Graduate Courses

Winter 2025

ARABIC 250 – Seminar: Premodern Arabic Literature
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Cooperson, M.D.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Readings in Arabic texts from variety of periods and genres, along with appropriate secondary literature. Topics include pre-Islamic poetry and oratory, Qur’an, Umayyad and Abbasid poetry and literary prose, Hadith and Fiqh, historiography, biography, geography, medicine, mathematics, theology, asceticism, and mysticism. May be repeated for maximum of 24 units. S/U or letter grading.

ART HIS 200 – Art Historical Theories and Methodologies
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Balafrej, L.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Critical examination of history of discipline of art history, with studies of various theoretical, critical, and methodological approaches to visual arts from antiquity to present. May be repeated for credit with consent of adviser. S/U or letter grading.

ART HIS 203 – Topics in Architectural History and Theory: Sound and Space
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Nair, S.E.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Focused studies of various theoretical and critical traditions within architectural history, concentrating on particular issues, authors, or methodologies either within or across historical, geographic, and cultural areas. May be repeated for credit with consent of adviser. S/U or letter grading.

ART HIS 217C – Medieval Art
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Cohen, M.M.
Course Description; Seminar, two hours. Studies in selected topics in Byzantine and European medieval art. May be repeated for credit with consent of adviser. S/U or letter grading.

CCAS 238 – New Directions in Chicanx and Latinx Art
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Black, C.V.
Course Description: Focus on current state and future of research, teaching, and museum practice in Chicanx and Latinx art history. Examination of various topics, including decolonial methodologies; national versus global perspectives on Latinx art; indigenity and Chicanx art; politics and publics of prints and graphics; public murals and monuments; race and place in Los Angeles; queer and feminist approaches to Chicanx and Latinx art; and collecting and display of Chicanx art by museums, galleries, and private collectors. Particular emphasis on decolonial, feminist, critical race, and poststructuralist approaches. Students prepare weekly readings for discussion, and complete final presentation and research project. Parameters of project to be determined in consultation with professor. Examples include original research paper, teaching portfolio, comprehensive historiographic review, or creative project. S/U or letter grading.

CHIN C250B – Chinese Literature in Translation: Traditional Narrative and Fiction
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Wu, Y.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Knowledge of Chinese not required. Examination of formation and development of Chinese narrative traditions from Tang to mid-Qing periods (7th-18th centuries). Readings from biographical writings, fiction, drama, legal cases, etc., with emphasis on different narrative conventions and their cultural assumptions and intersections. Exploration of important issues in context of imperial China, including order and chaos, self and other, desire and transcendence, gender norms and transgression, violence and justice. May be taken independently for credit. Concurrently scheduled with course C150B. Letter grading.

CHIN 285A – Seminar: Readings in Chinese Religions
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Balkwill, S.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of classical Chinese. Selected readings from religious traditions of China, with introduction to different disciplinary approaches, secondary scholarship, and research methodology. Topics rotate among chronological periods and major religious traditions. May be repeated for credit with consent of instructor. In Progress grading (credit to be given only on completion of course 285B).

CLASSIC 250 – Topics in Greek and Roman Culture and Literature: Classical and Classicizing Historiography by Eyewitnesses and Participants
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 2 or 4
Instructor: Spielberg, L.M.
Course Description: Study looks at historiographical accounts of events in which historian himself (or herself) participated. Study looks at topics such as ancient and modern theories of historiographical objectivity and bias, apologetic and secret histories, authorial voice and strategies of representation, and temptations that first-person historiography from ancient world has presented to scholars. Readings of ancient material include selections from authors such as Caesar and Caesarean continuators, Josephus, Anna Komnene, Ammianus Marcellinus, Polybius, Procopius, and Thucydides.

COM LIT M281 – Studies in Contemporary Spanish-American Literature
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Kristal, E.
Course Description: (Same as Spanish M280B.) Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one foreign language. In-depth study of topic of Latin American literature in comparative context. May be repeated for credit. S/U or letter grading.

CMRS-CEGS Fall Research Seminar
English 242, Keyword by Keyword: Dictionaries and the Making of Knowledge
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Thomas, A.
Course description: From the medieval to the modern periods, dictionaries in forms ranging from word-lists and vocabularies to glossaries and lexicons have served as compendia of knowledge across disciplines, genres and languages. Who made them and why? What principles governed their composition? How effectively did they capture the meanings of words key to their times and places? What light, if any, can dictionaries shed on the relationship between language and knowledge, between words and the world in our premodern past as well as in our present.

GREEK 222B – Plato
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 2 or 4
Instructor: Morgan, K.A.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours. Requisite: course 222A. S/U (2-unit course) or letter (4-unit course) grading.

GREEK 243 – Mycenaean Greek
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 2 or 4
Instructor: Vine, B.H.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Script, language, and grammar of Linear B inscriptions; their relevance to ancient Greek linguistic and cultural history. S/U or letter grading.

