Spring 2015

Lower Division Courses

COMP LIT 001. Major Books of Western Culture: The Ancient World (4 units)

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Linda Matheson

MW 12:10-2:00P

167 Olson Hall

27545

02

Cloe LeGall-Scoville

MW 10:00-11:50A

167 Olson Hall

27546

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 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).

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.


COMP LIT 001. Major Books of Western Culture: The Ancient World [Honors Section] (4 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

TR 2:10-4:00P
1342 Storer Hall
CRN available through Honors Program

Course Description: This Honors course in Comparative Literature introduces you to the methods of inquiry we apply to reading and to the practice of writing employing these methods. While we focus on the "major works" of the ancient Mediterranean which we will situate in their historical-cultural milieu, we will apply a critical analysis to the idea of historical and cultural “value” or “capital” and the role of these works in the development of a world literature canon.
 
In addition to reading all the required books, you will write four major essays, of which you will revise two. The fourth essay will be the final exam. Also, I may require reflection papers of 2 pages, what I call unofficial writing, which will be due to me before we discuss the assigned reading. These reflection papers should show your responses to the assigned reading: what happened? To whom? Why? Who is the audience? How does the narrative unfold? These are the kinds of questions your reflections might address. You are required to attend class. I expect you to be prepared to contribute to the classroom conversation and to advance your observations and interpretations of the works we will read together. Four unexcused absences will result in an automatic F in discussion grade for the class.

Grading: The grades for all the papers will be averaged, although later papers may be given more weight. This counts as 85% of your grade. Your discussion and unofficial writing 15%.

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).

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.

Textbooks:

  • Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fitzgerald  (Everyman's Library, 1992)
  • Euripides, Bacchae, translated by Paul Woodruff  (Hackett Publishing Company, 1998)
  • Plato, Six Great Dialogues (including Phaedo), translated by Benjamin Jowett  (Dover Publications, 2007)
  • Virgil, The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fitzgerald  (Vintage Classics, 1990)
  • St. Augustine, Confessions, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin  (Penguin Classics, 1961)
     

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

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

02

Navid Saberi-Najafi

TR 12:10-2:00P

163 Olson Hall

27548

03

Kristen Bergman Waha

MW 10:00-11:50A

1342 Storer Hall

52729

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 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).

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.


COMP LIT 003. Major Books of Western Culture: The Modern Crisis (4 units)

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Victoria White

MW 10:00-11:50A  

163 Olson Hall

27549

02

Deborah Young

MW 12:10-2:00P

163 Olson Hall

27550

03

James Straub

TR 12:10-2:00P

290 Hickey Gym

27551

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 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).

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.


COMP LIT 004. Major Books of the Contemporary World (4 units)

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Ted Geier

MW 8:00-9:50A  

205 Wellman Hall

27552

02

Amy Riddle

MW 4:10-6:00P

227 Olson Hall

27553

03

David Dayton

TR 12:10-2:00P

25 Wellman Hall

27554

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 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).

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.


COMP LIT 006. Myths and Legends (4 units)
Jocelyn Sharlet


Lecture:
TR 4:40-6:00P
100 Hunt Hall

Discussion Sections:

Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Amanda Batarseh

R 11:00-11:50A      

205 Wellman Hall

52731

02

Amanda Batarseh

R 12:10-1:00P

205 Wellman Hall

52732

03

Young Hui

W  4:10-5:00P

244 Olson Hall

52733

04

Young Hui

W 5:10-6:00P

223 Olson Hall

52734

05

Michelle Westbrook

M 5:10-6:00P

205 Wellman Hall

52735

06

Michelle Westbrook

M 6:10-7:00P

205 Wellman Hall

52736

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. Evaluation will be based on one short presentation with a one-page response paper, a four-page essay, a midterm and a final exam.

Prerequisite: None.

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

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

Textbooks:

  • Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Rostam: Tales of Love and War from the Shahnameh, translated by Dick Davis  (Penguin Classics, 2009)
  • The Song of the Cid: A Dual Language Edition with Parallel Text (Spanish), translated by Burton Raffel  (Penguin Classics, 2009)
  • Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (New Deluxe Edition), translated by Husain Haddawy  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)

Readings available on the course site:

  • Stories of Anansi the Spider and Coyote
  • Joseph in the Bible
  • Cupid and Psyche
     

COMP LIT 007. Fantasy and the Supernatural (4 units)
Gail Finney


Lecture:
TR 10:30-11:50A
160 Scrub Oak Hall

Discussion Sections:

Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Eric Taggart

M 4:10-5:00P      

105 Olson Hall

27561

02

Eric Taggart

M 5:10-6:00P

105 Olson Hall

27562

03

Amanda Hickok

R  4:10-5:00P

151 Olson Hall

27563

04

Amanda Hickok

R 5:10-6:00P

151 Olson Hall

27564

05

Hannah Kagan-Moore

F 9:00-9:50A

244 Olson Hall

27565

06

Hannah Kagan-Moore

F 10:00-10:50A

244 Olson Hall

27566

Course Description: Although the fantastic tale flourishes in the nineteenth century, fantasy and the supernatural are found throughout literature.  Flights of fancy, free-floating psyches, horror and morbidity, otherworldliness, fragmented bodies (disembodied hearts, teeth, or hair, possessing a life of their own)--all these phenomena have been associated with the fantastic and the supernatural. Yet the fantastic has no meaning without reference to realism, and the fantastic shares with realism a fascination with settings and objects, with the material realm. Indeed, the fantastic mode has been viewed as the “left hand” of realism.

This course will investigate these and other features of fantasy and the supernatural, as well as their relationship to realism, in literature and film from Shakespeare to Gabriel García Márquez. Readings and films will include the following:

  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610-11)
  • E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sand-Man” (1816) in conjunction with
  • Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (1919)
  • Edgar Allan Poe, “Berenice,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1835-1843)
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
  • Guy de Maupassant, “The Head of Hair” (1884), “Who Knows?” (1890)
  • Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
  • Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1915), “A Country Doctor” (1919)
  • The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (film) (1920)
  • Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (1941), “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941)
  • Beauty and the Beast (film) (1946)
  • Gabriel García Márquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (1968), “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” (1968)

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:

  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest, edited by Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine  (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
  • Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural [Revised Edition], edited by Gail Finney  (Cognella Inc., 2013)*
    *This title is available through the UC Davis Book Store and UniversityReaders.com
     

COMP LIT 010G. Master Authors in World Literature: Plautus, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Molière, Goldoni, Pirandello (2 units)
Leonardo Giorgetti

Section

Day / Time

Room

Updated CRN

01

M 4:10-6:00P      

207 Wellman Hall

53937

02

W 2:10-4:00P

101 Wellman Hall

53938

Course Description: In this course, we will read nine plays by seven different authors ranging from the ancient to the modern Western tradition of drama. We will examine in particular to what extent these texts deal with topics such as gender, mistaken identities, love and politics. We will also devote special attention to the reception of classical motifs in Renaissance and Modern theater, in order to understand how their reformulation according to different cultural contexts has reshaped the very notion of drama and its social function. All the readings will be in modern English translation, occasionally accompanied by screenings of the plays.

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:

  • Luigi Pirandello, Three Plays (Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants, translated by Anthony Mortimer  (Oxford University Press, 2014)

[Available on SmartSite]

  • Plautus, The Menaechmus Brothers  (2nd century BCE)
  • Machiavelli, The Mandrake Root  (1520)
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1599) / Henry IV, Part I  (1597)
  • Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna  (1611-1618)
  • Molière, The Misanthrope  (1664)
  • Carlo Goldoni, Mirandolina  (1753)
     

Upper Division Courses

COMP LIT 152. Literature of the Americas (4 units)
Leopoldo Bernucci

TR 3:10-4:30P
103 Wellman Hall
CRN 52737

Course Description: A close reading of major works by 19th and 20th century American and South-American writers with focus on narrative form as it engages issues of social critique, conventions of genre, autobiography, political, and literary authority. Consideration of the importance of plots as both a novelistic and political device in the contexts of narrative strategy and history. Students will have an opportunity to explore how American critics have read South-American authors and vice versa. Readings include Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro, Jorge L. Borges's "The Secret Miracle," John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Jose Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex, and Graciliano Ramos's Barren Lives.

Texts read in English with option for Spanish and Comparative Literature majors to read them in their original format.

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

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

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

Textbooks:

  • Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro: A Novel, translated by Helen Caldwell  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter  (Penguin Classics, 2002)
  • Graciliano Ramos, Barren Lives, translated by Ralph Edward Dimmick  (University of Texas Press, 1971)
  • John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath  (Penguin Books, 2002)
     

COMP LIT 154. African Literature (4 units)     Cross-listed with AAS 153
Moradewun Adejunmobi

TR 4:40-6:00P
202 Wellman Hall
CRN 52821

Course Description: This course focuses on famous African authors responding to questions about colonialism, independence, gender, war, and social change among others. Works by the following authors will be studied: Chinua Achebe, Patrice Nganang, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Zakes Mda, and Chimamanda Adichie.

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

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Zakes Mda, Ways of Dying  (Picador, 2002)
  • Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart  (Anchor, 1994)
  • Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions [2nd Edition]  (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004)
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun  (Anchor, 2007)
  • Patrice Nganang, Dog Days (An Animal Chronicle), translated by Amy Baram Reid  (University of Virginia Press, 2006)
  • Alain Mabanckou, Blue, White, Red  (Indiana University Press, 2013)
     

COMP LIT 156. The Ramayana (4 units)     Cross-listed with RST 158
Archana Venkatesan

W 2:10-5:00P
1344 Storer Hall
CRN 52738

Course Description: This course examines Ramayana story traditions with a primary focus on its many literary and oral variants.

