In serious literary, artistic, and intellectual circles, lots of people simply assume that you should know all about “Theory.” And if you can’t talk the talk, well, you are just not going to be cool to put it mildly. But theory—in a larger sense—is more than just a hipster’s affectation like a clunky pair of Doc Martens. You’ve been reading and writing with a “theory” all along, but you may not have been entirely clear and explicit about how you interpret “texts.” What are your unspoken assumptions? Who are YOU anyway? What is your “subject position”? These are just a few of the theoretical questions we’ll address, “interrogate,” and “problematize.”
To be more specific, we’ll move rapidly, sequentially, and cumulatively through many of the major schools of theory up to the contemporary moment: Liberal Humanism, Formalism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Postmodernism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Feminist Criticism, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Marxist Criticism, New Historicism, Postcolonial Criticism, and Ecocriticism. Finally, we’ll ask whether we are really approaching the “End of Theory” and “Return of the Aesthetic”?
As we move through these schools of criticism we’ll consider the writings of Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frederic Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Sigmund Freud, Northrup Frye, Jacques Lacan, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Louis Althusser, Raymond Williams, Stephen Greenblatt, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Edward Said, Yi-Fu Tuan, Stephen Pinker, and Elaine Scarry, among others. These are the names to conjure with. But first you need to read and understand their work—-with some help from your professor and your classmates.
This course will involve some challenging (though not inordinately extensive) reading. We will have seminar discussions three times a week and a weekly small group meeting on a sign-up basis. Each of you will provide three summaries/interpretations of the readings online to help everyone grasp the material. You will write a substantial paper in which you apply one or more of the theoretical approaches we’ve studied to a single text (in the manner of Postmodern Pooh without the intentional parody). There will be two essay exams. And, unfortunately, you may also have to confront the possibility that you are trapped inside an ideological state apparatus—a matrix—from which you cannot escape.
January 11 (Wednesday): "What is 'Theory'?" Introduction and Syllabus Review. DBE Signups. Photos taken.
January 13 (Friday): Read “The Fragmentation of Literary Theory” and “No Field, No Future” (Photocopied Readings). Handout #1.
January 16 (Monday): For this class, read Gorgias of Leotini, “Encomium of Helen” (Norton 29-33) and Plato, “The Republic” (Norton 33-37, 49-80). Handout #2.
January 18 (Wednesday): For this class, read Augustine of Hippo, “On Christian Doctrine,” “The Trinity” (Norton 185-196); Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologica” (Norton 240-246). DBE: Post. Handout #3.
January 20 (Friday): Read “Theory before ‘theory’--liberal humanism” (Barry 11-38) and “Twilight of the Dogs” (Crews 147-161). Handout #4.
January 27 (Friday): Read Matthew Arnold, “Functional Criticism” (Norton 807-825) and T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (Norton 1092-1098). Handout #5. DBE: Brace.
January 30 (Monday): Read John Crowe Ransom, “Criticism, Inc.” (Norton 1108-1118) and Cleanth Brooks, “The Formalist Critics” (Norton 1366-1371). Handout #6. DBE: Sietsema.
February 1 (Wednesday): Read “Structuralism” (Barry 39-60) and Ferdinand de Saussure, “Course in General Linguistics” (Norton 960-977). Handout #7. DBE: Post.
February 3 (Friday): Read Claude Levi-Strauss, “Tristes Tropiques” (Norton 1419-1427). Handout #8. DBE: Tedesco.
February 6 (Monday): Read “Post-structuralism and deconstruction” (Barry 61-80) and “Why? Wherefore? Inasmuch as Which?” (Crews 3-18). Handout #9.
February 8 (Wednesday): Read Roland Barthes, “Mythologies,” “Death of the Author,” and “From Work to Text” (Norton 1457-1475). Handout #10. DBE: Brace.
February 10 (Friday): Read Jacques Derrida, “Of Grammatology” (Norton 1815-1830). Handout #11. DBE: Awan.
February 13 (Monday): Winter Recess, No class. TAKE-HOME MIDTERM QUESTIONS AVAILABLE TODAY ON DISCUS.
February 15 (Wednesday): Read “Postmodernism” (Barry 81-95) and “Virtual Bear” (Crews 133-145). Handout #12.
February 17 (Friday): Read Jurgen Habermas, “The Stuctural Transformation of the Public Sphere,” “Modernity--an Incomplete Project” (Norton 1745-1759). Handout #13. DBE: Lee
February 20 (Monday): Read Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Defining the Postmodern” (Norton 1609-1615) and Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (Norton 1960-1974). Handout #14. DBE: Sietsema.
February 22 (Wednesday): Read Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra” (Norton 1729-1741). Handout #15. DBE: Lee.
February 24 (Friday): Read “Psychoanalytic Criticism” (Barry 96-120) and “The Courage to Squeal” (Crews 117-131); and Read Sigmund Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams” (Norton 913-929). DBE: Prutzman. Handout #16.
February 27 (Monday): Read Carl Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” (Norton 987-1002) and Northrop Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature” (Norton 1445-1457). DBE: Awan, Dykhuis, Brace. Handout #17.
March 1 (Wednesday): Read Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage . . .” and “The Signification of the Phallus” (Norton 1278-1290, 1302-1310). DBE: Masterton, Dykhuis. Handout #18.
