Syllabus for 8:229 Issues in Contemporary Criticism

Professor Florence Boos

Jump to October • November • December

August 28th Tuesday introduction; course procedures

August 30th Thursday

aesthetics:
Immanuel Kant NA 499-535

September 4th Tuesday

historical/political approaches:
Karl Marx NA 759-788

September 6th Thursday

psychological approaches:
Sigmund Freud NA 913-956

September 11th Tuesday

linguistic and structuralist approaches:
Ferdinand de Sassure NA 956-977;
Boris Eichenbaum, NA 1058-1080

September 13th Thursday

feminist approaches:
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, NA 2021-2035;
Helene Cixous, NA 2039-56;
Susan Bordo, NA 2360-2376

September 18th Tuesday

race and ethnicity:
Henry Louis Gates, NA 2421-31;
bell hooks, NA 2475-2484;
Paula Gunn Allen, NA 2106-2125

September 20th Thursday

post-colonial theory:
Franz Fanon, NA 1575-1593;
Homi Bhabha, NA 2377-2397

September 25th Tuesday

Mikhail Bakhtin, NA 1186-1220

September 27th Thursday

Louis Althusser, NA 1476-1509

October 2nd Tuesday

Walter Benjamin, NA 1163-85;
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, NA 1223-40

October 4th Thursday

phenomenology, existentialism:
Georges Poulet, NA 1317-1333;
Jean Paul Sartre, NA 1333-1349;
selections from Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (handout)

October 9th Tuesday

Michel Foucault, NA 1615-47

October 11th Thursday; teacher at conference

students will discuss Michel Foucault NA 1648-1670 and post responses to the web site

October 16th Tuesday

reception theory and historical narrative:
Hans Robert Jauss, 1547-64;
Hayden White 1709-1728

October 18th Thursday

speech acts and reader response:
J. L. Austin, NA 1427-1442;
Stanley Fish, NA 2067-2089;
Wolfgang Iser, NA 1670-81

October 23rd Tuesday

utopianism:
Frederic Jameson, "Marxism and Historicism,"
selections from Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (handouts)

October 25th Thursday

psychoanalysis:
Jacques Lacan, NA 1278-1310;
Kristeva NA 2165-79 ,
Kristeva on abjection (handout)

October 30th Tuesday

feminist psychologists:
Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering,
Jessica Benjamin, The Shadow of the Other, (handouts)

November 1st Thursday

Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot, selections (handout)

November 6th Tuesday

Marxists and Cultural Theorists:
Raymond Williams, NA 1565-75;
Terry Eagleton, NA 2243-49;
Pierre Bourdieu NA 1806-14

November 8th Thursday

language and rhetoric:
Jacques Derrida, NA 1815-30;
Paul De Man, NA 1509-31

November 13th Tuesday

Modernism and Post-Modernity:
Jurgen Habermas, NA 1741-1759;
Frederic Jameson, NA 1960-1974

November 15th Thursday

Sexuality studies:
Judith Butler, NA 2485,
Eve Sedgwick, NA 2432-2445,
Bonnie Zimmerman, NA 2339-2359

November 20th and 22nd Thanksgiving break

November 27th Tuesday

Cultural Criticism and Post-Modernism:
Roland Barthes, NA 1457-1475;
Dick Hebdige, NA 2445-57

November 29th Thursday

Jean Baudrillard, NA 1729-40;
Stuart Moulthop, NA 2502-24;
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, NA 1593-1609

December 4th Tuesday

translation theory/crossing borders:
essays by Walter Benjamin,
Gloria Anzaldua NA 2208-2222,
poss. Jacques Derrida (handout)

perception and disability: Lennard Davis, NA 2398-2423

December 6th Thursday

ecocriticism:
essays by Arne Naess on "Deep Ecology"
and Carolyn Merchant on radical ecology (handout)

December 11th Tuesday

ethics and literature:
Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, selections (handout);
Wayne Booth, The Ethics of Fiction, selections (handout);
Derek Attridge, chapter 9, The Singularity of Literature

December 13 Thursday

begin student summaries of final papers

December 18th Tuesday

final session: student summaries of final papers