Exploration of the place of empathy and intersubjectivity in human societies. Students examine contemporary ethnographic research contributing to anthropological study of empathy and the problem of mutual understanding. Questions include: How do we come to know others and how do others come to know us? How is empathy socialized? What is the place of empathy in anthropological fieldwork? Do cultures differ in the ways that empathy is demonstrated, displayed, and recognized? How do local understandings of personhood, self, emotion, motivation, and social action figure into local models of empathy? How do issues of power, hierarchy, and social position impact our empathic engagements with others? How can empathy function to cultivate insight into the lived experiences of individuals who occupy radically differing subject positions? What are the limits of empathy?

Jason Throop, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCLA where he specializes in the fields of medical and psychological anthropology. Dr. Throop has conducted extensive ethnographic research on subjectivity, empathy, morality, pain, and suffering on the island of Yap, Federated States of Micronesia. He is author of Suffering and Sentiment (2010, UC Press) and co-editor of The Anthropology of Empathy (2011, Berghahn Press) and Toward an Anthropology of the Will (2010, Standford University Press).

We all read translations, but when we are reading the Bible and the Qur'an or Homer and Cervantes and Dostoevsky, how conscious are we of the relationship between the original and the text in English? Examination of that relationship by comparison of various translations of the same work. Discussion of the role of translation in a globalized world.

Michael Henry Heim has taught in the Departments of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature for forty years. He has translated contemporary and classical fiction and drama from the Russian, Czech, Serbian/Croatian, Hungarian, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Chinese. He has been the recipient of numerous fellowships (Fulbright, Guggenheim) and translation prizes and served on translation juries for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

Using art and literature, study of society of Amazons as imagined by ancient Greek cultures. For comparison, examination of women warrior figures from some other cultures, mainly through literature. Through student presentations, analysis of women warriors in modern American culture in literature, film, television, comics, and video games.

Katherine King specializes in ancient Greek, in the Classical tradition (that is, medieval, renaissance, and modern revisions of Classical works), and in gender studies. She teaches a cross-listed course for Honors and Women's Studies called "Imaginary Women." She has published three books on ancient epic. She is a lifelong activist for social justice and against war. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton in 1978 and has been a professor at UCLA in the departments of Classics and Comparative Literature since then. She received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992.

How does distance impact the dancing experience? Using contact improvisation as springboard for experiences and discussions, students look at how varying levels of proximity impacts our movement choices. Study is experiential in nature. We will move. No prior dancing experience is necessary, but a literal and metaphorical desire to jump (and then analyze it) helps.

Lionel Popkin is a choreographer and performer. His dances have been presented in Los Angeles at REDCAT and the Getty as well as venues throughout the US. He is a former dancer with the Trisha Brown Dance Company and an Associate Professor at UCLA.

Some scholars claim that the great British painter and engraver William Hogarth (1697-1764) is the father of today's comic strip. Often focusing on pressing issues of sex, violence, and stupidity, he used his visual art to tell stories that convey moral, social, and political lessons. Examination of Hogarth's most famous comic strips--The Harlot's Progress, The Rake's Progress, Marriage-a-la-Mode, and Industry and Idleness--and his most famous comic panels--Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism and John Wilkes, Esqr. In addition, relation of Hogarth's techniques and ideas with those found in 20th- and 21st-century comic panels, comic strips, and editorial cartoons.

Professor Batten is an emeritus faculty member in the English Department. His academic specialty is eighteenth-century British literature.

Reading and discussion of Huckleberry Finn, one of America's most important novels. Students write weekly informal journal about material they have read. Class meets on April 10, 17, 24, May 8, 15, and 22 in A20 Haines Hall.

Robert Maniquis is Professor of Literature in the English Department at UCLA. His primary interests are 18th, 19th, and 20th C English, French, and German literature.

Who we are or may become originates in a history, each unique by virtue of ethnic heritage, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and individual talents and traits. In personal writings and poetry, women voice maternal stories that also recollect a communal history replete with images of homelands, political struggle, and ancestral rituals. Whether reading poetry or creating it, hearing stories or crafting them, or drawing forth dreams of ancient lands and sacred objects, students are expected to be contributors and collaborators. By identifying and celebrating personal legacies of being and belonging, students learn how memory and history imprint identity, how the past suffuses our present. By heeding truths gleaned from the ancestral past, each woman comes to know her Self and infuses her poetry with a distinctive vision and voice that makes lives, both old and new, into poetic memoirs. Remember, Audre Lorde proclaims, "poetry is not a luxury" but a "litany of survival."

