All Reading & Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the first half or the “A” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement. 

What makes a literary work a translation? Through a variety of genres, this course will ask students to interrogate the relationship between a translator and an author, the global power dynamics between literary cultures that translate and influence each other, translation between genres, and translation as both a creative and interpretive practice. While working to develop their own critical writing skills, students will be asked to consider what happens when a practical linguistic problem becomes a literary theme, bringing together issues ranging from western imperialism and economic inequality to gender, desire, and art itself.

Required Texts:
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage, 1998. ISBN: 0375706151
The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel. ed. Natalie Babel, trans. Peter Constantine. Norton, 2002. ISBN: 0393324028
Carson, Anne. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Vintage, 2003. ISBN: 0375724516
Weinberger, Eliot, and Octavio Paz. 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. Moyer Bell Limited, 1987. ISBN: 0918825148
Lowell, Robert. Imitations. FSG, 1990. ISBN: 0374502609
Berlin, Lucia. A Manual for Cleaning Women. eds. Stephen Emerson and Lydia Davis. FSG, 2015. ISBN: 0374202397

Prerequisite:  Successful completion of the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement.  Students may not enroll in nor attend R1A/R5A courses without completing this prerequisite.