Fall 2017

Lower Division Courses

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

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

 001

 Linda Matheson

 MW 2:10-4:00P

 1342 Storer Hall

 36569

 002

 Deborah Young

 TR 12:10-2:00P

 267 Olson Hall

 36570

 003

 Cloe LeGall-Scoville  MW 10:00-11:50A  1132 Bainer Hall  36571

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)

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

 001

 James Straub

 MW 12:10-2:00P

 1134 Bainer Hall

 36572

 002

 Megan Ammirati  TR 2:10-4:00P  27 Wellman Hall  36573

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)

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

 001

 Linda Matheson

 MW 10:00-11:50A

 1020 Wickson Hall

 36575

 002

 Jeremy Konick-Seese

 TR 12:10-2:00P

 209 Wellman Hall

 36576

 004

 Zhen Zhang  MW 2:10-4:00P  293 Kerr Hall  62388

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)

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

 001

 Sean Sell

 MW 2:10-4:00P

 1020 Wickson Hall

 36578

 002

 Cloe LeGall-Scoville

 MW 4:10-6:00P

 209 Wellman Hall

 36579

 003

 Carmine Morrow  TR 2:10-4:00P  163 Olson Hall  36580

 004

 Amy Riddle  TR 10:00-11:50A  108 Hoagland Hall  36581

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, Social-Cultural 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 006. Myths and Legends (4 units)
Cheryl Ross

Lecture:
TR 3:10-4:30P
180 MedSci Building

Discussion Sections:

Disc. Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

 001

 K. Gove

 W 5:10-6:00P

 141 Olson Hall

 63145

 002

 K. Gove

 W 6:10-7:00P

 141 Olson Hall

 63146

 003

 C. Ackerman

 R 5:10-6:00P

 101 Wellman Hall

 63147

 004

 C. Ackerman

 R 6:10-7:00P  101 Wellman Hall

 63148

 005

 T. Wang

 F 10:00-10:50A  113 Hoagland Hall

 63149

 006

 T. Wang

 F 11:00-11:50A  113 Hoagland Hall

 63150

Course Description: Myths and legends are the most ancient and yet most influential stories worldwide. In different ways, myths and legends express ideas about being human in relationship to phenomena and experiences higher and greater than the mundane: connecting everyday experience both to metaphysical realms and to the natural world.  Myths and legends also express deep thought about the complexities of human experience: moral values and obligations (often conflicting ones), insiders and outsiders, individual and community. These stories have inspired countless adaptations of literature and visual arts (and, more recently, film). In this course we will investigate a selection of myths and legends along with some later reworkings of these stories. We will also explore some major analytic approaches to such texts and practice our own interpretive and argumentative skills on these compelling, foundational works.

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbooks:

  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein  (Penguin Classics, 2003)
  • Anonymous, Gilgamesh: A New English Version, translated by Stephen Mitchell  (Atria Books, 2006)

Comparative Literature 007. Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural (4 units)
Michael Subialka

Lecture:
TR 12:10-1:30P
180 MedSci Building

Discussion Sections:

Disc. Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

 001

 M. Rajagopalan

 R 7:10-8:00P

 1120 Hart Hall

 63151

 002

 M. Rajagopalan

 R 8:10-9:00P

 1120 Hart Hall

 63152

 003

 K. Proehl

 M 4:10-5:00P

 115 Wellman Hall

 63153

 004

 K. Proehl

 M 5:10-6:00P

 115 Wellman Hall

 63154

 005

 X. Shao

 F 10:00-10:50A

 1134 Bainer Hall

 63155

 006

 X. Shao

 F 11:00-11:50A

 1132 Bainer Hall

 63156

Course Description: Wizard dreamers, monsters of imagination, parallel worlds inverted, crossing, and upside-down… the literature of fantasy has long been a place for our mind to unravel its most unusual and troubled thoughts. This course delves into categories of literature that sit in an uneasy relationship with our everyday reality. Many authors have constructed elaborate fantasy worlds that run parallel to, underneath, outside of, or even crisscross with our world: from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl. Other authors have focused on supernatural powers as a sometimes monstrous extension of human imagination. We see this in the elaborate stories of magic, fate, and psychological horror by authors such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Théophile Gautier, and Jorge Luis Borges. We likewise see it in tales of monsters that reflect us in a strange, distorted mirror, from Hungarian vampire stories and their 19th-century re-writings to the emergence of Godzilla or contemporary tales of the Slender Man. This class will examine literary texts in conjunction with their reverberations across media, including the fantasy space of World of Warcraft, Tim Burton’s re-imagining of Wonderland, Guillermo del Toro’s monstrous fantasy in Pan’s Labyrinth, and contemporary television’s take on the fantasy world, Stranger Things. Looking across cultures, time periods, and media, we will investigate ways in which fantasy and the supernatural mirror, distort, and reconfigure our perception of the world.

