Some recommended classes

Now that it's time to pick Winter classes, here are recommendations from members of Lit Collab. See also our Fall 2008 Very Unofficial Collection of Helpful Hints for New Lit Students (PDF), which has more suggestions on page 5 from Jordan '09, Ellen '10, and me. Feel free to comment on this post with a list of your own favorites!

Danielle '10

Basic Narrative Technique or anything like it is crucial for jump-starting your creative writing skills. Even if you think you know all the basics, trust me, you don't. Take this class.

Sign up for every creative writing class, attend the first meeting, and decide which ones you want to keep, if any. If you don't have a writing class every quarter, you can always do independent study, and the great thing about independent study is that you can pick which teacher you get to work with and what you work on.

Torrie '10

Some of the best courses are the random ones taken outside of your major. I highly recommend looking into the Anthropology and Classics departments; Professor Erickson in Classics is wonderful.

The language departments offer cool courses on literature, film, culture, etc. which are taught in English, so there is no need to be afraid to take a course in the Italian department if you don't speak the language. Just look for courses that have weird letter combinations after them, like Ys and Zs, and they will often be the English-language offerings.

The English department has a lot of great classes. I loved Environment and Literature, Detective Fiction and Fairy Tales. For professors, I recommend Zinn, Hiltner and Shirley Lim (who is also very involved in CCS).

If you are interested in creative writing, take Barry Spacks.

As a Lit student it seems almost required — but very fun and rewarding — to take either or both John Wilson's Diaries course and Caroline Allen's Telling Life Stories.

Take Walking Biology before you graduate.

Britta '09

Try the Feminist Studies department. I signed up for Gender, Science, and New Technology, not expecting much, and I loved it. Experience with academic feminist study can add a lot of depth to your understanding of literature, and it's also just refreshing to be part of a room full of people who deeply agree about the equality of human beings.

Take at least one graduate-level class — even better if you buddy with a CCS Lit friend and take it together. Danielle and I picked one in the Comparative Literature program and learned a lot in a tiny class from a distinguished visiting professor. So good! If the class you choose turns out to be too hard, you can drop it halfway through and still have had a valuable experience. All you have to do is pick up a form in the CCS office and get a few signatures.

Advice about writing papers

The following quote is from an email that Professor Richard Corum (now retired) sent to his CCS Lit Shakespeare class in October 2007, when we had a paper due soon. I find this oddly helpful to re-read when I'm working on an essay, and I hope you will too.

You're being asked to do this task entirely on your own. The point of this is not to defeat you and lead to learned helplessness, but to empower you, to give you confidence that you can do this kind of work on your own — that, more generally, you can learn to do all kinds of difficult things. This is the most important part of the assignment because this is the only hope that your age group will be able to keep on creating new knowledge once all of your teachers are dead. What you are most up against in doing this are, most likely, your feelings of panic, incapacity, fear, of wanting to do the right thing, the best thing, of succeeding even if success is handed to you. To write this paper you need to be able to get these emotions under some control, and to keep them from destroying the possibility of stepping outside your comfort zone. If you are in your comfort zone on this paper you aren't doing the assignment (unless you've done a lot of things like this in the past).

Take risks, and make this, in whatever way possible, something pleasurable for yourself. And, remember, it's better to get nowhere (this time) than to cave in and do the same old, same old.

Mapping the college

Hidden within the CCS website, there's a map of our building (left). I made a new version (right) as part of the in-progress website revision.

I could list the current uses of each room (and the past uses of some of them), but that's not very exciting. Instead, here's some history.

The college folklore is that our building is a "temporary" structure built during World War II as a commissary for the Marine air station that later became the UCSB campus (MCAS Santa Barbara). It seems like normal wartime construction, not intended to last a hundred years, maybe hasty, but pretty durable anyway. Commissary usually means grocery store, but the UCSB Long-Range Development Plan identifies Building 494 as a mess hall. This makes sense, since the book arts lab has old kitchen equipment hookups and a shed with extra sinks. I've heard that the Old Little Theater was a movie theater.

