reflections of a senior year english major

Image Description: A girl with dark hair, wearing a white dress with a blue graduation stole stands in beach waves, in front of a pink sky. Shadows of the California hills are visible against the sunset. Her face is not visible, covered by her hair, and the graduation stole is flying in the wind. Centered is the title “Reflections of a Senior Year English Major by Jessie Pyo” in cursive, white text. A white bunny sits on top of the title. Image is bordered with white lace.

as i prepare to graduate from ucla (in just two weeks!!!), i’ve been thinking a lot about the short two years i spent here as a second-year transfer. my transfer journey was honestly unplanned and completely unpredictable — i began attending uc davis straight out of high school, and transferring wasn’t even a thought i had in mind. my best friend (soomin <3) was doing the cc to uc transfer route, and begged me to apply to transfer as well, so that we might be able to go to the same university. although cc to uc is a super common route, i had the thought that uc to uc was near-impossible, and i half-heartedly applied to a few schools to appease her.

i think this goes to show that 1. nothing is impossible and 2. you never know what the future holds for you, like never. because now, three years since i pushed that “submit application” button, i’m preparing to receive my bachelor of arts in english, in my beautiful home city of los angeles. of course, not everything worked out the way i expected: entering a new university in my third year of college felt like i was weirdly a freshman again, having to navigate a new campus and new social life. leaving davis: my comfortable apartment, my cute job at a local cafe and all of my lovely friends was exhausting, to say the least. and my best friend: i came back down to socal, but soomin went far north, all the way to uc berkeley. still, i’m so proud of both of us, graduating from the #1 public school in the country (and the #2… lol)

i’m terrified, but i can’t wait to graduate. a lot of people ask me what the hell i’m going to do with a bachelor’s in english, and honestly, i can’t say i’m totally sure. all i know is that there was absolutely nothing else i could have majored in — i bleed english major through and through. i love literature, i love language, i love reading and writing and speaking and learning and absorbing. i love theory, i love collecting books and keeping a journal. i love the humanities, and i have a deep adoration for the incredible professors i’ve met, and the incredible upper division courses i was able to take here at ucla. 

so here, for any prospective english majors, minors or anybody who cares even a tiny bit: my favorite classes that contributed to my B.A. in english, and why you might be interested in taking them.

✦

ENGL M101B Queer Literatures and Cultures, 1850 to 1970: Queer Intimacy in Early Queer Literature

taught by Professor Arthur Little

taken winter 2024

satisfied my Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability & Sexuality Breadth Area requirement

this was by far the class that i read the most life changing literature in. the poems, plays and novels in this course were all so very stunning, emotional pieces — and the sheer amount of queer history i learned was enlightening, things i felt like i wouldn’t have been able to learn the same way if not in that classroom, with that professor. take this class if you are gay! there’s nothing like it. Professor Little has high expectations (and i will say that i wasn’t quite able to meet them part of the time), but it’s not only because this class is extremely popular, with a huge waitlist every time it is offered, but also due to the pure beauty, artistry, love that is with every piece of literature that is on the course list. this is not a class to skim through the readings. be passionate about it.

standout readings: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

(i now own a physical copy of each of these pieces btw)

ENGL 121: Modern Contemporary Aesthetics and Critical Theory

taught by Professor Mitchum Huehls

taken spring 2024

satisfied my English Elective requirement

Professor Huehls is the greatest professor i’ve had the pleasure of learning from at ucla. i non-stop recommend his course to all of my english major friends. he’s super intelligent, witty, speaks very quickly and is soooo freaking funny. he went viral on twitter once while i was taking his ENGL 120 course (which is also in this list). and he’s the type of guy who you can email and be like, “hey prof ur viral on twitter now!” (which i did).

anyway, about the course itself. to make it short and simple, i adore critical theory, but it’s got this awful reputation as being immensely difficult and hard to breach. which it definitely is sometimes, but Professor Huehls is a lecturer who makes critical theory exciting and fun. this course is about the big bones of theory: Marx, of course, Hegel, Derrida, Lacan (my personal favorite) and so on. you also get to read a lot of great feminist, person of color and queer intersectional critique, which are some of the best parts of the course. again, this is a course where you should not skip the readings!!! also, i will never forget writing about theory and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd for the final examination. thank you professor for getting us all deeply involved in the unfinished masterpiece that is this story about a sailor, and the ethics and morals of his life. and signs and significations and signifiers. genuinely, #neverforget.

standout thinkers: Karl Marx, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Langston Hughes

