Spring 2016

Lower Division Courses

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

Section

Instructor

Day / Time

Room

CRN

001

Anna Einarsdottir

MW 12:10-2:00P

113 Hoagland Hall

37626

002

Linda Matheson

TR 10:00-11:50A

1038 Wickson Hall

37627

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

Navid-Saberi Najafi

TR 12:10-2:00P

151 Olson Hall

37629

002

Jeff Weiner MW 10:00-11:50A 192 Young Hall 37630

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

Sean Sell

MW 10:00-11:50A

293 Kerr Hall

37631

002

Jeff Weiner

MW 12:10-2:00P

108 Hoagland Hall

37632

003 James Straub TR 12:10-2:00P 1006 Geidt Hall

37633

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

Celine Piser

MW 10:00-11:50A

1120 Hart Hall

37634

002

Pat Cabell

MW 4:10-6:00P

110 Hunt Hall

37635

003

Sayyeda Razvi TR 12:10-2:00P 1344 Storer Hall 37636

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, Domestic 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)
Archana Venkatesan


Lecture:
TR 12:10-1:30P
1003 Giedt Hall

Discussion Sections:

Disc. Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

01

Leonardo Giorgetti

R 5:10-6:00P

107 Wellman Hall

37637

02

Leonardo Giorgetti

R 6:10-7:00P

107 Wellman Hall

37638

03

Jeremy Konick-Seese

W 5:10-6:00P

1038 Wickson Hall

37639

04

Jeremy Konick-Seese

W 6:10-7:00P 1038 Wickson Hall

37640

05

Deepa Mahadevan

F 10:00-10:50A 140 Physics Building

37641

06

Deepa Mahadevan

F 11:00-11:50A 140 Physics Building

37642

Course Description: Introduction to the comparative study of myths and legends, excluding those of Greece and Rome, with readings from Near Eastern, Teutonic, Celtic, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, African and Central American literary sources.

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:

  • Anonymous, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, translated by Seamus Heaney  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001)
  • R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic  (Penguin Classics, 2006)
  • Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George  (Penguin Classics, 2003)
     

Comparative Literature 007. Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural (4 units)
Gail Finney


Lecture:
TR 10:30-11:50A
2205 Haring Hall

Discussion Sections:

Disc. Section

Discussion Leader

Day / Time

Room

CRN

001

Tianya Wang

W 4:10-5:00P

167 Olson Hall

37643

002

Tianya Wang

W 5:10-6:00P

167 Olson Hall

37644

003

Nicholas Talbott

R 5:10-6:00P

209 Wellman Hall

37645

004

Nicholas Talbott

R 6:10-7:00P

209 Wellman Hall

37646

005

Magnus Snaebjoernsson

F 10:00-10:50A

159 Olson Hall

37647

006

Magnus Snaebjoernsson

F 11:00-11:50A

159 Olson Hall

37648

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)
  • 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 Academic Publishing, 2013)*
    *This title will be available at the UC Davis Book Store and also online (online ordering instructions to come)
     

Comparative Literature 010N. Master Authors (2 units)
Young Hui

Section

Day / Time

Room

CRN

001

M 10:00-11:50A     

110 Hunt Hall

63632

002

W 12:10-2:00P

53A Olson Hall

63633

Course Description: In this course, we will explore the literature from around the world. We will examine in particular to what extent these texts deal with topics such as post-colonialism, post-imperialism, self-identity, politics, and religions in the post-World War era, in order to understand how their formulation according to different cultural and historical contexts reshaped the very notion of literature and its social function. All the readings will be in modern English translation.

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:

  • Samuel Beckett, Endgame & Act Without Words  (Grove Press, 2009)
  • Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies  (NYRB Classics, 2009)
  • Junichiro Tanizaki, Naomi, translated by Anthony H. Chambers  (Vintage Books, 2001)

Comparative Literature 011. Travel and the Modern World (4 units)   [Cross-listed with German 011]
Chunjie Zhang

TR 4:40-6:00P
166 Chemistry Building
CRN 
63918

Course Description: This course explores travel as a quintessential human activity and experience of global modernity and cross-cultural encounters from the 18th to the 21st century with an emphasis on German-speaking culture. Topics include: travel and science, travel and empire, travel and interiority, and travel and diaspora.