A Professor of English, Karen Rowe's research ranges from Renaissance and early American literatures to later British and American women writers, from continental fairy tales to women's education and curriculum reform. She was the Founding Director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Women and teaches courses cross-listed through the Women's Studies Program. She received a Distinguished Teaching Award and has been active in curriculum transformation and general education reform.

For decades, the oral tradition was the primary mode of literary expression for blacks in the U.S. With the spread of written literacy, however, the number of African Americans producing fiction, poetry, and autobiographies grew dramatically. Toward the end of the 19th century, black writers began to turn to oral expression for thematic and formal models, and this trend has continued to the present day. Consideration of how African American authors adapted sermons, folktales, and other vernacular forms in their work and how they drew as well upon black music (specifically blues, spirituals, and jazz) for inspiration. Primary focus on Langston Hughes, perhaps the best known and most celebrated African American poet before the 1960s. However, study also looks at such writers as Margaret Walker, Ismael Reed, and Nikki Giovanni and at spoken-word artists like Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets, and Tracie Morris.

Richard Yarborough is Professor of English and a Faculty Research Associate in the Center for African American Studies. Associate general editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature, he also oversees the University Press of New England's Library of Black Literature reprint series. He received UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1987, and from 1997 through 2001 he served as Director of the Center for African American Studies. He offers courses on African American literature and culture.

Focus on how iconic aspects of religion transcend mere symbolism, and that art and science are in many ways expressions of the quest for understanding the metaphysical. Consideration of the point that many of the arts and sciences are conceptualized cross-culturally and offer comparative views of their relationships to society, politics, and culture. Students visit different sacred spaces close to campus to assess the place of artistic expression in ritual, visual art, music, and architecture. Students also reflect on various scientific theories of time and space, and how both specific artists and scientists have speculated on issues related to religion. Study refers in part to this year's common book at UCLA, and meets at residence halls. Final three-page essay required.

Steven Loza is Professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, where he has been on the faculty for twenty-five years. He has conducted extensive research in Mexico, the Chicano/Latino U.S., Cuba, among other areas, and has lectured and read papers throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He has been the recipient of Fulbright and Ford Foundation grants, and has served on the national screening committees of the Grammy Awards. His books include Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (1993) and Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music (1999).

Medical training historically includes broad reading in humanities; medical themes can be found throughout literary history, from earliest texts to present. It is only with division of arts from sciences that humanistic and scientific treatments of the body were delinked. Students address questions that arise from this year's common book, exploring medicine as humanistic art through medium of storytelling--stories told from both patient and health provider perspectives. How do patients tell their stories to doctors, how do doctors interpret those stories and tell them back to patients as part of diagnostic process? Has art of medicine been lost in focus on innovation and research? How can stories help us connect to people and restore humanizing art of medicine? Students gain understanding of interconnections between different analytic approaches used in study of medicine and humanities through readings and discussions around series of medical and literary narratives. Class meets on April 3, 17, May 1, 15, and 29 in 115 Hedrick Hall.

Chris Hanscom is an Assistant Professor in the department of Asian Languages and Cultures. He received his Ph.D. in Korean Literature from UCLA and is currently writing a book on theories of language and modernist fiction in 1930s colonial Korea. Dr. Mina Kang obtained her medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and currently serves as the Associate Medical Director of the UCLA Hospitalist Section at St. Johns Health Center.

Moving on from station to station in the most spectacular segment of the ancient caravan trail known today as the Silk Road, study of breathtaking splendor of nature's beauty, priceless relics from antiquity, and fascinating heritage of native population. Designed to contribute to students' general education. Provides knowledge outside the realm of their chosen degrees and helps them develop into "well-rounded men" not only to beat Jay Leno's provocative quizzes on The Tonight Show but, much more importantly, to excel as erudite citizens of the U.S. with a broader vision in whatever position they establish themselves in the real world.

