Margaret MacDonald, "The Summer"

 

Issues in Contemporary Theory--15 weeks

Page numbers preceded by NA refer to readings from the course’s principal text, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent Leitch et al. I will provide copies of the other selections which I have marked with an asterisk.

August 23rd Introduction

August 25th Aesthetics and Synesthetics, readings:
Immanuel Kant, from Critique of Judgement, NA 504-13, 521-35
*Benedetto Croce, from Aesthetica in Nuce, Critical Tradition, 449-62
* Susan Langer, “Poetic Creation,” Critical Tradition, 534-42
*Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” Critical Tradition, 545-550
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August 30th Formalism and Structuralism, readings:
Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” NA 1258-65
Tzvetan Todorov, “Structural Analysis of Narrative, NA 2099-2106
Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” NA 1712-29
Mikhail Bakhtin, from “Discourse in the Novel,” NA 1190-1201

September 1st Poetics, readings:
*Reed Way Dasenbrock,“Poetry and Politics,” 51-63; Edward Larrissy, “Poetry and Gender,” 101-112; Joanne Feit Diehl, “Poetry and Literary Theory,” 189-200, all from the Blackwell Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry
*Stephen Adam, “Form in Free Verse,” from Poetic Design, 179-98
*Timothy Steele, “Boundless Wealth from a Finite Store," from All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing, 151-72
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September 6th Labor Day

September 8th *Michael Riffaterre, The Semiotics of Poetry, chapters 1 and 5, conclusion, 1-22, 115-66
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September 13th Marxism, readings:
Karl Marx, selections from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, The Communist Manifesto, Capital, and others, NA 764-788.
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” NA 1488-1505
Raymond Williams, from Marxism and Literature, NA 1567-75
Terry Eagleton, from Literary Theory: An Introduction, “The Rise of English,” NA 2243-49
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious, NA 1937-60

September 15th Historicism and Historical Scholarship, readings:
Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” NA 1550-64
*Frederic Jameson, “Marxism and Historicism,” New Literary History, 1979ff.
Stephen Greenblatt, Introduction, The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance, NA 2251-54
Stephen Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, “Against Theory,” NA 2460-75
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September 20th introduction, Henry Louis Gates, A Bondswoman’s Narrative, ix-lxxii

September 22nd Existentialism and Phenomenology
Martin Heidegger, “Language,” NA 1121-34
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Why Write?”, NA 1336-49
George Poulet, “Phenomenology of Reading,” NA 1317-33
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September 27th *from Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, forward and “Intimate Immensity,” vii-xxv, 183-210

September 29th Psychology and Psychoanalysis, readings:
Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, NA 919-47
Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” NA 1285-90
Julia Kristeva, “The Semiotic Chora Ordering the Drives,” NA 2169-75
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October 4th *Jacqueline Rose, "Where Does the Misery Come From?" in Feminism and Psychoanalysis, eds. Richard Feldstein and Judith Roof, 25-39; Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, 3-10, 141-58, 211-219; Jessica Benjamin, The Shadow of the Other, xi-xx, 70-109.

October 6th Deconstruction and Narratology, readings:
Jacques Derrida, “Of Grammatology,” 1822-1830
Peter Brooks, “Freud’s Masterplots,” Critical Tradition, 710-736
Paula Gunn Allen, “Kochinnenako in Academe,” NA 2108-2126
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October 11th from Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel, intro. and chapter 1 (on European bildungsroman)

October 13th Ethics and Literature, readings:
*selections from Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, vi-ix; 85-101; Humanism of the Other, 45-57.
*selections from Jane Tronto, Moral Boundaries (introduction and chapter 5, ix-xii, 1-21, 52-59, 92-97, 122-25))
*selections from Wayne Booth, The Company We Keep: The Ethics of Fiction, 19-22, 125-155, 483-89
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October 18th from Martha Nussbaum, The Frailty of Goodness, preface to second edition, introduction, chapters on Antigone and Hecuba

October 20th Reader-Response Theory, readings:
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” NA 1466-70
Wolfgang Iser, “Interaction Between Text and Reader,” NA 1673-82
Stanley Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum,” NA 2071-89
Jane Tompkins, “Me and My Shadow,” NA 2129-43
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October 25th from Kate Flint, The Woman Reader, 3-46, 187-252, 326-30 (chapters on "Theory and Women's Reading," "Reading Practices," "Conclusion)

October 27th Cultural Studies, readings:
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” NA 1166-86
Theodor Adorno and Max Herkheimer, “The Culture Industry,” NA 1223-40
Jürgen Habermas, “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,” NA 1745-48, 1753-59
Pierre Bourdieu, from Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, NA 1809-14
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November 1st Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, The History of Sexuality, NA 1636-66

November 3rd Feminism, readings:
Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” NA 2039-56
Annette Kolodny, “Dancing Through the Minefields,” NA 2146-65
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, from The Madwoman in the Attic, NA 2023-35
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” NA 2181-92
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November 8th Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

November 10th Race theory, readings:
Gerald Vizenor, “Manifest Manners,” NA 1977-86
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” NA 1313-17
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Talking Black,” NA 2424-32
Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory,” NA 2257-66
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November 15th Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

November 17th Gay/Lesbian/Sexuality, readings:
Adrienne Rich, from Compulsory Heterosexuality, 1762-80
Eve Sedgwick, “Homosocial Desire,” NA 2434-38
Bonnie Zimmerman, “What Has Never Been,” NA 2340-59
Barbara Smith, “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” NA 2302-2315
Judith Butler, from “Gender Trouble,” 2488-2501
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Thanksgiving
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November 29th Post-Colonial theory, readings:
Gloria Anzaldúa, from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, NA 2211-23
Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” NA 2197-228
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “On the Abolition of the English Department,” NA 2092-97

December 1st from Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
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December 6th Ecocriticism, readings:
*selection from Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology
*selection from Gary Snyder
*selections from Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, ed. Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy

December 8th from Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth

final exam week: Students will meet to give a precis of the argument of their final essays to the class.

Some other topics:

literary history; myth criticism; bibliographical and editorial theory; autobiographical and biographical criticsm; genre theory; history of ideas; new historicism; performance studies; rhetorical studies; literature and science; literature and philosophy; literature and religion; literature and law; literature and economics; literature and film; literature and music; hypertext; book studies.