Fall 2026
ANTHRO 116XP: Collaborative and Community-Engaged Archaeology
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Acabado, S.B.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled); fieldwork, 10 hours. Community and stakeholder engagement make anthropological practice more meaningful, especially when results of research empower descendant communities. Anthropology is in great position to work with communities to empower them in strengthening their identity. There is increasing number of anthropologists and allied social sciences who have intensified their cross-disciplinary work and engagement with communities that they work with. Students interact with Philippine collaborators through online conference to discuss how community participation enhances research. Students work with community stakeholders in developing heritage education materials. P/NP or letter grading.
ART HIS 21: Medieval Art History
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Cohen, M.M.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; quiz, one hour. Early Christian, Byzantine, Islamic, Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, and Gothic art and architecture. P/NP or letter grading.
ART HIS 119A: Western Islamic Art
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Balafrej, L.
Course description: Lecture, three hours. From Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to Spain, 7th to 16th century. P/NP or letter grading.
ART HIS 185: Undergraduate Seminar: Art of Weaving in Greece
Lecture: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Gerstel, S.E.J.
Course description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for juniors/seniors. Exploration of selected aspects of art history through readings, discussion, research papers, and oral presentations. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
ASIAN M60 / RELIGN M60A: Introduction to Buddhism
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Balkwill, S.
Course description: (Same as Religion M60A.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Not open for credit to students with credit for course M60W. Knowledge of Asian languages not required. General survey of development of Buddhism in India, with focus on those religious doctrines and meditative practices most essential to various Asian traditions of Buddhism. Letter grading.
ASIAN 40: Foundations of East Asia: Philosophical and Literary Traditions
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Duthie, N.N.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Orientation of foundational philosophical and literary texts in the classical Chinese or Sinitic/East Asian tradition. Shared by modern China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, these texts provide the rhetorical, intellectual, and ethical framework for premodern cultural tradition; and also serve as political, aesthetic, and moral anchors for contemporary media, art, and social discourse. Reading of classical texts from the pre-Qin Chinese received tradition (Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism). Exploration of the religious canon of Mahayana Buddhism. Engagement with classical literary works representing Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese traditions. Students relate the philosophical and literary works to their own lived experiences. P/NP or letter grading.
CLASSIC M121 / POL SCI M111A: Ancient and Medieval Political Theory
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Sissa, G.
Course description: (Same as Political Science M111A.) Lecture, three or four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Designed for juniors/seniors. Exposition and critical analysis of major thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, and More and questions such as forms of government, citizenship, justice, happiness, rhetoric, religion, emotion. P/NP or letter grading.
CLASSIC XL 191: Capstone Seminar: Classics
Lecture: Sem 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Spielberg, L.
Course description: Seminar, three hours. Requisites: courses 10, 20, at least four upper-division major courses. Limited to declared junior/senior departmental majors; minors may be admitted with consent of instructor. Topical research seminar on important themes, periods, genres of ancient Greek and Roman world. Intended to provide students with opportunity for serious engagement with research in discipline under close faculty supervision. Readings, discussions, oral presentations, and final research paper or project. May be repeated for credit. Letter grading.
COM LIT 2BW: Survey of Literature: Middle Ages to 17th Century
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Kanner-Botan, A.
Course description: Lecture, two hours; discussion, two hours. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3 or 3H or English as a Second Language 36. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 1B or 4BW. Study of selected texts from Middle Ages to 17th century, with emphasis on literary analysis and expository writing. Texts may include works by authors such as Chaucer, Dante, Cervantes, Marguerite de Navarre, Shakespeare, Calderon, Moliere, and Racine. Satisfies Writing II requirement. Letter grading.
CLUSTER M27A / ISLM ST M27A: Global Islam
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 6
Instructor: Green, N.S.; Yarbrough, L.B.; Chism, C.N.; Goldberg, J.L.
Course description: (Formerly numbered 27A.) (Same as Islamic Studies M27A.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Course M27A is enforced requisite to M27B, which is enforced requisite to M27CW. Introduction to Islam, immensely diverse global tradition which is second largest religion. Study of Islam and Muslims within framework of study of global religious traditions and emphasis on profound diversity of localized belief and practice found across world. Examination of Islam’s evolution across 15 centuries, from late antiquity–when it emerged as localized religion in Central Arabia–to modern era where it is practice from U.S. to Indonesia. Concentration on broad analytical categories in study of religion such as text, culture, history, and prophecy. Students transition to more complex analyses through chronological overview of Islamic history. Study also of case studies of Muslim global networks in arenas such as art, music, literature, and political thought. P/NP or letter grading.
CLUSTER M1A / ENVIRON M1A: Food: Lens for Environment and Sustainability
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 6
Instructor: Jay, J.A.; Cleveland, D.A.; O’Shea, J.M.; Thomas, A.