Andras Bodroglegeti is a Professor Emeritus in Iranian-Turkic Languages and Cultures of Central Asia, UNESCO Fellow (East-West Major Project 1957-66), and Guggenheim Fellow (The Chagatay Language). He wrote 28 books, 63 articles, and 19 Review articles. He is an examiner responsible to IBO and language expert of the Arizona Critical Languages Series. His recent publication is "'They are all honorable men.' An autobiographical Novel Book one: Showcase trials in Academia" (2011). He is currently researching the Tajik of the Bukharan Republic for the National Security Agency.

Presentation of long and rich tradition of pluralism and tolerance of classical era of Islam through short educational documentaries. In first video, Bill Moyers--well-known American journalist--introduces Islam through his conversations with Professor Huston Smith, leading authority on world's great religions. Video entitled The Traditional World of Islam, in six parts, produced by BBC, explores major facets of Islamic culture including Islam's concept of monotheism, its inner religious life (Islamic mysticism), Islam's emphasis on man's need for knowledge, and Islamic art and architecture. Concludes with series of videos on Islamic Spain and Islam's impact on European renaissance.

Professor Poonawala has offered various Fiat Lux Seminars since its inception and has been teaching Arabic and Islamic Studies courses at UCLA since 1974.

Examination of literary representation of the aftermath of catastrophe by way of a close reading of Haruki Murakami's short story collection After the Quake. Themes discussed include definition and representation of trauma as well as individual and communal responses to disaster. Students read one short story or essay each week as basis for discussion.

Seiji Lippit is Associate Professor of Japanese literature in the department of Asian Languages and Cultures. He received his PhD from Columbia University. He is the editor of The Essential Akutagawa and the author of Topographies of Japanese Modernism.

Detailed study of eight to 10 albums from such pioneers of 1969-1970 as King Crimson, Yes, and Gentle Giant through Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and other interesting bands today. (A couple of class-prompted musical choices are welcome, time permitting.) Issues: coming up with a definition, differences with classic rock, origins and intentions, and challenges and accomplishments of this ambitious music.

Thomas Harrison teaches various versions of this Fiat Lux course from one year to the next (Rock Lyrics, The Concept Album, etc). He teaches many more courses in the Italian Department, best known of which is a GE course on film (Italian 46). He is an amateur rock musician of sorts himself, once a member of Sleepy Hollow and now of Glass Wave.

Exploration of ways in which idealism has been expressed in American musicals, through specific songs and as a theme in particular shows. Selected musicals may include The Sound of Music, Camelot, Man of La Mancha, Once More with Feeling (Buffy episode), and Wicked.

Raymond Knapp has written two acclaimed books on the American musical, and his co-edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, has recently appeared. He has also published books on Brahms and Mahler.

Consideration of how race and ethnicity have been depicted and embodied on American musical stage, both historically (The Mikado, Show Boat, and West Side Story, among others) and in recent years (Dreamgirls and Hairspray, among others). Specific shows studied to some extent depend on student input.

Raymond Knapp has written two acclaimed books on the American musical, and his co-edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, has recently appeared. He has also published books on Brahms and Mahler.

Introductory survey of music in movies, from classic score of King Kong (1932) by Korngold to recent score for Avatar by UCLA alumnus (and instructor's former student) Academy Award-winner James Horner. No previous music training required. For students who do not play or read music, any deep interest in watching, analyzing, or enjoying movies and music in them rewarded with abundance of examples to watch, hear, and appreciate. Weekly film assigned for viewing; students should then be prepared to discuss its music in class. Emphasis on recent developments in film scoring, with special emphasis on digital revolution in film making. Examples taken from most recent movies, such as Social Network, True Grit, Tangled, and The King's Speech. Includes some background in recent developments in animation, with attention to Japanese movies by Miyazaki (for whose films instructor composed music).

PAUL SEIKO CHIHARA was born in Seattle, Washington in 1938. He received his doctorate degree (D.M.A.) from Cornell University in 1965 as a student of Robert Palmer. Mr. Chihara also studied with the renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Ernst Pepping in Berlin, and with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. With Toru Takemitsu, Chihara was composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1971, and also the first composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Neville Marriner, Conductor. More recently, he has served as the composer-in-residence with the Mancini Institute.