UCSB Geography has a great article about the spatial history of the campus and its department, which includes the following aerial photos (with circles added by me). Compare to the current map of the campus and Google Maps satellite view.

From the UC Library, that's the barracks area of the Marine base, probably photographed sometime between 1942 (when the buildings were constructed) and 1946 (when it stopped operating). It can be seen in context in this 1944 aerial photo of the whole station. According to the California State Military Museum, the station was established here to use the existing Goleta airport for training pilots. (It's no coincidence that there's now a WWII memorial right next to the airport parking lot.)

In the photo, building 494 is surrounded by an orderly arrangement of two-story barracks buildings; a few of them are still standing as buildings 429, 407, and 408. The Old Gym (with the swimming pool on the left) is there too. The tall lines of trees had been planted as windbreaks when the land was a ranch — see this history from the Music department as well as this map from 1888, which is part of a fascinating set of maps of the Goleta slough area. The row of eucalyptus trees along Ocean Road (between campus and Isla Vista) is also an old windbreak — and according to the UCSB LRDP it was "utilized as a gun range that included grenades, bombs, bomb fuses, pyrotechnics, rockets, small arms, and machine gun related ordnance," which is awesome except that the ground may be contaminated.

UCSB moved from its former location (now SBCC) to this spot in 1958. In this 1960 photo, the campus still has most of the old barracks-area buildings, with the addition of the Santa Rosa dorm and some other structures. I'd like to know what that thing is on the other side of the lagoon — that area is now just some crumbling pavement in the grass.

When the College of Creative Studies was founded in 1967, it was housed in the one-story WWII-era building a little north of its present home. In 1975, it moved to building 494 so that an extension to the library could be built on the site of the old place.

The UCSB Long-Range Development Plan's "Sensitivity Study for Potential Historical Resources" says that the few remaining Marine buildings on campus have "low potential to be historical resources" and can be knocked down. Noooooo! These structures aren't beautiful or distinctive, but their presence is educational and adds character to UCSB. They excite curiosity about the history of the campus, they can teach about World War II and the experiences of Marines, they add diversity and interest to the range of structures on campus, and they make students think about the uses and re-uses of places and buildings. I think the CCS home and similar buildings are significant enough to merit working with, not just razing, when planning a future grand avenue and bland dorm complex. (See the "Library Mall" page of the short version of the Campus Plan.) Luckily the UCSB budget probably won't be able to pay for new construction projects for a while.

Update (November 17, 2009):

I've been informed that the mystery structure in the second image is an old lookout tower. Wow!

I've also been learning more about "temporary" WWII construction. Here's a great article from the University of Utah about their similar buildings as worthy of historic consideration. From the article:

The main reason that these structures were labeled "temporary" was due to the general opinion that wars end...These structures were built with the expectation that they would last only 5 to 20 years. However, they have been somewhat over-designed if the objective was to erect temporary structures. President Roosevelt promised the mothers of servicemen that modern facilities and adequate shelter would be provided...a standard of health and comfort previously unknown by U.S. troops during wartime.

The significance of these buildings often lies in their connection to [the whole war effort] rather than as individual buildings...Though few renowned individuals, if any, have graced these buildings' halls, thousands of the unsung did on their way to and from the battlefield.

They are also significant for the way they influenced the building industry. These "temporary" buildings represent a construction methodology that swept the country after the war; that is, standardized plans, prefabrication of components and construction crews that specialized in only one aspect of the construction process.

[For the university's purposes,] costly new construction has often been postponed or even avoided in many instances by simply upgrading these "temporary" buildings with relatively inexpensive modifications such as adding insulation, making them ADA accessible, interior remodeling, a periodic painting, or as has often been the case, moving them to a needed location.

The blog City of Sound discusses another CCS-like building adapted for academic use at MIT (quoting from How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand, one of my favorite books):

"(A) temporary building left over from World War II without even a name, only a number: Building 20...'Unusual flexibility made the building ideal for laboratory and experimental space.'"

"Building 20 was...spartan in its amenities, often dirty, and implacably ugly. Whatever was the attraction?...'One never needs to worry about injuring the architectural or artistic value of the environment'; 'We feel the space is really ours. We designed it. We run it. The building is full of small microenvironments, each of which is different and each a creative space. Thus the building has a lot of personality.'"

