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.