Comparative Literature 752 - Theory & Practice of Comp. Lit

Fall
2019
01
3.00
Kathryn Lachman
TH 4:00PM 6:30PM
UMass Amherst
25715
Herter Hall room 113
klachman@llc.umass.edu
Comparative Literature as literary theory and as academic practice. Nineteenth-century background and the rise of "literary studies"; traditional concepts of influence, periods, themes, genres, "extraliterary" relations, translation studies, and their development in modern theory. Questions of textuality, canonicity, cultural identity, the politics of cross-cultural literary images, metatheory, and institutional setting as they affect current practice.
This course offers an examination of critical texts in 20th-21st century literary theory, focusing on how concepts of authority, originality, subjectivity, ethics, memory, and intermedial relations have been interrogated by major non-Western theorists including Glissant, Gilroy, Said, Ngugi, Cixous, Mbembe, Fanon, Djebar, and Khatibi. Short literary texts will be read alongside critical essays.
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.