printer friendly pageENGLISH 154: Mapping the Romantic Imagination
In this course, we will apply spatial humanities techniques to the study of Romantic writing. In the lyric poetry, national tales and Gothic novels of the Romantic period, how did geography, both real and imagined, influence the kinds of writing that were possible? Were there kinds of writing that could only happen in certain kinds of places? Together, using a combination of GIS mapping and geo-location, we will create a digital, annotated map of the Romantic imaginative world.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
ENGLISH 154E: Twentieth-Century Irish Literature
Plays, poems, short stories, and novels. Writers include James Joyce, William Yeats, Mary Lavin, Kate O'Brien,William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett. How the writer can sustain imaginative freedom and literary experiment in the face of a turbulent history.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Chace, W. (PI)
ENGLISH 154F: Film & Philosophy (FRENCH 154, ITALIAN 154, PHIL 193C, PHIL 293C)
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 155: Stories at the Border (COMPLIT 156, GLOBAL 120)
How authors and filmmakers represent the process of border-making as a social experience? How do the genres in which they work shape our understandings of the issues themselves? We will explore several different genres of visual and textual representation from around the world that bear witness to border conflict ¿ including writing by China Miéville, Carmen Boullosa, Joe Sacco, and Agha Shahid Ali¿ many of which also trouble the borders according to which genres are typically separated and defined.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Kantor, R. (PI)
;
Williams, L. (TA)
ENGLISH 156T: Analysis Interminable: Psychoanalysis and Literature
From symptomatic reading to self-help, we continue to be inundated by psychoanalytic metaphors and methods, even as we disavow many of the assumptions and conclusions for which psychoanalysis is notorious. This course couples an elementary grounding in the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, Kristeva, Winnicott, and Lacan with recuperations, critiques, and parodies of psychoanalysis in literature and literary criticism. Attending to the political landscapes that sustained, popularized, and/or debunked the field, we will begin to make sense of our troubled relationship to our psychoanalytic past. What happens when we read psychoanalytic theory as literature? How have psychoanalytic approaches to interpretation informed our norms of close reading, and where does psychoanalysis fit into contemporary literary and cultural criticism? Must we kill the father?
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
Instructors:
Atura Bushnell, A. (PI)
ENGLISH 157H: Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter (BIOHOPK 157H, BIOHOPK 257H)
What role does creativity play in the life of a scientist? How has science inspired great literature? How do you write accessibly and expressively about things like whales, DNA or cancer? This course begins with a field trip to Hopkins Marine Station where Stanford labs buzz with activity alongside barking seals and crashing waves. The trip provides a unique opportunity for students to directly engage with marine animals, coastal habitats and environmental concerns of Monterey Bay. As historian Jill Lepore writes of Rachel Carson: ¿She could not have written Silent Spring if she hadn¿t, for decades, scrambled down rocks, rolled up her pant legs, and waded into tide pools, thinking about how one thing can change another...¿ Back on campus students will complete and workshop three original nonfiction essays that explore the intersection between personal narrative and scientific curiosity. You will develop a more patient and observant eye and improve your ability to articulate scientific concepts to a general readership. **This course takes place on main campus and is open to all students. nNOTE: Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors:
Michas-Martin, S. (PI)
ENGLISH 158H: Science Meets Literature on the Monterey Peninsula (BIOHOPK 158H, BIOHOPK 258H)
(Graduate students register for 258H.) This course will consider the remarkable nexus of scientific research and literature that developed on the Monterey Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century and how the two areas of creativity influenced each other. The period of focus begins with the 1932 association of John and Carol Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, and Joseph Campbell, all of whom were highly influenced by the Carmel poet, Robinson Jeffers ¿ and ends with the novels Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954). An indisputable high-tide mark, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely of Travel and Research (1941) will be considered in detail. Weekend field trips will include intertidal exploration, a tour of the Jeffers Tor House in Carmel, and whale watching on Monterey Bay.
Last offered: Spring 2019
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 159: James Baldwin & Twentieth Century Literature (AFRICAAM 159, FEMGEN 159)
Black, gay and gifted, Baldwin was hailed as a "spokesman for the race", although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. This course examines his classic novels and essays as well his exciting work across many lesser-examined domains - poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy and artistic collaboration. Placing his work in context with other writers of the 20C (Faulkner, Wright,Morrison) and capitalizing on a resurgence of interest in the writer (NYC just dedicated a year of celebration of Baldwin and there are 2 new journals dedicated to study of Baldwin), the course seeks to capture the power and influence of Baldwin's work during the Civil Rights era as well as his relevance in the "post-race" transnational 21st century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership and country assume new urgency.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 159A: Literature that Changed the World (AFRICAAM 159A, CSRE 159I)
How does literary art get involved in politics? What is the border between propaganda and art? This class examines moments when writers seem suddenly not only to represent politically charged topics and themes, but to have a part in bringing about political change. We¿ll look at case studies from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the American Civil Rights struggle, 19th century Russia, and more.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Bronstein, M. (PI)
ENGLISH 160: Poetry and Poetics
Introduction to the reading of poetry, with emphasis on how the sense of poems is shaped through diction, imagery, and technical elements of verse.nEnglish majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Filter Results: