| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| COM LIT 60B | READING WITH THEORY | TERADA, R. | An introduction to critical theory, from the philosophical roots of critique to Marx, Foucault, Derrida, and queer, antiracist, and postcolonial theory (Butler, Spade, Fanon, Said, more). In short papers, you'll experiment with reading and writing with theory to enhance your analysis of culture and contemporary events. No previous experience expected; discussion and debate encouraged. |
| COM LIT 100A | REN EUR GOES MOVIES | NEWMAN, J. | “History does not exist until it is created.” -- Robert A. Rosenstone In his essay in a now well known book, Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (1996), scientist Stephen Jay Gould writes that the film Jurassic Park contains several errors, but that these errors “belong to the juicy and informative class of faults” characterized by the economist Vilfredo Pareto in the following way: “Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truths for yourself.” In this course, we will examine the “juicy faults” about the European Renaissance that we find in a series of movies from the 1940s up through the early twenty-first century and look at them in conversation with primary and secondary historical and literary texts from and about the period, asking what role cinematic representations of the European Renaissance and European early modernity (c. 1500-1650) played in the fashioning of modern and post-modern political, religious, cultural, and scientific identities from the Cold War up through the aftermath of 9/11. Lecture attendance, completion of short reading assignments, and watching the films mandatory; participation in group discussion section two times during the quarter, quizzes, short final paper. |
| COM LIT 107 | GLOBALIZ FROM BELOW | JOHNSON, A. | This course will be organized around the question of what globalization looks and feels like from below: this can mean both what is called the global south (what used to be called the third world) but also includes the face of globalization looks for those who may be on the loosing end of things in the global north as well. Are differences in space and time shrinking in the same way all over the planet? Is the present defined by speed, mobility, interconnectedness and hybridity for everyone? How is globalization being resisted or reformulated by those who call themselves anti-globalization? What if we are moving towards becoming, as Mike Davis suggests, a planet of slums? The first 6-7 weeks of class will lay the ground through readings which consider the impact of globalization on the organization of social movements, notions of identity, transformations of culture, experiences of space etc. in addition to the consideration of a few particular contexts through films and other readings. As this is the capstone seminar for the Global Cultures major, however, particular emphasis will be placed on students’ creative and critical contributions and to that end, the last 3-4 weeks of the class will be organized and run by student groups. Groups will be responsible for selecting an appropriate topic, identifying reading material as well as crafting study questions and assignments for the rest of the class in close consultation with me. Students will also be asked to write a final 8-10 page research paper that comes out of the work with and topic of their group. |
| COM LIT 120 | FUTURE MIND & WORLD | CHANDLER, N | The Future of the Mind and the Senses of World: Or, On “Double-Consciouness” We now know that we can no longer even imagine that we live only in a world; rather, there are only worlds, always at least plural – natural as well as social. With special reference to the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, especially his idea of “double-consciousness”, this seminar course explores the complex questions of self (identity, intention, consciousness, mind), home (and its opposing avatars of exile, migration, fugitivity), and world (simulacrum, universe, multi-verse, cosmos). It engages philosophy, religion, physics, historiography, literature, and social thought. Therein, paradoxically, questions of hierarchy, power, and enslavement, or freedom, and sovereignty, seem to always remain at issue. An exemplary and useful selection of brief readings will be chosen from among: the Vedas, Plato, Nargajuna, Santaraksita, Dōgen, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tagore, Freud, Du Bois, Soseki, Boas, Nishida, Einstein, Artaud, Schrödinger, Gödel, Ellison, Fanon, DeCerteau, Derrida, Jameson, Kauffman, Gould, Spillers, Penrose, Spivak, Nancy, Kaku. The aim of the course is to reflect critically on our tools of thought and reflection for addressing future senses of world -- of possible coming senses of consciousness, home, mind, and identity. This course is part of the STAR initiative -- Science, Technology, and Race -- established within the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Same as ANTHRO 139 and AFAM 118. |
| COM LIT 130 | PHIL&MATRIX TRILOGY | CHANDLER, N. | 1. This course examines the problem of how to understand the time of our own lives historically - conceived as a critical archaeology of the future. 2. Its core focus is the blockbuster film project, The Matrix Trilogy (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions), directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski from 1999 to 2004, including the special project that was also part of it, a collection of short films presented under the title Animatrix, involving several Japanese and Korean, and Chinese American, artists and directors working in manga and anime. 3. While the signature of the course is an engagement of the rich diversity of the religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions that have bearing for thinking a collective human future, as well as key global level historical turning points -- all of which are densely interwoven in The Matrix Trilogy -- its critical guide is the way in which the historicity of the African Diaspora, African Americans in the United States in particular, expose the most profound questions about the sense of a common futural historicity for humankind in general over the coming centuries. 4.The student who completes this course will understand both the need and some of the ways to go beyond traditional forms of history which remain so tied to traditional forms of identification in order to engage fully the diverse ways of life -- real and imagined -- that make up today’s globalized senses of world. 