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. Preparation: reading knowledge of one appropriate foreign language. Study of modern European and American works that are concerned both in subject matter and artistic methods with growing self-consciousness of human beings and their society, with focus on works of Kafka, Rilke, Woolf, Sartre, and Stevens. May be concurrently scheduled with course C163. Graduate students required to prepare papers based on texts read in original languages and to meet as group one additional hour each week. S/U or letter grading.
Exploration of film medium on African continent. Study of ethnographic and colonial development of film technologies. Brief study of Robert Flaherty, Margaret Mead, and Jean Rouch, thinking critically about representation of other on screen within colonially defined contexts. Examination of colonial propaganda film, which provided ways of seeing that coincided with unified colonial purpose. Study of selected films by revolutionary artists from Ola Balogun, Youssef Chahin, Lambros Jokaris, and Sembene Ousmane, to Safi Faye, Salem Mekuria, Joseph Gaï Ramaka and Jean-Marie Teno. Focus on newer films (post-2000) that also blur lines between art and commercial filmmaking through technique, content, distribution, and Web presence. Study draws widely on theories that focus on representation, transition from colonialism, and emerging hierarchies and forms of domination. Study of how these inequalities are expressed in, and held up and subverted by, visual culture.
Africa is digitizing faster than anywhere in the world, with significant consequences for African social, economic, and political formations. Study asks how online interactions on several platforms change how people relate to themselves and world, and challenge very notion of human; and what new imagined communities digital forms give rise to, and how they intersect with and alter concepts of nation, diaspora, and world. While many writers, journalists, and cultural producers online use digital media to challenge oppressive governments, institutions, and other gatekeepers, digital space has also given rise to new (often less locatable) forms of domination, such as neoimperialism of multinational corporations such as Google and Facebook. Includes community engagement component wherein students work with literary organizations in southern Africa to coproduce content on these topics for Malawi's Story Club radio station.
Seminar, three hours. Seminar on problems and methods of presenting literary texts as exemplary materials in teaching of composition. Deals with theory and classroom practice and involves individual counseling and faculty evaluation of teaching assistants' performance. May not be applied toward MA course requirements. S/U grading.
Seminar, three hours. Advanced course in critical theory, drawing on wide range of approaches and methods, from anthropology, art, history, literature, performance, philosophy, and political theory. Variable topics are set annually. Includes canonical thinkers (e.g., J. Butler, J. Derrida, M. Detienne, G. Dumézil, F. Héritier, B. Latour, C. Lévi-Strauss, A. Mbembe, E. Renan, M. Strathern) and contemporary critics (e.g., E. Apter, B. Cassin, E. Coccia, S. Bachir Diagne, W. Chi Dimock, P. Frankopan, S. Hartman, L. Lowe, J. Osterhammel, J.-F. Schaub, G. Spivak, E. Viveiros de Castro). S/U or letter grading.