printer friendly pageENGLISH 134A: Historical Fiction: Bringing the Past to Life in Text and Film
How does the past come to life, on the page and on the screen? From Walter Scott, to Toni Morrison, to the popular romances, films, and television series of today, this course considers a range of texts that draw their settings, characters, and plots from history. We will examine how each work addresses some of the central tensions of historical fiction: between the imagined past and the past as reconstructed through research, between description and the spirit of the past, between accuracy and relevance. Our focus will be on the craft of historical fiction and the power of techniques like description, dialogue, setting, and character to reanimate the past. For the final assessment, students will choose between a traditional argumentative paper and a historical story of their own invention.
Last offered: Summer 2017
ENGLISH 134C: The Western: Imagining the West in Fiction and Film (AMSTUD 134C)
The Wild West: a mythical place seared deep into the American imagination. Its familiar tropes lone riders on horseback, desert sunsets, saloon fights, train robberies echo through countless Western stories, novels, films, radio programs, and television series. Both formulaic and flexible, the Western has endured as a popular genre in American culture for more than a century, embodying and responding to many of the nation's broader anxieties surrounding its colonial history, its notions of masculinity and gender roles, its fascination with guns and violence, and its ideals of self-reliance and individualism. In this class we'll examine the Western genre through a selection of its central works in fiction and film, from the first dime novel Western, Ann S. Stephens Malaeska (1860), to Cormac McCarthy¿s acclaimed Blood Meridian (1985); and from the first silent film Western, Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903), to the mid-century Hollywood films of John Ford, to Maggie Greenwald¿s feminist Western, The Ballad of Little Jo (1993). Along the way we'll examine the Western as both a literary form and a cultural phenomenon, probing the history of its enduring appeal as a genre. How do these novels and films construct, adapt, and subvert the form and expectations of the Western, and how do they both perpetuate and challenge the broader cultural problems of their, and our, time? Finally, as Californians and inheritors of the nation's westward expansion, what does the Western tell us about national myths of the West, and the place in which we live?
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 135C: Reading and Writing the Personal Essay
This course examines the literary and cultural significance of the personal essay. We will begin with some influential theories of the essay, and conclude by considering the changing media from periodicals to blogs in which it appears. In between, we will explore some of the many reasons writers have had for writing themselves into their essays, such as explaining their personal tastes, demanding action from their readers, bearing witness to trauma, and making the personal political. Course readings will be drawn from across the rich history of the personal essay, including works by Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Alice Walker, David Foster Wallace, Elif Batuman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. As we explore the literary history, structure, and style of the personal essay, we will also reflect on what this genre reveals about the modern person. How are individuals shaped by social, cultural, and political forces? How are the ways we construct and express ourselves affected by changes in the media? And what might the personal essay reveal about the shifting boundaries between self and other, public and private, fact and fiction? Throughout the course, students will complete a series of short critical assignments, culminating in a final paper in which they will apply what they have learned to produce personal essays of their own.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Taylor, M. (PI)
ENGLISH 135E: William Blake: A Literary and Visual Exploration of the Illuminated Poetry (ARTHIST 135)
An introduction to the illuminated world of William Blake¿poet, prophet, revolutionary, and visionary artist. The course will address Blake's visual iconography, belief system and ideology, unique mythology, and method of relief etching that allowed him to make every illuminated book a unique work of art, among them, The Songs of Innocence and Experience; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; The Book of Thel; Visions of the Daughters of Albion; The Book of Urizen; America a Prophecy; and Europe a Prophecy.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Gigante, D. (PI)
ENGLISH 141C: Facts and Fictions: British Writing in the 1930s and the Rise of Fascism
In contemporary American politics where the phrase ¿alternative facts¿ has entered our lexicon in a post-truth attempt at media control, and where the activation of Brexit returns to Britain a little England model of insular nationalism, it might be a good time to return to the concerns of British writers in the 1930s about nationalism, militarism, and the politics of language. Well aware of nativist risks in a post-Depression era, as well as the loss of progressive ideals (unevenly) cultured during the 1920s, these writers explored the relationship and stakes between words and politics as they faced an increasingly fascistic continent. Writers include: G. Orwell, S. Jameson, W. Holtby, V. Brittain, N. Michinson, E. Waugh, S. Gibson, L. Woolf, V.Woolf, A. Huxley, W.H. Auden, C.Isherwood
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Staveley, A. (PI)
ENGLISH 141F: Short Story to Big Screen (AMSTUD 141F)
This course will study the adaptation from short stories to films, with a particular eye toward the form and structure of each media and their relationship to each other. Students will read a variety of 20th and 21st century stories and watch their adaptations (including ¿Rashomon" and ¿Brokeback Mountain,¿), as well as write a short screenplay adaptation and a short critical essay on a story/film of their choosing.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Jones, G. (PI)
;
Kealey, T. (PI)
ENGLISH 143A: American Indian Mythology, Legend, and Lore (AMSTUD 143M, ENGLISH 43A, NATIVEAM 143A)
(English majors and others taking 5 units, register for 143A.) Readings from American Indian literatures, old and new. Stories, songs, and rituals from the 19th century, including the Navajo Night Chant. Tricksters and trickster stories; war, healing, and hunting songs; Aztec songs from the 16th century. Readings from modern poets and novelists including N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko, and the classic autobiography, "Black Elk Speaks."
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Fields, K. (PI)
;
Pickering, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 144: Major Modernists: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot
What made modernism `new? Is the movement `evergreen? We examine representational change, narrative innovation, and political aesthetics in the poetry, short fiction, and novels of four iconic pioneers: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Chun, C. (PI)
;
Staveley, A. (PI)
ENGLISH 145D: Jewish American Literature (AMSTUD 145D, JEWISHST 155D, REES 145D)
From its inception, Jewish-American literature has taken as its subject as well as its context the idea of Jewishness itself. Jewish culture is a diasporic one, and for this reason the concept of Jewishness differs from country to country and across time. What stays remarkably similar, though, is Jewish self-perception and relatedly Jewish literary style. This is as true for the first-generation immigrant writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anzia Yezierska who came to the United States from abroad as it is for their second-generation children born in the United States, and the children of those children. In this course, we will consider the difficulties of displacement for the emigrant generation and their efforts to sustain their cultural integrity in the multicultural American environment. We'll also examine the often comic revolt of their American-born children and grandchildren against their (grand-)parents nostalgia and failure to assimilate. Only by considering these transnational roots can one understand the particularity of the Jewish-American novel in relation to mainstream and minority American literatures. In investigating the link between American Jewish writers and their literary progenitors, we will draw largely but not exclusively from Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Ruttenburg, N. (PI)
ENGLISH 146A: Steinbeck (AMSTUD 146A)
Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts of Steinbeck's major works; his fascination with California and Mexico; his interdisciplinary interest in marine biology and in philosophy; his diverse experiments with literary form, including drama and film.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-EDP
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