Course is cross-listed as a Lit Jrn 103.

This course is a survey of nonfiction writing about race in the United States of America, from the 19th century to the present. We will examine how writers have tackled issues of racial inequality and discrimination, and constructed narratives centered on the lives of people of color in various nonfiction genres, including: newspaper and magazine journalism, investigative reporting, essays, criticism, documentary film, and memoirs. Readings will include works by Ida B. Wells, W.E.B Du Bois, James Baldwin, Carey McWilliams, Ta-Nehisi Coates and others. Part of the aim of this class is what we can learn about the craft of writing as a tool of social engagement and change. How do writers construct works that cut through the falsehoods of prejudice and ignorance? How do they work to defend the humanity of those who have been marginalized or oppressed by dominant cultures? How do they express the joy and fortitude unseen or unknown by outsiders? As a final requirement, students will produce their own work of cultural reportage or criticism. Students will work on this project in several stages throughout the quarter, producing a 2,000-word piece by finals’ week. In addition, students will produce four, 300-word “responses” to the readings
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM

This course will introduce students to key theoretical works in the study of film and media. Its focus is broadly on theories of media and power: media’s symbolic power (its function in shaping how we view, make sense of, and understand our world); the allocation of power within the production of media texts (who makes media, under what conditions, for which purposes, to what ends); and the power of audiences/public’s to engage, resist, and reimagine the messages circulating within the media. Over the course of the quarter will engage both canonical works of media theory and more contemporary scholarship on media, identity, and power.
Days: TU TH  12:30-01:50 PM

The long eighteenth century is crucial for understanding modern relations between “Islam” and the “West”. In 1683, the armies of the Ottoman Empire besieged the Austrian capital of Vienna, and seemed poised to extend Islam across central Europe. This moment coincided with the end of the religious wars in Europe and the beginning of what some scholars have called the “Crisis of the European Mind”. European travel and trade was spreading across the world, bringing new knowledge of other human systems into societies in transformation by capitalism and social mobility. The new scientific, social and religious ideas that have come to be known as the “European Enlightenment” sat alongside brutal systems of slavery and colonization.

The failure of the 1683 siege ended Ottoman expansion in Europe and created a new set of conditions in which Muslims and Europeans entered a globalizing world system. How did European men and women come to understand Islam differently in this moment, and how did Muslims respond to the changes taking place in Europe and beyond? Was their relationship primarily cooperative, neutral or conflictual? Was the Enlightenment a purely European phenomenon? Did Muslims have their own “Enlightenment”? How did this moment of possibility come to an end?

In this class students will build historical reasoning skills around the analysis of primary and secondary sources, and work collectively on developing advanced writing techniques.

Prerequisite: Satisfactory completion of the Lower-Division Writing requirement.
Days: WE  11:00-01:50 PM

This is a documentary history of atheism in that we chronologically trace and read primary sources over the centuries. It’s is an upper-level, once-a-week, three-hour class conducted as a seminar—with weekly conversations arising from our reading of various authors from 500 BCE to modernity. These primary writings represent only a tiny portion of a very large literature of religious skepticism in the West, a literature that (almost) no one gets exposed to in their educational career, from kindergarten through a Ph.D. (Why is that?) There is considerable weekly work to do. Weekly assignments include reading and then writing short summaries of that reading (to prove you read it) and then composing a short ‘thought essay’ about some idea of your choosing from the reading. To pass the class, you must talk in our weekly discussions, and obviously you must show up for that. You are graded weekly on your writing and speaking, with an absence resulting in the loss of speaking points for that week. There will be a cumulative test at the end of the term. The principal required textbook is  “Varieties of Unbelief from Epicurus to Sartre,” edited by J.C.A. Gaskin—available for free as a PDF, for purchase or for renting in the UCI bookstore and other online sites, and for borrowing at UCI’s Langson Library Reserves. There will be a few PDFs of other authors, and possibly a second required book called “The Quotable Atheist” by Jack Huberman. 
Same as Rel Std 103
Days: WE  03:00-05:50 PM

Emphasis/Category: World Religions (Category 1)

This is a documentary history of atheism in that we chronologically trace and read primary sources over the centuries. It’s is an upper-level, once-a-week, three-hour class conducted as a seminar—with weekly conversations arising from our reading of various authors from 500 BCE to modernity. These primary writings represent only a tiny portion of a very large literature of religious skepticism in the West, a literature that (almost) no one gets exposed to in their educational career, from kindergarten through a Ph.D. (Why is that?) There is considerable weekly work to do. Weekly assignments include reading and then writing short summaries of that reading (to prove you read it) and then composing a short ‘thought essay’ about some idea of your choosing from the reading. To pass the class, you must talk in our weekly discussions, and obviously you must show up for that. You are graded weekly on your writing and speaking, with an absence resulting in the loss of speaking points for that week. There will be a cumulative test at the end of the term. The principal required textbook is  “Varieties of Unbelief from Epicurus to Sartre,” edited by J.C.A. Gaskin—available for free as a PDF, for purchase or for renting in the UCI bookstore and other online sites, and for borrowing at UCI’s Langson Library Reserves. There will be a few PDFs of other authors, and possibly a second required book called “The Quotable Atheist” by Jack Huberman. 
Same as HISTORY 114


Days: WE  03:00-05:50 PM

Emphasis/Category: Locating Africas, Inter-Area Studies
No description is currently available.
Days: W  01:00-03:50 PM