REL 318
California: Myths, Peoples, Places
Last Offered Spring 2013
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed AMST 318 / COMP 328 / LATS 318 / ENVI 318
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

“Now I wish you to know about the strangest thing ever found anywhere in written texts or in human memory…I tell you that on the right-hand side of the Indies there was an island called California, which was very close to the region of the Earthly Paradise.” As far as we know, the name “California” was first written in this passage by GarcĂ­ RodrĂ­guez de Montalvo, ca. 1510. Within a few decades, it came to be placed first on the peninsula of Baja California and then upon a region stretching up the Western coast of North America. What aspects of this vision are still drawn upon in how we imagine California today? How did certain narratives of California come to be, who has imagined California in certain ways, and why? What is the relationship between certain myths, the peoples who have imagined them, and the other peoples who have shared California dreams? In this course, we will examine some of the myths that surround California by looking at a few specific moments of interaction between the peoples who have come to make California home and the specific places in which they have interacted with each other. Of special interest will be imaginations of the Spanish missions, the Gold Rush, agricultural California, wilderness California, California as “sprawling multicultural dystopia,” and California as “west of the west.”
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 15
Class#: 3647
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: this course will be mostly discussion oriented, with grading based upon participation, short writing exercises, one 3-page review essay with mandatory revision, one 5- to 8-page midterm review essay, and a final 10- to 15-page comparative review essay
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: none
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under COMP; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under LATS, AMST, ENVI or REL
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AMST 318 Division II COMP 328 Division I LATS 318 Division II ENVI 318 Division II REL 318 Division II
Attributes: LATS Core Electives

Class Grid

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