ENGL 301

Fall 2019 All Classes

All Classes

Introduction to Critical Theory

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Credit: 3 hours.

Introduction to the critical frameworks and methods that have had the greatest impact on the field of literary studies. Students will read, discuss, and write about numerous theoretical approaches, including (but not limited to) critical race studies, ecocriticism, feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and structuralism. No previous background with theory is required.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement; one year of college literature or consent of instructor. For majors only.

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ENGL 301 class schedule data for fall 2019
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
50625	Lecture-Discussion	C	10:00AM -10:50AM	MWF	315 Gregory Hall	Parker, R	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/19-12/11/19 Section Title: How to Interpret Literature Section Info: “How to Interpret Literature: An Introduction to Contemporary Critical Theory.” This course is required for English literature majors and is best not delayed for long. Seniors in the course 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 change 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, race studies, postcolonial studies, disability studies, and ecocriticism. Expect some difficult reading, but we will work through it together. This course prepares students for future literature classes, and it helps us understand and question the world around us and the entire project of critical thinking and reading. Attendance will be crucial, because we learn these concepts both by reading and by working with the concepts together. If you like to stay silent in class, or if you do not attend class regularly, then do not take this section. Class time will focus on discussion, not on lecture, so you need to be there in the room and in the discussion.
50626	Lecture-Discussion	Q	12:30PM -1:45PM	TR	150 English Building	Loughran, P	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/19-12/11/19 Section Info: 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 critical reason that “theory” both performs and critiques. For example: was the Enlightenment (and its radically new embrace of reason) emancipatory or repressive? How did such patterns of thinking emerge alongside material developments like early capitalism, empire, and decolonization? Is aesthetics essentially a-political or does art participate (for good or bad) in the world of politics and power? Can historical consciousness serve as a corrective to the gross inequities of the world we have inherited from the past, or is History (with a capital H) a Trojan horse left behind amongst the wreckage of the Enlightenment? And what does any of this have to do with reading poems, plays, and novels? We will grapple with many –ISMS and –ISMish formations as we perform this survey (including Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, poststructuralism, feminism, and postcolonialism). To cope with these unwieldy abstractions, we will generally read short, iconic selections, thinking for the most part in broad, vivid strokes, with a few full texts interspersed for depth and texture. Most importantly (for newcomers to such material), we will work through it in a way that: a) makes sense, b) challenges you, and c) does not put any of us to sleep (or drive us crazy). This is, in short, an introduction to the history of such ideas, and any lively, alert, thinking reader should be able to keep up. A large part of this class is about what theory says. But an even bigger part is simply learning how to read theory. And we will do that by doing what we do in every English class: close reading the text itself.
54605	Lecture-Discussion	X	12:00PM -12:50PM	MWF	104 English Building	Parker, R	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/26/19-12/11/19 Section Title: How to Interpret Literature Section Info: “How to Interpret Literature: An Introduction to Contemporary Critical Theory.” This course is required for English literature majors and is best not delayed for long. Seniors in the course 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 change 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, race studies, postcolonial studies, disability studies, and ecocriticism. Expect some difficult reading, but we will work through it together. This course prepares students for future literature classes, and it helps us understand and question the world around us and the entire project of critical thinking and reading. Attendance will be crucial, because we learn these concepts both by reading and by working with the concepts together. If you like to stay silent in class, or if you do not attend class regularly, then do not take this section. Class time will focus on discussion, not on lecture, so you need to be there in the room and in the discussion.