Winter Quarter 2026

Winter Quarter 2026

Lower Division

 

  • COM 001 - Major Works of the Ancient World

  • Introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the major works of the ancient world (up to 5th century CE) such as The Odyssey, the Bible, Augustine's Confessions, and works by Plato and Confucius. Examined genres include religious texts, the epic, philosophy, drama, poetry.
  • COM 002 - Major Works of the Medieval & Early Modern World
  • Introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the major works of the medieval and early modern worlds (6th century to the mid-17th century) such as Dante’s Comedy, 1001 Nights, The Tale of Genji, and Elizabethan/Jacobean plays. Examined genres include framed narratives, courtly literature, and early modern drama.
  • COM 003 - Major Works of the Modern World
  • Introduction, through class discussion and frequent written assignments, to some of the major works of the modern world (mid-17th to the mid-20th centuries) such as those by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Woolf, Lu Xun, Borges and Yeats. Examined genres include realist fiction, modernist fiction, and modernist poetry.
  • COM 004 - Major Works of the Contemporary World
  • Comparative study of selected major Western and non-Western texts composed in the period from 1945 to the present. Intensive focus on writing about these texts, with frequent papers written about these works.
  • COM 011 - Travel and the Modern World
  • Examination of 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. Travelogues, literature, art, memoirs, and films in English translation.

Upper Division

COM 110 - Hong Kong Cinema 
Sheldon Lu
Hong Kong cinema, its history, industry, styles, genres, directors, and stars. Special attention to its polyglot, multicultural, transnational, colonial, and postcolonial environment.

COM 147 - Modern Jewish Writers
Timothy Parish
Problems of the modern Jewish experience from the perspective of the writer's construction of the self in relation to the future and to the non-Jew. Draws upon Russian, German, Yiddish, and American traditions.

Graduate

COM 210- Topics and Themes in Comparative Literature
Comparative, interpretive study of the treatment of specific topics and themes in literary works from various periods, societies, and cultures, in light of these works' historical and sociocultural contexts.
Section 001 - Noha Radwan
Section 002 - Sheldon Lu