ENGL 301

Spring 2013 All Classes

All Classes

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 spring 2013
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
48564	Lecture-Discussion	E	1:00PM -1:50PM	MWF	104 English Building	Parker, R	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/14/13-05/01/13 Section Info: ENGL 301 is restricted to English 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. 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. 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) or minor(s).
48562	Lecture-Discussion	M	9:30AM -10:45AM	TR	104 English Building	Hansen, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/14/13-05/01/13 Section Info: 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. ENGL 301 is restricted to English majors. Restriction(s): Restricted to English major(s) or minor(s).
48565	Lecture-Discussion	Q	12:30PM -1:45PM	TR	113 Davenport Hall	Rothberg, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/14/13-05/01/13 Section Info: ENGL 301 is restricted to English majors. This course will seek to change the way you think about literature?and culture in general?by introducing you to the world of literary and cultural theory. We will survey a number of innovations in critical thinking from the last two centuries and apply them to the analysis of selected literary and cultural texts. Some of the varied questions we will attempt to answer are: What is literature and is literary language different from everyday language? What is an author? How is meaning produced and how does interpretation work? What is the relationship between literature and history? Literature and politics? Literature and sexuality? Why do so many literary critics today talk about issues like race and colonialism? What does the unconscious have to do with literature? How can we apply our training in literary criticism to the analysis of visual culture? In seeking answers to these questions and others, we will consider critical movements such as New Criticism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, deconstruction, New Historicism, cultural studies, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. Literary texts to which we will apply these theories will probably include: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and selected poetry. A final paper will consider Michael Haneke?s 2005 film Cach� (Hidden). Requirements include: a willingness to work through difficult and unfamiliar material, regular class participation and short blog posts, three papers, and two exams. 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) or minor(s).