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbooks:

  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring  (Mariner Books, 1966)
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass  (Oxford University Press, 2009)
  • Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl, translated by D.P. Costello  (Grove Press, 2010)

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

TR 9:00-10:20A
1344 Storer Hall
CRN 62396

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)
  • The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings, edited by Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald  (Bloomsbury Academic, 2007)
  • J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace  (Penguin Books, 2008)
  • Fred Gipson, Old Yeller  (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009)
  • Colette, Gigi and the Cat  (Vintage Classics, 2001)
  • 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)
  • W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog's Purpose  (Forge Books, 2011)

Comparative Literature 141. Introduction to Comparative Critical Theory (4 units)      [Cross-listed with CRI 101]
Stefan Uhlig

TR 9:00-10:20A
1128 Hart Hall
CRN 62397

Course Description: This course provides an introduction to some basic intellectual challenges of complex texts and works in other media. With Jonathan Culler’s Literary Theory as our guide, each week will feature primary works in dialogue with readings drawn from influential theorists. Students will write a set of short responses and a final project paper. Our primary examples will be drawn from the works of Marina Abramović, Samuel Beckett, Alfred Hitchock, Franz Kafka, and William Wordsworth.

Prerequisite: One upper division literature course or consent of instructor (shuhlig@ucdavis.edu).

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.

Textbook:

  • Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction [2nd Edition]  (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Comparative Literature 160A. The Modern Novel (4 units)
Timothy Parrish

TR 12:10-1:30P
1120 Hart Hall
CRN 62398

Course Description: In its ongoing experimentation with the creation of self, form, and narrative, the modern novel can be said to go through Proust (Swann’s Way) and Kafka (The Trial). For Proust, the narrative act reveals the self as an ongoing process of recreation. For Kafka, the self comes into form through the surveillance of an outside agency, be it G-d or the state. Confronting the horrifying major historical events of the twentieth century, Clarice Lispector (Passion According to G.H.) and Bohumil Hrabal (Too Loud a Solitude) move between these two poles by enacting harrowing, yet often hilarious, accounts of consciousness. The aftermath of the Holocaust, Sebald (The Emigrants) raises the ghosts of the Holocaust while revising Proust’s account of memory. For Vladimir Nabokov (Real Life of Sebastian Knight) or Muriel Spark (The Comforters), narrative is playful and reality permeable, though perhaps bound by some force greater than the narrator can name. The reader, who she is and how his reading shapes the text, will stimulate our discussions with the assumption, always, that literature is fun and reading an act of discovery. Required: Two shortish essays, one longish paper, attendance and discussion.

Prerequisite: None.

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:

  • Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude, translated by Michael Henry Heim  (Mariner Books, 1992)
  • Franz Kafka, The Trial, translated by Breon Mitchell  (Schocken Books, 1999)
  • Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H., translated by Idra Novey  (New Directions Books, 2012)
  • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way, Vol. 1, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin  (Modern Library Classics, 2003)
  • Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight  (New Directions Books, 2008)
  • W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants, translated by Michael Hulse  (New Directions Books, 2016)
  • Muriel Spark, The Comforters  (New Directions Books, 2014)

Comparative Literature 167. Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy (4 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

R 4:10-7:00P
104 Sproul Hall
CRN 62400

Course Description: No two works have experienced the world-wide reception experienced by the two works on which this seminar focuses. Their works have been recast in various forms in literature, art, music, and now popular culture (comic books, video games, popular music, etc.) over the last two millennia. This is not a course designed for classicists or medievalists, although they are welcome and will learn a great deal. Rather, because both works have influenced artistic expression, especially since the nineteenth century, this is a course that will enrich the studies of modernists, art historians, historians, and literature students, especially those in English, Italian, and German. Dante’s Comedy has been translated into just about every modern literary language. Cary’s English translation appeared in the early nineteenth century, then came French soon thereafter, and then all the European languages. In the twentieth century the poem has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, etc. From Cervantes to Milton to Blake, to Coleridge, Goethe, and Victor Hugo, to Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Melville, to Sri Aurobindo, one of India’s great philosophers of the twentieth century, to Joyce, Eliot, Poind, and Beckett, or Carpentier, Borges, J.M. Coetze and Derek Wolcot, among countless others, we find allusions and echoes of both Virgil and Dante. In fine art, from Michelangelo to Delacroix to Rodin, Salvador Dali, Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, we find the stamp of Dante.

