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Dystopian California examines the ways the Golden State has been popularly imagined both historically as the Land of Promise and more recently as the land of apocalypse in science fiction and disaster films. Through this lens, we¿ll be exploring anxieties articulated through images of natural disaster, environmental degradation, urbanization and urban decay, invasion (both viral and ¿alien¿), societal collapse, overpopulation, and nuclear holocaust ¿ as well as the tenacity of the human spirit. We¿ll be discussing conceptions of survival and the ways these films both articulate societal fears and help to neutralize them. More broadly we will discuss how these films metaphorically address, through the loss of innocence, the possibility of establishing a truly Utopian California ¿ the Golden Land of Opportunity promised to us ¿ that had been unattainable or lost in the melee of postmodernity

(Formerly English 43/143). In his bold study, What Was African American Literature?, Kenneth Warren defines African American literature as a late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century response to the nation's Jim Crow segregated order. But in the aftermath of the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement, can critics still speak, coherently, of "African American literature"? And how does this political conception of African American literary production compare with accounts grounded in black language and culture? Taking up Warren's intervention, this course will explore African American literature from its earliest manifestations in the spirituals and slave narratives to texts composed at the height of desegregation and decolonization struggles at mid-century and beyond.

Are we living in a new Gilded Age? To answer this question, we go back to the original Gilded Age, as well as its successor, the Progressive Era. How did urban Americans around the turn of the twentieth century deal with stark inequalities of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And what can we learn from their struggles for our own time? Students use primary and secondary sources in digital and print formats. Possible field trip to San Francisco.

We may "know" "who" we "are," but we are, after all, social creatures. How does our sense of self interact with those around us? How does literature provide a particular medium for not only self expression, but also for meditations on what goes into the construction of "the Self"? After all, don't we tell stories in response to the question, "who are you"? Besides a list of nouns and names and attributes, we give our lives flesh and blood in telling how we process the world. Our course focuses in particular on this question--Does this universal issue ("who am I") become skewed differently when we add a qualifier before it, like "ethnic"?

Preference to freshmen. We will examine the struggles of African American women to define their own lives and improve the social, economic, political and cultural conditions of black communities. Topics will include women's enslavement and freedom, kinship and family relations, institution and community building, violence, labor and leisure, changing gender roles, consumer and beauty culture, social activism, and the politics of sexuality.

This discussion class will explore a series of social movements in modern America through the songs produced to support efforts to achieve labor unions, civil rights and racial justice, peace, and women's rights. For each class we will read short historical texts to provide contexts for the movements and then concentrate on the role of music within them. We will listening to and discuss several core songs for each topic. Biographical and autobiographical readings on a key set of musicians (including Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, and Bernice Johnson Reagon) will provide personal accounts of the relationship of songs to social movement . The music we include in class will range from ballads to anthems, from oral traditions to the work of singer-songwriters.

This course explores the emergence of concepts of gender equality in world history. It asks how gender inequality relates to racial, ethnicity, and sexual identities, how men engage with feminism, whether gender equality is purely a western cultural tradition, and much more. We approach the long history of ideas about gender and equality by reading primary historical documents from around the world, moving from the 15th century to the present. Topics include education, the body, sexuality, violence, labor, and politics.

Preference to freshmen. Mark Twain defined the rhythms of our prose and the contours of our moral map. He recognized our extravagant promise and stunning failures, our comic foibles and tragic flaws. He is viewed as the most American of American authors--and as one of the most universal. How does his work illuminate his society¿s (and our society¿s) responses to such issues as race, gender, technology, heredity vs. environment, religion, education, art, imperialism, animal welfare, and what it means to be ¿American¿?

Contemporary visual artists have long been in the forefront of social criticism in America and their key works have become anchors for discourses on racism, sexism, economic inequality, and immigrant rights. We will consider political art by artists such as ACT-UP, Judy Chicago, Fred Wilson, Guerilla Girls, Ai Weiwei and many others that raises social awareness, inspires social change and galvanizes activism. What makes their art enduring social criticism? How have they contributed to our understanding of American history?