ENGL 301

Fall 2013 All Classes

All Classes

CriticalApproaches to Lit&Text

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 2013
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
50625	Lecture-Discussion	G	3:30PM -4:45PM	MW	English Building	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/13-12/11/13 Section Info: This course is restricted to English majors. English minors can add with approval from our advising office. This course will examine the major theoretical and methodological approaches to literary and cultural studies which have evolved over the last few decades in dialogue with literature and other fictional media from the nineteenth century to the present day. Our readings will include some of the foundational texts of structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, minority discourse theory, and post-colonial studies. Although our main task will be to consider these once groundbreaking theoretical works as though we were reading them for the first time (as will be the case for many students!), we will also want to put them in a historical context. Today?s literary scholars are increasingly returning to considerations of form, aesthetics, and ethics, topics that ?theory? has at times deemed to be out-of-date. Reading literature from this new millennial vantage, we will think about how to blend ?critique? with methods from the past and present in order to bring this vitalizing historical sense to our own research and writing. Our class will occasionally make use of the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory?s series of Fall 2013 Modern Critical Theory Lecture series. Books (all required), Nicholas Birns, Theory after Theory; The Sign of Four. 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	M	9:30AM -10:45AM	TR	Gregory Hall	Parker, R	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/13-12/11/13 Section Info: This course is restricted to English majors. English minors can add with approval from our advising office. ?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, not on lecture. If you like to stay silent in class, don?t take this section. Students will write multiple short papers and share their papers with their classmates. 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).
54605	Lecture-Discussion	S	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	English Building	Hansen, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/13-12/11/13 Section Info: This course is restricted to English majors. English minors can add with approval from our advising office. 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).