Winter 2014

Lower Division Courses

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

Section Instructor     Day / Time Room CRN
01 Megan McMullan MW 10:00-11:50A 229 Wellman   57522
02 Nick Sanchez TR 12:10-2:00P 125 Olson 57523
03 Tori White TR 2:10-4:00P 125 Olson 57524

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).

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.


COM 2. MAJOR BOOKS OF WESTERN CULTURE: FROM THE MIDDLES AGES TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT (4 Units)

Section Instructor     Day / Time Room CRN
01 Navid Saberi-Najafi    TR 12:10-2:00P 108 Hoagland 57526
02 Megan Ammirati MW 12:10-2:00P 205 Wellman      57527
03(H) Brenda Deen Schildgen    MW 2:10-4:00P 110 Hunt @

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.

Honors Course: Session 3 is an honors version of the course. This honors course introduces students to advanced methods of inquiry in reading and writing, where they will employ these methods. In this course, students will be reading three authors who are considered the “greatest” writers in their respective cultures, all of whom continue to have an eduring influence on the respective literary traditions as well as on a “world republic of letters.” While the class will focus on these selected "great books," which will be situated in their historical-cultural milieu, students will be applying a critical analysis to the developments in “western civilization” represented by these canonical works, while also addressing their reception in later times. Of course, terms like “great books” and “western civilization” are profoundly contested terms, and students will address the issues that make such terms provocative. In addition to reading all the required books, students will write four essays, for two of which there will be an opportunity to revise. Also, students will make presentations on introductory topics to each work during the quarter. In addition, students may be required to write reflection papers of 1-2 pages, what is called unofficial writing, which will be due before the class discusses the assigned reading. These reflection papers should show the student's responses to the assigned reading: what happened? to whom? why? who is the audience? are the kinds of questions students' reflections might address. Students are required to attend class. Students are expected to contribute to the classroom conversation and to advance their observations and interpretations of the works the class will read together. Four unexcused absences will result in an automatic F for a student's participation grade. Students' grades are based on evaluation of their essays, on their contribution to class discussions, and on their final exam.

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, OthelloDante, The Inferno of DanteBeowulf; Salvatore Alloso, A Short Handbook for Writing Essays about Literature.


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

Section Instructor Day / Time Room CRN
01 Emelie Mahdavian MW 2:10-4:00P 205 Wellman   57528
02 Linda Matheson     MW 4:10-6:00P 227 Olson 57529
03 Shannon Hays TR 12:10-2:00P   105 Olson 57530

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).

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)

Section Instructor        Day / Time Room CRN
01 Senovia Han TR 10:00-11:50A 244 Olson  57532
02 Chris Tong MW 4:10-6:00P 141 Olson   57533
03 Linda Matheson MW 2:10-4:00P 227 Olson 57534
04 Anna Einarsdottir   TR 10:00-11:50A 1020 Wickson 57535

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 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):
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)
Jocelyn Sharlet

Lecture: TR 9:00-10:20A, 176 Everson
 
Discussion Sections:

Section Instructor     Day / Time Room CRN
01 Emily Meehan    M 3:10-4:00P 27 Wellman 57536
02 Emily Meehan   M 4:10-5:00P 27 Wellman   57537
03 A.J. Fitzgerald R 3:10-4:00P 267 Olson 57538
04 A.J. Fitzgerald R 4:10-5:00P 105 Olson   57539
05 Kevin Michael Smith    F 10:00-10:50A 105 Olson 57540
06 Kevin Michael Smith F 11:00-11:50A 129 Wellman    57541

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. Students will participate in section, write two short essays (1000 words each), and take several reading quizzes and a final exam.

Texts:
Husain Haddawy, tr., Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights
Patrick Olivelle, tr., Pancatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom
Rumi, The Masnavi: Book One, tr. Jawid Mojaddedi

Text available on the web:
Basile, Pentamerone

Course site: Coyote, Anansi the Spider, Aesop, Cupid and Psyche, fairy tales by Perrault and Grimm, Asian animal bridegroom tales, Marie de France, Boccaccio, Jataka tales, Buddhist and Taoist parables, Plato, Maimonedes and the Zohar.

