COM LIT Course Descriptions for 2024-2025

Fall 2024
Winter 2025
Spring 2025
Archive
Winter Course Descriptions
CourseTitleInstructorDescription
COM LIT 9MONSTRS&MONSTROSITYALFAILAKAWI, D.CL 9: Monsters and Monstrosity
The monster, in its many forms and contexts, is a powerful cultural tool for the expression of social tensions, a lens for deciphering a society’s greatest hopes and darkest fears. It is a creature that crosses boundaries, a creature of fragments, never behaving exactly as expected, and always returning to trouble our dreams again. In this course, we ask: what is a monster? Why are monsters so prevalent in literature, television, and film? What can monsters reflect about the people and the societies that they haunt? This course involves the in-depth analysis of literary and visual texts using the lenses of critical race theory, gender theory, queer of color critique, disability studies, psychoanalysis, and ecocriticism. Theorists to be discussed include Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, C. Riley Snorton, Barbara Creed, and Melissa K. Nelson, while authors and filmmakers include Marlon Jenkins, Danez Smith, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ahmed Saadawi, Bong Joon-ho, Guillermo del Toro, Yeon Sang-ho, and William Friedkin.
COM LIT 10MEMOIR AS RESISTANCECHAHINIAN, T.CL 10/Winter 2025
Chahinian

Memoir as Resistance: In Defense of the Fragmented Self

In a 2011 interview, CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg argued that in the digital age, our negotiations of the self demand a singular identity, claiming that “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (NYTimes 5/14/11). This class surveys contemporary memoirs and autobiographies to examine how the literary form of self-writing challenges emergent ideas of unified identity that online personas perpetuate. The class explores how in emergent multicultural societies, the memoir has gained popularity as a genre that celebrates notions of community, multiple belonging, and hybrid identities. In looking at the genre’s common themes of transgenerational memory, family narratives, and social responsibility, our readings will examine the intersection of power, privilege and bias inherent in the process of representing culture and expressing the self.
COM LIT 60BREADING WITH THEORYAMIRAN, E.This course is a broad introduction to literary theory.  We will read theory from Afro-pessimism, critical race studies, deconstruction, feminism, Marxism, media theory, psychoanalysis, and theory of war, and use these theories to read literary and cultural texts like Fredrick Douglass’s Autobiography, video poetry by Ghayath Almadhoun, short fiction by Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino, and Batman.  What does media theory say about guns, and why does that change how we think about drone footage?  What is the connection between advertising and Disneyland?  How can we think about domestic labor in a global context?  We’ll ask these kinds of questions and develop our own strategies for engaging them.  No previous theory experience required.
COM LIT 102WCREATIVE TRANSLATNWOLPE, S.Literary translation is not the transparent inter-lingual transfer of ideas out of one language into another. Rather, it is always conditioned by assumptions, values and codes proper to both the source- and the target-language, and often relies upon the hierarchies of power and prestige that structure both the discourses and realities of gender, race, class, sexuality, and national identity.

This course will:
1. Introduce the students to various forms of translations as well as theories and practice of literary translation and the challenges that contemporary translators face today in a variety of cultural and political context.
2. Guide the students towards exploring their own creative writing through translation, culminating in a group  project, as well as individual creative projects.

Working knowledge of a language other than English is required.

Assessment: Students will be assessed through:
Reading and writing assignments (45%), attendance (15%), participation (15%), and final projects (25%).

Required Texts
Required readings are available as PDF files through Canvas.
COM LIT 105ENVIRNMENTAL RACISMCARROLL, A.Winter 2025
Professor Alicia Carroll
COM LIT 105, “Environmental Racism”

How might the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples, philosophies, and ways of life in decision-making processes regarding the environment lead not only to the restoration of Indigenous stewardship and repatriation of stolen Indigenous lands but also to more equitable living conditions for all beings? This course examines settler colonial government policies and socioeconomic practices of environmental racism, a form of systemic racism that disproportionately exposes communities with dense populations of people of color to environmental hazards that lead to increased health risks, including cancer, respiratory diseases, and birth defects. Although the intentional placement of polluting facilities, toxic waste dumps, sewage works, landfills, etc. in communities of color affects people of various marginalized identities, this class focuses on environmental racism in the United States as experienced by Native Americans. One of the earliest examples of environmental racism in the US was the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which led to the displacement of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral homes in the southeast to lands in the west that were unsuitable for sustaining their lives and cultures. Today, Native people living in Indian reservations continue to suffer from the fallout of nuclear military weapons testing; the pollution of extractive economies such as oil drilling, gas fracking, mining, and hydroelectric damming; and corporations’ dumping of nuclear, toxic, medical, and otherwise hazardous waste that poisons their land, air, water, and plant and animal relatives. Students will explore examples of environmental racism through the theoretical lenses and conceptual frameworks of Indigenous ecocriticism, ecology, and cosmology and alongside examples of Indigenous-led activist movements for environmental justice. 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 authors.
COM LIT 121NRRTVE, PTTRN, TXTDIMENDBERG, E.Stories surround us and are essential to making sense of the world.  This class will explore ideas of narrative and genre through close readings of literary theory and texts. We will consider beginnings and endings, point of view, causation, character, masterplots, traits of fictional worlds, and distinctions between fiction and non-fiction. Theorists to be discussed include Hayden White, Northrop Frye, Roland Barthes, Peter Brooks, Umberto Eco, Sigmund Freud, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Their ideas will inform our discussions of works by Virginia Woolfe, Italo Calvino, Annie Ernaux, Raymond Queneau, Uwe Johnson, Martin Amis, and  Risa Wataya. Assignments include weekly reading questions, a take-home midterm, and a final research paper.  Instructor: Edward Dimendberg.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITTERADA, R.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITSCHWAB, G.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITRAHIMIEH, N.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITMOR, L.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITJOHNSON, A.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITCOLMENARES GON, D.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITCARROLL, A.
COM LIT 199INDPT STDY COMP LITAMIRAN, E.
COM LIT 210NORMALIZED ABNORMALTHIONG'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 210THINKING WITH WATERJOHNSON, 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 210INDIGENOUS ECOCRITCARROLL, 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 210PSYCH,TRAUMA THEORYSCHWAB, 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 290READING&CONFERENCELUPTON, J.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCETHIONG'O, N.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCETERADA, R.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCESCHWAB, G.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCERAHIMIEH, N.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCENEWMAN, J.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCEMOR, L.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCEJOHNSON, A.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCEGOLDBERG, D.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCECARROLL, A.
COM LIT 290READING&CONFERENCEAMIRAN, E.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGNEWMAN, J.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGRAHIMIEH, N.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGSCHWAB, G.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGTERADA, R.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGTHIONG'O, N.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGMOR, L.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGJOHNSON, A.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGHARRIES, M.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGGOLDBERG, D.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGFARBMAN, H.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGCARROLL, A.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGAMIRAN, E.
COM LIT 291GUIDED READINGABBAS, A.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHRAHIMIEH, N.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHSCHWAB, G.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHTERADA, R.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHTERRY, J.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHTHIONG'O, N.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHSTAFF
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHNEWMAN, J.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHMOR, L.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHJOHNSON, A.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHABBAS, A.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHAMIRAN, E.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHCARROLL, A.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHFARBMAN, H.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHGOLDBERG, D.
COM LIT 298PRE-DISS RESEARCHJARRATT, S.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHSCHWAB, G.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHTERADA, R.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHTERRY, J.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHTHIONG'O, N.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHLONG, M.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHSTAFF
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHRADHAKRISHNAN, R.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHRAHIMIEH, N.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHNEWMAN, J.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHMOR, L.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHJOHNSON, A.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHJARRATT, S.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHGOLDBERG, D.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHFARBMAN, H.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHCARROLL, A.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHAMIRAN, E.
COM LIT 299DISSERTATN RESEARCHABBAS, A.
COM LIT 399UNIVERSITY TEACHINGJOHNSON, A.