Results for COMPLIT

Introduction to theories about reading and theories about thinking. How should we best read novels, plays, short stories, poetry, and a variety of other forms of literary expression? Which ideas get taken across borders by literature, and which ideas do not? What role has literature played in human societies in different times and places? Fulfills the Writing-in-the-Major requirement. Gateway to the Comparative Literature Major.

Nabokov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel "The Gift," "Lolita" (the novel and screenplay), and "Pale Fire." Readings in English. Russian speakers will be encouraged to read Russian texts in original.

What is poetry? How does it speak in many voices to questions of history, society, and personal experience? Why does it matter? The reading and interpretation of poetry in crosscultural comparison as experience, invention, form, sound, knowledge, and part of the world. Readings include: classical Chinese poetry, English Romantic poetry, and modern Arabic, American, Brazilian, Japanese, German, Spanish poetry, with specific attention to landscape, terrain, the environment, and the role of the poet.

How literary works outside the realm of western culture struggle with questions such as identity, minority, and the issue of the other. How the Arab is viewed in Hebrew literature and how the Jew is viewed in Arabic literature. Historical, political, and sociological forces that have contributed to the shaping of the writer's views. Arab and Jewish (Israeli) culture.

An examination of the history, art and culture of Vietnamese Americans, and their contemporary experiences in the South Bay. The course will combine in-class learning with a major conference featuring prominent artists and scholars on the Vietnamese Diasporic community. A service learning component requires community work at a service organization in San Jose. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center). Course can be repeated once.

Even before Novalis claimed that the world must be romanticized, thinkers, writers, and artists wanted to perceive the human and natural world poetically. The pre- and post-romantic poetic modes of thinking they created are the subject of this course. Readings include Ecclestias, Zhaozhou Congshen, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Kafka, Benjamin, Arendt, and Sontag. This course will also present poetic thinking in the visual arts--from the expressionism of Ingmar Bergman to the neo-romanticism of Gerhard Richter.

Anna Karenina, the novel as a case study in the contest between "modernity" and "tradition," their ethical order, ideology, cultural codes, and philosophies. Images of society, women and men in Tolstoy v. those of his contemporaries: Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim, Freud. Open to juniors, seniors and graduate students. Requirements: three interpretive essays (500-1000 words each). Analysis of a passage from the novel; AK refracted through a "philosophical" prism and vice versa (30% each); class discussion and Forum (10%).

(Staff)

Close analysis of major works of LGBTQ literature, film, and visual art from the 1890s to today. Students will gain deeper knowledge and appreciation of historical and contemporary forms of queer representation in various national literatures, film, and visual art; understand relevant social and political debates; and gain a basic knowledge of feminist and queer theory. Course will include an optional online component to reach out to the public (class website queerlitfilm.wordpress.com, social media).

Designed to develop reading competence in Turkish for graduate students (undergraduates should consult the instructor). An introduction to the structures of Turkish language necessary for reading. Essential grammar, syntax points, vocabulary, and reading skills will be emphasized. The goal is to enable you to read Turkish at an advanced level in a relatively short period of time. It is not a traditional language course that takes an integrated four-skill approach; it focuses only on reading, and as a result we will be able to cover advanced material in a short amount of time.

This course will focus on the analysis of ten Iranian films with the view of conducting a discourse on the semiotics of Iranian art and culture.nnEach session will be designated to the viewing of a film by a prominent Iranian film-maker. Students are expected to prepare for class by having previously examined other available films by the film-maker under consideration.

Working through a selection of novels by the author widely considered as a founder of western (19th-century) "Literary Realism." Balzac's will be contextualized within his life and the French culture and literature of his time. We will also approach, from a philosophical point of view, the emergence and functions of "Literary Realism." Another focus will be Balzac's work as exemplary of certain traditions within Literary Criticism (particularly Marxist Literary Criticism). Taught in English.

Nabokov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel "The Gift," "Lolita" (the novel and screenplay), and "Pale Fire." Readings in English. Russian speakers will be encouraged to read Russian texts in original.

The role of narrative in the well-lived life. Are narratives necessary? Can they, and should they, be literary? When might non-narrative approaches, whether literary or otherwise, be more relevant? Is unity of self something given, something to be achieved, or something to be overcome? Readings from Aristotle, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, MacIntyre, G. Strawson, Velleman; Ricoeur, Brooks; Shakespeare, Stendhal, Musil, Levi, Beckett, Morrison; film. Taught in English.

Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit. Taught in English.

A number of faculty will present published work and discuss their research and composition process. We will read critical, theoretical, and literary texts that address, in different ways, "What is a World?" Taught in English.

How aesthetics and politics intertwine and break apart in Western and Eastern traditions. Aesthetics for understanding culture, morality, and power in crosscultural contexts. Readings include Hegel, Kant, Marcuse, Lukacs, and Adorno; and Chinese thinkers Wang Guowei, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, and Mao. Prerequisite: CHINLIT 127/207 or consent of instructor.

Anna Karenina, the novel as a case study in the contest between "modernity" and "tradition," their ethical order, ideology, cultural codes, and philosophies. Images of society, women and men in Tolstoy v. those of his contemporaries: Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim, Freud. Open to juniors, seniors and graduate students. Requirements: three interpretive essays (500-1000 words each). Analysis of a passage from the novel; AK refracted through a "philosophical" prism and vice versa (30% each); class discussion and Forum (10%).

Required for first-year Ph.D students in English, Modern Thought and Literature, and Comparative Literature. Preparation for surviving as teaching assistants in undergraduate literature courses. Focus is on leading discussions and grading papers.