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

Readings:

  • Jalal al-Din Rumi, The Masnavi, Book One, trans. Jawid Mojaddedi (Oxford University Press, 2008)
  • Anonymous, Pancatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom, trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford University Press, 2009)
  • Anonymous, Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights, trans. Husain Haddaway (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
     

COM 7. LITERATURE OF FANTASY AND THE SUPERNATURAL (4 units)
Shannon Hays

Lecture: TR 3:10-4:30P, 1309 Surge 3

Discussion Sections:

Section Instructor     Day / Time Room CRN
01 Pat Cabell M 4:10-5:00P 209 Wellman   83621
02 Pat Cabell M 5:10-6:00P 209 Wellman 83622
03 Amy Riddle T 5:10-6:00P 146 Robbins 83623
04 Amy Riddle T 6:10-7:00P 1020 Wickson 83624
05 Deborah Young R 5:10-6:00P 116 Veihmeyer   83625
06 Deborah Young      R 2:10-3:00P 1128 Bainer 83626

Course Description: In contemporary Western popular culture, the Fantastic and the Supernatural are dominated by Wizards, Zombies, Hobbits, and Vampires, and yet the genre has deep literary, historic, and social roots. Who are the literary "ancestors" of figures that have so entranced the Western Imagination in the late 20th and early 21st centuries? Comparative Literature 7 examines early departures from and reactions to Realism (often seen as the antithesis of fantasy, when in fact realism and fantasy are mutually constitutive) in order to understand the social and historical roots of fantastic and supernatural literature, as well as the popularity of this genre in literature, television and film today. Texts include: The TempestThe MetamorphosisThe Picture of Dorian GrayWarm Bodies, and selected short stories of ETA Hoffmann, Guy de Maupassant, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges.

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

Readings:

  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest  (Yale University Press, 2006)
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray  (Modern Library, 1998)
  • Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies  (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2012)
     

COM 10N. MASTER AUTHORS: BORGES, NABOKOV, KAFKA, FAULKNER (2 units)
Myha Do

Lecture/Discussion Sections:
Sec. 01.  M 2:10-4:00P, 244 Olson - CRN 84362
Sec. 02.  W 2:10-4:00P, 244 Olson - CRN 84363

Course Description: “What is a child?” and “Why are we so obsessed with childhood?” are questions at the heart of the Victorian world. Throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, the image of the child, as both pure and yet strangely erotic, became a figure of fantasy, obsession and suppressed desires for many people. This obsession with children reveals and reflects much of our longing for past times and identities.

In this course, we will explore such topics as gender, “the child,” childhood, culture, and sexuality, considering in particular how these discourses work towards deconstructing and reconstructing an individual’s identity. Concepts of the body, the child, and sexuality, compel us to reconsider how we think of children and the ways in which we “love” them.
 
We will examine a range of works from authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James, Vladimir Nabokov, Daphne du Maurier, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, as well as several others. COM 10N 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. This course does not fulfill the university writing requirement; therefore, no essays will be assigned. COM 10N is a 2-unit P/NP course.

Grading: PASS/NO PASS (P/NP) ONLY.

Readings:

  • Henry James, Daisy Miller  (Dover Publications, 1995)
  • Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca  (William Morrow, 2006)
  • Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita  (Vintage, 1989)
     

Upper Division Courses

COM 110. HONG KONG CINEMA (4 Units)
Sheldon Lu

Lecture: TR 12:10-1:30P, 158 Olson
Film Viewing: T 6:10-9:00P, 158 Olson
CRN 83627

Course Description: This course is a study of the cinema of Hong Kong, a cultural crossroads between East and West. Students examine the history, genres, styles, stars, and major directors of Hong Kong cinema in reference to the city's multi-linguistic, colonial, and postcolonial environment. The course pays special attention to Hong Kong cinema's interactions with and influences on other filmic traditions such as Hollywood and Asian cinema. Topics will include: characteristics of Hong Kong cinema as a local, regional, and global cinema; historical evolution of film genres and styles; major directors and stars; film adaption of literary works about Hong Kong; Hong Kong cinema's international influence.

Prerequisite: Upper-division standing or consent of instructor.

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

Readings:

  • Course book is available as a PDF
     

COM 120. WRITING NATURE: 1750 TO THE PRESENT (4 Units)
William Scott McLean

TR 3:10-4:30P
101 Wellman
CRN 83628

Course Description: The course will begin with a contemporary argument—Bill McKibben’s in The End of Nature.  McKibben’s essay summarizes what, in 1989, was already clear—that the survival of the nature Charles Darwin had described in the 19th century was dependent upon human patterns of resource use.  It became increasingly clear at the end of the 20th century that Climate Change would play the largest role in developments relating to what we call ‘nature.’

This is the first of McKibben’s  books we will use; the second is an anthology, published by the Library of America, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, and this volume will provide many of the texts we read in the second part of the course.

Students will be supplied with xeroxed extracts from Bob Torrance’s path-breaking anthology Encompassing Nature, and the course will focus on historical developments in our understanding of our relationship with nature as well as on close reading of literary texts that relate to our interactions with the natural world.  Other texts to be read include Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, Jacquetta Hawkes’ A Land, and Norman Maclean’s Young Men & Fire.