5. In addition to the Ultimate Matrix Collection from 2004, core documents for the course will include selections: from the contemporary writers and intellectuals Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Ernst Mayer, Raymond Kurzweil, Roger Penrose, Stuart A. Kauffman, Stephen Jay Gould, Shirley Tilghman, Ralph Ellison, Octavia Butler, Fredric Jameson, William Gibson, Hortense Spillers, Cornel West, Kevin Kelly, Edwin Black, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, and Frank Wilderson III; from several films of the 1990s, Microsomos (Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou, Jacques Perrin, 1996), A Bug’s Life (Pixar Studios, 1998), Ghost Dog (Jim Jarmusch, Forest Whitaker, 1999), Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii and Masmune Shirow, 1996), and, perhaps its sequel, Innocence [Ghost in the Shell 2](Mamoru Oshii and Masmune Shirow, 2004); from several classic texts in philosophy, natural science, literature, and cinema including work by Plato, Rene* Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Arnold Schopenhauer, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Lewis Carroll, Friedrich Nietzsche, Herbert Spencer, Gregor Mendel, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Albert Einstein, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Akira Kurosawa; and from several major texts in religion and philosophy, not only the Abrahamic religious traditions (Judaic, Christian, and Islamic), but the Upanishads of the Indian sub-continent, and Buddhist thought in the texts of Nagarjuna, Santaraksita, Dōgen, as well as twentieth century Japanese and Buddhist philosophy in the work of Nishida, Kitarō. 6. This course is part of the STAR initiative -- Science, Technology, and Race -- established within the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. |
| COM LIT 143 | ITALIAN CINEMA | SCHLOSSMAN, B. | Internationally influential and highly innovative, Italian film has a long history. It is best known for the movement of neorealism (1943-1955), with its focus on working class Italians in urban settings, and its use of non-professional actors. Several directors of Italian neorealist film are among the most influential figures in the global history of film. Neorealism was followed by author-based film (cinema d’autori) (1950-1980), or art cinema, including avant-garde experimentation, comparable to the French New Wave, which was also influenced by Italian neorealism. During this second major period, Italian-style comedy also flourished and received world-wide attention. Works studied will include films by Visconti, Rossellini, De Sica, Germi, Fellini, Antonioni, Wertmüller, and Benigni. Films screened are in Italian, with English subtitles. Readings include one required book and short excerpts on line. Lectures, readings, screenings, midterm, and final exam. |
| COM LIT 190W | MID EAST DIASPORA | RAHIMIEH, N. | This course is a capstone seminar for Comparative Literature majors and requires completion of the Lower-Division Writing requirement. The course focuses on literature produced by communities of migrants from different nation states in the Middle East. You will examine the concept of diaspora, its history, and its significance in the age of globalization. The emergence of communities of migrants from the Middle East is closely tied to the politics of the region and affects the way they relate to both to their home and host cultures. Through the study of theories of diaspora and literary texts you will explore the relationship between ethnicity, national identity, and diaspora. You will have the opportunity to formulate your own research topic and learn how to focus your argument. You will write drafts of your paper, participate in a peer-review process, and enhance your skills at writing scholarly essays. |
| COM LIT 210 | JOYCE BECKT LIT FLM | SCHLOSSMAN, B. | This seminar will explore some major works of modern Irish literature and theater. We will focus on influential early works of fiction (story sequences) and drama by Joyce and Beckett. Readings will include Joyce’s Dubliners and Exiles, and Beckett’s More Pricks than Kicks and his important play, Waiting for Godot. Film versions of several works will be used to study interpretation and cultural contexts. Student participation includes informal discussion and a brief presentation of a research paper topic. |
| COM LIT 210 | ECOPOLITICS | SCHWAB, G. | This course will deal with contemporary ecocritical theories, including debates about biopolitics and new materialisms. In order to ground the discussion and explore the contribution of the Humanities and critical theory to visions of ecological and and sustainable living, we will highlight the role of the ecopolitical imaginary in diverse, yet global constructions of subjectivity and subjection. In this context, we will also address topics such as Bateson’s “ecology of mind,” the future of biopolitics, interspecies relations and the boundaries of the human, the legacy of the Manhattan Project and the question of “radioactive colonization,” the emergence of a nuclear imaginary and a concomitant nuclear necropolitics. The course will be divided in four sections: 1. Ecology of Mind 2. Biopolitics and Geophilosophy 3. Interspecies Relations, New Materialisms and the Boundaries of the Human 4. The Nuclear Imaginary Texts: 1. Ecology of Mind Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind Felix Guattari, Three Ecologies Paul Virilio, “Grey Ecology” in: Open Sky 2. Biopolitics and Geophilosophy Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (Recommended: Michel Foucault, On the Government of the Living) Deleuze/Guattari, “Geophilosophy” in: What Is Philosophy? Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine William Connolly, The Fragility of Things 3. Interspecies Relations, New Materialisms, and the Boundaries of the Human Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses (recommended: The Posthuman) Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things 4. The Nuclear Imaginary Jacques Derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now” Joseph Masco, Nuclear Borderlands Ward Churchill, “Radioactive Colonization” in A Little Matter of Genocide Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics” in: Public Culture |
| COM LIT 210 | GLBL POSTCOL AF NAR | THIONG'O, N. |