This course is designed for new transfer students, and will provide the tools and supports necessary to succeed in upper-division coursework in the Arts and Humanities at Berkeley. Working together in collaborative hands-on workshops in the Active Learning Classroom, students will master the major skills of humanistic study: critical reading, active listening, literary and cultural analysis, examination, participation, research, writing, and revision. Learning from panels of senior transfer students and visiting professors, this class will build a large and supportive cohort of new students, a community that is astoundingly diverse in its make up but united in its aim to make Berkeley an intellectual home.

“Transfer Foundations” is a course designed especially for first-semester transfer students intending to study in the Arts and Humanities. Many transfer students report that the transition from community college to UC Berkeley is one of the most challenging moments in their educational careers. This course is designed to support that transition by introducing students to key methods in the humanities. We'll explore these methods in detail and in explicit, transparent, and demystifying ways. Students will work to develop strategies for approaching the main activities involved in upper-division humanities coursework: critical reading, active listening, literary and cultural analysis, participation, research, writing, and revision. Our core text over the course of the semester will be Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus." We will undertake a close, critical reading of the novel and then expand our study to consider its cultural context, its international reception and many adaptations, the scholarly conversations around it, and its relationship to companion texts in other disciplines and genres. Through this intensive study of a classic text, we will explore how humanistic study works, step by critical step, while also asking about literature's place in the world.

In Fall 2023, this course is equivalent to COMLIT 100 and will count towards major requirements for Comparative Literature.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.