Comparative Literature Graduate Course Descriptions
Winter Quarter
| Dept | Course No and Title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|
| COM LIT (W25) | 210 PSYCH,TRAUMA THEORY | SCHWAB, G. |
| CL 210 Psychoanalysis and Trauma Theory The focus of this course will be on psychoanalysis, violence and trauma. We will begin with a discussion of some texts by Freud, including “Why War?” “Moses and Monotheism,” “Civilization and its Discontents,” “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” We will then deal with a selection of major psychoanalytic contributions to the analysis of violence and violent histories, addressing issues such as trauma and its transgenerational transmission, “the reproduction of evil,” the “fascist character,” and modalities of resistance. Texts: Sigmund Freud, “Why War?”; “Moses and Monotheism”; “Civilization and its Discontents”; “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” Jacques Lacan, “Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis” D. W. Winnicott, “Aggression in Relation to Emotional Development” Melanie Klein, “Envy and Gratitude and Other Works” (Selections) Christopher Bollas, The Bollas Reader, Selections, including “The Fascist Character” Sue Grand, The Reproduction of Evil (Selections) Jacqueline Rose, The Last Resistance and “You Made me Do It” Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory (Selections) Gabriele Schwab, Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma (Selections) | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 210 INDIGENOUS ECOCRIT | CARROLL, A. |
| COM LIT 210, “Indigenous Ecocriticism” (Winter 2025) This course introduces foundational texts in ecocriticism, a cultural theory and literary critical practice that explores the relationship between humans and nature and how literature and other cultural productions represent and shape that relationship. The course centers the perspectives and contributions of Native American and Indigenous scholars and artists who intervene in the field by challenging the human/nature division inherent in European American worldviews and asserting Indigenous philosophies and practices of interrelatedness/interspecies kinship, interdependence, animacy, communalism, respect, and reciprocity. Course materials include documentary films and works of fiction, theory, criticism, and philosophy by Acjachemen, Tongva, Anishinaabe, Laguna Pueblo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Lakota, Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen, Potawatomie, and Tewa people. Students will pursue interdisciplinary research (e.g., informed by other fields like biology, biopolitics, ecology, environmental studies, etc.) and engage with other theoretical approaches (e.g., feminist, Marxist, or queer criticism) to produce a project that focuses on environmental justice. Required texts available at UCI bookstore: Cajete, Gregory (Tewa). Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence Hogan, Linda (Chickasaw). Solar Storms Kimmerer, Robin Wall (Potawatomie). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants King, Thomas (Cherokee). Green Grass, Running Water Additional texts available on Canvas. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 210 THINKING WITH WATER | JOHNSON, A. |
| CL 210: Thinking with Water (Or the Politics & Poetics of Water) Wed 3:00-5:50pm The seminar is a critical introduction into some of the discourses and debates around the Blue Humanities, also variously known as Blue Cultural Studies, Oceanic Studies, Hydrocriticism, Hydro-Colonialism, Thalassography, Wet Globalization, Wet Ontologies, or Hydrohumanities. While these fields of thinking overlap with ecocriticism or the environmental humanities, they have also emerged in counterpoint to them, proposing ways of moving beyond earth-centered approaches to our surroundings. Three central questions will guide our inquiry. First, how do different forms or bodies of water matter and inform these discourses? Or what changes depending on which waters we’re starting from? Ocean spaces (which as Christopher Connery has said, is capital’s “myth element”) has driven much of the theorizations of the Blue Humanities, but different lines of thinking have emerged from confronting rivers, estuaries and, to a much lesser extent, rain. Second, how do theoretical discourses and/or the questions being asked rest on particular archives, geographic locales or historical anchoring points? Early iterations of the Blue Humanities were both Atlantic-centric as well as dominated by Anglophone literary criticism and histories; although there has since been a shift to global, non-Western, and indigenous materials some archives are still missing in the discussions. Questions around rivers are often articulated with indigenous struggles while ocean spaces are variously linked to capital and the slave ship. How might we think critically about such archival distributions? Third and finally, what does it mean to think and read for water in literature, photography, film, or art? Readings will include selections from Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, Melody Jue’s Wild Blue Media, Jamie Linton’s What is Water?, Ceclia Chen, Janine MacLeod and Astrida Neimanis’ Thinking with Water, Deborah Cowen’s The Deadly Life of Logistics, Nicole Starosielski’s The Undersea Network, Alexis Wick’s The Red Sea: In Search of Lost Space, Carl Schmitt’s Land and Sea, Dilip da Cunha’s The Invention of Rivers and others. Films will likely include Alan Sekula’s The Forgotten Space, Patricio Guzman’s The Pearl Button, Everlane Moraes’ Pattaki. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 210 NORMALIZED ABNORMAL | THIONG'O, N. |
| Normalized Abnormality of the Post-Colonial: African Literature in European Languages The course looks at the African novel in European languages as an example of the normalization of the anomalies and abnormalities of the post-colonial situation in the globe. So although the course is based primarily on texts from Africa, it will make comparisons with the Irish and other post-colonial situations. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | AMIRAN, E. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | CARROLL, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | GOLDBERG, D. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | JOHNSON, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | MOR, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | NEWMAN, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | RAHIMIEH, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | SCHWAB, G. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | TERADA, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | THIONG'O, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 290 READING&CONFERENCE | LUPTON, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | ABBAS, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | AMIRAN, E. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | CARROLL, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | FARBMAN, H. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | GOLDBERG, D. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | HARRIES, M. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | JOHNSON, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | MOR, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | NEWMAN, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | RAHIMIEH, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | SCHWAB, G. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | TERADA, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 291 GUIDED READING | THIONG'O, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | ABBAS, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | AMIRAN, E. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | CARROLL, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | FARBMAN, H. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | GOLDBERG, D. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | JARRATT, S. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | JOHNSON, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | MOR, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | NEWMAN, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | RAHIMIEH, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | SCHWAB, G. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | TERADA, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | TERRY, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | THIONG'O, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 298 PRE-DISS RESEARCH | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | ABBAS, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | AMIRAN, E. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | CARROLL, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | FARBMAN, H. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | GOLDBERG, D. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | JARRATT, S. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | JOHNSON, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | MOR, L. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | NEWMAN, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | RAHIMIEH, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | SCHWAB, G. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | TERADA, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | TERRY, J. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | THIONG'O, N. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | LONG, M. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | STAFF |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 299 DISSERTATN RESEARCH | RADHAKRISHNAN, R. |
| No detailed description available. | ||
| COM LIT (W25) | 399 UNIVERSITY TEACHING | JOHNSON, A. |
| No detailed description available. | ||