Literature Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Summer Session II 2022 (S222)
LTCS 119 - Asian American Film and Media
Instructor: Steven Beardsley
Contact instructor for course description.
- LTCS 119 will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
LTCS 131 - Topics in Queer Cultures/Queer Subcultures
The Monstrous Queer in Cinema
Instructor: Erik Homenick
What can we learn about our fear of queers when we examine the vampires, mad scientists, and serial killers that stand in for them in the cinema? This course examines how queerness is portrayed as monstrosity in films spanning decades.
LTEA 120A - Chinese Films
Anti-heroes in Chinese Culture
Instructor: Jing Chen
Monkeys rule heaven; men devour rouge- iconoclastic undercurrents have been surging in the cultural universe of Chinese language. Through the concept of anti-hero(ine), this course surveys how images of irreverent figures in Chinese canon undergo nuanced changes in modern/postmodern context.
- LTEA 120A will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
- LTEA 120A will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
LTEN 154 - The American Renaissance (c)
19th-Century Gothic Literature
Instructor: Laurie Nies
This course explores the political and cultural anxieties that were haunting the nineteenth-century American imagination. We will focus on gothic tropes --monstrosity, darkness, the uncanny, etc. –and what their use reveals about national identity, colonialism, slavery and female autonomy.
- LTEN 154 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
LTEN 171 - Comparative Issues in Latino/a Immigration in US Literature
Latinx Cultures & Migration
Instructor: Jessica Aguilar
We will examine how Latinx literary and cultural productions represent the figure of the Central American, Mexican, and Haitian [im]migrant in the context of contemporary transnational crime, gender-based-violence, global economic inequality, and the development of advanced technologies for border surveillance.
- LTEN 171 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
LTEN 181 - Asian American Literature (d)
An Approach via Animal Studies
Instructor: Ningning Huang
This course offers a comparative reading of Asian Americans and domestic animals given their shared liminal positions as both racial /animal others and assimilable /tamed minorities /pets by utilizing critiques of anthropocentrism offered by animal studies as critical race theories.
- LTEN 181 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
LTEN 189 - Twentieth-Century Postcolonial Literatures
African Literature and Space
Instructor: Marina Vlahakis
How do African writers employ space to represent (non)-belonging? How do characters negotiate their place in the world against interlocking historical and social processes such as colonialism, globalization, migration and heteropatriarchy, racism, and class? We will examine spaces such as the Hotel, Hair Salon, Market Place, Townships, and the Airport.
LTWR 100 - Short Fiction Workshop
Instructor: Julia Moncur
Contact instructor for course approval.
LTWR 102 - Poetry Workshop
Instructor: Ben Doller
Contact instructor for course approval.
LTWR 115 - Experimental Writing Workshop
Disruptive Desires
Instructor: Neon Mashurov
This workshop explores writing for which the traditional generic distinctions of prose/poetry, fiction/documentary, narrative/discourse do not apply. Students taking this course will be asked to challenge the boundaries of literature to discover new forms and modes of expression. Readings will center work that conceptualizes the world-making potential of radical desire outside of capitalist success & the white heteropatriarchal couple form, including friendship, queer/trans embodiment, utopias, revolution, & life beyond labor.