HEBREW 235 – Hebrew Literature of Second Temple Period
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Bonesho, C.E.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for students who have basic language skills and capacities necessary for reading Biblical Hebrew or Rabbinic Hebrew. Reading, analysis, and interpretation of Hebrew literature composed during Second Temple period. Relevant sources include Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira, Daniel, Dead Sea Scrolls, and other documents from Judean desert, and various aprocrypha and pseudepigrapha. Special attention to historical development of Hebrew language and literature in relation to both earlier biblical sources, styles, grammar, and syntax and to subsequent Rabbinic writings. Course builds following skills: reading unpointed texts, mastering distinctive elements of vocabulary, idiom, and syntax of Second Temple Hebrew, and analyzing relationships between biblical and postbiblical sources. May be repeated for credit. S/U or letter grading.

HIST 200L – Advanced Historiography: China: Approaches to Late Imperial and Modern China
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Goldman, A.S.
Course Description: Broad overview of important scholarship on late imperial and modern China. Attentive to both chronological coverage and historiography, readings introduce many major concepts, debates, and scholarly figures in field over last 30 years. Weekly themes include state-society relations, regional history and spatial analysis, sociocultural history, gender history, material turn, new Qing history, 19th-century Qing encounter with Western imperialism, colonial modernity, and People’s Republic of China as history. Readings span many genres of historical writing including monographs, conference volumes, review essays, and journal articles. Common readings in English.

I E STD 281A – Seminar: Indo-European Linguistics
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 2
Instructor: Jamison, S., Goldstein, D.M., Yates, A.D.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Requisite: course 210. Selected topics in Indo-European comparative grammar for advanced graduate students. May be repeated for credit. S/U or letter grading.

ITALIAN 214B – Studies in Medieval Literature: Dante’s Other Works
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Ciavolella, M.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours. S/U or letter grading.

JAPAN 297A – Seminar: Premodern Japan
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Duthie, T.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Selected topics on premodern Japan. Letter grading.

JAPAN 297B – Seminar: Modern Japan
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Emmerich, M.D.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Selected topics on modern Japan. Letter grading.

PHILOS 207 – Seminar: History of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Copenhaver, B.P., Normore, C.G.
Course Description: Seminar, four hours. Selected problems and philosophers. May be repeated for credit with consent of instructor. S/U or letter grading.

POL SCI 218 – Selected Topics in Political Theory: Imperialism, Anti-Imperialism, and Internationalism from Rome to Washington
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Pagden, A.R.
Course Description: Examination of various ideologies–imperialism, anti-imperialism, and internationalism–that have sustained Western empires since ancient Rome. Empire is understood here to embody universal set of beliefs about legitimacy of certain ways of life, laws, and political formations. Discussion of how these ideologies arose, how they have been challenged and contested, and how they still shape understanding of modern global neighborhood.

SCAND C237 – Old Norse Literature and Society
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Price, B.
Course Description: In this seminar, students will examine the myriad ways in which gender and sexuality were conceived of in medieval Scandinavia, by examining their representations in Old Norse literature. To interrogate how gendered and sexual identities were constructed and contested in this place and period, students will read a variety of sources in translation, including myths, poetry, laws, and sagas. Their understanding will be furthered by situating these texts in their sociohistorical context, interrogating the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between literary portrayals of gender and sexuality and lived reality in the Middle Ages. As they read, think, talk, and write together, students will reflect upon what gender, sexuality, and queerness mean in a distant past. No knowledge of Old Norse or the Middle Ages is required or expected.

SPAN 262B – Studies in Medieval Spanish Literature: Chivalric Novel before Cervantes
Discussion: Dis 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Dagenais, J.C.
Course Description: Students read principle representative works of 15th- and 16th-century chivalric fiction from Castilian and Catalan traditions. Works include Libro de cavallero de Dios (Libro de cavaller Çifar), Amadís de Gaula, and Tirant lo Blanc. Study of medieval theories of love and chivalry reflected in these works, and in Cervantes’ parody of this genre.

WL ARTS 201 – Theories of Performance
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Banerji, A.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours; outside study, nine hours. Close reading and analysis of classic and contemporary studies of performance and related aesthetic practices. Familiarization with ways in which performance is defined and deployed by scholars working in disciplines of anthropology, dance, folklore, linguistics, literature, musicology, performance studies, philosophy, sociology, and theater. S/U or letter grading.

WL ARTS 220 – Seminar: Culture and Performance
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Banerji, A.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours; outside study, nine hours. Designed for graduate students. Variable topics in interdisciplinary study of expressive culture, arts, and performance in social and historical context. May be repeated for credit with topic change. S/U or letter grading.

WL ARTS C246 – Politics of Performance
Seminar: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Banerji, A.
Course Description: Seminar, four hours; outside study, eight hours. Designed for graduate students. Opportunity to reflect on artists and intellectuals as cultural workers operating in domains of ideology, aesthetics, and theory. Analysis of such keywords as ideology, aesthetics, theory, art, politics, intervention, intellectuals, and artists. Concurrently scheduled with course C146. S/U or letter grading.