Building 494 is a lot like that. You don't have to worry about getting it dirty, and it's full of nicely worn-in rooms that have adapted to their uses. Students are allowed to make many modifications, although we have to ask before doing permanent structural damage (it's a small building, not a huge one like MIT's). City of Sound goes on to discuss the replacement for Building 20, called Stata and designed by Frank Gehry, and how it both continues that tradition of hackability (with careful planning for flexible spaces) and doesn't continue it (because it's a very expensive new building). It'd be nice if CCS had the funds for a replacement building, much less one like Stata, but even then it'd lose something important that Building 494 has.

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area also has a page explaining their preserved WWII temporary buildings. And I found references to a document from 1993 titled World War II Temporary Military Buildings: A Brief History of the Architecture and Planning of Cantonments and Training Stations in the United States, but I don't have access to it.

Summer reading

Heather recently posted this stack of books she read over the summer:

Yay! I got inspired to take a picture of my stack, with some in common because we both took "Reading and Writing Personal History" with Barry Spacks:

All of my books were for summer English and Literature classes; I wouldn't read that much on my own. I got most absorbed in This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, and Kindred by Octavia Butler (I'd already read it in 10th grade, but it was good the second time too).

In other news, the CCS Student Lounge now has a set of this year's New Yorker issues for reading and borrowing but not stealing. We're watching you.

Isla Vista

As a Lit major, you probably have opinions about the local coffee. Here are mine. Nicoletti's (and its branches at the Arbor, by Buchanan, etc.) is pretty much the only option on campus, and it's sufficient between classes but not great. Luckily Caje in Isla Vista is reasonably good. It's tastier, quieter, and less crowded than Java Jones. This is what Caje looks like:

Isla Vista in general gets a lot of loathing, but I'm fond of it. Check out this detailed UCSB and Isla Vista Walking Tour by a Physics professor. A few of the highlighted locations: the entrance to a long-defunct asphalt mine, the memorial to the symbolic Isla Vista tree, the geodesic dome house, the Celtic cross at Coal Oil Point, and remnants of Isla Vista's primeval oak forest. You also can't miss the Food Co-op.

Local opportunities for getting published

A compilation of details for all the UCSB-related publications I could find:

Creative writing

Catalyst is UCSB's free undergraduate literary journal of original poetry and short fiction. To reach the current editorial staff, contact Ann Wainwright (wainwright@english.ucsb.edu), undergraduate advisor in English.

Into the Teeth of the Wind is a poetry journal produced by CCS students who serve as editors, contributors, and publishers. Submissions are also sought from the greater community. Submit poems to windsteeth@ccs.ucsb.edu.

Spectrum is the literary journal of the College of Creative Studies. Many students have had writing or artwork published in this magazine, and others have served as editors or assisted in another aspect of production. Spectrum accepts submissions of prose, poetry, nonfiction, and art from anyone, anywhere. Submit work to spectrum.ccs.ucsb@gmail.com.

WORD Magazine is a quarterly Isla Vista arts and culture magazine produced by UCSB students as part of the course INT 185ST. More information.

Journalism

The Daily Nexus, UCSB's campus newspaper, holds meetings for interested writers, copyeditors, illustrators, and photographers near the beginning of every quarter.

The Independent, Santa Barbara's weekly paper, also sometimes hires students as columnists and interns.

Research

California Engineer is a research journal for undergraduate engineers in the UC system.

Focus Media Journal is the annual scholarly publication of the Film and Media Studies Department at UCSB. It accepts student submissions from all majors; see this announcement for instructions.

Discovery is UCSB's journal of undergraduate student research (see here). Manuscripts are considered from all scholarly fields and must be based on original research. A letter of recommendation from a faculty member must accompany your camera-ready manuscript. Deadline for submissions is one week after Spring quarter finals. Complete guidelines may be obtained from the Math Department Office, Room 6607 in South Hall.

The Law and Society Journal at UCSB accepts original student submissions related to law and society, including reviews, photo essays, and editorials.

