Spring 2014

Lower Division Courses

COM 1. MAJOR BOOKS OF WESTERN CULTURE: THE ANCIENT WORLD (4 units)

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.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

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

GE Credits (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE Credits (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).

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 CULTURE: FROM THE MIDDLES AGES TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT (4 units)

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.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

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

GE Credits (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE Credits (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).

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 CULTURE: THE MODERN CRISIS (4 units)

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.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

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

GE Credits (Old): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
GE Credits (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).

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)

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.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

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

GE Credits (Old): Arts & Humanities, Domestic Diversity, and Writing Experience.
GE Credits (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).

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 5. FAIRY TALES (4 units) 
Shannon Hays

Lecture: TR 3:10-4:30P, 1002 Giedt

Discussion Sections:

Course Description: This course investigates fables, fairy tales, and parables that have circulated widely in world culture from ancient to modern times. We will explore the dynamics of each type of story using examples from a range of cultures. We will examine how fairy tales portray individual development in the context of the family, fables depict social hierarchy and resistance to it, and parables convey spiritual transformation.

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

Prerequisite: None.

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

Textbooks:

• The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar  (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999)
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray  (Modern Library, 1998)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One, translated by David Luke  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Andrea Lunsford, EasyWriter [5th Edition]  (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013)
   

---

COM 7. LITERATURE OF THE FANTASY AND THE SUPERNATURAL (4 units)
Neil Larsen

Lecture: TR 12:10-1:30P, 1002 Giedt

Discussion Sections:

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. Comparative Literature 7 is an Introductory General Education course in Civilization and Culture.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Discussion 1 hour.

Prerequisite: None.

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

Textbooks:

• Edgar Allen Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allen Poe  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004)
• Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass  (Penguin Classics, 2003)
• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction  (Bantam Classics, 1981)
   

---

COM 10J. MASTER AUTHORS: FLAUBERT, TWAIN, TURGENEV, GALDÓS, IBSEN (2 units)
Myha Do

Course Description: We veil ourselves; this much we know. We reveal sides of our identities to certain people and screen them from others. Our masks and personas personify our social, cultural and political roles, which we perform in order to negotiate the self and its interactions with the social world.

Hence, we mask, sublimate and suppress that what we are into pseudo-identities, alien even to ourselves.

In this course, we will explore the idea of masks and consider issues of contradictory struggles for identity. We will survey a range of works from authors such as Charles Dickens, Gaston Leroux, MG Lewis, George Eliot, as well as several others.

COM10J is a 2-unit P/NP course and is designed primarily 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. Grades are based on participation, quizzes, reading responses and a final exam.

Required Texts:
Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera
Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk
Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

(Shorter readings will be available on smartsite)

Grading: PASS/NO PASS (P/NP) ONLY.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 2 hours.

Prerequisite: None.

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

Textbooks:

• Matthew Lewis, The Monk  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations  (Penguin Classics, 2002)
• Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, translated by Mireille Ribiere  (Penguin Classics, 2012)
   

---

COM 53B. LITERATURE OF INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA (3 units)
Archana Venkatesan

MWF 10:00-10:50A
207 Wellman
CRN 42755

Course Description: This course is a broad survey of the literature and literary cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Taking conflict as a central theme, we will examine the poetry, short stories, and novels from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Cambodia.

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

Prerequisite: None.

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

Textbooks:

• Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy  (Mariner Books, 1997)
• Sivadasa, The Five-and-Twenty Tales of the Genie, translated by Chandra Rajan  (Penguin Classics, 2007)
• Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind, translated by Max Lane  (Penguin Books, 1996)
• U Sam Oeur with Ken McCullough, Crossing Three Wildernesses  (Coffee House Press, 2005)
• Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies  (Picador, 2009)
• A Course Reader
   

---

Upper Division Courses

COM 138. GENDER AND INTERPRETATION IN THE RENAISSANCE (4 units)  [Cross-listed with ITA 141]
Juliana Schiesari

TR 12:10-1:30P
107 Wellman
CRN 43869

Course Description: This course touches on critical analysis of Renaissance texts with primary focus on issues such as human dignity, education, and gender politics; "high" and "low" culture and its relation to literary practices. It focuses on the culture of the Renaissance and the question of what it means to be human. Considering the importance of the human being as a focus of Renaissance thought, we will study both theoretical and literary texts that deal specifically with education of boys and girls, the "Querelle des femmes" (A question of women), thus gender and its reception and interpretation. We will also draw upon literary texts that actively engage in the question of male and female sexuality.