Participants will read excerpts from travel writings by Christopher Columbus, George Forster, James Cook, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Darwin. These prominent travelers’ findings decisively shaped human understanding of nature and culture and commerce on a global scale. We also discuss works of literature and art in the era of European colonialism and imperialism such as Heinrich von Kleist’s Betrothal in Santo Domingo (1811), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), and Werner Herzog’s epic film Fitzcarraldo (1982). Other works in this course explore how travel is related to human interiority. We will read Kafka’s America, a psychological journey in the form of a travel story, together with Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K about the impasse of the South African political situation. The film Babel (2006) is a modern parable of the impossibility of communication in the modern world of telecommunication and long-distance travel. Last but not least, we will explore the experience of 20,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai during WWII.

Prerequisite: None.

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

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Writing.

Textbooks:

  • Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness  (Penguin Classics, 2007)
  • Franz Kafka, The Man Who Disappeared (America), translated by Ritchie Robertson  (Oxford University Press, 2012)
  • J.M. Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K: A Novel  (Penguin Books, 1985)
     

Upper Division Courses

Comparative Literature 146. Myth in Literature (4 units)
Cheryl Ross

TR 3:10-4:30P
105 Wellman Hall
CRN 62981

Course Description: This course will investigate a selection of classical myths whose characters, plots, and/or themes are re-envisioned and reworked by later authors.  Mythic selections to be chosen from such classical tales as Persephone. Apollo and Daphne, Pygmalion and Galatea, and Oedipus; literary manifestations of myth to be drawn from a variety of Renaissance and modern texts and films.

Prerequisite: Comparative Literature 006 is recommended.

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:

  • Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald  (Mariner Books, 2002)
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale  (Signet Classics, 2010)
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet  (Signet Classics, 1998)
     

Comparative Literature 161B. Comedy (4 units)
Noah Guynn

TR 1:40-3:00P
141 Olson Hall
CRN 62982

Course Description: According to British philosopher Simon Critchley, “Jokes tear holes in our usual predictions about the empirical world.  We might say that humor is produced by a disjunction between the way things are and the way they are represented in the joke, between expectation and actuality. Humor defeats our expectations by producing a novel actuality, by changing the situation in which we find ourselves.”  This course will explore the relevance of Critchley’s insight for the history of Western comedy, from Athenian Old Comedy through contemporary French and American cinema.  We will focus our attention on plays and films that use humor to tear holes in the world, compelling us to ask questions about what is real, how reality has been constructed for us, and how it might change in response to our laughter.  We will do our best not to forget that laughter is a pleasurable, bodily experience, one that is fundamentally at odds with philosophical explanation.  The comedies we will read/view will help us in this endeavor, in that they insistently focus the viewer’s attention on embodied states of being.  We will return the favor by paying close attention to how they depict sexual difference and desire, and how they use laughter to imagine innovative and even radical expressions of gender and sexuality.

Course requirements will include three expository essays, a take-home final exam, and active, informed class participation.  The assigned texts and films are:

Aristophanes, Lysistrata (Greek, 411 BCE)
Spike Lee, Chi-Raq  (American, 2015)
Terence, The Eunuch (Roman, 161 BCE)
Molière, The School for Wives (French, 1662)
William Wycherley, The Country Wife (British, 1675)
Pierre de Marivaux, Games of Love and Chance (French, 1730)
Abdellatif Kechiche, L’esquive (French, 2003)
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (British, 1913)
Guillaume Apollinaire, The Mammaries of Tiresias (French, 1917)
Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator (American, 1940)
Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine (British, 1979)

Most of the plays are short and can be read in one or two sittings.

