COM LIT Course Descriptions for 2008-2009

Fall 2008
Winter 2009
Spring 2009
Archive
Winter Course Descriptions
CourseTitleInstructorDescription
COM LIT 40BDEVELOPMNT OF DRAMABARKER, S.
COM LIT 40BDEVELOPMNT OF DRAMABARKER, S.
COM LIT 40BDEVELOPMNT OF DRAMABARKER, S.
COM LIT 40BDEVELOPMNT OF DRAMABARKER, S.
COM LIT 40BDEVELOPMNT OF DRAMABARKER, S.
COM LIT 40BDEVELOPMNT OF DRAMABARKER, S.
COM LIT 60BREADING WITH THEORYHALL, J.How does a story function? How does a film mean? And why do magazine and television advertisements work so well on us? This course introduces you to basic tools of cultural and textual analysis including the following: semiotics, formal analysis, Marxist and Freudian criticism, feminist, queer, postcolonial, and ecological studies. We apply these critical theories to a wide variety of media objects from around the globe: short stories, magazine advertising, films, internet sites—even your own dreams. The course assumes no prior knowledge of theory or criticism and provides an excellent opportunity for you to sample the wide variety of "critical theory" used in the Humanities and Social Sciences--and to determine the methods that seem most promising for your own studies. The course is open to students from all schools and majors. Course requirements include five one-paragraph submissions to an online course website, two online quizzes, and two short papers (3-5 pp).
COM LIT 100AGERMANJEWISHWRITINGGELLEY, A.Our focus will be on the inter-relation of Jewish and German culture and literature in the half-century leading up to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. This period is marked by the unification of Germany as a nation, the extensive migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the west and especially to Germany, the emergence of the Jewish national movement of Zionism, and the growth of a vigorous secular Jewish culture. The status of Jews in the German-speaking world in this period reveals a complex interplay of national aspirations and group identity. In the context of this historical background we will focus on a number of leading writers and thinkers including Peretz, Aleichem, Kafka, Schnitzler, Benjamin, Scholem, Arendt, and Agnon.
COM LIT 102WWORD AND IMAGEJARRATT, S.An introduction to the study of visual rhetoric--the study of contemporary critical problems associated with image making, circulating, and viewing--in transnational public spheres. Readings include Roland Barthes, Photography, and Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others; essays on race and visibility in the U.S. context (Patricia Jay Williams; Kelly Oliver); and Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis. Topics include the lure of objectivity, the possibilities for formal image analysis, the ethics of representation in wartime, and word/image resonance in a child’s story of exile. Analysis of visual texts—news photographs and other images of the students’ choosing—will be a significant part of the class discussion from week to week. Students will draft a series of short writings inspired by a visual text of their choice. These may include an initial description and personal reaction, a formal analysis, a study of history and context, and a reflection on ethics. These writings will then be combined and revised to constitute a longer paper (8-10 pages) due at the end of the term. There will be an option to take an exam on the graphic novel and submit a shorter final paper (5-6 pages). Gen Ed: upper-division writing
COM LIT 143VOICE&AURAL UNCONSCABBAS, M.This course will investigate the paradox of voice as what we don’t hear; or more precisely as what we don’t hear in what we hear: an aural unconscious. We forget ‘the voice’ either because we are too focused on meaning or content, as in ‘speech’; or because we focus too much on form or ‘beauty’, as in singing. In such cases, the voice is displaced onto something else and we hear it only when communication breaks down, as in lip-synching when the machine is suddenly switched off. The course will draw on a number of works (of music, literature, cinema, and theory ) to explore the implications of ‘voice’ in culture. Topics studied will include : --Theory: Dolar on ‘voice-as-thing’ and Chion on the acousmetre. --The voices of innocence and experience in Blake’s ‘Songs’ --The colonial voice in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ --Kafka’s ‘Josephine the Mouse-Singer’ and ‘The Silence of the Sirens’ --Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ --Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ --Voice and the Cultural Revolution in Liu Sola’s ‘Fantasy of the Red Queen’ (libretto and videotape) EVALUATION By class participation, a short mid-term test, and a 10-page or so final paper. TEXTS (all on order from bookstore) Mladen Dolar: ‘A Voice and Nothing Else’, MIT 2006. Michel Chion: ‘The Voice in Cinema’, Columbia UP 1999 William Blake: ‘Selected Poems’, Penguin. Joseph Conrad: ‘Heart of Darkness’, Norton Franz Kafka: ‘Metamorphosis and Other Stories’, trans Malcolm Pasley, Penguin Samuel Beckett: ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, Faber
COM LIT 143ASNAM LIT/FLM ADAPTSHROFF, B.
