The Compass Courses offer you an opportunity to explore the division of Arts and Humanities. They are offered on different themes each year, but they share a unique structure. The class is taught by three professors in three modules of study. You will have a chance to study with each professor, experience a range of approaches to the theme, and learn the methods and structures of different disciplines. Compass Courses are designed to guide you through various options for study in Arts and Humanities and to serve as a gateway to the rich offerings at Berkeley. They are part of the freshman experience, advancing a common journey of discovery and building an intellectual cohort among students new to Berkeley's expansive possibilities.

What does it mean when represented violence makes us laugh? This course will explore this question in a range of genres and time periods: classical Greek and Roman drama, turn-of-the century European drama and fiction; and contemporary US and Asian cinema. Comedy in these texts is both a literary and cinematic mode and also an affect. How can we read ethically? How can theoretical accounts of laughter help us understand our responses? What is the role of ethics in our responses? What are the differences between the contexts of the texts and our context? What can these moments teach us about how we think about ourselves? The syllabus will include: Aristophanes, Plautus, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, Lewis Carroll, Alfred Jarry, J. M. Synge, Shin’ichirô Ueda, Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Bong Joon-Ho.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills