Expository writing based on analysis of selected masterpieces of ancient and modern literature. R1A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement, and R1B satisfies the second half.

“I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Inhabiting your memory, hidden in your dreams, creeping along your bathroom floor, lurking in the neighborhood… monsters and ghosts are our perennial literary figures standing for what we love, fear, desire, abhor, and attempt to contain or banish. Incarnated on the page or the screen, they become able to haunt, seize, caress, protect, speak, and, perhaps, love us back. At what point does an undesired body, an abject thought, or a residual emotion turn into a monster, and according to whom? In whose imaginations and dreams is a monster conjured? What sustains its existence? This course will delve into the abundance of monster stories in various literary traditions both as remnants of past perceptions and as contemporary indexes of recognition, terror, and (in)humanity. In addition to engaging with ghosts and monsters as they appear in novels, films, poems, short stories, TV shows, and potentially even more genres, we will consider reading and writing as parallel processes that function at once as repositories of “monstrous” and “ghostly” feelings and the very space of their neutralization. We will ask, for example, whether reading and writing may appear to be “terrifying monsters” in their own right, or consider the possibility that writing is the site of possession. What can you do when you feel perpetually haunted by the author’s ghost? How do you contain the monstrous mass of your thoughts and feelings in a coherent piece of writing, while retaining its vitality and potentiality? When your monstrous pen gives birth to a monster baby – an original piece of writing that resists existing categories, disciplinary boundaries, scholarly frameworks – how do you take care of her? As a course on writing, our primary goal will be to dispel the “terror” of writing, and to create with confidence. To develop your close reading skills, you will look through our texts to find the places where they might come apart at the seams and reveal the horrors they have embedded within. Building upon your original observations, the assignments are designed to help you find your own style of argumentation and will include, most significantly, two papers of literary criticism as well as several in-class responses. Because this class fulfills the second half of the R&C sequence, you will be asked to develop your own research question and to engage with appropriate secondary sources.

Requisites

• UC Entry Level Writing Requirement or UC Analytical Writing Placement Exam. 1A or equivalent is prerequisite to 1B.

Credit Restrictions

Students will receive no credit for COM LIT R1B after completing COM LIT N1B, COM LIT S1B, COM LIT H1B, or COM LIT 1B.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills