ENGL 301

Spring 2014 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 spring 2014
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
48564	Lecture-Discussion	D	11:00AM -11:50AM	MWF	115 English Building	Gilmore, S	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/14-05/07/14 Section Info: ENGL 301 is restricted to English majors. 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).
48565	Lecture-Discussion	M	9:30AM -10:45AM	TR	150 English Building	Loughran, P	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/14-05/07/14 Section Info: ENGL 301 is restricted to English 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).
48562	Lecture-Discussion	P	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	150 English Building	Newcomb, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/14-05/07/14 Section Info: ENGL 301 is restricted to English majors. This course focuses on some of the many differing ways literary texts can be read, and what factors make some texts (and not others) seem ?literary? in the first place. Before we?re done you?ll be exposed to the most significant contemporary methods of literary theory, which will aid you in every literature class you take from now on. Our approach will be twofold. We?ll look at critical and theoretical texts by major contributors to the field including Marx, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Butler, and a good many others. And we?ll test their ideas about how to read and talk about texts against a few selected classics that we?ll return to throughout the term (such as Henry James? ?The Turn of the Screw? and Keats? ?Ode on a Grecian Urn?), and also against some works whose ?literariness? might be a matter of debate, such as Conan Doyle?s Sherlock Holmes stories. There will be several short essays and other writing tasks, and a final exam. 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).