Spring 2011

Lower Division Courses

COM 1. MAJOR BOOKS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION: THE ANCIENT WORLD (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, TR 10:00-11:50, 101 Wellman) CRN 27466
STAFF (Sec. 2, MW 12:10-2:00, 205 Wellman) CRN 27467
STAFF (Sec. 3, TR 12:10-2:00, 207 Wellman) CRN 53123

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 frequent short papers and take a final examination.

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement. GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, and Wrt (cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously). Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

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

COM 2. MAJOR BOOKS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION: From THE MIDDLES AGES to THE ENLIGHTENMENT (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, MW 12:10-2:050, 211 Wellman) CRN 27468
STAFF (Sec. 2, MW 2:10-4:00, 103 Wellman) CRN 27469
STAFF (Sec. 3, TR 2:10-4:00, 103 Wellman) CRN 27470

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.

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

COM 3. MAJOR BOOKS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION: THE MODERN CRISIS (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, TR 10:00-11:50, 129 Wellman) CRN 27471
STAFF (Sec. 2, TR 12:10-2:00, 211) CRN 27472
STAFF (Sec. 3, MW 10:00-11:50, 125 Wellman) CRN 27473

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.

Readings (vary from section to section):
J.W. von Goethe, Faust (Part One); Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents; Franz Kafka, The Trial; 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.

COM 4. MAJOR BOOKS OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, TR 2:10-4:00, 233 Wellman) CRN 27474 NEW DAY/ TIME/ ROOM
STAFF (Sec. 2, MW 4:10-6:00, 163 Olson) CRN 27475
STAFF (Sec. 3, TR 12:10-2:00, 127 Wellman) CRN 27476

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.

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.

COM 6. MYTH AND LEGEND (4 Units)
Seth Schein, Professor

Lecture: TR 3:10-4:30, 1002 Giedt

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (F 10:00-10:50, 117 Olson) CRN 27484
Sec. 2 (F 12:10-1:00, 192 Young) CRN 27485
Sec. 3 (R 6:10-7:00, 141 Olson) CRN 27486
Sec. 4 (R 5:10-6:00, 141 Olson) CRN 27487
Sec. 5 (M 5:10-6:00, 159 Olson) CRN 27488
Sec. 6 (M 6:10-7:00, 159 Olson) CRN 27489

Course Description: This course is an introductory, comparative study of heroic epics and creation mythology from a variety of societies, with attention both to the cultural specificity of each work and to the generic and other features they have in common.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, and Wrt.

Readings:

Homer and Stanley Lombardo (trans.), Iliad (Hackett)
Hesiod and N.O. Brown (trans.), Theogony (Prentice Hall)
Andrew George (trans.), The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin)
Seamus Heaney (trans.) and Daniel Donoghue (ed.), Beowulf: A Verse Translation (W.W. Norton)
William Buck, The Ramayana (Univ. Of CA Press)
Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (W.W. Norton)
Ferdowsi and D. Davis (trans.), Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings
Enuma Elish
Qur'an (selections)

COM 7. LITERATURE OF FANTASY AND THE SUPERNATURAL (4 Units)
Neil Larsen, Professor

Lecture: TR 4:40-6:00, 1322 Storer

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (M 4:10-5:00, 141 Olson) CRN 53265
Sec. 2 (M 5:10-6:00, 141 Olson) CRN 53266
Sec. 3 (T 7:10-8:00, 105 Olson) CRN 53267 NEW TIME & ROOM
Sec. 4 (T 6:10-7:00, 105 Olson) CRN 53268
Sec. 5 (F 10:00-10:50, 293 Kerr) CRN 53269
Sec. 6 (F 11:00-11:50, 105 Olson) CRN 53270

Course Description: The literature of fantasy and the supernatural, although often transporting the reader into another world or a distant past, is a product of modern, urban society. In its Western variations, it dates from not much earlier than the 19th century. The urge for fantasy assumes the existence of a dominant literary realism, and the taste for the supernatural rests on the broad, secular disbelief in its existence. This course will explore this historical and cultural dynamic through a variety of literary texts and films, including works by E.T.A. Hoffmann; Sigmund Freud; Edgar Allen Poe; Lewis Carroll; Henry James; Franz Kafka; Jorge Luis Borges; and Ryunosoke Akutagawa. Films to be viewed include F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu; Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast; and Hideo Nakata's Ringu. Comparative Literature 7 is an Introductory General Education course in Civilization and Culture.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, and Wrt.

