ENROLL

Baird Jarman

Ross Elfline

Prerequisite: Any one term of art history

Shaohua Guo

This course (taught in English) provides an overview of Chinese popular culture from 1949 to the contemporary era, including popular literature, film, posters, music, and blog entries. The course examines both old and new forms of popular culture in relation to social change, cultural spaces, new media technologies, the state, individual expressions, and gender politics. Throughout this course, special attention is paid to the alliance between popular literature and the booming entertainment industry, the making of celebrity culture, and the role digital media plays in shaping China's cultural landscape. The course requires no prior knowledge of Chinese language, literature, or culture.

In translation

Michael Kowalewski

An intensive study of writing and film that explores California both as a place (or rather, a mosaic of places) and as a continuing metaphor--whether of promise or disintegration--for the rest of the country. Authors read will include John Muir, Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, Robinson Jeffers, John Steinbeck, Joan Didion and Octavia Butler. Films will include: Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, Zoot Suit, Boys inthe Hood and Lala Land.

OCS Visions of California Program

Susan Jaret McKinstry

"Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories?" asks Hayden White, metahistoriographer. To try to answer that question, we will read contemporary narrative theory by critics from several disciplines and apply their theories to literary texts, films, and cultural objects such as graphic novels, television shows, advertisements, and music videos.

Prerequisite: One 6-credit English foundations course and one additional 6-credit English course or permission of the instructor

Candace Moore

This capstone seminar reads representations of racial, gender, and sexual minorities in popular culture through the lenses of feminist, critical race, queer, and trans theories. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in the late 1980s to describe an approach to oppression that considered how structures of power act multiply on individuals based upon their interlocking racial, class, gender, sexual, and other identities. This seminar takes up the charge of intersectional analysis—rejecting essentialist theories of difference while exploring pluralities—to interpret diversity (or lack thereof) in forms of art and entertainment, focusing on film, TV, and digital media.

Noboru Tomonari

This course will examine manga (Japanese comic books that first appeared in post-World War II Japan). Manga are avidly read in Japan as a main component of Japanese popular culture. They have a huge influence on other media such as films and anime. The genre has greatly expanded its readership outside of Japan during the last decade. We will read a variety of manga aimed at different gender and age groups, in English translation. The texts will be interpreted as a means of understanding the world-views of the Japanese, and how Japanese society has evolved in recent decades.

In Translation

Seth Peabody

This class introduces students to the various theoretical frameworks and the many approaches scholars can use when analyzing a text (whether this text is a film, an image, a literary piece or a performance). What do words like ‘structuralism,’ ‘ecocriticism,’ 'cultural studies,' and ‘postcolonial studies’ refer to? Most importantly, how do they help us understand the world around us? This class will be organized around interdisciplinary theoretical readings and exercises in cultural analysis.

Prerequisite: At least one 200- or 300-level course in Literary/Artistic Analysis (in any language) or instructor permission