An introduction to problems of the comparative study of literature and culture. Emphasis on principles of comparative methods and analysis with focus on selected literary, critical, and theoretical texts from antiquity to the present. Readings in English.

This introduction to the study of literature in comparative contexts focuses on the essay in writing, film, and photography. As a form that wonders and wanders, taking readers down circuitous paths, in playful, exhilarating, and disturbing ways, the essay makes a habit of leaving us with more questions—often without the comfort of tidy closure or a domesticated subject. As students of the essay, we will analyze its exploratory disposition toward writing while developing a robust critical language to describe the work of the essay and its social implications and engagements. What kind of work do essays do? How has the essay been a crucial resource for thinking for scholars, students, and creative writers? How does the essay differ from other literary forms and what makes an essay essayistic? What particular capacities does the essay have to engage with questions of identity, race, class, gender, sexuality? To address these questions, this course considers the essay in relation to theory and philosophy, queer and trans studies, the archive and historiography, to name just a few. The focus of this course will be on essays written in the 20th and 21st centuries in order to explore how the essay is currently being reshaped and reimagined, such as in hybrid and lyric forms. We will apprentice ourselves to the various forms to develop our own approaches to writing essays in conversation with our readings. Essayists will include some of the following: Virginia Woolf, Edward W. Said, Toni Morrison, Theodor Adorno, Alice Notley, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Anne Carson, Harun Farocki, Fanny Howe, Jamaica Kincaid, Cristina Rivera Garza, Saidiya Hartman, W. G. Sebald, Jorge Luis Borges, Audre Lorde, Bhanu Kapil, Chris Marker, Claudia Rankine, Christina Sharpe, Julietta Singh, Susan Howe, Agnes Varda.

Students must have completed the R&C series to enroll in this course.

*Enrollment permission for this class is primarily reserved for intended Comparative Literature majors. To inquire, email complituga@berkeley.edu

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