Pictures of Building 494

I've heard people complain about the odd colors of the CCS building, but this is what it looked like in 2003 (credit to Brendan Barnwell):

I like the colors:

Blogs by Literature students

A couple of CCS Lit writing classes have encouraged people to start blogs, and some of us have just decided to do this on our own.

Here are a few that I know of by current students (some prefer to remain anonymous):

• AUDJ LODJ — '09
• Buffalo not Beef — '10
• Clockwork Oren — Oren '11
• Conejito — '09
• Dog-Eared — Danielle '10
• Jeweled Platypus — me '09

I helped Robyn write a few posts too: Uncle Saxophone.

And Barry has a blog: Poetry Matters.

Some by recently graduated Lit students:

• Inword — Sophia '07
• NYC Food Adventures — Pamela '07
• tie me in a knot and CinderLisaDesign — Lisa '07
• Unnecessary Analysis — Jessica '08

The big three

People don't always like the Literature requirement of taking Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and there isn't much official communication about why we have to take them. Here are some reasons that I've heard or thought about:

• They're a vestige of traditional Literature education — back thirty years ago, all you studied as a Lit major (or equivalent) was old white men. Now we study a much wider range of writing, but there's a little bit of that left.
• Robyn says that part of the reason we study those three is because they each changed the English language.
• Nobody knows, especially since our founder was not a fan of them: "we were asked (though perhaps not expected) to get through piles of Shakespeare (whom he called a misogynist), Chaucer ('just pretend it’s horribly misspelled'), and Milton (again, no favorite of Mudrick's)".
• They show that Lit is a "hard" major.
• For bragging rights.
• To inspire debate about the literary canon.
• To understand allusions and references (but then why not include the Greek and Roman epics or the King James Bible?).
• Because they're old white men.
• Because they're just that good.
• Because they're challenging.
• Because it'd be ridiculous to get a Lit degree without having read them.
• Because it sounded like a good idea at the time.

For one of the three, we used to be able to substitute a class about a significant author if taught in the original language; now we can substitute various single-author classes (ask your advisor for details).

Litify it!

Hello, all! Danielle here, pinch-blogging for Britta to give you the happenings from the Literature meeting held last Friday:

Notes

The Annual Literature Meeting began on a somber note, with Bruce having to explain to us that a beloved teacher was going to have to take the remainder of the quarter off. As a result:

1. Solo Authors is canceled. Students will be rewarded 2 units for work already completed.
2. Donelan takes control of Milton after a week and a half hiatus.
3. Graphic Novels will be covered by another professor.
4. Lim will oversee the creative writing advisees as well as independent studies and my colloquium.

A "Thinking Of You" card will be circulating throughout classes to be signed by all students who feel so inclined this week and next.

After the bad news, we received some better news. Changes are happening within the Lit program in order to make ours as defined and organized as all the others in CCS. Most of the changes that will be implemented to support this project sound great so far.

In conjunction with the struggle to cover Robyn's classes and advisees, more student advisers are being sought out so each professor will have fewer students to advise and we, in turn, will receive more one-on-one mentorship.

Classes will be outlined hopefully a full year in advance to aid in planning of schedules.

Bruce is working to expand the breadth of topics covered by Literature classes, as in recent years they have been mostly regarding the same types of subjects (ie. specific authors, time periods, regions). In the past, however, Literature classes ranged from philosophy, religion, history, etc. studied through "a literary lens."To help bring in new literary topics outside of our usual studies, professors from departments including German/Slavic Studies and Psychology will be on loan.

A few students, including myself, will be working with Leslie to define more clearly the requirements for Literature majors in order to graduate. Lists will be drafted to clarify which classes fulfill the breadth and related reqs.

The mid-residency review process is still being polished, but its basic function remains this: to determine after a few quarters in CCS if a student is really meant to remain within the college, or might possibly be best served in another deparment. This decision will rest in the hands of a panel of faculty that will review a student's portfolio as it stands at the end of the sophomore year.

The senior portfolio is also a work-in-progress. They are not required this year but may be next year. The senior portfolio will also be critiqued by a panel of faculty to polish the set of work for graduate school applications and resumes.