March 3 (Friday): Read “Feminist Criticism” (Barry 121-138) and “Just Lack a Woman” (Crews 47-63). Handout #19.
March 6 (Monday): Read Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own” (Norton 1021-1029) and Simone de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex” (Norton 1403-1414). DBE: Post, Dougherty. Handout #20.
March 8 (Wednesday): Read Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “The Madwoman in the Attic” (Norton 2023-2035). DBE: Krueger, Sutter. Handout #21.
March 10 (Friday): Susan Bordo, “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body” (2362-2376). DBE: Prutzman, Tedesco. Handout #22.
March 13 (Monday): Read “Lesbian/Gay Criticism” (Barry 139-155) and Michel Foucault, “The History of Sexuality” (Norton 1648-1666). DBE: Masterton, Dougherty. Handout #23.
March 15 (Wednesday): Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, “Between Men” (Norton 2434-2438) and Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble” (Norton 2485-2501). DBE: Dykhuis, Sutter. Handout #24.
March 17 (Friday): SPRING BREAK
March 20 (Monday): SPRING BREAK
March 22 (Wednesday): SPRING BREAK
March 24 (Friday): SPRING BREAK
March 27 (Monday): Read “Marxist Criticism” (Barry 156-171) and “The Fissured Subtext: Historical Problematics, the Absolute Cause, Transcoded Contradictions, and Late-Capitalists Metanarrative (in Pooh)” (Crews 33-46). Handout #2.1.
March 29 (Wednesday): Read Karl Marx, “Communist Manifesto,” “Grundrisse,” “Capital” (769-774, 776-787) and Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of the Intellectuals” (1138-1143). Handout #2.2. DBE: Dougherty, Krueger.
March 31 (Friday): Read Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (Norton 1476-1509); Raymond Williams, “Marxism and Literature” (Norton 1567-1575). Handout #2.3. DBE: Awan.
April 3 (Monday): Read “New Historicism and Cultural Materialism” (Barry 172-182) and “A Bellyful of Pooh” (Crews 19-32); Stephen Greenblatt, “The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance” (2251-2254). Handout #2.4. DBE: Sutter.
April 5 (Wednesday): Read Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” (Norton 1615-21, 1636-1647). Handout #2.4. DBE: Tedesco, Krueger.
April 7 (Friday): Read Richard Ohmann, “The Shaping of a Canon: U. S. Fiction, 1960-1975” (Norton 1881-1894); Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste” (Norton 1809-1814). Handout #2.5. DBE: Sietsema.
April 10 (Monday): Read “Postcolonial Criticism” (Barry 192-202) and “Resident Aliens” (Crews 81-96). Handout #2.6. I strongly recommend that you get started on your papers, if you have not done so already. After the Easter break, I'd like to begin meeting with all of you one-on-one to brainstorm and discuss your progress.
April 12 (Wednesday): Read Edward Said, “Orientalism” (Norton 1986-2012). Handout #2.7. DBE: Lee.
April 14 (Friday): GOOD FRIDAY—NO CLASS.
April 17 (Monday): Read “Ecocriticism” (Barry 248-271) and “Gene/Meme Covariation in Ashdown Forest: Pooh and the Consilience of Knowledge” (Crews 97-115). Handout #2.8. The HCTA is now avalible online if you would like to evaluate this class (please do--it does help make the class better over time.)
April 19 (Wednesday): Read Yi-Fu Tuan, “Topophilia and Environment” (Photocopied Readings). Handout #2.9. DBE: Masterton.
April 21 (Friday): Read Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate, “The Arts” and “appendix” (Photocopied Readings). Handout #2.10.
April 24 (Monday): Elaine Scarry, “On Beauty and Being Fair” (Photocopied Readings). Handout #2.11. DBE: Prutzman.
April 26 (Wednesday): Read Orpheus Bruno, "The Importance of Being Portly" (Crews 65-79); Marjorie Perloff, “Crisis in the Humanities? Reconfiguring Literary Studies for the Twenty First Century” (Photocopied Readings) and Robert Scholes, “Presidential Address 2004: The Humanities in a Posthumanist World” (Photocopied Readings). Handout #2.12.
April 28 (Friday): Read N. Mack Hobbs, "You Don't Know What Pooh Studies are About" (Crews, 163-175); Thomas H. Benton, “College and the Fall” and “Life after the Death of Literary Theory” (Photocopied Readings). Paper Handout. Discussion about the course as a whole and the final paper. I won't be able to hold office hours beginning today because I no longer have an office, but I'll be avalaible by e-mail all the time if you'd like some input. I can also come in a few times for meetings at the Kletz if any of you would like a personal consultation, in particular, on Tuesday from 10-2 when I am between exams. Just send me an e-mail.
May 5, 4PM (Friday): FINAL PAPER DUE. BECAUSE OF ALL THE COMPLICATIONS WITH LUBBERS CLOSING AND MY LEAVING FOR SABBATICAL, I HAVE TO ASK THAT YOU SEND YOUR PAPER AS AN E-MAIL ATTACHMENT, PREFERABLY IN MICROSOFT WORD.
Schedule
Resources and Links (suggestions welcome)