R1B, Section 1
Reading & Composition Course
4 units
TT 3:30-5
Dara Hellman
Watch this Space!
A Detailed Description is Forthcoming!
This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. Courses taken to fulfill this requirement must be taken for a letter grade.
Texts: to be announced.
Prerequisite: Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement or its equivalent. Students may not enroll nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite
R1B, Section 2
Reading and Composition: Irish Drama in a Comparative Context
4 units
MWF 3-4
This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. Courses taken to fulfill this requirement must be taken for a letter grade.
The primary focus of this course is the improvement of your writing. Since R1B is an intensive college writing course, issues of development and style are presented at an advanced level. Further, students are to receive attention to their writing through detailed comments on their essays and through discussion in class and during office hours.
Your writing for this course will analyze and interpret significant dramatic and poetic texts from Ireland. We will read Irish dramatic texts alongside some Greek tragedies. Of importance to our reading are: 1.) the development of Irish drama in its historical context; 2.) the place of Irish drama as a response to Greek drama; and 3.) the dramatic artistry of the plays themselves. The course will examine the form and nature of drama and performance.
Required Texts:
Diane Hacker and Nancy Sommers. A Pocket Style Manual. 6th ed. Bedford/St. Martins. ISBN-10: 0-312-542542.
John P. Harrington, ed. Modern Irish Drama (Norton Critical Editions). 2nd ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. ISBN-978-0-393-93243-0.
Seamus Heaney. The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles’ Antigone. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2004. ISBN-10: 0-374-11721-7.
—–. The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1991. ISBN 0-374-52289-8.
Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. J. E. Thomas. Clayton, DE: Prestwick House, 2005. ISBN 978-1-58049-388-8.
Euripides. Medea. Trans. Rex Warner. Mineola, NY: Dover Thrift Editions, 1993. ISBN-13: 978-0486275482.
COURSE-READER: Prepared by the instructor, this text will be available during the first week of classes.
NOTE: Only the above editions and translations will be used in this course. Other editions and translations are not acceptable.
Prerequisite: Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement or its equivalent. Students may not enroll nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite.
15: Elementary Modern Irish
4 units
TT 3:30-5
Eddie Stack
A beginner’s course: Students will learn about the history of the language and the basics of Irish grammar. Emphasis will be on pronunciation, using different tenses, and the acquisition of basic vocabulary and idioms and students will develop the ability to understand, speak, read and write the language. Simple written stories and conversations in Irish will supplement classroom oral-aural work.
Class activities will include conversation and discussion of homework in Irish. At the end of the course students should be able to carry on a basic conversation in Irish, understand the unique idiom of the language, and read and write basic poetry and prose. In-class participation and homework will make up 25% of the grade.
Required Text:
Foclóir Póca (pocket dictionary) ISBN-13: 978-0828817080 or Pocket Oxford Irish Dictionary ISBN 0-19-860254-5
Prerequisites: none.
70: The World of the Celts
Satisfies L&S Historical Studies OR Social & Behavioral Sciences breadth requirement.
4 units
TT 9:30-11
Daniel Melia
L&S Breadth: Historical Studies OR Social and Behavioral Sciences
Did the Druids really burn people in giant wicker statues? Did they worship a mother-goddess? Did they worship trees? Did the Celts build Stonehenge? Was Britain Rome’s Vietnam? Who are the Celts anyway (or were they Kelts?) Who was King Arthur (was there really a King Arthur?)
Celtic Studies 70 is designed to allow you to be able to answer these and other questions about the Celtic world of the past and the present. The course will present an overview of the history of the Celtic-speaking peoples from Indo‑European times to the present concentrating particularly on questions of assessing evidence. How are we to interpret Roman or Greek views of the Celts? How do we know about languages of which there are no written records? We will discuss the extent to which Celtic culture can be seen as a unitary phenomenon at various periods. The course will cover what we know and what we may be able to reconstruct of Celtic belief systems and social structure. For the later historical period we will discuss Celtic tribal migration, cultural absorption, and linguistic fragmentation.
Course requirements:
1.) 3 short quizzes in class
2.) 1 group report in class
3.) 1 final 3‑hour examination.
Texts:
James, Simon, Exploring the World of the Celts
Cunliffe, Barry, The Celts: A Very Short Introduction
Caesar, Julius, Seven Commentaries on The Gallic War With an Eighth Commentary by Aulus Hirtius, Translated with Introduction and Notes by Carolyn Hammond
Koch, John, The Celtic Heroic Age,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain
Prerequisites: None.
