Rebecca Karni completed her PhD in comparative literature at UCLA, earned a postdoctoral research fellowship and was a visiting scholar in Stanford University’s departments of English and comparative literature. Her teaching and research interests include 20th- and 21st-century world, global Anglophone, British, American, Asian British and Asian American, Japanese, Asian Diasporic and French/Francophone literatures; global, transnational, diaspora and postcolonial studies; the novel; narrative and literary theory; global film and visual culture; translation; aesthetics and ethics; affect theory; and ecocritical approaches to the study of literature, film and culture.
Karni’s recent publications have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, The Cambridge Companion to Kazuo Ishiguro (ed. Andrew Bennett, Cambridge UP, 2023) and Kazuo Ishiguro (Twenty-First Century Perspectives, ed. Peter Sloane and Kristian Shaw, Manchester UP, 2023). She is currently completing a book-length study of the Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro’s fiction in the contexts of world literature and reading transnationally and is also at work on a second book project focusing on aspects of style, translation and affect in late 20th- and 21st-century transnational novels and films.
Courses
Fall 2024 Courses
LAS E101-29 - FIRST-YEAR LITERATURE SEMINAR
LevelUndergraduate
UnitLiterary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
FormatSeminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
LAS E101-29
FIRST-YEAR LITERATURE SEMINAR
LevelUndergraduate
UnitLiterary Arts and Studies
Subject Literary Arts and Studies
PeriodFall 2024
Credits3
FormatSeminar
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: TTH | 4:40 PM - 6:10 PMInstructor(s): Rebecca KarniLocation(s): College Building, Room 301Enrolled / Capacity: 15Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
An introduction to literary study that helps students develop the skills necessary for college-level reading, writing, research and critical thinking. Through exposure to a variety of literary forms and genres, historical periods and critical approaches, students are taught how to read closely, argue effectively and develop a strong writing voice. The course is reading and writing intensive and organized around weekly assignments. There are no waivers for LAS-E101 except for transfer students who have taken an equivalent college course.
First-year Students are pre-registered for this course by the department.
Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Transfer Students register into designated section(s).
Major Requirement | BFA
LAS E309-01 - TRANSNATIONAL SPY & DETECTIVE FICTION
This course, besides revisiting the traditional narrative elements of spy and detective fiction, considers a selection of the increasing number of late twentieth- and twenty-first-century transnational, diasporic, postcolonial, and minority/ethnic authors from around the world who adapt spy and detective fiction conventions for the purpose of social critique. In focusing on issues related to identity, culture, ethics, human rights, justice, and knowledge construction narrated by these fictions, we will examine carefully, for example, the figure of the spy or detective as outsider to and observer of society as well as, in the works at issue here, frequently an immigrant or cultural or social "other." In the process, we will also engage questions central to reading, interpreting, and comparing fiction in a global context.
