UC Berkeley Comp Lit Journal

The UCB Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal will showcase the best undergraduate work in comparative literature across the nation as well as highlight more contemplative writing by students regarding multicultural issues, culture shock, or transnational experiences such as studying abroad.

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Let's Meditate On This...

By: Puja Iyer Being in my first semester at Cal, I decided that to help cope with the allegedly stressful environment of the university I would first enroll myself in 16 units and then take anothe...

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by Alex Millen There is an anonymous quotation about the power of children€™s literature that renders the rest of this article inadequate and unnecessary: "€˜Great children's literature appeals not on...

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The wait is over - the Summer 2013 issue of the UC Berkeley Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal is live! 

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Call for Submissions!

We're currently accepting submissions for the Fall 2013 issue of UC Berkeley's Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal. We accept undergraduate papers in the humanities, in all languages, from students all around the world. Submit your paper by Sept. 5!

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WHAT TEACHERS MAKE by Taylor Mali

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Wow this cartoon is amazing

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Through the lens of a first generation Mexican-American, I am able to draw many parallels from African-American texts, in particular the struggle for identity, culture and language and how each of these intersections have framed so much of who I am and where I come from. It was through the study of these texts that I realized my work in the classroom was political, subversive, good work.

Not all English majors become teachers - but when they do, it can be kind of awesome. 

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Let's Shake Up the Social Sciences

It is time to create new social science departments that reflect the breadth and complexity of the problems we face as well as the novelty of 21st-century science.

Nicholas Christakis suggests a re-imagination of social science departments. Do you agree? 

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Paper Darts Interview: Derrick Brown

"Poetry is a bullet and the novel is a slow strangle. For this very reason I believe poetry readings can by synonymous with rock shows. Less cocaine brooding and more heart charging sass."

Write Bloody founder Derrick Brown on the power of poetry and what it takes to make an independent press work. 

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Send Bay Area Unified to the National Poetry Slam in Boston!

We need your help sending the top performance poets in the Bay all the way across the country for the National Poetry Slam!

Some very talented neighbors of ours are trying to get to the far side of the country to represent the Bay Area. Check out their work and if you have a few bucks to spare, think about using it to support your local poets. 

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Great interview with Jonathan Safran Foer on literature, writing, and the nature of art.

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The humanities give us a chance to read across languages and cultural differences in order to understand the vast range of perspectives in and on this world. How else can we imagine living together without this ability to see beyond where we are, to find ourselves linked with others we have never directly known, and to understand that, in some abiding and urgent sense, we share a world?

Judith Butler

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That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

 ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (via liolia)

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6 Writing Tips From John Steinbeck

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Read more. [Image: AP]

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We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down…. Kurt Vonnegut (PDF of above photos)

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And is it complicated? Well, it is complicated a bit; but life and truth and things do tend to be complicated. It’s not things, it’s philosophers that are simple. You will have heard it said, I expect, that over‐simplification is the occupational disease of philosophers, and in a way one might agree with that. But for a sneaking suspicion that it’s their occupation.

Performative Utterances, J. L. Austin

Oh, Mr Austin, you are so very witty, now I’d appreciate it if you were a tad bit more clear and explicit. Somebody needs to make one of those cool ‘people think I do this, but I actually do that’ thingies for Comp Lit students because you always imagine you’ll read loads of books in different languages and be Umberto Eco and write superexciting things about superexciting topics in comp lit but most of the time you just end up reading loads (and loads and loads) of sociology and linguistics and writing about completely obscure topics. And, of course, other people either think you’re doing a wishy-washy degree that doesn’t mean anything or are completely clueless when it comes to what comp lit means so they imagine you do something very complicated and intellectual.

(via andyisreadingbooks)

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