Course description: (Same as Environment M1A.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Course M1A is enforced requisite to M1B, which is enforced requisite to M1CW. Limited to first-year freshmen. Food as lens for local and global environmental and sustainability issues. Integration of environmental, social, economic, and technological solutions for fair, sustainable, and healthy food production, food security, and access. Focus on human impacts on Earth’s biological and physical systems, including how food production and consumption contributes to, and is impacted by, global problems, including climate change, pollution, and overpopulation. Laboratory exercises included in discussions. P/NP or letter grading.
ENGL 10A: Literatures in English to 1700
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Chism, C.N.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: English Composition 3 or 3H, English 4W or 4HW. Survey of major writers and genres, with emphasis on tools for literary analysis such as close reading, argumentation, historical and social context, and critical writing. Minimum of three papers (three to five pages each) or equivalent required. P/NP or letter grading.
ENGL 19: Humans and Other Animal Prisoners: Writing from Cages and behind Bars
Lecture: Sem 2
Units: 1
Instructor: Thomas, A.
Course description: Seminar, one hour. Discussion of and critical thinking about topics of current intellectual importance, taught by faculty members in their areas of expertise and illuminating many paths of discovery at UCLA. P/NP grading.
ENGL 140A: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Fisher, M.
Course description: A rattle bag of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow entertainments and edifications, the Canterbury Tales resists easy categorization. This quarter, we’ll engage Chaucer’s obsessive attention to how language functions and fails to function, how speech can instruct or mislead, educate or confuse, and how it can become more or less meaningful through repetition. We’ll encounter gossip, prophecy, prayer, promises of love, oaths of friendship, lies, fraudulent agreements, alchemy, and ekphrasis, and we’ll analyze how the text constructs gender, faith, and sexuality over a number of the individual tales. Class participation is required. There will be a Middle English quiz, frequent in-class writing assignments, and two longer essays.
ENGL 145: Medieval Literatures of Devotion and Dissent
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Thomas, A.
Course description: Stories of holy women – hagiographical narratives – offer a space for thinking through the shifting relationship between the church and the holy woman, between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, as well as between animals and saints. The course extends from the travails of the runaway bride Christina of Markyate and the visions of Hildegard of Bingen to the feats of Catherine of Siena, and the travails of Dorothea of Montau and Margery Kempe. We will read writings about and by holy women (and a couple by holy men) alongside relevant materials on dream-visions, narrative strategies, books of rhetorical composition, digests of law, and other institutional documents on issues ranging from virginity to marriage, from travel to enclosure, from writing to preaching, from secrets shared and secrets betrayed. Questions for discussion include: What make these narratives compelling or powerful? To what extent do formal conventions of storytelling help invent powerful female characters in an otherwise male-dominated world? Not open for credit to students who have completed the same topic with Prof. Thomas in a previous lecture or seminar course.
ENGL 182B: Topics in Renaissance and Early Modern Literature
Lecture: Sem 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Little, A.L.
Course description: Too often our curriculum, like so many others, separates the study of Shakespeare from that of his early modern peers, effectively intellectually and culturally rendering Shakespeare sui generis. There is, however, much we can learn about Shakespeare and other playwrights when we consider them together, as belonging to the same early modern English theatrical world; in fact, there’s much we do miss when we don’t. One hopefully not overly schematic way to exemplify what we’re after here is for us to look at plays (one Shakespeare and one non-Shakespeare) that, arguably, are in conversation with each other. Our seminar will examine some of these pairings: for example, George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Philip Massinger’s The Renegado and Shakespeare’s Othello. The course will be structured around discussions, presentations, and writing assignments.
ENGL 184.2: Capstone Seminar: Shakespeare in Performance
Lecture: Sem 2
Units: 5
Instructor: Watson, R.N.
Course description: Shakespeare wrote his plays primarily to be performed, rather than read on a page. This seminar will study a variety of those plays though discussion of filmed versions, as well as some film adaptations and spinoffs. Likeliest to be studied are Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, and The Tempest. Students will be submitting short weekly response papers, and building toward a Capstone project, but their most essential assignment is to come to every session fully prepared (by reading the plays and watching some assigned films) to participate in a lively, respectful, well-informed analysis of the plays and performances.
GLBL ST 102: Globalization: Markets and Resources
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Peters, M.E.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: course 1. Examination of how domestic and international politics determine how global economy is governed. Topics include monetary and capital policy, trade, international investment, and migration. Letter grading.
HIST 11A: History of China: To 1000
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Zhang, M.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Survey of early history of China–genesis of characteristic Chinese institutions and modes of thought from antiquity to 1000. Focus on social, political, intellectual, and economic aspects of early and middle empires. P/NP or letter grading.
