Undergraduate Courses

Spring 2024

AN N EA 10W – Jerusalem: Holy City
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5.0
Instructor(s): Schniedewind, W.M.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 12W. Survey of religious, political, and cultural history of Jerusalem over three millennia as symbolic focus of three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Transformation of sacred space as reflected by literary and archaeological evidence through examination of testimony of artifacts, architecture, and iconography in relation to written word. Study of creation of mythic Jerusalem through event and experience. Satisfies Writing II requirement. Letter grading.

AN N EA M70 – Demons, Fear, and Uncanny in Ancient World
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Konstantopoulos, G
Course Description: (Same as Religion M70.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Consideration of place of demons and fear in several different societies and cultures in ancient world: Mesopotamia; ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and Biblical and early Jewish contexts. Investigation into why demons and monsters existed in these cultures; how they were opposed or protected again; and what these different societies feared, and how that fear was represented. As demons and monsters are reflections of particular culturally specific fears and norms, studying them allows for examination of societies that constructed them. Examination of how fear of threats such as disease, illness, and death were constructed alongside fears of foreign and of women. Critical examination of wide range of primary source texts, addressing core question of how different societies construct unique fears–and how those fears shape those societies in turn. P/NP or letter grading.

ART HIS M119D – Archaeology and Art of Christian and Islamic Egypt
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor(s): Burke, K.S.
Course Description: (Same as Archaeology M112, Islamic Studies M112, and Middle Eastern Studies M112.) Lecture, three hours. Culture of Egypt transformed gradually after Muslim conquest in mid-7th century CE. According to material evidence such as ceramics, textiles, architectural forms, and building techniques, it is functionally impossible to separate pre-Islamic Christian Egypt from early Islamic Egypt. Although population may have become largely Muslim by 10th century, Egypt remained Coptic in many senses even to 14th century and retains sizeable Christian minority to present. Survey of archaeological remains and standing architecture of Egypt from 6th to 19th century, charting changes and continuities in material culture and shifts in human geography and land use. P/NP or letter grading.

ART HIS C148B – Art and Material Culture of Early Imperial China, 210 BC to AD 906
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor(s): Von Falkenhausen,
Course Description: Lecture, three hours. Palaces and tombs of early imperial dynasties, impact of Buddhist art (cave temples), rise of new media and technologies. Concurrently scheduled with course C248B. P/NP or letter grading.

COM LIT 2BW – Survey of Literature: Middle Ages to 17th Century
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Pack, E.R.
Course Description: Lecture, two hours; discussion, two hours. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3 or 3H or English as a Second Language 36. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 1B or 4BW. Study of selected texts from Middle Ages to 17th century, with emphasis on literary analysis and expository writing. Texts may include works by authors such as Chaucer, Dante, Cervantes, Marguerite de Navarre, Shakespeare, Calderón, Molière, and Racine. Satisfies Writing II requirement. Letter grading.

ENGL 10A – Literatures in English to 1700
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5.0
Instructor(s): McEachern, C.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: English Composition 3 or 3H, English 4W or 4HW. Survey of major writers and genres, with emphasis on tools for literary analysis such as close reading, argumentation, historical and social context, and critical writing. Minimum of three papers (three to five pages each) or equivalent required. P/NP or letter grading.

ENGL M105A – Early Chicana/Chicano Literature, 1400 to 1920
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor(s): Lopez, M.
Course Description: (Same as Chicana/o and Central American Studies M105A.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisite: English Composition 3. Survey of Chicana/Chicano literature from poetry of Triple Alliance and Aztec Empire through end of Mexican Revolution (1920), including oral and written forms (poetry, corridos, testimonios, folklore, novels, short stories, and drama) by writers such as Nezahualcoyotl (Hungry Coyote), Cabaza de Vaca, Lorenzo de Zavala, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Eusebio Chacón, Daniel Venegas, and Lorena Villegas de Magón. P/NP or letter grading.

