Comparative Literature Program - Course Descriptions

Term:  

Spring Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
COM LIT (S25)9  IMMIGRATIONGAMBER, J.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)10  HUMANOIDSCHAHINIAN, T.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)60C  CULTURAL STUDIESJOHNSON, A.
Com Lit 60C: Cultural Studies

CL60C is the last class of the introductory series to the Comparative Literature major and focuses on introducing students to the third pillar of our educational mission: to develop the ability of students to critically read cultural texts in a range of genres and media (novels, poetry, drama, film, architecture & urban design, political discourse, popular culture, online internet cultural forms, music, etc.) from across the globe. This course specifically introduces students to modes of analysis that came to be known as “cultural studies”, that focused on popular or mass media and articulated theories of the relationship of culture to social and political processes. We will read theory but also consider fairytales, popular music, advertising, film, and social media genres.
COM LIT (S25)105  INDGNOUS FEMINISMCARROLL, A.
Spring 2025
Comparative Literature 105: Indigenous Feminisms
Professor Alicia Carroll


This upper-division seminar engages with novels, memoirs, dramatic and documentary films, poetry, and essays by Native American and Indigenous feminist scholars, artists, and activists from across the Americas, Hawai’i, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand to examine multiple intersections of oppression based on gender, sex, sexuality, race, indigeneity, and class. The course materials focus on the intellectual and political interventions of Indigenous feminists who assert that historical and present forms of gendered violence—including sexual assault, domestic abuse, environmental destruction, and the impositions of heteronormativity and patriarchy—are key components of Indigenous genocide and the larger context of settler colonialism.
COM LIT (S25)130  FMNSM MOD J NOVELLONG, M.
EAS 170/Com Lit 130/Gen&Sex 170

This is a small upper-division literature seminar about love, feminism and modern Japan. The theme is “voice.” We focus on seven women authors, reading more than one work by each to explore their distinctive voices. Which authors talk about feminism in a way that resonates with UCI students in 2025? How do they define “love”? “freedom?” “equality?” Sometimes Japanese feminists approach issues like abortion, care-work, sex-work, queer and trans issues, and sexual pleasure in ways that feel familiar and easy to debate. Other times, political and cultural contexts like Marxism, anarchism, colonialism, and ultra-nationalism reveal approaches to the same issues that feel totally new. Assignments include weekly reading quizzes, mid-term and final lists, and two recorded contributions to class audiobooks.
COM LIT (S25)130  RACE MEETS RELIGIONCARTER, J.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)150  WOMEN WRITE THECITYDIMENDBERG, E.
CL 150  Women Write the City

Through close readings of novels by women or with central female protagonists, this class will consider the modalities of modern urban experience in Berlin, Paris, London, Shanghai, Budapest, Los Angeles, Rome, and Tokyo.  Authors to be studied include Wang Anyi, Muriel Spark, Jean Rhys, Sayaka Murata, Emile Zola, Joan Didion, Raymond Queneau, Magda Szabo, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Irmgard Keun. We will investigate their books for clues about the cultural work accomplished by urban narratives and the agency of women in the metropolis during times of political and social transformation. Readings by theorists such as Lauren Elkin, Elizabeth Wilson, David Harvey, Deborah Parsons, Henri Lefebvre, and Walter Benjamin will provide an armature for thinking broadly about cities and space.  Assignment structure:  Weekly reading questions, take-home midterm, and final essay. Regular attendance and participation in class discussions will be expected. Instructor: Edward Dimendberg
COM LIT (S25)150  SEPHARDIC WORLDSBARON-BLOCH, R.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)190W  AUERBACH'S MIMESISNEWMAN, J.
Professor Jane O. Newman
CL190W (Spring, 2025): 


Course title: “Reading: Auerbach’s Mimesis, Chapter 21”

This course is designed to give you the opportunity to take what you have learned at UCI about how to read ‘texts’ broadly conceived, including literary, cinematic, visual, and digital works as well as the ‘texts’ of history and society and political, philosophical, and ideological texts too, with care and nuance. As the capstone seminar for Comparative Literature majors, the course will allow students to look back on their course of study at UCI and the multiple kinds of texts they have encountered and to investigate how reading – and writing about – texts and events can help us orient ourselves in today’s complex world. Our guide in this journey will be one of the major figures of the discipline of Comparative Literature in the U.S., Erich Auerbach, whose book, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), was described by the great post-colonial critic, Edward Said, as “by far the largest in scope and ambition out of all the other important critical works” of the twentieth century. After introducing ourselves to the history of the discipline of Comparative Literature and to Auerbach’s place in it in a series of short readings, we will familiarize ourselves with Auerbach’s reading techniques and study what he has to say in Mimesis about how to tease out the work that texts do as they struggle to represent the realities of human existence in the midst of challenging times. As a designated upper-division writing seminar, the course is also designed to allow you to devote time to producing your own texts; students will thus be asked to return to a text (again, with text broadly understood, i.e., a novel, a series of poems, a film, a TV show, etc.) of their choice, something by which they have been particularly moved during their undergraduate years — or pick a new one that they haven’t yet read, but have always wanted to – and undertake an in-depth reading of it, based on the model of the chapters of Mimesis assigned. The goal is a 10-15 page research paper on the text or object you have chosen in consultation with the instructor. Class time will be used for analyzing and discussing how Auerbach’s close readings unfold, learning research methods, writing exercises linked to our reading of Mimesis and of your individual texts and projects, and sharing your work with the other seminar participants in a collaborative fashion. The last two weeks of the quarter will be devoted exclusively to revising and finalizing your research papers, with meetings for peer editing as well as individual sessions with UCI research librarian Richard Cho and the instructor. All students will be provided with a copy of Auerbach’s Mimesis after they have contacted the instructor (jonewman@uci.edu) about their intention to enroll in the course. Please contact Professor Newman asap so that you can be sure to get your copy! NOTE: This course is restricted to Comparative Literature majors in their junior or senior year!
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITAMIRAN, E.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITCARROLL, A.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITCOLMENARES GON, D.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITJOHNSON, A.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITMOR, L.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITRAHIMIEH, N.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITSCHWAB, G.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITTERADA, R.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S25)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITTHIONG'O, N.
No detailed description available.