Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0222 - Intro to Literary Theory

An introduction to core debates in literary theory focused on four moments or movements critical to modern and postmodern literature: Marxism and historical materialism; post-structuralism; psychoanalysis; and postcolonial critique. Close readings of theoretical texts - and, on occasion, the literary texts they analyze and discuss - will allow us to explore a range of different questions that theorists of literature have asked about both the formal, aesthetic, rhetorical, or technical and the cultural, social, political, and historical dimensions of literature from the late 19th century to the present. Possible readings in Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Sigmund Freud, Edouard Glissant, Jacques Lacan, Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Gayatri Spivak.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives In this course, students are expected to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.