HIST 13A: History of the U.S. and Its Colonial Origins: Colonial Origins and First Nation-Building Acts
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Pestana, C.G.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Strongly recommended for History majors planning to take more advanced courses in U.S. history. Cultural heritages, political institutions, economic developments, and social interactions which created contemporary society. P/NP or letter grading.
HIST 19: Chinese History Through Historical Drama
Lecture: Sem 1
Units: 1
Instructor: Zhang, M.
Course description: Seminar, one hour.
HIST C191D: Topics in History: U.S.
Lecture: Sem 3
Units: 4
Instructor: Tejada, V.
Course description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for seniors. Limited to 15 students meeting with faculty member. Reading and discussion of selected topics, and development of culminating project. May be repeated once for credit. May be concurrently scheduled with course C201H. P/NP or letter grading.
IRANIAN 35: Archaeology of Ancient Iranian Empires
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Fabian, L.
Course description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. For around 1,200 years, three massive empires centered in Iran ruled over vast territories: Achaemenid Empire (550 to 330 BCE), Parthian Empire (247 BCE to 224 CE), and Sasanian Empire (224 to 651 CE). Often overlooked in studies of the ancient world, these empires were a critical force that shaped political and social life across Eurasia. Consideration of the figure of Cyrus the Great and the policies of his empire. Examination of how local communities in lands stretching from modern Turkey in the west to Afghanistan in the east lived under and alongside the sequence of empires. Consideration of how trade in precious metals and silks shaped Eurasian economies stretching from Rome to China under the Parthians. Examination of how the technologically complex cities of Sasanians grew into massive, multicultural, cosmopolitan hubs. Students learn how to examine and combine archaeological and textual evidence to develop a multi-dimensional picture of past societies. P/NP or letter grading.
ITALIAN 102A: Transgression/s at the Periphery On Blue Humanism: Mobility, Identity, Crossings
Lecture: 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Morosini, R.
Course Description: This course examines the ideological and political themes of Boccaccio’s Decameron, set during the 1348 plague in Florence. It explores how the work, through the character of Pampinea, presents a model of civilization rooted in human ingenuity, responsibility, and care for the body and environment. By rethinking community and imagining the possibility of rebuilding social life, the Decameron offers a powerful point of departure for considering contemporary questions of social and climate justice. The course also explores the Mediterranean as a cultural and literary space, bridging local and global contexts. We will consider literary geography in Boccaccio’s works, focusing on the sea’s sociopolitical and artistic significance, the mobility of bodies across borders, and the construction of “Otherness.” Attention will be given to women and mobility, opening onto questions of violence and slavery in the medieval Mediterranean, where human beings could themselves become objects of trade. Inspired by Paul Gilroy’s concept of “thinking at sea level,” the course examines how the Mediterranean shapes civilizations, with particular attention to race, gender, and migration. Through texts, images, and maps, we will approach the Mediterranean as a humanistic and literary space, a site of global meaning, and a map of human history, while considering the transformative power of literature and cartography
JEWISH M10 / RELIGN M10: Introduction to Judaism
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 5
Instructor: Bonesho, C.E.
Course description: (Same as Jewish Studies M10.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Judaism’s basic beliefs, institutions, and practices. Topics include development of biblical and rabbinic Judaism; concepts of god, sin, repentance, prayer, and the messiah; history of Talmud and synagogue; evolution of folk beliefs and year-cycle and life-cycle practices. P/NP or letter grading.
MUSCLG 193C: Music History Journal Club Seminars for Majors
Lecture: Sem 1
Units: 2
Instructor: Upton, E.R.
Course description: Seminar, two hours. Limited to Musicology majors. Introduction to discipline through discussion of readings and lectures on current topics in field, with focus especially on its practice at UCLA, and addressing research methodologies and development of bibliographic control. Normally taken in junior year. P/NP grading.
RUSSN M118 / HIST M127A: History of Russia, Origins to Rise of Muscovy
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Lenhoff, G.D.
Course description: (Same as Russian M118.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Designed for juniors/seniors. Kievan Rus’ and its culture, Appanage principalities and towns; Mongol invasion; unification of Russian state by Muscovy, Autocracy and its Servitors; serfdom. P/NP or letter grading.
RELIGN 177 – Variable Topics in Religion: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Dagenais, J.
Course description: Seminar, three hours. Interdisciplinary approach to some major topics in study of religion, such as religion and science, religion and society, politics, mysticism, ideas of revelation, scripture, myth and religion, worship and ritual. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
SPAN 120: Literature in Historical Context
Lecture: Lec 1
Units: 4
Instructor: Patiño Loira, J.
Course description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: course 25 or 27. Introduction to different ways of looking at literary works as historical phenomena. Presentation of major models for writing history: great narratives, cyclic, teleological, sacred, and profane conceptions. Traditional concepts of literary history and problems of mixed categories (historical epochs versus epochs of style, national history, and world literature). P/NP or letter grading.