Virgil’s Aeneid, along with Ovid’s Metamorphosis are the two most important literary texts throughout Latin antiquity and through to the nineteenth century in Europe. Dante, as writer of theCommedia, was the first vernacular poet recognized by literary commentary. This seminar examines the place of Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Commedia in world literature. Because this course will very specifically focus on close reading of these pivotal literary texts that belong to a world republic of letters, we hope to accomplish three things: first, we spend three weeks on reading Virgil’s Aeneid; second, we spend five weeks on reading Dante’s Comedy; third, we have class presentations on research papers.

Latin and Italian are useful, but not required. Students with an interest in the Western literary tradition, translation, the formation of canon, and counter-canon, as well as the dynamics of empire, nation, and transnationalism and the role of literary works in this trajectory will benefit from this course. Seminar format. Each week, we would like a short response paper on the week’s assigned readings. The seminar paper will be due on the scheduled day and time of the final exam.

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor (bdschildgen@ucdavis.edu).

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:

  • TBA
     

Comparative Literature 170. The Contemporary Novel (4 units)
Noha Radwan

TR 3:10-4:30P
263 Olson Hall
CRN 63207

Course Description: This course will explore the contemporary (20thcentury) novel as it travels outside of Europe and the U.S. Through readings and discussions of a selection of the most highly acclaimed fiction from the Middle East, India, South Africa, and Mexico, the class will explore the diverse ways in which the novel becomes “world literature.”. Rather than comparing these novels to their European contemporaries, class discussions will focus on the formal, stylistic, and thematic features that make them representative literary voices of their own social contexts.
 
Course requirements:

 Five 1-page book responses  35%
 Participation in online discussions  15%
 One class presentation  10%
 Participation in class discussion  15%
 Final paper (7-10 pages, topics TBA)  25%

This class will not have a final exam. Paper will be due on date of exam (12/12) by 5:00pm.

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:

  • J.M. Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K.  (Penguin Books, 1985)
  • Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden  (Grove Press, 1994)
  • S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh, translated by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)
  • Sonallah Ibrahim, The Committee  (Syracuse University Press, 2001)
  • Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North,  translated by Denys Johnson-Davies  (New York Review Books Classics, 2009)
  • R.K. Narayan, The Guide  (Penguin Classics, 2006)

Graduate Courses

Comparative Literature 210 [Section 001]. Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy (4 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

R 4:10-7:00P
104 Sproul Hall
CRN 36640

Course Description: Companion course to COM 167 for graduate students. (please see course description of Comparative Literature 167)

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

Format: Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • TBA
     

Comparative Literature 210 [Section 002]. Literature of the Holocaust (4 units)      [Cross-listed with GER 297]
Sven-Erik Rose

M 1:10-4:00P
3 Wellman Hall
CRN 63306

Course Description: TBA

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

Format: Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • TBA 
     

Comparative Literature 255. Proseminar: Comparative Literature: Past, Present, Future (4 units)
Stefan Uhlig

T 2:10-5:00P
123 Wellman Hall
CRN 62402

Course Description: This colloquium provides an introduction to the challenges and opportunities of comparative literary studies. We will review the origins and famously self-critical construction of the field, and look at arguments about the future of the discipline. 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.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing. Restricted to graduate students.

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

Textbooks:

  • TBA
     

Professional Courses

Comparative Literature 390. Teaching Comparative Literature in College (4 units)
Cheri Ross

Enrollees will be informed of schedule, meeting location and CRN.

Course Description: Discussion of the theory and practice of teaching composition at the college level in a department of comparative literature in relation to major cultural and social developments and with specific application to the introductory courses COM 001, 002, 003 and 004. (S/U grading only)

Prerequisite: Appointment as a Comparative Literature Associate Instructor or consent of instructor (cross@ucdavis.edu). Restricted to graduate students.

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

Textbooks:

  • TBA