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

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement, at least one course in literature, or consent of instructor.

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

Textbooks:

• Gaspara Stampa, Gaspara Stampa: Selected Poems, translated by Marie Prentice Lillie  (Italica Press, 2008)
• Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, translated by Guido Waldman  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, translated by Charles S. Singleton  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2002)
   

---

COM 141. INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORY (4 units)  [Cross-listed with CRI 101]
Neil Larsen

TR 9:00-10:20A
244 Olson
CRN 42720

Course Description: This course introduces students to the basic concepts and methods of critical and literary theory. Drawing on Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction, selections from primary works by theorists from Marx and Freud to Benjamin and Foucault, and taking up the contributions of areas such as feminist and film theory, the class will explore the theoretical ramifications of a small group of literary and cultural texts, including Shakespeare's King Lear; Hitchcock's classic film, Vertigo; and a contemporary work of fiction to be announced in class. Students will be asked to write a series of guided essays, culminating in a final project of theoretical analysis centered on pre-determined text.

Format: Lecture/Discussion 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: One upper division literature course or consent of instructor.

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

Textbooks:

• William Shakespeare, King Lear  (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
• Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction [3rd Edition]  (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
   

---

COM 146. MYTH IN LITERATURE (4 units)
William Scott McLean

TR 1:40-3:00P
205 Wellman
CRN 42728

Course Description: Comparative study of different versions of one or more central myths, with attention to their cultural settings, artistic and literary forms of representation, as well as to their psychological dimensions.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: COM 6 recommended.

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

Textbooks:

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I & II, translated by Stuart Atkins  (Princeton University Press, 1994)
• Friedrich Holderlin, Hyperion and Selected Poems  (Bloomsbury Academic, 1990)
• Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus, translated by Robert Fagles  (Penguin Classics, 1984)
• Homer, The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles  (Penguin Books, 1991)
• Gary Snyder, Myths and Texts  (New Directions, 1978)
   

---

COM 147. MODERN JEWISH WRITERS; IDENTITY, HOME AND EXILE (4 units)  
Emily Foss

TR 12:10-1:30P
261 Olson
CRN 43812

Course Description: This course will explore the diversity of modern Jewish literature with attention to the themes of identity, home, and exile.  We will begin with a general survey of modern Jewish writings from around the world, including Hebrew poetry, Yiddish theater, and Ladino folk tales.  These readings will be interpreted as literary pieces in their own right and against the cultural and historical reality of the authors.  The second part of the course will be dedicated to autobiographical literature by authors who experienced the Holocaust, and will similarly highlight the diversity of these writings.  In addition to class readings, a screening of the film Nowhere in Africa is planned, as well as a visit from a guest speaker.  All readings will be in English translation.

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

Prerequisite: Completion of Entry-Level Writing (formerly Subject A) Requirement and one lower division literature course.

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

Textbooks:

• Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz  (Touchstone, 1995)
• Helen Epstein, Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History  (Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2005)
• Stefanie Zweig, Somewhere in Germany: An Autobiographical Novel, translated by Marlies Comjean  (Terrace Books, 2006)
   

---

COM 155. CLASSICAL LITERATURES OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD 600-1800 (4 units)
Jocelyn Sharlet

TR 12:10-1:30P  (Note: 1:40-2:00pm session is optional; if students wish to enroll in a course beginning at 1:40pm then they should see Chris Meares in 211 Sproul for a PTA code)
129 Wellman
CRN 42729

Course Description: This course explores ideas about history, love, politics, gender, ethnicity, religion and philosophy in major works of literature in translation from Arabic and Persian as well as Urdu and Ottoman Turkish, including poetry, stories, epic, romance, the frame tale, and the essay. Emphasis will be on the relationship between elite and popular culture and the development of themes, concepts and stories in diverse cultural contexts. We will also investigate the role of these works in world literature both within and beyond the Islamic World.