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:

  • Caryl Churchill, Cloud 9  (Theatre Communications Group, 1994)
  • William Wycherley, The Country Wife  (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2003)
  • Jean-Baptiste Moliere, The School for Wives and The Learned Ladies, translated by Richard Wilbur  (Mariner Books, 1991)
  • George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion  (Penguin Classics, 2003)
     

Comparative Literature 167. Comparative Study of Major Authors: Shakespeare (4 units)
Cheryl Ross

TR 10:30-11:50A
80 Social Sciences Building
CRN 62983

Course Description: This course will explore Shakespeare’s extraordinary dramatic originality in his historical context: a time characterized both by an appreciation of the past and by political, religious, social, and economic upheaval in the present.  We will locate Shakespeare in the culture of his time by reading his work in dialogue with relevant works from across Europe from classical to early modern eras.   Authors to be juxtaposed with Shakespeare may include Ovid, Plutarch, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Kyd, Marlowe, Montaigne, Rabelais, Cervantes, Calderon.

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor (cross@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:

  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale  (Signet Classics, 2010)
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, Othello  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1  (Signet Classics, 1998)
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V  (Signet Classics, 1998)
     

Comparative Literature 195. Between History and Fiction: Palestinian and Israeli Literature and Film (4 units)
Noha Radwan

R 3:10-6:00P
163 Olson Hall
CRN 62984

Course Description: In his Poetics, Aristotle noted that history describes what happened, while poetry describes what may have happened, and thus gave literary writers credit for being more philosophical and better aware of the universal laws that govern the movement of history. Israeli and Palestinian literature not only lends credence to Aristotle’s remark, but also adds new layers of complexity to it. For here is a literature that “documents” repressed histories, engages with debated accounts, and not only describes what may have happened but also imagines what could have and did not happen, and points at that which is yet to happen. 

In this seminar, students will begin by reading brief non-fictional accounts of the history of the occupation of Palestine and the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, the six day war of 1967 and some of the major developments that have transpired since then, including the Palestinian intifadas, the peace process of the 1990’s and the construction of the wall.  Afterwards, the class readings will alternate fiction by Israeli and Palestinian authors reflecting on and representing the history of Palestine/Israel since 1948 to the present. Several feature films will also be assigned and discussed in class. The last two weeks of class will be dedicated to Poetry.  

Class discussions will focus on the formal elements as well as the content of the literary works, and the place that Palestinian and Israeli literature in translation occupies within the sphere of “world literature’ or what Pascale Casanova calls the “world republic of letters.  All works will be taught in English translation. No prior knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, or the history of the region required.

Prerequisite: Senior standing as a Comparative Literature major or minor or consent of instructor (nmradwan@ucdavis.edu).

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

Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh: A Novel, translated by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)
  • Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories, translated by Hilary Kilpatrick  (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999)
     

Graduate Courses

Comparative Literature 210. Topics and Themes in Comparative Literature (4 units)

Section 001. Has been cancelled.

Section 002. Trauma: Its Representation in Theory, Literature, and Film (4 units)   [Can also be used to fulfill GER 296]
Gail Finney

T 1:10-4:00P
201 Wellman Hall
CRN 62985

Course Description: This seminar seeks to acquaint students with the complex domain of trauma studies by exploring theoretical, literary, and cinematic responses to three major types of traumatic experience: world war, the Holocaust, and family trauma.

Selections by theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth, Marianne Hirsch, Michael Rothberg, Kaja Silverman, Kirby Farrell, Jeffrey Alexander, Dori Laub, E. Ann Kaplan, Dominick LaCapra, Judith Herman, Ruth Leys, and Frank B. Wilderson III will be studied.

With the aid of these and other theorists, students will investigate the representation of traumatic experience and its aftermath in works by such authors as Sophocles, Erich Maria Remarque, Wolfgang Borchert, Elie Wiesel, W.G. Sebald, and Paula Vogel and films such as All Quiet on the Western FrontThe Murderers Are Among UsNight and FogSophie’s Choice, and Monster’s Ball.

Consideration of these works will be complemented by contributions from students’ respective areas of specialization.

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

Format: Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus, translated by Robert Fagles  (Penguin Classics, 2000)
  • Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, translated by A.W. Wheen  (Ballantine Books, 1987)
  • Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside: Play & Stories, translated by David Porter  (New Directions, 1971)
  • Paula Vogel, The Mammary Plays: Two Plays  (Theatre Communications Group, 1997)
  • W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants, translated by Michael Hulse  (New Directions, 1997)
  • Elie Wiesel, Night, translated by Marion Wiesel  (Hill and Wang, 2006)