"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)
(Source: andyispoesizing, via complit)
While we have already received a ton of wonderful submissions from students across the country, we will be extending our spring 2012 deadline in order to accommodate students who may just be getting back in the swing of things this week. Let all your literarily-inclined friends know! We don’t discriminate. CLUJ is not just for Comparative Literature majors; we love students of African-American studies, English majors, francophiles, etc. If you wrote about literature last semester, send us your work!
For submission instruction, go here.
When I was fifteen I got to go to Europe with my best friend’s family. We country hopped for a bit, from Ireland to France to England. We only had about three days in France, and we spent those days rushing from landmark to must-see. They say it’s supposed to take three days to experience the Louvre? We had three hours. It was like the rest of out experience of Paris, a beautiful blur. But there was one day that wasn’t so beautiful, at least to start with.
By Elizabeth Soto
Given what I’ve seen around campus, university students’ beverage of choice is coffee. It’s a fact: humans are social creatures, so they drink the coffee they see other humans drinking. Still, a smaller population of tea fanatics perhaps feel morally obligated to shun the fast-paced life the image of coffee invokes in favor of the relaxed and dignified space of their gardens or their drawing rooms… As you can probably tell by now, I’m a tea person.
Continue reading here.
By Isabella Mazzei
Recently my Comparative Literature class read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the subsequent discussions raised many interesting points. After reading several so-called “feminist” critiques of Frankenstein, I couldn’t help but wonder—to what extent can we account for the author’s life when we interpret his (or in this case, her) works?
Continue Reading Here.
By Christina Kowalski
And it’s not the usual forever unemployed and homeless nonsense. I recently had an interaction with someone in which I told her that my major is Comparative Literature. She responded with something along the lines of: “Oh, how fun! I took some Comp Lit classes when I went to Cal and they were the most fun classes I took.” I’m just going to gloss right over the potential for the whole studying literature is a joke thing, because I don’t even bother arguing with people about that anymore.
Continue Reading Here.
By Isabella Mazzei
I have many bucket books. My list of books to read before I die fills several pages of my journal, and contains exactly 86 titles (I just checked). These are books that I found in a variety of ways, some I found in bookstores, some I heard about and some I discovered while reading submissions for CLUJ and thought “wow that sounds awesome!” And then there are the other books, the books that I feel like I should read, the books that everyone says everyone should read, the books like Lolita, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, and, naturally,War and Peace.
Continue reading here.
By Anne MacKinney
What does it mean to translate a poem from a foreign language? At first, this may seem like an easy, if not silly question. It means simply taking the words and phrases of the poem, translating their meaning into the target language, and arranging them into pleasing verses, maybe even ones that rhyme if you’re lucky – right? The German verb for translation, übersetzen, may even provide a useful image: consisting of the two words über (across, over) and setzen (to place, to set down), übersetzen evokes for me the act of taking an English word, traveling with it across some divide, and setting into the realm of the German language.
Continue reading here.
For more information, visit the website at calcomplit.com.
CLUJ supports undergraduate research! CLUJ is partnering with the UC Berkeley Comparative Literature Undergraduate Association to put on Cal’s first comp lit undergraduate conference. While we are still in the preliminary planning phase, we will be inviting past contributors to CLUJ as well as others who have engaged in undergraduate research in the field.
It’s free! Register to attend now!
Are you interested in presenting your research? Stay tuned! We will have a Proposal Request form available soon. Keep updated by bookmarking the website.
We are also still searching for department associations, publications, and other organizations to partner with us! If you want to be involved with the planning or host your own session, please contact us directly at berkeleycluj[at]gmail[dot]com for more information.
![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]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0sevcgD2Z1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
