UCLA
The Department of Comparative Literature
From the recent Andalusian play, “Clytemnestra. Una mujer.” Faculty expert, Kathleen L. Komar. Banner image: John Locke. Faculty expert, Kirstie McClure.
Seminar, three hours. Study of theory of literature, with emphasis on genealogy of theoretical problems. S/U or letter grading.
Seminar, four hours. Study of specific poets and poetics related to them during first half of 20th century. Texts may include poets such as W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Paul Valéry, R.M. Rilke, Gunnar Ekelöf, and Wallace Stevens. May be concurrently scheduled with course C153. Graduate students may meet as group one additional hour each week. S/U or letter grading.
Hybridity--and related terms such as creole, mestizaje, miscegenation, and multiculturalism--as used in discussion of postcolonial world focuses on decolonizing power of hybridizing processes in colonial or neocolonial contexts. Potential for producing hybrid newness has been debated in sociocultural and literary theory by intellectuals such as Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, and Stuart Hall, whose theories have drawn from observable processes of creolization in Caribbean islands in particular. Study of these improve understanding of what is at stake in seeing world as hybrid. Study includes other cultural hybridity theories from Indian Ocean islands; nonisland regions characterized by cultural contacts; women's voices often not counted as theory, such as those of Algerian novelist Assia Djebar and Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé; and from other disciplines including biology and linguistics.