Prerequisite: None.

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

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Swami Venkatesananda, The Concise Rāmāyana of Vālmīki  (SUNY Press, 1988)
  • Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, edited by Paula Richman  (University of California Press, 1991)
  • The Ramayana Revisited, edited by Mandakranta Bose  (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  • Pudumaipithan, Narada Ramayanam: An Allegory of Indian History from Rama to Hindi, translated by S. Ganesan  (iUniverse, Inc., 2007)
     

COMP LIT 164C. Baroque and Classic (4 units)
Brenda Deen Schildgen

TR 12:10-1:30P
1344 Storer Hall
CRN 52739

Course Description:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts . . .”
(Jaques, As You Like It, Act. II, sc. Vii, ll. 139-142)

“Baroque,” a French word, actually comes from the Portuguese word "barroco,” Spanish "barroco," the name given to a "rough or imperfect pearl.” We often use the word loosely to describe something excessively elaborate. As a period and a style, “Baroque” emerged in the wake of the European Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation in northern Europe. There is no question that a radical shift in style takes place beginning in Rome in 1600 and lasting until roughly 1720. This shift can be noted in music (emergence of opera/ballet), art (Caravaggio and Bernini), architecture (Bernini), and literature (Cervantes, Basile, Calderón de la Barca, and even Shakespeare), even if there are overlaps between the more “classical” traits of the Renaissance and this new style, later labeled Baroque. This art appealed to the senses; it was theatrical; it is in motion; it depends on hyperbole, a rhetoric of excess, exaggeration, and extravagance; it combines dark and light; it celebrates hybridity, flamboyance, and the mixture of registers; it looks upward to the intersection between the heavens and the earth, while it grovels in reality. Baroque is fascinated with excess, violence, and bombast whereas classicism focuses on harmony, serenity, and aestheticism. Baroque highlights contradictions between the absolutist, ornate, excessive court society that triumphs in the period (Louis XIV of France, for example, the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty, or the papal court in Rome) and political chaos and warfare; the sublime and idealized as in classicizing literature versus the dark underside of the world as it is. The style spread across the Catholic world, encompassing Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Latin America. Thematic concerns are “What is True?” as typified in Don Quixote, a quintessential example of the baroque imagination at work; the world is a stage, “Theatrum Mundi;” and the exercise of absolute power because the cultural developments occur alongside the emergence of absolute monarchies and absolutist politics and religion.

What we will read:

Classical

  • Pierre Corneille, “Three Unities” (available on smartsite)
  • Jean Racine, Phèdre (1677), trans. Margaret Rawlins (Penguin, 1992)*

Baroque

  • Monteverdi, Orfeo (1610)
  • Cervantes, “The Deceitful Marriage” and “The Dialogue Between Scipio and Berganze” in Novelas Exemplares (1613 [www.gutengerb.org/ebooks]
  • Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610-11). Any edition, although the Norton Critical Edition is recommended.*
  • Calderón de la Barca, La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream) (1635), ed. and trans. Stanley Appelbaum, dual language (Dover Publications, 2002). You can read this in Spanish (dual language edition if you choose).*
  • Basile, Pentamerone (1634-36). Selections are available on smartsite. Or read an Italian version of you prefer. It is in Neapolitan dialect.
  • Selections from Tirso de Molina, El Burlador de Sevilla (The Trickster of Seville) (1630) (On smartsite)
  • Molière, Don Juan (1665) (in Don Juan and Other Plays, Oxford University Press, 2008).* Or, you can read a French version if you prefer.
  • Molière and Lully, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670) (in Don Juan and Other Plays, Oxford University Press, 2008).* Or, you can read a French version if you prefer.

What we will do:

- We will be looking at examples of baroque art and architecture to introduce the topic.
- We will meet twice a week and create a lively conversation about the assigned reading for the week.
- Write 3 papers of no more than five pages each, or a choice of 2 papers (one five pages and one ten pages).
- Unofficial writing as reflection papers and study questions to promote class discussion.
- Grades based on papers (90%) and class discussion (10%).

Prerequisite:  None.

