Course Descriptions

Term:

Pacific Rim

Winter Quarter (W18)

Dept/Description Course No., Title  Instructor
ART HIS (W18)162C  CONTEMPORARY JAPANWINTHER, D.
Emphasis/Category: Pacific Rim

World art has been greatly impacted by all kinds of Japanese contributions in recent decades.  We will explore Japanese ceramics, comics, painting, and photography. You will learn about Japanese artistic responses to WWII, the revival of traditional arts, avant-garde groups,  and popular culture. Topics range from Department Store Art and Cute Style to and Pet Architecture and Nirvana art.  Three frameworks of study are used: individual artists’ careers, historical movements or groups, and social systems or institutions of art.  No prerequisites.
Days: TU TH  03:30-04:50 PM

HISTORY (W18)142A  CALIFORNIA DREAMINGIGLER, D.
Emphasis/Category: Pacific Rim

California is the “Great Exception.”  California is the “Leading Edge” State.  California is an Island or it’s a center of Global Trends.  The Land of Sunshine.  The Golden State, Gold Mountain, gam saan, Alta California, the Eastern Pacific.  These and many other designations carry great cultural weight in California history.  This course examines the history of California as a state, but it places the state within the broader context of the American West, the nation, and the world.  Lectures, discussions, movies, and other visual material will explore this history, spotlighting pivotal events and issues.
Days: MO WE  10:00-10:50 AM

E ASIAN (W18)150  THE WOMAN WARRIORHU, Y.
Emphasis/Category: Pacific Rim

This course focuses on the figure of the woman warrior as constructed through the ages in Chinese literature and Chinese-American literature. Our readings include poetry, fiction, autobiography,  memoirs and film. Our questions include the following: What constitutes the cultural and historical code of the warrior/knight/xia? How does the code change when gender is introduced into the picture? And how does it change when cross-cultural context is present? Through the image of the woman warrior, how does fictional imagination conform to, deviate from and subvert normative gender behavior?

Course requirements: Reading about 60 pages per week (in English); 2 oral presentations; 2 exams; 2 papers.
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

COM LIT (W18)132  CALIFORNIA LITERATURESDIMENDBERG, E.
Emphasis/Category: Pacific Rim

Whatever the eventual verdict on the ongoing experiment that is California, few can deny the range and fecundity of its literary traditions which span from Native American inhabitants and European explorers and missionaries to contemporary immigrants. This class will consider a wide range of California writing in the modes of folklore, the short story, novel, diary, literary essay, natural history, poetry, and cultural criticism. It will cover by texts by Spanish missionaries and conquerors, Native Americans, Sarah Royce, Helen Hunt Jackson, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, Robinson Jeffers, Joan Didion, Blaise Cendrars, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Raymond Chandler, M.F.K. Fischer, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Thomas Pynchon, Amy Tan, John Steinbeck, Clifford Odets, Louis Adamic, Nathanel West, Reyner Banham, Tom Wolfe, John Muir, Carey McWilliams, and Vikram Seth. Our goal will be to understand the interactions of culture and nature and the formations of community in a place defined by the myths of the Gold Rush, abundant natural resources, sunshine, noir, and boundless opportunity. Course assignments include take-home midterm and final research paper. 


Days: TU TH  12:00-01:20 PM

Courses Offered by Global Cultures or other Schools at UCI

Pacific Rim

Winter Quarter (W18)

Dept Course No., Title   Instructor
INTL ST (W18)142D  INTL REL OF E ASIAURIU, R.

Emphasis/Category: Pacific Rim, Inter-Area Studies
No description is currently available.

GLBLCLT (W18)105  LANGUAGE ORIGINSSCHWEGLER, A.

Emphasis/Category: Hispanic, US Latino/a and Luso-Brazilian Cultures, Locating Europes and European Colonies, Pacific Rim, Inter-Area Studies, Locating Asias (Nation, Culture, and Diaspora), Atlantic Rim, Locating Africas, Global Middle East
No description is currently available.

INTL ST (W18)143A  VIETNAM WARO'CONNELL, C.

Emphasis/Category: Pacific Rim
No description is currently available.