FALL 2012

Tuesday nights

(public lecture)

7:30-9:20 PM, 1092 Lincoln Hall

Tuesday

(seminar)

3:00-5:00 PM, 136 Armory

This course provides a historical survey of the foundational thinkers, texts, and schools that orient contemporary work in the humanities, from Kant and Hegel to cultural studies and postcolonial theory.  As an “advanced introduction,” the course is intended primarily for first-year graduate students and for those who may not have covered the development of critical theory in a systematic way.

The course will include significant reading and discussion of figures that include: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Adorno, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Žižek, Butler and others. Among the topics we will address: history, the subject, value, power, language, ideology, materiality, gender, sexuality and race.

The purpose of this course is to ensure that graduate students receive a rigorous introduction to critical theories and methodologies central to a variety of fields in the humanities and to provide the basis for interdisciplinary conversation and intellectual community among graduate students and faculty members from across the university.

The course will meet twice a week, once a week (the Tuesday evening meeting) in a public lecture that will include graduate students from the Unit for Criticism/English 500 course and, and once a week in a smaller seminar (Thursday afternoon). Drawing on the resources of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, we will invite to class guest experts from around campus (and occasionally from off campus); these guests will visit the public sessions of the seminar throughout the semester.

Students will complete a 10-12 page paper on critical theory and a take home final exam. Readings will be from the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory and a selection of e-reserves that are also available at the Unit’s Modern Critical Theory page.