printer friendly pageENGLISH 105A: Aesthetics and the Audience: Literary Landmarks
In this course, we will consider major landmarks of aesthetic reflection on the meanings of artworks for their audiences, each of which is a landmark of literature in its own right. Authors might include the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Burke, Schiller, Hazlitt, Nietzsche, Woolf, Sontag, Cavell, Irigaray.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Greif, M. (PI)
ENGLISH 106A: Black Mirror: A.I.Activism (AMSTUD 106B, ARTHIST 168A, CSRE 106A, SYMSYS 168A)
Lecture/small group course exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engages with, and generated by, exponential technologies. Our course explores the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 113A: African American Ecologies (AFRICAAM 113A)
African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni M
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African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison, short stories and essays by Charles Chesnutt, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine McKittrick, and adrienne marie brown, and films and multimedia works by Julie Dash, Stephanie Dinkins, and Jordan Peele. Important topics will include the ecology of the plantation, black feminist ecological thought, and the significance of water in African American life and culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Gordon, W. (PI)
ENGLISH 113P: Media and Communication from the Middle Ages to the Printing Press (ENGLISH 13P, HISTORY 13P, HISTORY 113P, MUSIC 13P, MUSIC 113P)
Did you know that the emperor Charlemagne was illiterate, yet his scribes revolutionized writing in the West? This course follows decisive moments in the history of media and communication, asking how new recording technologies reshaped a society in which most people did not read or write--what has been described as the shift "from memory to written record." To understand this transformation, we examine forms of oral literature and music, from the Viking sagas, the call to crusade, and medieval curses (Benedictine maledictions), to early popular authors such as Dante and the 15th-century feminist scribe, Christine de Pizan. We trace the impact of musical notation, manuscript and book production, and Gutenberg's print revolution. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum, how did the medium shape the message? Along the way, we will consider how the medieval arts of memory and divine reading (lectio divina) can inform communication in the digital world. This is a hands-on course: students will handle medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Special Collections, and will participate in an "ink-making workshop," following medieval recipes for ink and for cutting quills, then using them to write on parchment. The course is open to all interested students.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Phillips, J. (PI)
ENGLISH 114B: Paradise Lost
Intensive reading of Milton's epic Paradise Lost together with selections from Milton's other poetry and from his prose.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Jenkins, N. (PI)
;
Hua, X. (TA)
ENGLISH 115: Virtual Italy (ARCHLGY 117, CLASSICS 115, HISTORY 238C, ITALIAN 115)
Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Ceserani, G. (PI)
ENGLISH 115H: Essential Shakespeare, Shakespearean Essence
What do we mean when we call something Shakespearean? It is not uncommon to see the adjective tied to political scandals, prestige television (e.g. Succession), or inventive lyricists. But then again, for the Romantics, Shakespeare also represented the artist who disappeared behind his works?the chameleon poet whose characters become free artists unto themselves. In this course, we will read a selection of poems and plays to explore what, if anything, is Shakespearean about Shakespeare. Is there a tragic vision that is particularly Shakespearean? How has same-sex desire, ubiquitous in the poems and plays, been erased from the mainstream conception of the Shakespearean? Is there a particularly Shakespearean understanding of gender? Is there a Shakespearean politics? A Shakespearean philosophy? While we pursue this essence of Shakespeare, we will also be thinking about what it means for Shakespeare to have become an "essential" author in the canon of English literature. This course should appeal to Shakespearean devotees and skeptics alike, as well as neutral parties, since, as we might conclude, there is nothing more Shakespearean than ambivalence.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Kidney, J. (PI)
ENGLISH 118: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)
How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Eagleman, D. (PI)
;
Landy, J. (PI)
;
Carter, H. (TA)
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more instructors for ENGLISH 118 »
Instructors:
Eagleman, D. (PI)
;
Landy, J. (PI)
;
Carter, H. (TA)
;
Cashe, I. (TA)
;
Ding, G. (TA)
;
Heyward-Rotimi, K. (TA)
;
Horowitz, A. (TA)
;
Martinez, N. (TA)
ENGLISH 119: Pitching and Publishing in Popular Media (FEMGEN 118)
FOR UNDERGRADUATES ONLY (grad students enroll in 318 in the winter) Most of the time, writing a pitch for a popular outlet just means writing an email. So why be intimidated? This course will outline the procedure for pitching essays and articles to popular media: how to convince an editor, agent, or anyone else that your idea is compelling, relevant, and deliverable. We'll take a holistic approach to self-presentation that includes presenting yourself with confidence, optimizing your social media and web platform, networking effectively, writing excellent queries and pitches, avoiding the slush pile, and perhaps most importantly, persevering through the inevitable self-doubt and rejection.We will focus on distinguishing the language, topics and hooks of popular media writing from those of academic writing, learn how to target and query editors on shortform pieces (personal essays, news stories, etc.), and explore how humanists can effectively self-advocate and get paid for their work.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 3 units total)
Instructors:
Goode, L. (PI)
ENGLISH 122C: Medieval Fantasy Literature
This is a comparative medieval literature course that surveys Anglo-Norman and English romance, English and Norse heroic epic, and Norse and Celtic mythology. What significance and meaning did medieval writers from different times and places see in magic and monsters; what superstitions and beliefs converged in their efforts to represent things from the other side, and what compelled them to do so? We will address such questions by reading the literature against the social, cultural, and religious contexts that shaped medieval life and artistic production. Finally we will turn to some modern works inspired by these medieval texts, reflecting on how literary medievalism has cultivated the tropes of medieval fantasy to produce works which mediate between an imagined history, sublime fabrication, and contemporary concerns.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Ashton, M. (PI)
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