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Catalog Descriptions
Lower Division
COM 001 - Major Works of the Ancient World
Course Description: Introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the major works of the ancient world (up to 5th century CE) such as The Odyssey, the Bible, Augustine's Confessions, and works by Plato and Confucius. Examined genres include religious texts, the epic, philosophy, drama, poetry.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR).- COM 002 - Major Works of the Medieval & Early Modern World
Course Description: Introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the major works of the medieval and early modern worlds (6th century to the mid-17th century) such as Dante’s Comedy, 1001 Nights, The Tale of Genji, and Elizabethan/Jacobean plays. Examined genres include framed narratives, courtly literature, and early modern drama.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR).- COM 003 - Major Works of the Modern World
Course Description: Introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the major works of the modern world (mid-17th to the mid-20th centuries) such as those by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Woolf, Lu Xun, Borges and Yeats. Examined genres include realist fiction, modernist fiction, and modernist poetry.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR).- COM 004 - Major Works of the Contemporary World
Course Description: Comparative study of selected major Western and non-Western texts composed in the period from 1945 to the present. Intensive focus on writing about these texts, with frequent papers written about these works.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR).- COM 005—Fairy Tales, Fables, and Parables | Noah Guynn
- This course offers an introduction to three narrative genres in which seemingly anything can happen: fable (in which animals behave like human beings), parable (in which mundane realities reveals otherworldly truths), and fairy tale (in which both fantasies and nightmares become real). We will explore these genres in a variety of cultural and historical forms. Our primary sources will include folkloric sources, literary narratives, and animated and live action films. We will also discuss a number of secondary sources, including scholarship in literary, historical, cultural, and feminist/queer studies. Throughout the quarter, we will be interested in exploring both the formal properties of our three genres and the ways in which those properties are used to shape and reshape social identities, power relations, moral values, and metaphysical truths. Fables, parables, and fairy tales exist in many cultures and periods and remain popular, even ubiquitous, today. One major impetus for the course will be to ask why we return to these genres so consistently and what they reveal about the predicaments of human existence and our desire to overcome — or at least make sense of — those predicaments.
- COM 007 Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural | Michael Subialka
- Cross the threshold to where dreams become landscapes, monsters reveal hidden fears, and reality bends, doubles, and turns upside down. This course explores fantasy and the supernatural across literature from many countries and eras, along with their echoes in film, visual art, and other media. On this journey, we ask why imagined worlds can seem so powerful, sometimes even more than our own. From parallel worlds and uncanny creatures to artificial intelligence, we examine how fantasy helps us think about identity, fear, desire, and the limits of the human. The only prerequisite is curiosity.
- COM 014 Introduction to Poetry | Stefan Uhlig | New course!
- In many cultural traditions, poetry explores in concentrated form what we may feel or think, imagine or perceive. This course provides an introduction to how even shorter literary texts can speak to us despite their differences from ordinary communication. We will read materials that were composed in different languages and contexts. Hence one central feature of this course will be that, almost every week, we will invite a specialist in languages including Tamil, Latin, French, Italian, Japanese, or Persian to join us in the classroom. Alongside an introduction to poetic writing, this course therefore offers, equally, a window onto studying comparative literature at UC Davis. This course does not have a writing requirement, and your role will be to participate actively in class and help inform our discussion by providing low-stakes feedback notes.
Course Description: Comparative study of poetry in a variety of lyric and other poetic forms from different historical periods and different linguistic, national, and cultural traditions.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR).
Upper Division
- COM 100 World Cinema | Sheldon Lu
This quarter we focus on the rich cinematic traditions of China. We begin with early Chinese cinema and move all the way to the twenty-first century. Students will explore the themes, styles, aesthetics, stars, and socio-political contexts of individual films as well as the evolution of entire film industries. Representative directors and internationally renowned filmmakers will be discussed, such as Wu Yonggang, Sun Yu, Xie Jin, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Ang Lee, Feng Xiaogang, Jia Zhangke, and Xue Xiaolu. We examine Chinese cinema as an outgrowth of indigenous, national roots as well as a necessary response to international film culture. We look at how films engage in social critique and cultural reflection, and how film artists react to the conditions and forces of socialist politics, capitalist economy, tradition, modernization, and globalization in Chinese-speaking regions.
Upper-division standing. The class is conducted in English, and all films are subtitled in English.
The course fulfills General Education Requirements: Arts & Humanities, Visual Literacy, World Cultures, and Writing Experience.- COM 141 Introduction to Critical Theoretical Approaches to Literature & Culture | Stefan Uhlig
- This course provides an introduction to the history and recent place of critical theory in comparative literary studies. We begin by asking what led critics in the 60s and 70s to borrow methods from adjacent disciplines like linguistics, anthropology, or continental philosophy. We pursue this process until the discovery of Paul de Man’s wartime writings seemingly confirmed suspicions about deconstruction. In between, we study questions raised by psychoanalysis, structuralism, Derridean difference, Foucault’s discursive histories, de Manian deconstruction, race, and gender. We conclude this course by testing how our thinking about literary texts, images, and movies may have changed as a result of what we have discussed and read.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR). - COM 153 The Forms of Asian Literature | Sheldon Lu
- For this quarter, the course focuses on modern Chinese literature from the beginning of the 20th century to the present time. Students will read short stories, excerpts of novels and novellas, poems, and essays written by leading Chinese writers. Relevant films will be selected to be shown and discussed in conjunction with literary texts. The class analyzes recurrent themes and topics such as love, death, revolution, war, tradition, city life, modernization, westernization, and globalization. Literary developments in modern China will be examined in broad international contexts. Students are expected to gain a better understanding of the cultural and literary tradition of China as well as important social issues that confront Chinese people in modern times as reflected in literature.
The course fulfills the requirements of Arts and Humanities, World Cultures, and Writing.
Mandatory class attendance, weekly reading assignments, participation in class discussion, book report, midterm paper, and final paper.
Textbooks:
Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt, eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. Columbia University Press, 2007. Available in Canvas course site.
Yunte Huang, ed. The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century. Norton, 2016. Paperback. Equitable access.
Students will also read selected journal essays that can be accessed online in the UC Library System. pdf files or handouts of relevant writings will be provided as well. - COM 166 Literatures of the Modern Middle East | Noha Radwan
In this course we will read 20th century novels from two Arab countries (Sudan and Syria) and from Turkey. Class discussions and writing assignments will focus on social structures and relationships especially those of gender.
The novels for the class are:
1. Season of Migration To The North by Tayeb Salih (Sudan), 1967
2. Cities Without Palms by Tarek ElRayeb (Sudan-Austria) 2009
3. The Calligrapher's Secret by Rafik Schami (Syria-Germany) 2011
4. The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (Turkey- U.K.) 2011
Graduate
- COM 210 Topics/Themes in Comparative Literature | Robert Newcomb
- COM 210 Topics/Themes in Comparative Literature: Gender and Sexuality | Michiko Suzuki
- This course discusses different approaches to gender and sexuality in literature by analyzing modern Japanese texts (early 20th century-present) as a case study. In addition to gaining insight into relevant issues within modern Japanese literature, students will learn about a range of possible approaches to the study of gender and sexuality that will be of use for research in their own national/linguistic areas of literature. We will read specific Japanese texts in English translation together with literary criticism. While this is not intended to be a comprehensive course on literary theory relating to gender/sexuality, it will introduce students to some important theorists writing on the topic. Modules will be organized around specific themes with appropriate readings etc.
- COM 392 Teaching Internship | Cheryl Ross