English: Literary Theory (C)

About ENGL 2000 C

Survey of literary and cultural theory introducing a variety of major approaches to the interpretation of literature. Required for all English majors and minors. Pre/Co-requisite: ENGL 1500.

Notes

Pre/Co-requisite: ENGL 1500. Junior and senior ENGL, SEE majors and ENGL minors only until Wednesday, April 9th; then ENGL SEE majors and ENGL minors only during the first week registration

Section Description

How does culture work? Why is interpretation more than simply opinion? What worlds do we make when we think about culture in relation to other categories – like gender, race, power, desire, freedom, resistance, and transgression? This course is an introduction to how people have thought and talked about cultural production, how they have tried to define culture as aesthetic, social, ordinary, sacred, practical, imaginative, and political. But it is also a class about how textuality – literature and film, for example – allow readers to live in productive contradictions that connect them to unexpected histories, and help them imagine different futures. Thinking, reading, and interpretation are social and sociable, so you’ll have to come to class, be prepared to talk, and be prepared to change your mind, be wrong, be right, and then do it all over again. The course will require about six hours of reading a week. Your grade will be based on three papers and a final project, attendance, and participation. There are no exams at all. You’ll read, among others, Marx, Freud, Foucault, Butler, Berlant, and more.

Important Dates

Resources

• Parking
• PACE Course Pricing
• Textbooks

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