novel that rethinks the Enlightenment through the lives of the South-American explorer Wilhelm von Humboldt and the legendary mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: A Selected Edition  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
  • Voltaire, Candide and Other Stories, translated by Roger Pearson  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
  • Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World: A Novel  (Vintage Books, 2007)
  • Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe  (Oxford University Press, 2009)
  • The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick  (Penguin Books, 1995)
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and the First and Second Discourses, translated by Susan Dunn  (Yale University Press, 2002)
     

Comparative Literature 180. A Story for a Life: The Arabian Nights (4 units)
Same course as COM 172, MSA 121C, and ARB 140
(If you have not met the listed prerequisite below, please obtain a PTA form from Chris Meares in Sproul Hall 209 to be granted enrollment by Prof. Sharlet)
Jocelyn Sharlet (jcsharlet@ucdavis.edu)

TR 1:40-3:00P
108 Hoagland Hall
CRN 73010

Course Description: This course is an in-depth investigation of the best-known work of pre-modern Arabic literature, The Thousand and One Nights, which is also known as The Arabian Nights in the recent English translations and continues to be popular around the world. All readings and course work will be in English. We will investigate how characters use storytelling to construct multifaceted identity, and to escape danger, justify their actions, and explain losses and gains of wealth or status. Students will explore how storytelling serves as a means to analyze relationships, social conditions and ideas about fate, predestination and free will.  We will also consider the historical context of the circulation of this book, including popular culture, visual culture, and film as well as religion, colonialism, orientalism and nationalism.  In order to place The Arabian Nights in its context in world literature, we will read short selections from other texts from Sanskrit, Urdu, Spanish, English, Italian, and Persian literature.

Short selections from the following texts will be available in a reader or on the website:

- Malcom Lyons, tr., Arabian Nights: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, 3 volumes (the most extensive version of the book)  
- Seventy Tales of the Parrot (Sanskrit)
- Mir Amman, Tale of Four Dervishes (Urdu)
- Boccaccio, Decameron (Italian)
The Wiles of Women (Spanish)
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
- Nizami Ganjavi, Haft Paykar (Bahram Gur) (Persian)

Prerequisite: Completion of Subject A Requirement and one course in literature. If you have not met the listed prerequisite, please obtain a PTA form from Chris Meares in Sproul Hall 209 to be granted enrollment by Prof. Sharlet.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy and edited by Muhsin Mahdi  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
  • The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy and edited by Muhsin Mahdi  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
     

Graduate Courses

Comparative Literature 210. Translation (4 units)
Archana Venkatesan

W 1:10-4:00P
812B Sproul Hall
CRN 73527

Course Description: This course will cover major theories of translation. The emphasis of the course will be on the craft and art of translation, and students will be asked to engage critically with their own translation work. The course will require students to complete an original translation and to draft a short essay reflecting on their approach to translation.

The course will include guest speakers, including the translation editor from University of California Press.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing in Comparative Literature, English, or a foreign-language literature, or consent of instructor (avenkatesan@ucdavis.edu).

Format: Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What it Means, edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky  (Columbia University Press, 2013)
  • The Translation Studies Reader [3rd Edition], edited by Lawrence Venuti  (Routledge Books, 2012)
     

Comparative Literature 255 & 298. Colloquium (2 units each)
Stefan Uhlig

T 2:10-5:00P
822 Sproul Hall
CRN 73011 (2 units)
 and CRN 47463 (2 units)

Course Description: This colloquium serves as an introduction to the disciplinary parameters and opportunities of comparative literary studies. We will review the origins and famously self-critical construction of the field, and look at current arguments and new technologies that look set to define the future. Sessions on the history and theory of comparative literature will alternate with readings focused around basic media and literary forms (narrative, poetics, performance, photography and film). Along the way, we will discuss exemplary comparative scholarship whose questions range from Greece and Rome, via the Latin middle ages, to the literatures of South Asia, India, China, and Japan. The goal will be to think about what makes some research questions (perhaps necessarily) comparative, and how to find the methods that will best address them. Participants will write an eight- to ten-page paper on how what they have read/discussed helps them rethink their current dissertation plans. Students must enroll in both COM 255 and COM 298. (COM 298 is a variable unit course, so please make sure to select 2 units)

Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours.

Textbooks:

  • All texts provided electronically
     

Comparative Literature 390. Teaching Comparative Literature in College (3 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

Course Description: Methods of teaching Comparative Literature with specific application to the introductory courses 001-004, in relation to major cultural and social developments. Also, discussion of ways to teach analytical writing.

Format: Lecture - 1 hour; Discussion - 2 hours.

Textbooks:

  • TBA
     

University Writing Program 392. Teaching Expository Writing (2 units)
Melissa Bender

M 1:10-3:00P
822 Sproul Hall
CRN 73971

Course Description: Discussion of problems related to teaching expository writing at the university level, with special emphasis on teaching reading and writing skills and responding to student papers.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing, appointment as Teaching Assistant in the Composition Program; completion of UWP 390 or the equivalent.

Format: Discussion - 2 hours.

Textbooks:

  • All readings to be posted online