ENGL 119XP – Literary Cities–Service Learning: Refugee Literature, Then and Now
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Weaver, E., Thulin, L.
Course Description: (Formerly numbered 119SL.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled); fieldwork, two hours. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3. Exploration of place of literary imagination in making of cities, with focus on questions of cultural exchange, development, migration, urban rebellion, and style. Topics may include meaning of urban space and time, city as urban village or cosmopolitan hub, segregated dystopia or postmodern future, and impact of exile, tourism, and migration in making of cities. Service learning component includes meaningful work with local nonprofit organizations selected in advance by instructor. May be repeated for credit with topic or instructor change. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Focus on stories of more than 100 million people who are currently displaced by violence and environmental destruction. Students work with community organizations in greater Los Angeles to support recently resettled refugees, and immigrant rights more broadly. Students also read contemporary stories of exile and migration alongside 19th-century slave narratives and medieval accounts, pushing back at notion that there has ever been nation apart. Much medieval English literature was resolutely engaged with enduring questions of displacement and hospitality. Ongoing projects, like Refugee Tales, evoke deep archive of Anglophone writing by and about asylum seekers. Students spend 20 hours volunteering with assigned community partner.

English 141 A – Early Medieval Literature
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor(s): Jager, E.
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Major poetry and prose of early medieval Britain, including epic, romance, history, saints’ lives, and travel literature. Texts and topics include Beowulf, Vikings, poems on women, Bede, and King Alfred. P/NP or letter grading.

English 141 A – Early Medieval Literature
Lecture: Lec 2
Units: 4
Instructor(s): Weaver, E.
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Major poetry and prose of early medieval Britain, including epic, romance, history, saints’ lives, and travel literature. Texts and topics include Beowulf, Vikings, poems on women, Bede, and King Alfred. P/NP or letter grading.

ENGL 142R – Later Medieval Literature: Research Component: Chaucer and Art of Research
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Fisher, M.N
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Reading and historical explication of major writers of later medieval Britain (e.g., Gawain-poet, Langland, Gower, Margery Kempe, Malory, miracle and morality plays, prose, and lyrics). Substantial research component included. May be repeated for credit with topic or instructor change. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Reading springtime world of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one would be hard pressed to know that medieval England was riven with political divisions. It struggled with crises of class, gender, and religious identities; alongside relentless march of disease and medicine, technology and superstition, international trade and reactionary provincialism. What, then, are histories that medieval English literature creates and obscures? Students learn how to develop historical research questions, conduct historical and literary research, and begin to answer those questions in substantial literary critical papers. Class reads Canterbury Tales, and selections of connected Middle English verse and prose, to ask meaningful literary critical questions about wider medieval world. Includes one five- to six-page paper and final 20-page paper. Students also make formal 15-minute presentation on their research project.

English 150A, Shakespeare: Poems and Early Plays
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): McEachern, C.
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Intensive study of selected poems and representative comedies, histories, and tragedies through Hamlet. P/NP or letter grading.

ENGL 150C – Topics in Shakespeare: Resourceful Shakespeare: Origins, Analogs, and Offshoots
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Dickey, S.J.
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Introduction to or advancement of student knowledge of Shakespeare’s works through broad or specific topics set by instructor. May be repeated for credit with topic or instructor change. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Exploration of selected plays by William Shakespeare from general perspective of source study, considering both Shakespeare’s use of sources and use of Shakespeare as source. Students read some narrative and dramatic works that Shakespeare used in crafting his own plays to better understand playwright’s transformational strategies. Students gain fresh awareness of plays’ particular idiosyncrasies, and more complex sense of Shakespearean imitation and originality. Consideration of those plays as sources, in turn, for modern theatrical, literary, cinematic and musical derivatives. Although main focus is Shakespeare’s plays, students also acquire sense of their durable importance as cultural properties, resources, and totemic objects of veneration, homage, allusion, and parody.