138: Irish Literature, 700-1800
Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature breadth requirement.
4 units
MWF 12-1
Thomas Walsh
L&S Breadth: Arts & Literature
From our earliest poetic texts to the last moments of the Gaelic order in the 1700s, Irish literature presents us with a vast wealth of material in a wildly diverse variety of genres. This course will focus tightly on the famous sagas of the Ulster and Finn Cycles as well as on the lyrical texts of “nature,” praise and, at the end of the tradition, Bardic Poetry, but we will also give a panoramic view of the range of early Irish genres from history, genealogy, law, satire, gnomic literature, as well as philology, prosody, medicine, hagiography, etc. not to mention the translations of Greco-Roman epic. Of concern will be the theoretical orientation of our readings: how does the literature in its early phases exhibit the techniques of oral story-making (so markedly present in the Táin Bó Cualinge)? What theoretical models for analyzing these texts have developed in recent thinking? How have other textual traditions (such as the Greco-Roman or Judeo-Christian traditions) affected the texts themselves and our understandings of what they might mean? Are terms like “lyric” or “epic” helpful or not? What is the place of early Irish literature in the newly emergent conceptions of “World Literature” or “Early Comparative Literature”?
Student work will include a few short quizzes, 1 short midterm and a final; 1 short paper (due mid-semester) and a term paper (due at semester’s end).
The course will be presented as a series of lectures with plenty of room for discussion.
Required Texts:
Thomas Kinsella, The Tain: Translated from the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cualinge New York: Oxford, 2002 (1969). ISBN-10: 0192803735.
Anne Dooley and Harry Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland. New York: Oxford University Pres, 2008 ISBN-10: 0199549850.
G. Murphy. Early Irish Lyrics. Foreword by Tomás Ó Cathasaigh. Dublin: Four Courts, 1998 (1956). ISBN 978-1-85182-198-3.
John T. Koch (ed.) with J. Carey, The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales. Rev. ed. Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003. ISBN 1-891271-09-1.
COURSE READER: Prepared by the instructor, this text will be available during the first week of classes.
Prerequisite: None. Course and readings in English
144A: Modern Welsh, Level III
4 units
MW 4-5:30
Kathryn Klar
This is a continuation of Celtic Studies 16 and 86. Advanced grammatical concepts are introduced and vocabulary building (especially idioms) is emphasized. Students read materials such as magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and popular novels.
Texts: To be announced by the instructor at a later date. Students will be required to purchase texts from an online source.
Prerequisites: Celtic Studies 86; consent of instructor
146A: Medieval Welsh Language and Literature
Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature breadth requirement.
4 units
TT 2-3:30
Annalee RejhonNew Classroom as of Sept 3, 2015: 6307 Dwinelle
L&S Breadth: Arts & Literature
A selection of medieval Welsh prose and poetry will be read with a view to learning to read the original language as well as to examining key themes in the literature; lectures will provide both grammar instruction and analysis of the works in their cultural and historical contexts. The Mabinogion tales of Branwen and Maxen Wledic will be read as will selections from the early Welsh poetry of Taliesin and Aneirin and from the fourteenth-century poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym. Selections will also be read from the oldest Arthurian tale in the vernacular, Culhwch & Olwen. English translations will be available for all works read in the original Middle Welsh and in-class translations will form a normal part of each class.
Course requirements include a midterm and final examination.
No prerequisites.
C168: Celtic Myth and Oral Tradition
Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature breadth requirement.
4 units
TT 11-12:30
Annalee Rejhon
L&S Breadth Requirement: Philosophy and Values OR Arts & Literature
The course will examine the mythology of the Celts—their gods, goddesses, festivals, and belief systems—as it is reflected in medieval Irish and Welsh texts. Following a short presentation of introductory material regarding the history and civilization of the early Celts, the course will begin with the early Irish tale known as The Second Battle of Maige Tuired, a core mythological tale that best exemplifies the pattern of mythological deities and belief systems that pertain to varying degrees in other Celtic tales. These tales will include in Irish, the Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, the Tale of Macc Da Thó’s Pig, Bricriu’s Feast, the Wooing of Etaín, the Dream of Oengus, the Wasting Sickness of CúChulaind, the Cattle Raid of Fróech, and the Táin, and in Welsh, the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, Culhwch and Olwen, Lludd and Llefelys, the Tale of Gwion Bach and the Tale of Taliesin, and the poems, “What Man the Gatekeeper” and “The Spoils of the Otherworld.” All the readings are in English translation.
Course requirements include a midterm and final examination.
Prerequisites: none.