Course Flyer: Click (HERE).

Readings:

Henry James, Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction
Edgar Allan Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe
Carroll Lewis, Alice's Adventure in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories

COM 10N. MASTER AUTHORS IN WORLD LITERATURE (2 Units)
STAFF

Lecture/Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (M 2:10-4:00, 209 Wellman) CRN 27490
Sec. 2 (T 10:00-11:50, 211 Wellman) CRN 27491

Course Description: This course is 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. Authors that will be studied, but not limited to: Rilke/Yeats, Joyce/Woolf, Mann/Céline, Bulgakov/Tanizaki, O’Neill/Brecht, Lorca/Pirandello.

Readings:

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Sergei Dovlatov, The Suitcase: A Novel

COM 20. HUMANS AND THE NATURAL WORLD (4 Units)
Scott McLean, Lecturer
(TR 3:10-4:30, 125 Olson) CRN 27492

Course Description: You will read some of the foundational books in the Environmental movement - including Henry David Thoreau's Walden, in its entirety. But we will also read books that often are not seen as part of this history, including Colin Turnbull's Forest People and the Cuban novel, The Lost Steps, as well as, a range of poetry, from Virgil to Whitman.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Readings:

Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds
Carpenter, Lost Steps
Thoreau, Week, Walden, Maine Woods, Cape Cod
Muir, John Muir: Nature Writings
Turnbull, Forest People
Torrance, Encompassing Nature

Upper Division Courses

COM 140. THEMATIC AND STRUCTURAL STUDY OF LITERATURE: Literature of the Supernatural (4 Units)
Kari Lokke, Professor
(TR 9:00-10:20, 1134 Bainer) CRN 53126

Course Description: Interpretation of selected works illustrating the historical evolution of themes, as well as, of formal and structural elements. May be repeated for credit when substance of course varies.

Topic: "Literature of the Supernatural"

A survey of literature of the supernatural in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe including such genres as the Gothic novel, the conte fantastique (fantastic tale) and the Kunstmärchen (art fairy tale). We will study recurring figures such as the double, the revenant, and the mermaid, and prominent themes such as transgressive sexuality, feminist challenges to patriarchal structures of the family, the blurring of the boundaries between self and other, and the undermining of hierarchies of the real and unreal.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Readings:

Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto
Ann Radcliffe, Sicilian Romance
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
De la Motte Fouque, Undine
ETA Hoffman, Tales of ETA Hoffman
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil

COM 152. LITERATURE OF AMERICAS (4 Units)
Neil Larsen, Professor
(TR 12:10-1:30, 261 Olson) CRN 53290

Course Description: The Americas stretch from the Arctic regions of Canada to the Straits of Magellan, with a history dating back literally tens of thousands of years, to the first crossings of the ice age land bridge at the Baring Strait by tribal nomads. How, then, to teach a course on its "literature" in a mere ten weeks? One way - to be put into practice in this course - is to start with the one most decisive shared historical reality of the Americas - colonization - and trace the literary genealogy of the colonial and its aftermath as these diverge more and more radically along a South/North axis, resulting in what has now become an imperial, neo-colonizing North (the United States) and a neo-colonized, "underdeveloped" South (Latin America and the Caribbean). As this history unfolds, however, the literature of the Americas does something seemingly paradoxical: with major exceptions, of course, it gradually declines in the imperial North after reaching a high point in the 19th century. Meanwhile, without ceasing to look to the metropolitan North, literature blossoms in the 20th and 21st century South. To further explore this genealogical pattern, we will read a selection of (mostly narrative) works, to include the following: Mark Twain's great 19th century classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); the Trinidadian V.S. Naipaul's brilliant short comic novel, The Mystic Masseur (1957); the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa's historical novel about the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, The Feast of the Goat (2000); a short, experimental novel, Nazi Literature in the Americas (1996) by the late Chilean writer and "enfant terrible" Roberto Bolaño; and, as one of many exception-proving rules, the Harlem Renaissance classic, Jean Toomer's Cane (1923). These five novels will be supplemented by very short readings (short fiction and/or poetry from Poe, Whitman, Henry James, Faulkner and Morrison to Martí, Darío, Machado de Assis, Derek Walcott, César Vallejo, and others); a limited selection of critical literature (Roberto Schwarz, Michael Denning, Franco Moretti, et. al.); three films: Vidas secas (1963; Brazil; dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos); Lucía (1969: Cuba; dir. Humberto Solás) and La ciénaga (2003; Argentina; dir. Lucrecia Martel); and, in yet another major exception to the North/South aesthetic inversion, several episodes of the pathbreaking HBO television series, The Wire. Students will, whenever possible, be encouraged to read works in the original Spanish, Portuguese or (in the case of the Caribbean) French.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Course Flyer: Click (HERE).

Readings:

Roberto Bolano, Nazi Literature in the Americas
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feat of the Goat
V.S. Naipaul, The Mystic Masseur
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Jean Toomer, Cane

COM 167. COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MAJOR AUTHORS - Dante (4 Units)
Brenda Schildgen, Professor
(TR 10:30-11:50, 1007 Giedt) CRN 53803

Course Description: The major author studied in this course will be Dante, with selected readings in the Vita Nuova (1298) and Monarchia (1312?). The focus will be the Divine Comedy. We will also read parts of Virgil's Aeneid (Book 4 and 6) and parts of the Song of Songs from the Hebrew Bible.

Attendance, participation, reading, two five-page papers, and a final exam (which is equal to another five-page paper) are required components of this class. Possible topics for essays include Dante and the ancient world (poetry, philosophy, or politics); Dante and nature; Dante and interpretive strategies; Dante and the visual arts; reception of Dante (by poets, writers, artists, etc. in any period, any culture, any language); Dante outside the medieval context; Dante's imagery; and whatever else you can imagine.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Readings:

Dante, Inferno. Translated by Anthony Esolen (Random, 2005)
Dante, Paradise. Translated by Anthony Esolen (Random, 2004)
Dante, Purgatory. Translated by Anthony Esolen (Random, 2004)

COM 168A. ROMANTICISM (4 Units)
Scott McLean, Lecturer
(TR 12:10-2:00, 101 Olson) CRN 27501

Course Description: This is an introduction to the Romantic movement with emphasis upon Romantic concepts of the self, irony, love, the imagination and artistic creativity, and the relationship of the individual to nature and society. Romanticism as a historical movement began in Germany and England and then spread to France, Italy, Spain, Russia and the USA. Romanticism is a quintessentially international movement that came into being as an almost worldwide response to such cultural and sociopolitical events as the French Revolution, the abolitionist movement, the stirrings of first wave feminism and the colonialist enterprises of the major European powers. This course will expose students to the works of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads and Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther that portray the price paid by Europeans for the rise of urbanization and industrialization at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Readings:

Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose
Clare, I Am
Wordsworth, Essential Wordsworth
Rousseau, Reveries of Solitary Walker
Coleridge, Selected Poems
Shelley, Frankenstein
Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Holderlin, Hyperion and Selected Poems
Keats, Essential Keats
Wordsworth, Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals
Rothenberg, Poems for the Millennium, Volume 3

COM 180. TOPICS IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE - Writing Catastrophe: Violence, Resistance, and the Literary Form in 20th Century Jewish Literature (4 Units)
Shaul Setter, Visiting Instructor
(TR 4:40-6:00, 251 Olson) CRN 53127

Course Description: Study of a selected topic or topics appropriate to student and faculty interests and areas of specialization of the instructor. May be repeated one time for credit when the topic differs.

Topic: "Writing Catastrophe: Violence, Resistance, and the Literary Form in 20th Century Jewish Literature"

It sometimes seems that we live in an era whose main feature is a sense of a continuous catastrophe: ecological disasters, demographic crises, a constant political state of emergency. But this, in itself, is not new. Eric Hobsbawm has famously characterized the 20th century as "The Age of Extremes," in which wars, genocides, the uprooting of entire populations, and legions of rightless and dispossessed people are, in fact, the rule; Jews were oftentimes seen as the paradigmatic protagonist of these events.