Camarades Ensemble, the acclaimed string chamber music group of world-renowned UCLA string faculty and top students, presents two high-profile concerts of music by Los Angeles composers on May 18 and May 22. Students have a unique opportunity to learn in-depth about the music programmed at the concert; witness several rehearsals leading up to the concerts; interact with the participating performers and composers; attend the two concerts; and get bitten by the bug of chamber music and its intimacy and power. Students write final essay. Class meets in Schoenberg Music Building: May 4 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in rm. 1402, May 16 from 2 to 4 p.m. in rm. 1354, May 18 from 7 to 9 p.m. and May 22 from 8 to 10 p.m. in rm. 1100, and May 21 from 5 to 6 p.m. in rm. 1230 and from 6 to 7 p.m. in rm. 1100.

Movses Pogossian Professor--Violin; Chair of Strings area Telephone: (310) 267-4637 E-mail: mpogossian@gmail.com Office: B824 For more information about the UCLA Strings program, please go to: www.uclastrings.com Violinist MOVSES POGOSSIAN made his acclaimed American debut performing the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall in 1990, about which Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote: "There is freedom in his playing, but also taste and discipline. It was a fiery, centered, and highly musical performance?" Movses Pogossi

Introduction to some of the most pressing issues in Nordic Mythology, from archaeology to early religion, from source materials to the role of the gods in early Scandinavia, presented by the world's leading scholars of Nordic mythology. The course, hosted by Scandinavian Section faculty, comprises several master classes with Nordic mythologists and archaeologists, and one day of attendance at a symposium of Nordic mythology in Royce Hall.

Professor Timothy R. Tangherlini received his AB from Harvard and MA and PhD from UC Berkeley. He wrote "Danish Folktales and Legends" (2012), "Interpreting Legend" (1998), and over 80 scholarly articles on Nordic folklore and mythology. His current research focuses on computational approaches to Nordic culture. Asst. Professor Arne Lunde received his PhD from UC Berkeley. He is the author of Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema. His research has also focused on representations of the Vikings and early Scandinavia in Cinema.

In 711, Muslims from North Africa invaded the Iberian Peninsula, defeating the Visigoths and starting a period of Muslim domination in certain areas of the Iberian Peninsula they called Al Andalus that lasted until 1492. The interpretation of the relationship between Al Andalus and Spain has been the center of numerous polemics. Traditionally, there were no doubts that Spain as a nation was born in opposition to Al Andalus. However, at the beginning of the 19th century, Spanish Liberals offered a new interpretation that has lasted until today. According to them, Muslims were also Spaniards who suffered persecution and were forced to leave their country. From then on, there have been two radically different and opposing interpretations of Al Andalus. Goal is to analyze the reasons for this double interpretation of Al Andalus, and to explain its implications for modern Spain and the world. Class meets on April 5, 19, May 3, 17, and 31 in A28 Haines Hall.

Jesus Torrecilla, Professor for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese received his PhD from USC in 1991. His area of specialization was 18th-20th C Spanish literature. His research interests include: marginality, imitation, exoticism, and postcolonialism. His publications include: "Identities on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (edited volume, 2009), "Literary Wars of 18th-Century Spain" (book, 2008), "Exotic Spain" (book, 2004), "Times and the Margins" (book, 1996), and "Collective Imitation" (book, 1996).

Workshop approaches writing of a poem as a physical experience. A written poem can be regarded as a text that needs to be performed by the entire body. One might think, in this context, of writing as a kind of musical score, except that idea of music is too restrictive. More appropriate is the idea of notation that captures sound imperatives contained in writing of the poem. Deploys practical exercises to explore relationship between writing, voice, and body. Goal is to train students to express orally what has been written, rather than to write poems or to physically memorize texts. At the same time, study encourages reflection on role of poetic orality in 21st century, in light of current technological transformations that give rise to formats and genres that complement traditional medium of the book. Participants should have interest in poetry and be willing to engage in moderate physical exercise. Class meets on April 16 and May 2 from 6 to 6:50 p.m. in 3134 Rolfe Hall, April 23 from 7 to 8:50 p.m. in A2 Haines Hall, and April 24, 25, and 26 from 6 to 7:50 p.m. in 3134 Rolfe Hall.

Maarten van Delden obtained his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1990. Prior to joining the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA in 2009, he taught at New York University, Rice, and the University of Southern California. He is the author of Carlos Fuentes, Mexico, and Modernity (an "Outstanding Scholarly Book" by Choice Magazine), co-author (with Yvon Grenier) of Gunshots at the Fiesta: Literature and Politics in Latin America, and numerous other articles and reviews on Latin American Literature, Mexican Studies, Comparative Literature, and US Literature.