Bruce introduced the idea of a Literature Symposium that all freshmen would take to reveal to all students the resources that are available to them at our university. The skills focused on in this one-quarter class would aid students in writing university-level papers and the general critical study of literature.

Spectrum and Teeth for this year have received full funding but other arrangements need to be made to match their budgets against next year. One goal Bruce has for Spectrum and Teeth is to reopen them to the literary world on a national level by increasing circulation.

These are the changes that so far are in effect/being finalized. Some other problems with the Literature program were brought to the Dean's attention by students.

Colloquiums are remaining at two units but the prospect of a writing workship colloquium counting for writing requirement credit was proposed. Bruce agreed that with a supplemental two-unit independent study with a faculty member would allow this.

The number of L&S students appearing in writing classes was brought up in relation to lack of opportunities to fulfill writing requirements. Marthine is going to be researching the ratio of L&S students to CCS Lit students in all classes, not just Creative Writing, to determine if this is a valid concern. Among the possible solutions suggested were a weeding-out process for any non-CCS Lit students in the form of a submitted piece of work to the professor.

Thoughts

The final concern voiced was the monotony of Literature Symposium. Whether students realize it or not, Literature Symposium is an opportunity to hear from many different kinds of people, writers and performers and publishers alike. It exposes us to a variety of careers and genres of writing and even the speakers we hate further educate us in what we do not want to do. As long as speakers are not being repeated within the year, we really have no right to complain. On top of all of this, it is only one hour a week. What doesn't kill us, makes us a stronger, for lack of a better way of phrasing that thought.

This brings me to a point of Bruce's I would like to touch on. Many Literature students waste their time complaining about the Literature class offerings not fulfilling every one of their educational desires. What many Literature students do not realize is that all other CCS majors receive the majority of their education outside of CCS. There are hundreds of classes out there in the university that will provide the subjects and studies we all want to persue. CCS cannot cover everything. The Literature program should primarily concern itself with teaching classes we cannot get outside of the college, otherwise money and time is being wasted. Also, a variety of professors should be circulated through CCS in order to give us all well-rounded educations.

These are all important things we need to think about concerning our futures in CCS and within the Literature major. We also need to keep in mind that Bruce cannot come up with a solution to every single problem we come up with. Changes take a lot of time and Bruce does his best to listen to everyone and take all opinions into account.

If you by choice did not attend the Literature meeting, seriously think about attending next year. Not only is it the perfect forum to have a say in your education (which you're paying thousands of dollars for), but it's also a great way to meet other Literature students and get to know our loveable Dean.

Thanks to Britta for having me as a guest blogger on the official Literature Collaborative blog =)

Literature course catalog descriptions

The official UCSB Catalog descriptions for CCS Lit classes sound so good:

CS 110. Genres
Emphasis on the development of literary forms, represented in the work of major authors, essential traditions. Exploration of ways genre directs and, discovered by a topic, takes individual shape.

CS 111. Literary Structure: Chronological
Emphasis on periods and influences: intervals during which literary production especially corresponds with or responds to activity in the culture at large.

CS 112. Literary Structure: Nonchronological
Logical, analogical, cyclical, and repetitive schemes.

CS 113. Subjects and Materials
Emphasis on style and content of literary texts: critical investigation of how matter and manner work together in serious literature.

CS 114. Themes and Motifs
Emphasis on structure and meaning in literary texts: analytic focus on principles of representation, and on recurrent features, in the literature studied.

I hope all of that is what I've actually been learning during the past 3.75 years! But no, Lit Collab has decided that these descriptions were probably just made up by our instructors a long time ago when UCSB demanded that they list something in the catalog. I still like them.

Photos from recent events

Into the Teeth of the Wind staff members putting up a poster next to a "pre-dental meeting" poster:

Teeth is currently accepting poetry for its 10th anniversary issue (no particular deadline - see website for details), and Spectrum is accepting writing and art until February 11. Both CCS publications are open to submissions from non-UCSB students.