In this course we will read both literary and theoretical works which are informed, in various ways, by 20th century rich history of political catastrophe, violence, and resistance, and ask how these events affect the forms of writing, discursive practices, and textual operations of the works themselves. We will discuss the apparatus of violence and its marks on the body, inflicting violence on others and bearing witness to it, states of loss and the endless work of mourning, speech and collectivity in the face of catastrophe, and different possibilities for political resistance in and outside poetic language. We'll read works by Franz Kafka, S. Yizhar, Paul Celan, Adrienne Rich, Sigmund Freud, Maurice Blanchot, Albert Memmi, and Marc Nichanian, among others.

Shaul Setter is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. He works on 20th century Hebrew and French texts and on literary and political theory. His dissertation, "The Departure from History: Writing at the Ends of Literature in Israel/Palestine," explores dissident concepts of history, historiography, and literary historiography in the face of political collapse. For any inquiries, contact him at &#115haulse

@berkeley.edu.

GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Readings:

S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-1972
Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of Disaster

COM 195. SENIOR SEMINAR IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: The Gothic (4 Units)
Kari Lokke, Professor
(R 12:10-3:00, 822 Sproul) CRN 53129

Course Description: Advanced comparative study of selected topics and texts, with explicit emphasis on the theoretical and interpretive approaches that define Comparative Literature as a discipline and distinguish it from other literary disciplines. May be repeated one time for credit when topic differs.

Topic: "The Gothic"

An examination of the Gothic in Romantic fiction, drama, and poetry from Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance to George Eliot's The Lifted Veil. We will begin by posing the question of the relations of the Gothic and the Romantic, asking whether Anne Williams is correct, in Art of Darkness, in asserting that Gothic narratives mark the birth of the Romantic, indeed that the Gothic and the Romantic are one. We will also study the Gothic as a response to the French Revolution and to the rise of middle class conceptions of marriage and the family. The related question of the Gothic as a vehicle for giving expression to transgressive sexualities will also be a central concern of our discussions. Although our primary focus will be Gothic fiction, we will also study Gothic drama and poetry, both that written by the canonical male Romantic poets and non-canonical works written by women. Theoretical texts from the following authors, among others: Eve Sedgwick, Ronald Paulson, Julia Kristeva, Kate Ellis, Rosemary Jackson, Anne Williams, Michael Gamer, Helen Moglen. Primary works by Radcliffe, Tieck, Austen, Coleridge, Percy Shelley, E.T.A. Hoffmann, James Hogg, L.E.L., Nerval, George Eliot.

Readings:

Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto
Ann Radcliffe, Sicilian Romance
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
De la Motte Fouque, Undine
ETA Hoffman, Tales of ETA Hoffman
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil

Graduate Courses

COM 210. TOPICS AND THEMES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: The Courtesan in Literature (4 Units)
Archana Venkatesan, Assistant Professor
(W 3:10-6:00, 822 Sproul) CRN 27536

Course Description: This course focuses on the figure of the courtesan and her representation in literature. The approach is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. The first half of the course will focus on courtesan cultures in South Asia. In the second half of the class, we will focus on works suggested by the participants in the seminar.

Readings:

Acharya, Diwakar. Trans. The Little Clay Cart. Shudraka. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Azfar, Amina. Trans. The Courtesan's Quarter. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Feldman, Martha and Bonnie Gordon. The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-cultural Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Kannabiran, Kalpana and Vasant Kannabiran. Trans. Web of Deceit: Devadasi Reform in Colonial India. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003.
Matthews, David. Trans. Umrao Jan Ada. Mirza Muhammad Hadi Rusva. New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 1996.
A Reader (it will be available at the Davis Copy Shop 1 week prior to the beginning of class. Once the reader is ready, I will send out an email to inform the registered students that it is available for pick-up. )

COM 396. TEACHING INTERNSHIP IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN COLLEGE

Olga Stuchebrukhov, Associate Professor of Russian (Sec. 1, CRN TBA)
Seth Schein, Professor (Sec. 2, CRN TBA)
Neil Larsen, Professor (Sec. 3, CRN TBA)