ENGL 301

Spring 2017 All Classes

All Classes

CriticalApproaches to Lit&Text

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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 2017
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
48564	Lecture-Discussion	C	10:00AM -10:50AM	MWF	150 English Building	Basu, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 Section Info: This course will introduce you to some of the most significant contemporary interpretive methods in the study of literary texts. However, it will do so always keeping in mind the primacy of the literary text itself. At the center of the class then, we will have at least two representative literary texts which generated excitement, criticism, and debate in their own times as well as later. With these texts and their times as the ‘stuff’ of our business, we will study such critical movements as new criticism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminist and gender studies, Marxism, new historicism, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and reader response theory. As it prepares students for future literature classes, this course helps us understand and question the relations between reading literary texts and thinking critically, and more profoundly perhaps, between reading, criticism, and the practices involved in putting ourselves irrevocably amidst others. This course is required for English literature majors. Most English majors should take English 301 in the second semester of their sophomore year or the first semester of their junior year, but only if they have already taken several literature courses. The most common complaint about this class comes from seniors who regret not taking it sooner. 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.
48562	Lecture-Discussion	P	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	150 English Building	Gaedtke, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 Section Info: How do we think with literature? What are the roles of the author and the reader in determining what a text means? How do we determine what might be hidden beneath the surface of a text, and is there more to the “surface” than meets the eye? If novels, poems, and plays express unspeakable desires, what do they want? As readers, how should we relate to other cultures and moments in history? What is meant by “Theory?” This course will examine major theoretical and methodological approaches to literary and cultural studies that have evolved over the last few decades. Our readings and discussions will clarify the debates and claims of structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, post-colonial studies, and disability studies. While we consider how these theoretical approaches may be useful for analyzing literature, we will also consider their ideological agendas and test the value and limits of “ideology critique.” Finally, we will determine how best to “use” and engage with theory in our own writing and research as we apply these methods 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.
48566	Lecture-Discussion	S	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	131 English Building	Hansen, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/17-05/03/17 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.