ENGL 181A Theory of the Novel

taught by Professor Joseph Dimuro

taken spring 2024

satisfied my Seminar requirement

i took this “senior year seminar” my junior year, because class standing isn’t actually a huge distinction for these classes. overall, i highly recommend doing so if you want to escape the scrambling in senior year to find a seminar that not only has a good professor or timeslot, but also seems truly enjoyable. as a devout reader, novels have always been my favorite, so it was so interesting to dive into it wholly: its conception, which is actually quite recent, the history of the form and how it has transformed into becoming the largest, most common form of literature. one misconception that a lot of people have is that every book is a novel, which just isn’t true at all. i always knew that in my heart — but this seminar gave me the words and knowledge to better articulate how this is.

the entire seminar is culminated in a single, large final paper in which you can write about any novel you would like, which was just perfect to me. my essay ended up being around 12 pages long, and it was on The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt, which i’ve long considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written. the pure freedom of the course is great, and Professor Dimuro is always very attentive and open to feedback!

standout readings: The Theory of the Novel by György Lukács, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, Emma by Jane Austen

ENGL 120 History of Aesthetics and Critical Theory

taught by Professor Mitchum Huehls

taken fall 2024

satisfied my English Elective requirement

this is the second Huehls course i was able to take. the two courses have really similar titles, but if i were to differentiate them: ENGL 121 is mostly about critical theory, and ENGL 120 is mostly about aesthetic philosophy. this course is about art, beauty, the transcendental, the Romantic, the sublime, the universal. the self, religion, artifice, ideas, symbols, humanity, history. if you are interested in art and philosophy and what the great thinkers of the world have believed about such eternal, intrinsic concepts, you will enjoy this course. 

personally, ENGL 121 was more to my taste, but i adored 120 as well. again, highly recommend taking Professor Huehls, no matter what the topic is. both courses are a lot of work, and there are obviously easier electives i could have chosen to take, but i could honestly listen to Professor Huehls lecture about anything. 

standout thinkers: Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Frederich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf

ENGL 163C Jane Austen and Her Peers / Jane Austen: Then and Now

taught by Professor Cailey Hall

currently taking spring 2025

this course is another incredibly popular one, for pretty obvious reasons — i wanted to take it my junior year spring, but i couldn’t even snag a spot on the waitlist until now, when my senior year class pass-time kicked in. as most english majors, i love Jane Austen, and this course happens to center on my two most favorite novels from her: Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. i won’t lie, i’ve already read a lot of Austen, but i wanted to take this course for the pure enjoyment of it. the biggest pleasant surprise about the required works is that Professor Hall also included multiple film/TV adaptations of the Austen works, which there are so many of.

taking this course also lovingly coincided with the 20th anniversary theatrical re-release of Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice film, which is one of the adaptations listed on the syllabus. so i was able to watch it in theaters as my homework, and then discuss it in class the following week. one note i have about Professor Hall is that they are a paper-only, no technology allowed lecturer, which i actually really enjoy! 

standout adaptations: Pride and Prejudice dir. Joe Wright, Fire Island dir. Andrew Ahn, Becoming Jane dir. Julian Jarrold

RUSSN C124T Studies in Russian Literature: Tolstoy

taught by Professor Vadim Shneyder

currently taking spring 2025

i wanted to sneak this course in, even if it is in the RUSSN catalog (and not even cross-listed for ENGL). however, there are tons of English majors in the class, and Russian literature has always been one of the most well-loved genres amongst many readers, including myself. it might seem a little daunting, but this course and all of its required readings are all in English. there are moments, though, when Professor Shneyder reads passages from the original text in his beautiful Russian. 

i had never read Tolstoy before this, but Anna Karenina, the main novel in the syllabus, has been on my to-be-read list for literally 10+ years as one of those big, accomplished classics that you can humble brag about having read. which now, i can finally do! Tolstoy’s prose and style is so beautiful, which you can recognize even when reading translations (i favor the Pevear and Volokhonsky version because they’ve translated all of my Dostoevsky’s too), and in these types of author-focused classes you get to read a large body of their work, and learn a lot about their biographies as well. i highly recommend looking into other catalogs for these types of courses; RUSSN C124T is my favorite class i have taken all year.

standout Tolstoy works: Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Three Deaths

✦

i am so grateful to ucla for giving me some of the most exciting and influential years of my life. I love my major, i love the libraries on campus, i love Kaplan Hall which houses the English Reading Room and all of the English department offices. i get this question often from my friends and peers: which class was my favorite that i’ve taken? and although i could never choose my number one favorite, i’ve always wanted to chronicle these courses that i will never, ever forget. with four years straight on the quarter system, you take an innumerable number of classes, and not all of them are enjoyable — that would be impossible, honestly. but i can say with confidence that the english major here at ucla has to have some of the best picks you could find.

and i can’t go without a thank you to FEM Newsmagazine, where i have had the privilege to be an author/editor for the past two years! being a copy & content editor, i have read so many unique, intelligent and effervescent pieces of writing written by the lovely people in FEM. if for any reason you can’t take any of these classes, you can read our articles and check out our print mag instead…

with so much love,

jess, (incoming) B.A. in English