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

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

Textbooks (*available through Book Store):

   *William Shakespeare, The Tempest, edited by Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)
   *Jean Racine, Phedre [Dual Language Edition], translated by Margaret Rawlings  (Penguin Classics, 1992)
   *Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Life is a Dream/La Vida es Sueño [A Dual Language Book], translated by Stanley Applebaum  (Dover Publications, 2002)
   *Moliere, Don Juan and Other Plays, translated by George Gravely and Ian Maclean  (Oxford University Press, 2008)


COMP LIT 180. Writing for the World: World Literature and the Modern Novel (4 units)
Kfir Cohen

TR 12:10-1:30P
141 Olson Hall
CRN 52740

Course Description: In this course we will explore the concept of world literature. Our approach will try to avoid understanding the “world” as the sum total of people, cultures and literatures, and instead develop the concepts of “worldly” and “non-worldly” as effects of the unevenness of the literary world. Thus, our discussions will not be guided so much by the question what is “world literature,” but how do novelistic forms become worldly. To understand what is at stake in such a concept, we will concentrate our critical gaze on the intersection of the encounter between local (“peripheral”) cultures and international forms and audiences, and examine how aesthetic figures (narrator, characters, time, space, etc.) change as a consequence of this encounter. One of our main concerns will be to understand what happens to the fictional world as a whole once novels move out of the “periphery” and into the “center,” and whether we could generalize the relation between the construction of literary worlds and worldliness. By focusing on the entry of writers from peripheral states into the international/global literary market, we will attend, although indirectly, to questions of colonial/postcolonial relations and the networks of global capital.

We will begin by examining current debates around “world literature,” and the stakes it holds for understanding both contemporary literary production and the discipline of literary studies. We will then look into specific theories and cases, each of which understands world literature differently. We will discuss both the premises of several theories and the way they were critiqued and assessed. The theorists we will read will include Emily Apter, Pascale Casanova, David Damrosch, and Franco Moretti. We will examine their theories in relation to several corpora of literature in Ireland, Palestine and the US. Novelists will include William Faulkner, Assaf Gavron, James Joyce, Ghassan Kanafani and Sean O’Casey.

Students will be asked to write five 2/3-page weekly response papers and a 5-page final paper.

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

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

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

Textbooks:

  • James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007)
  • William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury  (Vintage Books, 1991)
  • Ghassan Kanafani, All That's Left to You: A Novella and Short Stories, translated by May Jayyusi and Jeremy Reed  (Interlink Books, 2005)
  • Assaf Gavron, Almost Dead: A Novel  (Harper Perennial, 2010)
  • Sean O'Casey, Three Dublin Plays  (Faber & Faber, 2000)
     

Graduate Courses

COMP LIT 210. History of Emotion (4 units)     Cross-listed with CRI 200C
Kari Lokke and Seth Schein

M 12:10-3:00P
822 Sproul Hall
CRN 27614

Course Description: In this survey of Western conceptions of emotion, we will consider the history of  philosophies of emotion in the context of contemporaneous literary works and current theories of affect.  Requirements: an oral presentation and a seminar paper.

Plato Phaedrus and a brief selection from Republic
Aristotle Selections from De animaRhetoric, and Poetics
Euripides Medea
Cicero Cicero on the Emotions, Tusculan Disputations, Books 3 and 4
Seneca On Anger,  Medea
Lucretius On the Nature of Things (Conclusion to Book 4)
Descartes The Passions of the Soul
Hobbes Selections from Leviathan
Rousseau Selections from Discourse on the Origin of InequalityReveries of the Solitary Walker
Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments
Wollstonecraft Selections from A Vindication of the Rights of WomanThe Cave of FancyMaryA Fiction, and Scandinavian Letters
Staël Selections from The Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of the Individual and Nations,  On GermanyCorinne, or Italy
Letitia Landon “Erinna”
James “What is an Emotion?”
Freud “Mourning and Melancholia”

Selections from Current Affect Theory:

Martha Nussbaum  The Therapy of Desire,  Sara Ahmed   The Cultural Politics of Emotion,  Raymond Williams “Structures of Feeling,”  Teresa Brennan  The Transmission of Affect,  Helene Foley  Female Acts in Greek Tragedy,  Rei Terada  Feeling in Theory,  Juliana Schiesari  The Gendering of Melancholia,  Silvan Tompkins  Shame and its Sisters,  Eve Sedgwick  Touching Feeling,  Patricia Clough  Introduction to The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Todd and Barker-Benfield on sensibility.

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

Format: Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, translated by Maurice Cranston  (Penguin Classics, 1985)
  • Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments  (Penguin Classics, 2010)
  • Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Anger, Mercy, Revenge, translated by Robert A. Kaster and Martha C. Nussbaum  (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
  • Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Six Tragedies, translated by Emily Wilson  (Oxford University Press, 2010)
  • Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero on the Emotions, translated by Margaret R. Graver  (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
  • Euripides, Euripides' Medea: A New Translation, translated by Diane J. Rayor  (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
     

COMP LIT 396. Teaching Assistant Training Practicum (Variable units)

(CRN ***)
(CRN ***)

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