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Literature Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Summer Session II 2025 (S225)

LTAM 110 - Latin American Literature in Translation
Contrafeminicide Movements and Activism in Latin America
Proposed Instructor: Carolina Ramirez Moreno

This course focuses on gender violence against women, also referred to as feminicide in Latin America. The goal of this class is to examine and understand the social, cultural, and political responses aimed at disrupting its normalization. Students will engage with the history and growth of contrafeminicide movements, analyzing how activist movements challenge patriarchal systems and advocate for social justice in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Argentina. These approaches will enable us to observe and analyze the evolving movements over time and representations of these communities via interdisciplinary approaches.

  • LTAM 110 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTCH 101 - Readings in Contemporary Chinese Literature
Animals in Chinese Literature
Proposed Instructor: Yi Sun

We always see ourselves in animals and give animals human traits. From the shape-shifting fox in China’s Strange Tales (志怪小说) to the kung-fu master panda in modern Hollywood animation, anthropomorphized animals appear in diverse forms across cultures. This course examines representations of anthropomorphized animals in different media (literature will be our primary focus) across different historical periods, exploring questions such as: how do animal stories reflect our definitions of humans and animals? How do these definitions influence the anthropomorphized animals we create? What insights can these figures offer about human-animal relationships in the real world? 

  • LTCH 101 will count towards the Language (Chinese) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTCH 101 will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTCS 130 - Gender,Race/Ethn,Class&Culture
Capitalism, Gender, and Labor
Proposed Instructor: Jessica Lizarraga

This course examines how speculative literature explores the intersections of capitalism, gender, and labor within multi-ethnic communities, using a Marxist feminist framework. Through works by authors such as Octavia Butler, V. Castro, and Alice Sola Kim, among others, we will analyze how economic systems (re)shape gender roles, family structures, and individual agency, particularly in the context of immigration, racial inequalities, and labor exploitation. By engaging with speculative narratives that reimagine power structures and alternative futures, we will critically assess how economic survival, reproductive labor, and systemic oppression influence characters’ lives and identities. Students will explore the role of speculative fiction as a site of critique and resistance, investigating how these narratives challenge dominant economic ideologies and envision new possibilities for gender and labor relations.

LTEA 138 - Japanese Films
Japanese Post-war Anti-establishment Cinema
Proposed Instructor: Erik Tan

This course explores Japanese cinema from the turbulent post-war era through the lens of anti-establishment movements, radical aesthetics, and marginalized perspectives. Students will critically engage with the political ideas and ideologies embedded in films responding to Japan’s vibrant New Left politics, dissecting how filmmakers depicted revolutionary fervor, student protests, and social upheaval. We will also closely examine groundbreaking cinematic techniques that challenged authority and embraced transgressive modes of storytelling.

Additionally, the course foregrounds voices often sidelined—analyzing how gender, sexuality, and ethnic minorities were portrayed and reclaimed within these transgressive works. By unpacking these cultural and ideological tensions, students will gain valuable insights into navigating our contemporary era of global turbulence and social transformation.

  • LTEA 138 will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTEA 138 will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEN 149 - Topics: English-Language Literature (D)
Culture and the Body: Constructing Gender, Sex, and Race  
Instructor: Meg Wesling

This course examines the intersection of sex, sexuality, and popular culture by looking at the history of popular representations of sexuality since the 1920s. We will be looking at literature and pop media as well as sports, medicine, and the law to interrogate how we come to learn social and sexual norms. Students will be able to form projects in the discipline of their choosing for closer research and analysis.

  • LTEN 149 will count towards the "D" (U.S. Lit Post-1860) requirement for the Literatures in English major.

LTEN 169 - Topics in Latino/a Literature (D)
Chicana/o Literature & Culture:Gender & Sexuality in the Borderlands
Proposed Instructor: Oscar Garcia

This course includes a variety of works by Chicana/o/x authors to understand how debates of gender and sexuality emerge alongside discussions about the nation, class, and movimiento. Observing the historical breadth of Chicana/o/x perspectives, students will gain a critical awareness for discourse of gender and sexuality, as well as a deeper understanding of the issues confronted by this community.

  • LTEN 169 will count towards the "D" (U.S. Lit Post-1860) requirement for the Literatures in English major.
  • LTEN 169 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEN 180 - Chicano Literature in English (D)
Proposed Instructor: Bianca Negrete

Contact instructor for details.

  • LTEN 180 will count towards the "D" (U.S. Lit Post-1860) requirement for the Literatures in English major.
  • LTEN 180 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEN 181 - Asian American Literature (D)
Remapping Asian America: Fantasy and Speculative Geographies
Proposed Instructor: Ziyang Li

What is “Asian America,” and how does it exist beyond borders, nations, and fixed identities? This course rethinks “Asian America” not just as a geographic site but as a shifting structure shaped by race, gender and sexuality, empire, and migration. Through the lens of fantasy and speculative power, we explore how imaginative world-building redefines geographic concepts like “America” and “homeland.”