Readings will include selections from the following books in a course reader or on smartsite:

Jayyusi, Classical Arabic Stories
Van Gelder, Classical Arabic Literature
Poetry by Hafez (tr. Bly and Lewison) and Ibn ‘Arabi (tr. Sells)
Ottoman Lyric Poetry, tr. Andrews, Kalpakli and Black
Arabian Nights tr. Husain Haddawy
Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings tr. Dick Davis
Ibn al-Muqaffa’, The Fables of Kalilah and Dimnah, tr. Saleh Sa’adeh Jallad
Ikhwan al-Safa’, The Case of the Animals Versus Man Before the King of the Jinn, tr. Goodman

The following books are to be purchased/rented from the UC Davis Bookstore for class:

Lakhnavi and Bilgrami, The Adventures of Amir Hamza (special abridged edition) tr. Farooqi
Nizami, The Story of Layla and Majnun, tr. Gelpke
Rumi, The Masnavi, Book One, tr. Jawid Mojaddedi

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

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

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

Textbooks:

• Rumi, The Masnavi, Book One, translated by Jawid Mojaddedi  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Nizami, The Story of Layla and Majnun, translated by Rudolf Gelpke  (Omega Publications, 1996)
• Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami, The Adventures of Amir Hamza [Special Abridged Edition], translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi  (Modern Library, 2012)
   

---

COM 195. UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA IN WORLD LITERATURE (4 units) 
Noha Radwan

M 2:10-5:00P
102 Hutchison
CRN 17580

Course Description: To imagine an ideal society has been an occupation of writers and artists since ancient times. In 1516, English social philosopher, Thomas More, wrote Utopia. More’s “good-place,” or no-place,” would give a new name to an older genre. It also gave it some new characteristics, as did many of those who wrote later ‘Utopias’. What inspires Utopian literature? And what is at work in shaping the Utopian imaginary, a political project par excellence that nonetheless points to the end of the ‘political’ as we know it? How is Utopian literature related to Dystopian literature? How are both related to the historical moments of their writing and to the present? This seminar will investigate these questions through reading primary literature as well as critical and theoretical writings on the subject. Additional reading material not included in the list below will be provided electronically by the instructor. Students will be expected to complete 2 short writing assignments during the course of the quarter. The assignments could be incorporated into the final paper, due during exam week.

Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: Senior standing as a Comparative Literature major or minor or consent of instructor.

GE Credits (Old): None.
GE Credit (New): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.

Textbooks:

• P.D. James, Children of Men  (Vintage, 2006)
• José Saramago, The Cave, translated by Margaret Jull Costa  (Mariner Books, 2003)
• William Morris, News from Nowhere and Other Writings  (Penguin Classics, 1994)
   

---

Graduate Courses

COM 210. UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA IN WORLD LITERATURE (4 units) 
Noha Radwan

M 2:10-5:00P
102 Hutchison
CRN 17604

Course Description: To imagine an ideal society has been an occupation of writers and artists since ancient times. In 1516, English social philosopher, Thomas More, wrote Utopia. More’s “good-place,” or no-place,” would give a new name to an older genre. It also gave it some new characteristics, as did many of those who wrote later ‘Utopias’. What inspires Utopian literature? And what is at work in shaping the Utopian imaginary, a political project par excellence that nonetheless points to the end of the ‘political’ as we know it? How is Utopian literature related to Dystopian literature? How are both related to the historical moments of their writing and to the present? This seminar will investigate these questions through reading primary literature as well as critical and theoretical writings on the subject. Additional reading material not included in the list below will be provided electronically by the instructor. Students will be expected to complete 2 short writing assignments during the course of the quarter. The assignments could be incorporated into the final paper, due during exam week.

Format: Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing in Comparative Literature, English, or a foreign-language literature, or consent of instructor.

Textbooks:

• P.D. James, Children of Men  (Vintage, 2006)
• José Saramago, The Cave, translated by Margaret Jull Costa  (Mariner Books, 2003)
• William Morris, News from Nowhere and Other Writings  (Penguin Classics, 1994)
   

---

COM 396. TEACHING ASSISTANT TRAINING PRACTICUM (Variable units)

Noha Radwan (CRN ***)
Shannon Hays (CRN ***)
Neil Larsen (CRN ***)

(Note: Contact Falicia Savala, fsavala@ucdavis.edu, for the CRNs for COM 396.)