ENGL 301

Fall 2012 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 27-Dec 12

Critical Approaches to Lit

Credit: 3 hours.

Introduction to influential critical methods and to the multiple frameworks for interpretation as illustrated by the intensive analysis of selected texts. For majors only.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement and ENGL 200.

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ENGL 301 class schedule data for fall 2012
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
54605	Lecture-Discussion	E	1:00PM -1:50PM	MWF	English Building	Parker, R	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/27/12-12/12/12 Section Info: This course is restricted to majors and will not be opened up to non-majors. ?How to Interpret Literature: An Introduction to Contemporary Critical Theory.? This course is required for English literature majors and is best not delayed for too long. Seniors usually regret not taking it sooner. Literature students write, think, and speak literary criticism, and this course sets out to make that process more interesting and?eventually?more fun. In the last half century, critics have repeatedly reinvented literary and cultural criticism in ways that can deeply influence how we interpret what we read and how we understand our daily lives. We will study such critical movements as new criticism, structuralism and narratology, deconstruction and poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer studies, Marxism, new historicism, cultural studies, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and reader response. This course prepares students for future literature classes, and more to the point, it helps us understand and question the entire project of critical thinking and reading. Attendance will be crucial, for we learn these concepts both by reading and by working with the concepts together. Class time will focus on discussion and more discussion, not on lecture. Each student will write multiple short papers and make multiple class presentations. If you like to stay silent in class and do not want to make class presentations, don?t take this section. Readings will include How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies (2nd edition, 2011) and Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies (2012). It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses. Restriction(s): Restricted to English major(s).
54838	Lecture-Discussion	F	2:00PM -2:50PM	MWF	Lincoln Hall	Loughran, P	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/27/12-12/12/12 Section Info: This course is restricted to majors and will not be opened up to non-majors. Theory: the final frontier. At least that?s how many U of I English majors seem to feel! In this course, we will survey major developments in the history of thinking hard from the eighteenth century to today. Along the way, we will ask a series of interrelated questions about the rise of Western reason that theory both performs and critiques. For example: Was the rise of Enlightenment thinking emancipatory or repressive? How did such patterns of thinking emerge alongside material developments like early capitalism and empire? Are aesthetics essentially a-political or does art participate (for good or ill) in the world of politics and power? Can historicism serve as a corrective to the gross inequities of our world, or is it a Trojan horse left behind amongst the other wreckage of the Enlightenment? And what does any of this have to do with reading sonnets, plays, and novels? Major players in this story are likely to include Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno Lukacs, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Butler, Sedgwick, Said, and the great and inscrutable Gayatri Spivak. As in any theory course, a number of major -ISMs (and their relatives) will appear regularly on the docket?including materialism, historicism, structuralism (and its posts-), queer theory, and postcolonialism. But to cope with the vertigo an ISM always produces, we will generally read short, iconic selections, thinking for the most part in broad strokes, with a few full texts interspersed for depth and texture. And we will find a way to work through this material that: a) makes sense, b) challenges you, and c) does not put any of us to sleep (or drive us mad). This is, in short, an introduction to the history of such ideas, and any lively, alert, game young reader will be able to keep up. It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses. Restriction(s): Restricted to English major(s).
50625	Lecture-Discussion	S	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	English Building	Hansen, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/27/12-12/12/12 Section Info: This course is restricted to majors and will not be opened up to non-majors. This course will introduce students to the various issues and debates central to contemporary literary studies. If you have ever wondered why people interpret certain texts, and even certain events and actions, as they do, then this is the course for you. The class will begin by exploring the ways in which three profoundly different thinkers, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, introduced a peculiarly suspicious form of reading, a way of interrogating texts and the world that looks beneath the surface and doubts that what you see is what you get. We will go on to explore how literary critics in the 20th century worked to map this Modern ?hermeneutic of suspicion? onto political, psychological, and philosophical issues that still have an effect on us today. Finally, the course will engage with literature?s relationship to questions of sexual and racial difference, of power, and of technology. Requirements will include active class-participation, weekly journal entries, two short papers, and two exams. Texts will include Freud?s Interpretation of Dreams, Marx?s The Communist Manifesto, Nietzsche?s Genealogy of Morals and a Course Packet with essays by critics in the Gender, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and Post-Structuralist traditions. It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses. Restriction(s): Restricted to English major(s).
50626	Lecture-Discussion	X	12:00PM -12:50PM	MWF	English Building	Gaedtke, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/27/12-12/12/12 Section Info: This course is restricted to majors and will not be opened up to non-majors. This course will examine the major theoretical and methodological approaches to literary and cultural studies that have evolved over the last few decades. Our readings will include some of the foundational texts of structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, minority discourse theory, and post-colonial studies. While we consider how these theoretical approaches have reconfigured the goals and methods of literary studies, and we will also critically assess their ideological agendas and practical implications. Finally, we will determine how best to use and engage with theory in our own writing and research as we test their applications to several short works of literature. It is strongly recommended that all English and Teaching of English majors take ENGL 300 and ENGL 301 BEFORE taking any other 300- or 400-level courses. Restriction(s): Restricted to English major(s).