Our journey spans a range of geo-cultural landscapes: from the evolving spaces of Koreatowns and Chinatowns (as seen in Turning Red) to the mythic, settler-colonial terrain of the Gold Rush. We also venture into speculative/fantastical geographies, from Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange to R.F. Kuang’s Babel, and from Ken Liu’s cosmic vision in Mono no Aware to the chaotic multiverse of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Final projects are open-ended and can be academic or creative—your choice.

  • LTEN 181 will count towards the "D" (U.S. Lit Post-1860) requirement for the Literatures in English major.
  • LTEN 181 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL 100 - Mythology
Ancient Greek Mythology
Instructor: Jacobo Myerston

This fully asynchronous, remote course offers an in-depth introduction to the study of ancient Greek mythology. While many of us are familiar with these myths through movies and popular books, the stories told by the ancient Greeks were much more than entertainment. They were deeply connected to the religion, politics, rituals, and social structures of the time. Rather than simple tales about gods and heroes, these myths formed a complex system of meaning that shaped how ancient Greeks understood the world and their place in it.

Coursework: Students will complete four weekly response essays and a final paper.

  • LTWL 100 will count towards the Historical concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL 181 - Film Studies and Literature: Film Movement
Regarding the Pain of Others
Proposed Instructor: Tatum Howey

Everyday we are asked to bear witness to bad news. Doomscrolling, compassion fatigue, and media detoxes are some of the ways we respond to the 24/7 news cycle. Picking up from Susan Sontag’s essay of the same name, this class will explore how we can sit with and respond to the current proliferation of traumatic media, while also questioning the violence of looking itself. We will ask ourselves how we can become better witnesses, while acknowledging our own entanglement with the production of this media. Readings will include those from Judith Butler, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, John Berger, Allen Feldman, Gil Z. Hochberg, and artworks by Harun Farocki, Lawrence Abu Hamadan, Constantina Zavitsano, Onyeka Igwe, Chloé Galibert-Laîné and others.

  • LTWL 181 will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL 184 - Film Studies and Literature: Close Analysis of Filmic Text
Bollywood
Instructor: Silpa Mukherjee

As the world’s largest producer of films, Bollywood’s existence as a model combining song and dance sequences with a melodramatic plot structure, a model that could not be destroyed by the onslaught of affordable digital platforms and global content has become something of a legend. This course will tell you the story of how the Hindi film industry of the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) became “Bollywood”: a globally recognized and circulating brand of filmmaking from India, which is often posited by the international media as the only serious contender to Hollywood in terms of global popularity and influence. A particular corpus of Bollywood films emerged around the twenty first century, that signified a certain form of bigness, with their star lifestyles, bloated economies of scale, world market share, and opulent mise-en-scène. This kind of fecundity in a postcolonial country’s culture industry was unprecedented. The neoliberal restructuring of the Indian state and economy— intensified from 1991, followed by the Hindi cinema receiving official industry status from the state in 1998—resulted in Hindi film industry’s metamorphosis into Bollywood—a dramatically altered mediascape, armed with satellite television, dotcom boom, and multiplex theaters. In this course we will study this corpus of big Bollywood films. Each week we will acquaint ourselves with concepts and methods that will help us study Bollywood as the producer of a distinct aesthetic, a unique language of cinema. Weekly readings are curated as per a specific configuration related to the cultural and social status of cinema—as well as the political economy of filmmaking—and locate them in Bollywood’s own efforts to accrue symbolic capital, social respectability, and professional distinction.

  • LTWL 184 will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTWL 184 will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWR 102C - Poetry Craft
Caribbean Poetics
Proposed Instructor: Lucia Herrmann

This craft course will explore how Caribbean poetics—primarily artists of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico & their diasporas—consider place, identity, belonging & possibilities of multi & trans/lingual text & art. We will adopt a decolonial, anti-imperialist lens to consider the intersection of history, politics, migration, resistance & its influence on Caribbean poetics. We will pay particular attention to ecopoetics and writing about the environment, considering how climate change and natural-not-so-natural disasters have and will continue to impact Caribbean communities. Students will read diverse cultural materials from textual, visual, and site-specific projects.

LTWR 115W - Experimental Writing Workshop
Proposed Instructor: Rose Pacult

This 5 week, remote course aims to elevate student's understanding of what research may look like by taking it closer to one’s self, and one's home. Along with readings about searching to understand "place," students will find their own sense of the city within San Diego that they like to visit, and do qualitative research on the location, interviewing people, reading journals, and also analyze the city's history in order to learn more about it. There will be many writing assignments and workshopping throughout the term.

Summer Session 2 2025 (S225) Global Seminars

The following Global Seminars are being offered. Students must apply and be accepting into the Global Seminars Program to enroll in these courses.

LTAM 110GS - Latin American Literature in Translation
Proposed Instructor: Bretton Rodriguez

Contact instructor for details.

  • LTAM 110GS will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL 180GS - Film Studies and Literature: Film History
Proposed Instructor: Todd Kontje

Contact instructor for details.

  • LTWL 180GS will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.