CWL 58th Annual Conference during the week of April 15, 2024

Join us in-person or on Zoom!

Writers of Extreme Situations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Program

New CWL courses this Fall 2024

Check these out!

CWL 230B Heroes and Rebels: World Literature and Its Contexts from the 1700s to the Present–explore stories about heroes and/or rebels from around the world! TuTh 9:30-10:45 am, #11191. 

CWL 265 Intro to Literary Theory–Comp Lit is all about text and theory. Find out how it works! MW 12:30-1:45 pm, #11176. Fulfills GE: C.

Plus two courses that are offered from time to time:

CWL 344 Literature of the Holocaust–yes, it’s a heavy topic, but you’ll be inspired by the resilience of the human spirit. TuTh 11:00 am-12:15 pm, #10445. GE: UD-C.

CWL 405 Global Fantasy–it’s SF, fantasy & horror without the SF and horror. TuTh 2:00-3:15 pm, #11135. GE: UD-C.

And the classes offered by our new Fall hire, Dr. Viola Lasmana:

CWL 205 Digital Narrative and Culture. TuTh 11:00 am-12:15 pm, #11557. GE: C.

CWL 300 Representing the World: Literature and Culture in Contact and Conflict. TuTh 2:00 -3:15 pm, #10761. GE: UD-C, Writing Intensive.

CWL 495 genre–practicum on publishing the next volume of our journal. W 12:30-3:15 pm, #11136

CWL Graduates Publish Research Papers

Three CWL graduates from 2021 and 2022 have published their CWL 480 research papers! Congratulations to

Marvin Palencia: “Exploring Reflections of Modern Capitalism within Science Fiction”
Counterpunch
 

Recent CWL Faculty Publications

Dr. Crystal Yin Lie would like to share her recent article, published in the interdisciplinary quarterly Biography. “Drawn To History: Healing, Dementia, and the Armenian Genocide in the Intertextual Collage of Aliceheimer’s” explores Dana Walrath’s memoir, Aliceheimer’s: Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass (2016), noting graphic medicine’s commitments to interrogating power relations in medical discourse, highlighting the valuable perspective of dementia experience, and revealing how by juxtaposing personal essay with the visual-verbal affordances of comics, intertextual collage, and the altered book, Walrath links her experiences of caregiving, Alice’s dementia, and Armenian history to the adventures of Carroll’s Wonderland, creating a sense of both dissonance and exploratory freedom to broach subjects that might typically be regarded as unapproachable. The entire issue can be accessed on Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/47911. Readers may also be interested to know that ‘Graphic Medicine’ is also a book forthcoming from the University of Hawai‘i Press in July 2022: https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/graphic-medicine/

Also from Dr. Lie:

(Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 44, nos. 2-3, 2021)
 
(U. Michigan Press, 2021/Open Access)
 
From Dr. Elizabeth Dahab:
 
2020a: “Poetics of Madness and Alienation in a Francophone Canadian Novel,” Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. https://wordgathering.com/vol13/issue4/essays/dahab/
 
2020b (June): “Systemic Racism and the Killing of Rayshard Brooks,”Counterpunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/author/f-elizabeth-dahab/ Non-academic piece in the spirit of Black
Lives Matter.
 
2020c (March): “The Corona Virus, Trump, and Friday the 13th Press Conference,” Counterpunch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/17/the-corona-virus-trump-and-friday-the-13th-pressconference/
Pertains to Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
 
2020d: “Burial at Sea: Reconciliation and Bereavement in Wajdi Mouawad’s Littoral (Tideline), in Selected Proceedings of the 2017 Societies of Activities and Research on the Indian World
(Sari) conference on the theme of “Reinventing the Sea: Precarity, Epistemology, Narratives,” pp. 57-65. Refereed. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02455760/document Refereed. Online.
 
2020e: “‘To Roam a Borderless World’: The Poetics of Movement and Marginality in Carnival,” in Beirut to Carnival City: Reading Rawi Hage. Ed. Krzysztof Majer. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2020,
pp. 120-134. Refereed/Invited. Print.
 
2018: “Like a Dancing Gypsy’: A Close Reading of Cockroach,” in Comparative Literature for the New Century. Ed. Giulia de Gasperi. Queen’s University Press, pp. 215-228. Refereed. Print.
 
2016: “Poetics of Amnesia and Reverse Migration in Khaled Osman’s Le Caire à corps perdu,” Journal of Disability Literature. Volume 4, #4 (December), http://www.wordgathering.com/issue40/essays/dahab.html. Invited. Online.
 
2015: “On the Poetics of Arab-Canadian Literature in French and English,” in The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. Ed. Cynthia Sugars (University of Ottawa). New York: Oxford University Press USA: 639-657. Invited/Refereed.

the all new Health Humanities Minor!

CWL is proud to announce the inauguration of our Health Humanities Minor. The Health Humanities focus on skills that the Humanities and Social Sciences provide that help Health Professionals do their jobs better. We are fortunate to have Dr. Crystal Yin Lie, who is a specialist in Health Humanities and Disability Studies, overseeing the Minor. Read more about Dr. Crystal Yin Lie!

For the list of courses, see the Health Humanities Minor flyer!

new courses for Fall 2021: Global Fantasy and Russian Lit

55th Annual Comp Lit Conference April 7-8, 2021

Our conference this year is ON! “Outcasts and Outliers in Literature, Music, and Visual Arts.” Check out the description and the program! Hope to see you there (on Zoom)!

Statement in support of AAPI

Innocent immigrants working minimum wage 

Just lost their lives because their skin color is beige 

[…] The old me is to let the hatred slide 

But now I am filled with Asian pride 

I am so sick of holding the pain inside 

[…] My community is under attack 

So stop ignoring these crimes and playing pretend 

And check in on your Asian family and friends 

Let’s have each other’s backs and put this hate to an end. 

 

Sherry Cola 

 

Comparative World Literature denounces racially-motivated violence in the world, especially the most recent tragedy in Atlanta against Asians and Asian-Americans. We lend our support and solidarity to Asians, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, here in the United States and the world.  

Our faculty heartily believes that the world is a better place because of the rich diversity of cultures and literatures. We teach our students to engage with the literatures of the world in an effort to use the power of literature to eradicate racial bias and hatred! 

Today, we are All Asian-American! 

22 March 2021

Statement in support of BLM

The Comparative World Literature Program denounces the acts of violence committed against our fellow Black Americans by police brutality. We compassionately stand in unity with and support of people who have suffered due to the color of their skin. We acknowledge the historical and institutional racism that persists in America, and we call for positive change from our leaders, of this country, and of our institutions. The creation of an ethnic studies graduation requirement at CSULB would be a step toward making our students aware of the complex structures that enable racism and give them tools to foster social change. CWL embraces and celebrates the literatures and cultures of the world.

2 June 2020

In Memoriam Dr. Raymond Waters

Dr. Raymond M. Waters taught in the Department of Comparative Literature from the early nineties until his premature death on July 20th, 2019, at the age of 57.
 
Ray graduated with a BA from UCLA, taught English in Japan for two years, and wrote his M.A. thesis on film adaptation of novels as exemplified by the classic western Shane. Ray earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa. His dissertation was on Western pop culture depictions of Japan. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of film history and pop culture, inspiring many thousands of students who took his legendary Comic Spirit class over the decades.
 
A memorial service celebrating Ray’s life was held in October 2019 in the Earl Burns Miller Japanese garden at CSULB. It was heavily attended by colleagues, family, students, and friends. Ray Waters will be sorely missed and remembered dearly.