ENGL 155 – Renaissance Subjects: English Erotic Lyric, 1560 to 1640
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Shuger, D.K.
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 10A, 10B. Literary representations of personhood in early modern period, with attention to issues such as personal voice, relations of privacy/community, bodies/souls, selves/others, as impacted by quotients such as gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity as they are understood in period from 1500 to 1700. May be repeated for credit with topic or instructor change. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: The class will begin with the foundational discourses of early modern eroticism: Plato’s Symposium; Ovid’s Amores and/or Ars amatoria; and Petrarch’s Rime sparse. We will then turn to the erotic lyrics of the English Renaissance (Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Donne’s Songs and Sonnets, et alia). There will be weekly short (1-2 pp.) papers on the assigned readings. Attendance and participation are required, but I can probably Zoom the class for those stricken by illness or car trouble. Note: none of this poetry is remotely pornographic, although some of it deals with subjects one might not wish to explain to young children. But, in general, the only body parts to which reference is made are the heart and eyes. This is a course about eros, not libido.

ENGL 181b
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Shuger, D.K.
Course Description: The seminar will read selections from the classic texts of British law, from Fortescue in the fifteenth century to Blackstone in the eighteenth. We will explore a variety of topics: contract, oaths, the jury system, rape, murder, equity, suicide, censorship, inheritance. The readings tend to be long and hard—and therefore wonderful preparation for law school (especially since 90% of modern American law is rooted in the English common law)—although we will also read some utterly electrifying trial narratives. Although the course has obvious relevance for prospective law students, it should also be of great value for those intending to do graduate work in English history or literature. . . . I strongly recommend reading J.H. Baker’s Introduction to English Legal History over spring break. There will be weekly short papers on the readings, but no exams.

ENGL 184.3 – Books in the Basement: New Encounters with Old Books
Capstone Seminar
Instructor(s): Fisher, M.
Class Description: What differentiates a rare book from an old book? Why are some old books valuable and others worthless? We will work hands-on with medieval manuscripts, early printed books, 18th century engravings, 19th century pulp novels, archival photographs, ephemera such as zines and rock posters, and other archives in Special Collections. We will study how libraries and special collections are assembled (and what’s excluded), how digital archives are curated and presented (and what voices are silenced), and how books are described, bought, and sold. As we explore UCLA’s Special Collections, we will develop research questions in response to the books and texts we encounter each week. There will be a series of shorter writing assignments and a final research paper. Students will also make a formal 15 minute presentation on their research project during the second half of the quarter.

HIST 1A – Introduction to Western Civilization: Ancient Civilizations, Prehistory to circa AD 843
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor(s): Goldberg, J.L.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Survey of diverse cultures that shaped foundation of Western civilization to onset of 9th century AD. Investigation of first civilizations in Near East and Egypt. Analysis of worlds of Greeks and Romans. Examination of ways in which western European societies created new syntheses through selective appropriation of Greek and Roman cultures and introduction of new cultural forms. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST 2C – Religion, Occult, and Science: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in Western Tradition, 1000 to 1600
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Specific aspects of elite and popular culture in medieval and early modern Europe. Manner in which men and women sought to explain, order, and escape terrors of their lives by embracing transcendental religious experiences and dreaming of apocalypse and witchcraft. Examination of experiences in context of genesis of the state, birth of a new science, and economic and social change. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST 9C – Introduction to Asian Civilizations: History of Japan
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Survey of Japanese history from earliest recorded time to the present, with emphasis on development of Japan as a cultural daughter of China. Attention to manner in which Chinese culture was Japanized and aspects of Japanese civilization which became unique. Creation of the modern state in the last century and impact of Western civilization on Japanese culture. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST 105C – Survey of Middle East, 500 to Present: 1700 to Present
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Designed for juniors/seniors. Background and circumstances of rise of Islam, creation of Islamic Empire, and its development. Rise of Dynastic Successor States and Modern Nation States. Social, intellectual, political, and economic development. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST 107A – Armenian History: Armenia in Ancient and Medieval Times, 2nd Millennium BC to AD 11th Century
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description:Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Designed for juniors/seniors. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST 116B – Byzantine History
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Designed for juniors/seniors. Political, socioeconomic, religious, and cultural continuity in millennial history of Byzantium. Reforms of Diocletian. Byzantium’s relations with Latin Europe, Slavs, Sassanids, Arabs, and Turks. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST 191B – Capstone Seminar: History—Medieval
Seminar: Sem 1
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for seniors. Limited to 15 students meeting with faculty member. Organized on topics basis with reading, discussion, and development of culminating project. May be repeated once for credit. P/NP or letter grading.

HIST C191F – Topics in History: Near East: Ottoman Historian’s Craft: Archive, Historiography, and Diplomatics
Seminar: Sem 1
Course Description: (Formerly numbered 191F.) Seminar, three hours. Designed for seniors. Limited to 15 students meeting with faculty member. Reading and discussion of selected topics, and development of culminating project. May be repeated once for credit. May be concurrently scheduled with course C201J. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Introduction to sources used by historians to reconstruct history of Ottoman empire. For nearly 600 years, sprawling empire connected Europe, Asia, and Africa. Today, it has fractured into more than 35 nation-states, each with its own fraught relationship with Ottoman past. Examination of sharia court records about divorces, stolen animals, loan disputes, imperial decrees, fiscal registers, and travelogs (all available in English translation). Students also read historiographical commentary, and evaluate how professional historians have used these sources. Students work on short research paper with instructor guidance.

HIST C191N – Topics in History: India: Mughal Empire and Its Neighbors
Seminar: Sem 1
Course Description: (Formerly numbered 191N.) Seminar, three hours. Designed for seniors. Limited to 15 students meeting with faculty member. Reading and discussion of selected topics, and development of culminating project. May be repeated once for credit. May be concurrently scheduled with course C201K. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Examination of trajectory of Mughal empire–with Safavids and Ottomans, one of great Islamic empires of early modern times. This empire was founded in 1526 in northern India by Babur, descendant of Chinggis Khan and Timur. Its lasted until 1858 and rebellion against East India Company. After brief general consideration of empire in world history, study addresses subjects ranging from ideological questions, or formation of administrative elites; to other broad questions of political, economic, and cultural import. Students write final capstone paper based on secondary literature selected in consultation with instructor.

ITALIAN 110 – Dante in English
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours. Close study of one of world’s greatest literary geniuses, particularly of his masterpiece, “Divine Comedy,” the archetypal medieval journey through the afterworld. P/NP or letter grading.

ITALIAN 140 – Italian Novella from Boccaccio to Basile in Translation
Lecture: Lec 1
Instructor(s): Ciavolella, M.
Course Description: Lecture, three hours. Analysis of development of Italian novella in its structure, historical context, and folk material. Special emphasis on how Italian novella influenced other European literatures. P/NP or letter grading.

PHILOS 100C – History of Modern Philosophy, 1650 to 1800
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Preparation: one philosophy course. Strongly recommended requisite: course 100B. Courses 100A, 100B, and 100C should be taken in immediately successive terms if possible. Survey of development of metaphysics and theory of knowledge from 1650 to 1800, including Locke and/or Berkeley, Malebranche and/or Leibniz, and culminating in Hume and Kant. Topics may include views of these (and perhaps other) philosophers of the period on mind and body, causality, existence of God, skepticism, empiricism, limits of human knowledge, and philosophical foundations of modern science. P/NP or letter grading.

