Winter 2010

Lower Division Courses

COM 1: Great Books of Western Civilization - The Ancient World (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, MW 10:00-11:50, 207 Wellman) CRN 37478
STAFF (Sec. 2, TR 12:10-2:00, 205 Wellman) CRN 37479
Patricia MacKinnon, Lecturer (Sec. 3, TR 2:10-4:00, 105 Wellman) CRN 37480

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. GE Credit: ArtHum and Wrt (cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

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

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours. 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.

Textbooks (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.


COM 2: Great Books of Western Civilization - From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, TR 8:00-9:50, 209 Wellman) CRN 37482
STAFF (Sec. 2, TR 10:00-11:50, 207 Wellman) CRN 37483
STAFF (Sec. 3, MW 12:10-2:00, 205 Wellman) CRN 37484

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. GE Credit: ArtHum and Wrt (cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

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

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours. 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.

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


COM 3: Great Books of Western Civilization - The Modern Crisis (4 Units)

STAFF (Sec. 1, MW 2:10-4:00, 103 Wellman) CRN 37486
STAFF (Sec. 2, MW 4:10-6:00, 205 Wellman) CRN 37487
STAFF (Sec. 3, TR 12:10-2:00, 107 Wellman) CRN 37488

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. GE Credit: ArtHum and Wrt (cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

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

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours. 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.

Textbooks (vary from section to section):
J.W. von Goethe, Faust (Part 1); Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents; Franz Kafka, The Trial; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein;
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground; 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, MW 8:00-9:50, 207 Wellman) CRN 37489
STAFF (Sec. 2, MW 4:10-6:00, 107 Wellman) CRN 37490
STAFF (Sec. 3, MW 2:10-4:00, 101 Wellman) CRN 37491

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. GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, and Wrt (cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously).

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

Course Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours. 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.

Textbooks (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, Fables, and Parables (4 Units)
Jeff Fort, Assistant Professor of French (&#106pfort

@ucdavis.edu)

Lecture: TR 1:40-3:00, 1002 Giedt

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (M 9:00-9:50, 90 Social Science and Humanities) CRN 63474
Sec. 2 (T 12:10-1:00, 103 Wellman) CRN 63475
Sec. 3 (W 10:00-10:50, 103 Hutchison) CRN 63476
Sec. 4 (M 3:10-4:00, 90 Social Science and Humanities) CRN 63477
Sec. 5 (T 5:10-6:00, 158 Olson) CRN 63478
Sec. 6 (W 5:10-6:00, 1128 Hart) CRN 63479

Course Description: This course will provide an overview of three literary "genres" from their ancient forms in Greece and India to more modern versions in writers such as Franz Kafka and Angela Carter. We will follow the development of various animal and fairy tales as they shift, broadly speaking, from relatively clear "morals" or lessons that comment on fixed social structures to more opaque and enigmatic fictional statements, and from a "fabulous" world of enchantment to the anxious disenchantment of the twentieth century. We will also look at one Disney version (Snow White) in order to analyze both its differences and its own specific purposes, as well as a film version (from 1948) of Beauty and the Beast by Jean Cocteau.

Course work: One midterm exam, two papers (the first of which will be a re-write of the essay question on the midterm), and a final exam.

Textbooks:

  • M. Tatar (ed.), The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton Critical Edition)
  • W. Shakespeare, The Tempest (Bantam)
  • B. Schildgen and G. Van den Abeele (eds.), A World of Fables
  • F. Kafka, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories (trans. Neugroschel)

COM 7: Literature of Fantasy and Supernatural (4 Units)
Gail Finney, Professor

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

Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (F 11:00-11:50, 101 Olson) CRN 37498
Sec. 2 (R 5:10-6:00, 207 Olson) CRN 37499
Sec. 3 (T 5:10-6:00, 261 Olson) CRN 37500
Sec. 4 (F 12:10-1:00, 101 Olson) CRN 37501
Sec. 5 (M 4:10-5:00, 151 Olson) CRN 37502
Sec. 6 (W 3:10-4:00, 90 Social Science and Humanities) CRN 37503

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 texts such as the following:

  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610-11)
  • E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman” (1816) in conjunction with
  • Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (1919)
  • Edgar Allan Poe, “Berenice,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Black Cat, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1835-1843)
  • Guy de Maupassant, “La Chevelure” (1884), “Le Horla” (1887)
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865)
  • Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
  • Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1915), “A Country Doctor” (1917) The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (film) (1920)
  • Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (1941), “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941)
  • Yasunari Kawabata, “One Arm” (1964)
  • Gabriel García Márquez, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” (1968), “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (1968)

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

Textbooks:

  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Edited by Barbara Mowat (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
  • Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (Norilana Books, 2007)
  • Edgar Allan Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by David Galloway (Penguin, 1967)
  • Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories (Schoken, 1996)
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (AD Classics, 2009)

COM 10L: Master Authors in World Literature (2 Units)
STAFF

Lecture/Discussion Sections:
Sec. 1 (M 12:10-2:00, 107 Wellman) CRN 37404
Sec. 2 (T 10:00-11:50, 205 Wellman) CRN 37405

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.

