CoursesSenior Seminars

“Flyover Country” refers to the interior parts of the country that one flies over when traveling from one cost to the other, usually from one densely populated urban center (like southern California) to another (like the northeastern “Megalopolis” of Boston/New York/Philadelphia/Washington DC). The term also implies a general neglect and ignorance of this wide swath of U.S. territory. Given that it’s an election year, when “flyover states” will play a crucial role in choosing our next president, this seminar explores the 20^th and 21^st-century literature of “flyover country.” What histories, logics, and values shape this literature? What challenges might this literature pose for the assumptions that status quo, center-left discourse makes about the world? What counts as politics in “flyover country”? Or are these places and peoples really as different as we’ve been led to believe? Readings will include novels from Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, and Marilynne Robinson.

 

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.

In this seminar we try to answer two basic questions that should interest all students of literature: what is a novel, and why does it matter? We will approach these questions from two related areas of study. These include (1) the novel’s historical emergence as a cultural phenomenon over hundreds of years of development, and (2) the novel as a distinct literary genre with its own narrative conventions, techniques, and conceptions of human character. Both areas have been the subject of intense literary criticism and theoretical speculation for the last hundred years or so. Students will read the most provocative and engaging statements about the novel from these important secondary sources, and will use their insights from them to read two or three novels from different time periods. Requirements include regular oral reports, engaged class discussion, short papers, and a longer paper.

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.[1] There will be weekly short papers on the readings, but no exams. No late admits permitted.

 Not open to students who have previously taken a seminar titled “The Literature of the Law” with Prof. Shuger.

This class will investigate the genre of the psychoanalytic case history, considering it from a literary angle as well as a psychoanalytic one.  In addition to providing an overview of major psychoanalytic concepts, the class discussions will attend to questions of narrative perspective and reliability, to modes of characterization, including the role of major and minor characters, and to the role of the analyst.  We will read a substantial selection of Sigmund Freud’s case histories, as well as case histories and commentaries by Ella Sharpe, Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, and Frantz Fanon.  We will discuss the ways in which gender, age, sexual orientation, war trauma, and a colonial setting impact the telling and rendering of the case history.

Course explores cancer narratives including John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), novelist Frances Burney’s mastectomy narrative (1812), and poet Anne Boyer’s anti-memoir The Undying (2019), in order to better understand the vexed relationship between disability studies and health humanities. We will also read a range of historical and theoretical sources on topics including the history and sociology of cancer (starting with Susan Sontag’s 1978 classic Illness as Metaphor), the genre of the illness narrative, and the complex distinctions and connections between illness and disability. Requirements include several discussion-board posts, an oral presentation, and a final research project which could include your own personal narrative.

 

A portion of ENGL 184.1 will be allocated to students pursuing the Disability Studies major or minor. Disability Studies students should inquire with Prof. Deutsch at hdeutsch@humnet.ucla.edu.

Using the extensive resources of the Oscar Wilde archive held at the Clark Library, this seminar focuses on different ways of researching topics relating to both the writer’s controversial life and his links with other artists and writers of the 1880s and 1890s. The seminar draws on published and unpublished materials to consider such issues as Wilde’s income, his successes on the London stage, the trials of 1895, his prison years, his links with publishers such as John Lane and Elkin Mathews, his relations with the audacious artist Aubrey Beardsley, and his early death from encephalomeningitis in Paris on November 30, 1900. This seminar will be of particular interest to undergraduates who wish to acquire advanced research skills in the humanities. Course requirements include two research papers.

 

How to Apply:

On the morning of Friday, February 16, Professor Bristow will conduct interviews through Zoom with selected students who have expressed interest in enrolling the seminar. Prospective students should submit the following documents to Professor Bristow: a letter explaining their reasons for wanting to enroll in the course, a printed PDF of their DAR, and a resume containing contact information. The documents should be submitted to Professor Bristow in the UCLA English Department Main Office (149 Kaplan Hall) by 5:00pm PST, Friday, February 9, 2024.

 

English 184.2 will be the Spring 2024 Ahmanson Undergraduate Seminar. Subsidies for use of Lyft are provided for student transportation to and from the Clark Library. Undergraduate students who successfully complete the seminar are awarded a $1,000 scholarship.

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.

“Flyover Country” refers to the interior parts of the country that one flies over when traveling from one cost to the other, usually from one densely populated urban center (like southern California) to another (like the northeastern “Megalopolis” of Boston/New York/Philadelphia/Washington DC). The term also implies a general neglect and ignorance of this wide swath of U.S. territory. Given that it’s an election year, when “flyover states” will play a crucial role in choosing our next president, this seminar explores the 20^th and 21^st-century literature of “flyover country.” What histories, logics, and values shape this literature? What challenges might this literature pose for the assumptions that status quo, center-left discourse makes about the world? What counts as politics in “flyover country”? Or are these places and peoples really as different as we’ve been led to believe? Readings will include novels from Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, and Marilynne Robinson.

 

Reserved for American Literature & Culture majors only on first pass. Open to English majors on second pass.