PHILOS 107 – Topics in Medieval Philosophy: Utopia, Thomas More, and More
Lecture: Lec 1
Instructor(s): Robiglio, A
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Preparation: one philosophy course. Recommended requisite: course 105 or 106. Study of philosophy and theology of one medieval philosopher such as Augustine, Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, or Ockham, or study of one single area such as logic or theory of knowledge in several medieval philosophers. Topic announced each term. May be repeated for credit with consent of instructor. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (d. 1855) characterizes Socrates as the ironist par excellence and contends that “just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony”. In this sense, one might argue, there may be no authentic teaching and practice of philosophy without understanding the uses of irony. In 1516 Louvain a sophisticated Englishman published a fascinating philosophical fiction, Utopia, the title of which became eponymous of a new way of thinking: The author was Thomas More (1478-1535) and, like Socrates, died as the result of a capital punishment imposed on him by the political authorities. Through the close reading of More’s celebrated Utopia, we’ll uncover the structure, assumptions, insights and arguments at work in it. Moreover, in order to better evaluate the use of arguments, we will compare More’s Utopia with two other philosophical writings on Ideal Commonwealths, written between the autumn of the Middle Ages and the birth of the Scientific Revolution: Campanella’s City of the Sun and Bacon’s New Atlantis. Why is there society and what is it for? What does human knowledge consist in? What might be the pure form of reality?

PHILOS C119 – Topics in History of Philosophy: Cartesian Theories of Animal Consciousness
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Preparation: one philosophy course. Study of selected philosophers or themes in history of philosophy from different periods (e.g. ancient and medieval, medieval and early modern). May be repeated for credit with consent of instructor. Concurrently scheduled with course C219. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Descartes notoriously held that animals are mere machines, devoid of consciousness. This beast-machine doctrine provoked moral outrage and disbelief among his contemporaries but was fiercely defended by many of his followers, including most notably Nicolas Malebranche. What motivated them to hold view that they acknowledged violates common sense? To answer this question, study places beast-machine doctrine within larger framework of their metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and scientific project. Beast-machine doctrine offers particularly fruitful perspective on these aspects of their thought, which are often ignored in favor of their epistemologies. Examination of their arguments for this doctrine, including Descartes’ famous language argument and Malebranche’s argument from divine justice, which is closely related to his theodicy of evil. Consideration of objections to beast-machine doctrine by other 17th-century philosophers including Leibniz and Locke.

PHILOS C119 – Topics in History of Philosophy: Mexican Philosophy
Lecture: Lec 2
Course Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Preparation: one philosophy course. Study of selected philosophers or themes in history of philosophy from different periods (e.g. ancient and medieval, medieval and early modern). May be repeated for credit with consent of instructor. Concurrently scheduled with course C219. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Historical introduction to major figures and debates in Mexican philosophy. Topics include Aztec metaphysics; ethics of war and conquest; origins of feminism in Mexico; debates concerning nation formation; and pursuit of authentic Mexican identity, philosophy, and culture.

SPAN 135 – Topics in Early Modern Studies: Performing One’s Life in 17th-Century Transatlantic Hispanic World
Lecture: Lec 1
Course Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisites: courses 25 or 27, and 119. Exploration of 16th and 17th centuries, with focus on early modern period of Spain and Spanish America. Possible topics include Spanish colonization and indigenous responses, transatlantic literary and visual baroque, race and religion in construction of early modern nation, transatlantic fictions, early modern identities and theatrical representations, literature and historiography, transatlantic poetics and poetry. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
Class Description: Performance shaped existence of 17th-century individuals. Men and women–regardless of class and race–gathered at theater, eager to see and to be seen. At end of day, human hearts and minds supplied the curious with most genuine and mysterious spectacle to see, asking how others really are inside; and what people hide when they show up in public. Reading of plays by Ruiz de Alarcón, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Sor Juana, Lope de Vega, and others. Plays guide students through world in which suspicion that everyone in street was performing a role was only too real. Individuals feared that everyone else was concealing their true selves. It became necessary to develop tools to see into others’ minds, while keeping one’s own under lock. Only smartest realized that even to spy on others was often easier than to look inside oneself–because no one wants to incur self-hate. Taught in Spanish.