everything.study
21L.310

Bestsellers

2-0-4 units · Undergraduate

Focuses on works that caught the popular imagination in the past or present. Emphasizes texts that are related by genre, theme or style. Books studied vary from term to term. May be repeated once for credit if content differs. Confirm start and end dates on Literature website. Enrollment limited.

Fall 2018 · Bestsellers: Out for the Count

Topics

  • Introduction to Course
  • Historical and Folkloristic Background
  • “Wake Not the Dead” and “Fragment of a Novel”
  • “The Vampyre”
  • Varney the Vampire
  • Carmilla (I)
  • Carmilla (II)
  • Dracula : The Novel (I)
  • Dracula : The Novel (II)
  • Dracula : The Critical Heritage (I)
  • Dracula : The Critical Heritage (II)
  • Conclusion

Readings

Spring 2010 · Bestsellers: The Memoir

What is a "life" when it's written down? How does memory inform the present? Why are memoirs so popular? This course will address these questions and others, considering the relationship between biography, autobiography, and memoir and between personal and social themes. We will closely examine some recent memoirs: Tobias Wolff's _This Boy's Life_, Barack Obama's _Dreams From My Father_, Edwidge Danticat's _Brother_, _I'm Dying_, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's _Infidel_, and Alison Bechdel's _Fun Home_. Students will write two brief papers: a critical essay and an experiment in memoir. As a "Sampling," this class offers 6 units, with a strong emphasis on close reading, group discussion, focused writing, and research and presentation skills.

Readings

  • Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father - A Story of Race and Inheritance . New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2004.
    Listed reading
  • Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. Infidel . Tampa, FL: Free Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780743289696.
    Listed reading
  • Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir . New York, NY: Grove Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780802136688.
    Listed reading
  • Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I’m Dying . New York, NY: Vintage, 2008. ISBN: 9781400034307.
    Listed reading
  • Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic . New York, NY: Mariner Books, 2007. ISBN: 9780618871711.
    Listed reading
Fall 2006 · Bestsellers: Detective Fiction

This course focuses on works that caught the popular imagination in the past or present. It emphasizes texts that are related by genre, theme or style. The books studied in this course vary from semester to semester, and the topic for Fall 2006 is Detective Fictions.

Readings

  • Doyle, Arthur Conan. Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories . Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992. ISBN: 0486270556.
    Listed reading
  • Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire . New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1999. ISBN: 0679723420.
    Listed reading
  • Poe, Edgar Allen. Tales of Terror and Detection . Mineola, NY: Dover, 1995. ISBN: 0486287440.
    Listed reading
  • Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice . New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN: 0679723250.
    Listed reading
  • Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon . New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN: 0679722645.
    Listed reading
  • Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . New York, NY: Berkley Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0425200477.
    Listed reading
  • Weber, K. J. Five Minute Mysteries . Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 1989. ISBN: 0894716905.
    Listed reading
  • Sobol, D. J. Two Minute Mysteries . New York, NY: Scholastic, 1991. ISBN: 0590447874.
    Listed reading
  • Browning, Robert. My Last Duchess and Other Poems . Mineola, NY: Dover, 1993. ISBN: 0486277836.
    Listed reading
  • Sophocles. Oedipus Rex . Mineola, NY: Dover, 1991. ISBN: 0486268772.
    Listed reading
  • Sophocles. Oedipus Rex .
    Listed reading
  • Film: The Moonstone . Directed by Paddy Russell. 1972. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Poe, Edgar Allen. “ The Raven .” In Tales of Terror and Detection . ↗
    Listed reading
  • Ancillary Readings
    Listed reading
  • Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure . New York, NY: Appleton-Century Company, 1941.
    Listed reading
  • Poe, Edgar Allen. “ Murders in the Rue Morgue (PDF) ,” “ The Purloined Letter ,” “ The Raven ,” and “ The Philosophy of Composition .” In Tales of Terror and Detection. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter.’” Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. Yale French Studies 48, French Freud: Structural Studies in Psychoanalysis (1972): 5-9.
    Listed reading
  • Browning, Robert. “ The Bishop orders His Tomb ,” “ My Last Duchess ,” “ Porphyria’s Lover ,” “ Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister .” In My Last Duchess and Other Poems. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Porter, Dennis. “Backward Construction and the Art of Suspense.” In Pursuit of Crime . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. ISBN: 0300027222.
    Listed reading
  • Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd .
    Listed reading
  • Wilson, Edmund. “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” Originally published in New Yorker , January 20, 1945.
    Listed reading
  • Grossvogel, David. “Agatha Christie: Containment of the Unknown.” In Mystery and Its Fictions: From Oedipus to Agatha Christie . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. ISBN: 0801822017.
    Listed reading
  • Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon .
    Listed reading
  • Film: The Maltese Falcon . Directed by John Huston. 1941. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Chandler, Raymond. “The Simple Art of Murder.” Originally published in Atlantic Monthly , December, 1945.
    Listed reading
  • Film: Citizen Kane . Directed by Orson Welles. 1941. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Stowe, William. “From Semiotics to Hermeneutics: Modes of Detection in Doyle and Chandler.” In Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction and Literary Theory . Edited by Glenn Most and William Stowe. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1983, pp. 366-84. ISBN: 0156723123.
    Listed reading
  • Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Garden of Forking Paths,” “Death and the Compass,” and “Ibn Hakkam al-Bokhari, Dead in his Labyrinth.” In Collected Fictions . Translated by Andrew Hurley. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1999. ISBN: 0140286802.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Kafka and His Precursors.” In Labyrinths: Selected Short Stories and Other Writings . New York, NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964. ISBN: 0811200124.
    Listed reading
  • Film: Psycho . Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1960. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Barthes, Roland. “Delay and the Hermeneutic Sentence.” In Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction and Literary Theory . Edited by Glenn Most and William Stowe. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1983. ISBN: 0156723123. Also published in: Barthes, Roland. “ Sarrasine , by Honoré de Balzac.” In Appendices of S/Z: An Essay . Translated by Richard Miller. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1974. ISBN: 0374521670.
    Listed reading
  • Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire .
    Listed reading

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: None U (Spring) 2-0-4 units Can be repeated for credit.

Sources