COM LIT 190WTHEORY OF THE NOVELGELLEY, A.Special Topic: Romantic Narrative: Romanticism has a central place in the evolution of the modern mind. In historical terms it represents both a realization and a reaction to certain impulses of the French Revolution. In cultural terms it represents a transition between a stratified, pre-modern society and the forms of mass culture that evolved in the course of the 19th century. In literature, Romanticism typifies a new, self-conscious form of imagination and creativity that has had decisive consequences for all subsequent forms of art and for the very conception of art itself. This course surveys some of the principal tenets and literary forms of the period through works by Goethe, Hölderlin, Mary Shelley, Keats, Kleist, Poe, and Balzac.
COM LIT 210ANCIENT RHETORIC: SPEAKING THE CITYJARRATT, S.Course Code 22800, Seminar A F, 12:00-2:50PM, HIB 411 This course offers an introduction to ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric organized around the concept of the polis. The image of rhetoric as the free and open address of a frank speaker visible to an audience in a defined public venue exerted a strong force in antiquity, lies at the heart of Enlightenment political theory, and operates as a default assumption of public discourse in the contemporary era. This image is belied, compromised, or at least complicated by the rhetorical remains (many of them canonical) under consideration here. Our project will be to address a series of questions arising from the mutual constitution of the space of the city and the practice of public speaking. In whose voice does the city-rhetor speak? The parody of political speech in philosophical dialogue, the embedding of antagonists’ statements within political pamphlets, the imitation of historical figures in declamation, the shielding of political opposition through “figured discourse” and genres such as biography, panegyric, and the novel: these are some of tactics of political rhetoric we will explore. Through what postures and manners, specifically concerning the expression and control of anger and the production of masculinities, did ancient rhetors negotiate dangerous terrains of power, hierarchy, and affiliation? How did the movement from Greek polis to Roman cosmopolis, with its all-encompassing geography and monumental visual field, shift the rhetorical possibilities for Roman citizens and provincial subjects of empire? What is the role of fantasy and the visual image in, for example, the repeated projection of “Sophistopolis,” the ideal city, or the recurring figure of the speaking statue? Although the emphasis here is performance in the political realm, the readings will offer opportunities to discuss rhetorical theory and rhetorical education (paideia) as cultural capital. Readings may include fragments of Sappho and Alcaeus, the funeral oration of Thucydides/Pericles and Plato’s parody of the genre (Menexenus), Book 2 of Aristotle’s Rhetoric on ethos and public emotions, excerpts from Demosthenes’ On the Crown and Isocrates’ Panegyricus, selections from Cicero’s De Oratore and his the Second Philippic, Book IX of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory, Tacitus’ Agricola and Dialogue on Orators, Favorinus’ “Corinthian Oration,” Aristides’ encomium of Rome, and Heliodorus’ novel, Ethiopica. Critical and theoretical sources will include Loraux, Arendt, Nicolet, Foucault (Fearless Speech and Care of the Self), Elsner, Goldhill, Whitmarsh, Gleason, and Peter Brown, among others. All readings will be in English translation with reference to the original language texts. Course requirements are an oral presentation and final paper (10 pages for pro-seminar students; 20 pages for seminar students).
COM LIT 210POSTCOLONIALISM, GLOBALISM, & AFRICAN NARRATIVESNGUGI, W.Course Code 22810, Seminar B W, 3:00-5:50PM, HIB 411 The course examines issues and themes in African fictional narratives to help define the concept and phenomenon of postcolonialism. But the postcolonial question cannot be divorced from that of globalism and globalization. Central to the course is the exploration of the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity, the cold war, and military coups in the shaping of nations and nation-states in the era of globalization. While based on Africa, the course tries to narrow down the concept of the postcolonial by examining closely the “neo” hidden in the “post” of many theories of the post-colony and the globe.
COM LIT 210PASOLINI, FASSBINDER, TSAIHALL, J.Course Code 22820, Seminar C TU, 11:00-1:50PM, HIB 90 (same as 33028, Visual Studies 295, Seminar A) Examining the creative and critical work of three gay male filmmakers— Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982), and Tsai Mingliang (1957—), this seminar probes the intersection of avant-garde cinematic practice, sexuality, and queer theory. Semiotic theories of language and image, hyperbolic reformulations of family romance, and a constant critique of left-liberalism are some of the thematics through which we approach these directors. But, we also explore how the work of these filmmakers engages feminist film criticism, how new, queer scholarship has attempted to address the dystopic positions often identified within the gay male film text, and how Pasolini, Fassbinder, and Tsai, each in a different manner, refuse subordination to a sexual hermeneutics. Readings are drawn from Leo Bersani, Teresa de Lauretis, Gilles Deleuze, Lee Edelman, D.A. Miller, Kaja Silverman, Matthew Tinkcom, and Amy Villarejo. A separate, optional screening time will be arranged weekly (day and time TBA) for seminar participants to view major feature films. Seminar participants are also asked to contact the professor (jmhall@uci.edu) prior to the course in order to access readings for the first week.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATION RESEARCHABBAS, A.Course Code 22990, Tutorial A, Variable Units (4-12) For students who have completed coursework, are preparing for their qualifying exams, or who are ABD.