Part of the crowd at Lit Collab's Scrabble evening on Friday:

See more pictures on Facebook. The top scorer was a biochemistry major, but that's OK. We'll have another rematch next quarter.

What the college would like us to know

As part of our series of posts learning about Mudrick (see these five descriptions and an alumna's perspective), here's a description of him from the Spring 2008 Literature Symposium announcements, probably written by John Wilson or Caroline Allen [paragraph breaks mine]:

Marvin Mudrick founded the College of Creative Studies in 1967. The existence and survival of CCS have depended on the ideas for education that Mudrick set down after Chancellor Cheadle asked him to "work up an academic plan for this campus." After the Regents approved it, Mudrick ran CCS as its Provost for nearly twenty years. Moreover he taught a literature class and a class in the writing of narrative prose every quarter. 

His classes were exciting, funny, and unlike anybody else's. Besides being a teacher and administrator, Mudrick was a brilliant and prolific writer. He published essays quarterly in The Hudson Review without missing a deadline for over twenty-five years, and most of these essays are collected in his books. But as good as his writing was, his talk was even better. He had the gift of gab and used it. In the classroom, according to Max Schott, Mudrick "took delight in arguing, loved hyperbole, had a propensity for intellectual provocation and irreverence and blasphemy, took pleasure in kicking against the pricks, and was convinced and tried to convince others that talk and the thinking in it (even about serious things, or especially about them) could and should be entertaining." 

Mudrick spoke in this way in a number of CCS symposia: starting with certain notions and improvising as he went along with a lot of wit and a lot of enthusiasm, trying to ignite a feeling for literature and music in others. One of these, an Art Symposium called "Am I Enjoying Myself Yet?" was videotaped in 1985. It will be shown for this symposium.

I enjoyed watching that videotape; it was helpful to hear him speak in his own words.

Also check out the only mention of Mudrick on the college website right now, this dull page titled History of the College of Creative Studies [paragraph breaks mine]:

Planning for the college began in 1965 when Chancellor Vernon I. Cheadle commissioned Dr. Marvin Mudrick, Professor of English, to serve as Academic Planner for the UCSB campus during the academic year 1965–1966. He was asked to propose a long-range academic plan for this campus’ growth. Chancellor Cheadle informed Dr. Mudrick early in their discussions that he was interested in the possibility of a special small college that would serve a part of the student population for which the University, at that time, made no provision.

Dr. Mudrick, who himself entered college at 15, formulated several proposals. Among them was the suggestion for a separate college, independently staffed and administered, with a specially selected and identifiable student body: students who, in addition to meeting UC entrance requirements, demonstrate “talent for original work in an art or science” (CCS Proposal, p. 1). The proposal was approved by the Regents in February 1967 and the College opened in Fall 1967 with an enrollment of 50 students. The College was originally housed in a cramped Marine barracks building next to the library — a relic of WWII when the seaside campus was a military base. The College moved to its present site, still a former Marine barrack, but a larger one, in the fall of 1975.

Literature showing up in sneaky places

Genre fiction in literature classes

In our meeting on January 7 we talked a little bit about genre fiction and its relationship to literary fiction, so here are a few related links that people may find interesting:

Science Fiction Authors That Lit Geeks Think It's Cool To Read — people who blur those boundaries.

Beautiful Sci-Fi covers — about an experiment in non-cheesy covers for science fiction books.

Thoughts on Genre — a quote from Joyce Carol Oates on "a tacit contract between [genre readers] and the writer."

Formula, Convention, and Cliche: Repetition in Genre Fiction — slightly more formal than the above posts.

Literature classes on Facebook

In our meeting today I talked about my dad's Facebook groups for the classes he's teaching at USC in American Studies (he's an English professor):

ARLT101.Spring2009, "Los Angeles: The Fiction"

AMST301.Spring2009, "America, the Frontier, and the New West"

Check out the "discussions" for his lecture notes. They're kind of silly but good, including lecture notes and a "YouTube Bibliography". He's told me that his students like to check Facebook during his classes anyway, so why not put the class there as well?

There's one UCSB English class that I know of with a Facebook page: ENGL 122NW: Narratives of War.