Honors
HNRS 268-01: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
Got theory?
We all do, whether we know it or not. Our critical approach to the world determines what we see in the world, how we see it, what we think about it. Method (that is, a critical lens) has everything to do with what we like and with what we don’t like, with what makes us mad and with what makes us glad, with our very notions of existence. How can we imagine, then, that something so complex, so messy, so individualized, so culturally specific, so temporally disparate as human activity can be encompassed–let alone explained and pigeonholed–by a single critical approach? By one critical theory?
(It can’t.)
Therefore, it makes good educational sense to acquaint ourselves with a variety of critical methodologies, to arm ourselves with several different ways to see and to think about the world. That way, we become better and smarter readers of the human pageant.
(Golly, that sounds swell!)
We will begin our inquiry into literary and cultural theory by gaining a sense of the history and prominent ideas of criticism stretching back to the Greeks. After that, we will concentrate on the 20th- and 21st-century developments in the field, particularly the hot debates that currently vex academic departments across the country. Theories studied will include not only such conservative standards as Old Historicism and New Criticism, but such radical (i.e. post-1960s) upstarts as Reader Response, Feminism, Post-Structuralism, Cultural Poetics, Post-Colonialism, and Queer Theory. Longer-standing maverick theories, such as Marxism and Psychological Criticism, will be considered as well. We will read closely primary texts by theorists in these areas. Moreover, ours will be a course of theory joined with practice. We will not just read and talk theory, but we will do, test, and exercise ourselves in these various theories as well. The point will be for you do develop a feel for how these methods actually work. Most important, you will be encouraged to consider which of these theories you think make sense, and which you think make nonsense. You will be formulating your own critical stance.
What cultural texts we examine will be determined largely by the class as we go along. I’m perfectly happy scrutinizing Hamlet or a bus ticket, the Code of Hammurabi or how McDonald's successfully advertizes food that will kill you. Ours will be a multi-disciplinary approach. Any text at all is fair game. As for the work load, you will read and write a lot. The writing will take the form of both shorter informal critical response papers and longer formal critical essays. You will be responsible as well for daily and informed classroom discussion of the reading and for one group-project presentation to the class. In both your writing and your discussion, you will be expected always to state your honest critical opinion about things and be ready to defend it. With any luck at all, you’ll have some passionate and very useful disagreements with your classmates.
Fall Term: 2008
Credits: 4
Fulfills: GE Requirement in Humanities (U)
Cross-listed: ENGL 302-01
Meeting times: 13:30-14:50 TR
Instructor: Kirk Combe