Textbooks:

  • Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka
  • Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
  • James Joyce, Dubliners
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
  • Ibsen, Four Major Plays, Volume 1

COM 25: Ethnic Minority Writers in World (4 Units)
Poonam Sachdev, Lecturer in the University Writing Program (&#112sachdev

@ucdavis.edu)
(TR 12:10-1:30, 234 Wellman) CRN 37506

Course Description: This course will consider a broad range of writers who speak from an ethnic perspective different from the nominally or politically dominant culture of their respective countries and who explore the challenges faced by characters significantly affected by their ethnic minority status. For any inquiries, contact the instructor directly at &#112sachdev

@ucdavis.edu. GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
  • Brian Freil, Translations: A Play by Brian Freil
  • Alaa Al-Aswany, The Yacoubian Building
  • Jamaic Kincaid, A Small Place
  • Thrity Umrigar, The Space Between Us

 


Upper Division Courses

COM 135: Women Writers (4 Units)
Anna Kuhn, Professor of Women & Gender Studies (&#97kkuhn

@ucdavis.edu)
(TR 1:40-3:00, 261 Olson) CRN 63483

Course Description: This course on women writers is structured around the notion of writing as resistance. Among the questions we will address are: how do women, who have traditionally been excluded from positions of power, resist the social, political, and economic strictures placed on them? To what degree are writings by women in themselves acts of resistance? For example, what is the impact of the representation of the women's limited life situations on readers of literary texts? To what degree can literary texts envisage and help create alternative realities for women? To what degree can writing function as a form of therapy for the writer herself. GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Prerequisite: None.

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

Textbooks:

  • Kluger, Still Alive
  • Cha, Dictee
  • Min, Becoming Madame Mao
  • Anonymous, Woman in Berlin
  • Depizan, Book of the City of Ladies
  • Sand, Valvedre
  • Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
  • Satrapi, Persepolis: The Complete Set

COM 146: Myth in Literature (4 Units)
Scott McLean, Lecturer
(TR 3:10-4:30, 129 Wellman) CRN 37513

Course Description: This course is a 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. GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Prerequisite: course 6 recommended

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Heaney, Burial at Thebes
  • Euripides, Euripides V: Three Tragedies
  • Holderlin, Hyperion and Selected Poems
  • Euripides, Bacchae of Euripides: Communion Rite
  • Goethe, Faust I and II (Volume 2)
  • Homer, Iliad
  • Sophocles, Three Theban Plays

COM 153: The Forms of Asian Literature (4 Units)
Sheldon Lu, Professor
(TR 9:00-10:20, 116 Veihmeyer) CRN 63480

Course Description: This course is a comparative study of modern Chinese and Japanese literature from the late 19th century to the present. Students will read short stories, novels, and poems written by leading East Asian writers. The class will analyze recurrent themes and topics in modern East Asian literature such as romantic love, death, revolution, war, tradition, modernity, and globalization. Literary developments in Asia throughout the long twentieth century and beyond will be examined in broad international contexts. GE Credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.

Prerequisite: Upper-Division standing.

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

Textbooks:

  • Modern Japanese Literature. Edited by Donald Keene (1956)
  • The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. Edited by J. Lau and H. Goldblatt (2007)

COM 166A: Epic (4 Units)
Seth Schein, Professor
(TR 10:30-11:50, 148 Physics/Geology) CRN 63482

Course Description: In thes course we shall study representations of heroism, history, relationships between divinity and humanity, conflicts between individuals and society, gender roles, and social and cultural identity and authority in three epics: Homer's Iliad, Vergil's Aeneid, and Milton's Paradise Lost. We also will pay particular attention to the distinctive features of traditional oral epics and written epics, and to tensions in the poems between traditional and new ideas and values. GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Prerequisite: None.

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

Textbooks:

  • Homer, Iliad. Translated by S. Lombardo (Hackett, 1997)
  • Homer, Vergil. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald (Vintage, 1983)
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost. Edited by Gordon Teskey (W.W. Norton, 2005)

COM 167: Comparative Study of Major Authors (4 Units)
Brenda Schildgen, Professor
(TR 3:10-4:30, 113 Hoagland) CRN 63481

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.

Grades are based on papers (25% first paper; 30% second paper), participation 15%, and 30% for the final. GE Credit: ArtHum, Wrt.

Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor.

Course Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

  • Dante, Inferno. Translated by Anthony Esolen (Random, 2005)
  • Dante, Paradise. Translated by Anthony Esolen (Random, 2004)
  • Dante, Purgatory. Translated by Anthony Esolen (Random, 2004)
  • Dante, Vita Nouva (Penguin, 2004)

 


Graduate Courses

COM 210: Translation (4 Units)
Seth Schein, Professor
(T 1:10-4:00, 322 Sproul) CRN 37551

Course Description: The subject of this course is "Translation: history, politics, theory, and practice." Taking as a point of departure Lawrence Venuti's distinction between "domesticating" and "foreignizing" translations, we shall read and critique selected brief discussions of translation by such writers as St. Jerome, F. Schleiermacher, F. Nietzsche, W. Benjamin, E. Pound, R. Jakobson, K. Reiss, G. Steiner, I. Evan-Zohar, A. Lefevere, A. Berman, L. Chamberlain, G.C. Spivak, K.A. Appiah, J. Derrida, and S. Sontag. We shall pay particular attention to linguistic, political, cultural, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions of translation, especially in our current age of globalization. Toward the end of the course, each student will translate and present to the class a short passage of poetry or prose from her/his language of specialization.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing or Consent of Instructor.

Course Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper

Textbooks:

  • The Translation Studies Reader. Edited by L. Venuti (Routledge, 2004)
  • Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation. Edited by S. Bermann and M. Wood (Princeton, 2005)
  • E. Apter, The Translattion Zone (Princeton, 2005)
  • L. Venuti, The Scandals of Translation (Routledge, 1998)

COM 396: Teaching Internship in Comparative Literature

STAFF, Professor (Sec. 1, CRN TBA)
STAFF, Professor (Sec. 2, CRN TBA)
STAFF, Professor (Sec. 3, CRN TBA)

Course Description: This course is designed for graduate students who are seeking teaching internship-unit credit.

Prerequisite: Graduate Standing or Consent of Instructor.

Textbooks: None