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

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

Readings:

  • Charles Darwin, Origin of Species  (Penguin Books, 2009)
  • Jacquetta Hawkes, A Land  (Beacon Press, 1991)
  • Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire  (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
  • Bill McKibben, The End of Nature  (Random House, 2006)
  • Ed. Bill McKibben, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau  (The Library of America, 2008)
     

COM 164D. THE ENLIGHTENMENT (4 Units)
Julia Simon

MWF 11:00-11:50A
163 Olson
CRN 83629

Course Description: This course will explore the emergence of a form of writing in the eighteenth century that sought to express the inner-workings of the self. We will read both fictional and autobiographical accounts in our analysis of the appearance of new discourses of subjectivity that coincide with the rise of the novel and of the middle class.

We will begin with the best known of all eighteenth-century representations of the self, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which set a new standard for novelistic production both in England and on the continent.  The course will explore a variety of works England, France and Germany to ask questions concerning gendered subjectivity, techniques of self-representation and the workings of memory.  Texts will include Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Voltaire’s Micromegas, Franklin’s Autobiography, Rousseau’s Confessions, Graffigny’s Letters of a Peruvian Woman and Goethe’s Sorrows of the Young Werther.

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

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

Readings:

  • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels  (Penguin Classics, 2003)
  • Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe  (Penguin Classics, 2003)
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions, trans. J.M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1953)
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, trans. Michael Hulse (Penguin Classics, 1989)
  • Francois de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman, trans. David Kornacker (MLA, 1993)
     

COM 180. A STORY FOR A LIFE: THE ARABIAN NIGHTS (4 Units)
Jocelyn Sharlet

TR 12:10-1:30P
146 Robbins
CRN 83630

Course Description: This course is an in-depth investigation of the best-known work of pre-modern Arabic literature, The Thousand and One Nights, which is also known as The Arabian Nights in the recent English translations. All readings and course work will be in English. Students will explore the frame tale, a major genre of pre-modern world literature, as it develops in this text. They will examine the use of the genre to compare and contrast different perspectives on the problem of trust in human relationships. We will see how characters use storytelling to construct their identity, and to escape danger, justify their actions, and explain losses and gains of wealth or status. Students will analyze how storytelling serves as a means to forge, modify, undermine, critique, and destroy relationships between people. We will also explore the historical context of the circulation of this text in Arabic and other languages.  In order to place The Arabian Nights in its context in world literature, we will also read short selections from other texts in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sanskrit, Urdu, Spanish, Italian, and French to illustrate parallel themes, other versions of the same stories, and other approaches to the frame tale genre.

Students will write one short essay (4 pages) on a single story from The Arabian Nights and one longer essay in lieu of a final exam on two or three stories from The Arabian Nights or stories from The Arabian Nights and another text in the course (7-8 pages).

Topics: continuities and contrasts between supernatural and political authority; gender and the boundaries of the household in shaping identity and relationships; the book’s commentary on attitudes toward mercantile culture and moral values; how the stories in the book use ethnic and religious diversity to analyze cosmopolitan culture; the representation of the human and the non-human body.

Texts:
Husain Haddawy, tr., The Arabian Nights (stories from the earliest version ed. by Muhsin Mahdi)
Husain Haddawy,tr., Sindbad and Other Stories from The Arabian Nights (stories from later versions) Selections  that will be available on the website:
Malcom Lyons, tr., Arabian Nights: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, 3 volumes (the most extensive version of the book)
Nizami Ganjavi, Haft Paykar (Bahram Gur) (Persian)
Shaykh-zada, The Forty Viziers (Ottoman Turkish)
Haksad, tr., Seventy Tales of the Parrot (Sanskrit)
Mir Amman, Tale of Four Dervishes (Urdu)
Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France
Boccaccio, Decameron
Basile, Pentamerone

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

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

Readings:

  • Anonymous, The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
  • Anonymous, Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
     

Graduate Courses

COM 255. COLLOQUIUM (2 Units)
Sheldon Lu

M 2:10-4:00P
822 Sproul
CRN 83631

Course Description: History, theory, and methodology of Comparative Literature; issues of national literature, world literature, and comparative literature; relation between Comparative Literature and other disciplines and mediums; oral presentation and critique of research papers; discussion of current problems in teaching and research in Comparative Literature. May be repeated for credit. Required for all entering Comparative Literature students.

Readings:

  • Ed. Charles Bernheimer, Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)
  • Ed. David Damrosch, et al., The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature: From the European Enlightenment to the Global Present (Princeton University Press, 2009)
  • Erich Auerbach and Edward W. Said, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask (Princeton University Press, 2013)
     

COM 396. TEACHING ASSISTANT TRAINING PRACTICUM (Variable Units)

Jocelyn Sharlet (CRN ***)
Noha Radwan (CRN ***)
Shannon Hays (CRN ***)