ENG 702: Introduction to Critical Theory
ENG 463: Seminar in Literature - Theory & Criticism

Introduction to Literary Theory - February 1

Why Literary Theory? Overview & Syllabus
463 Syllabus | 702 Syllabus
Predatory Reading & Notetaking
“Old Hat” Literary Theory
Sign up to lead a part of one class with key terms & concept
Dropbox setup

HW: 1) Read through the syllabus carefully. Accept my Dropbox folder invitation.
2) Read the Letter to Students here. Write your response and drop the PDF into your Dropbox before next class.
3) Do some predatory reading on the three theories below for next week.

Marxism - feminism - psychoanalytic theory -  FEBruary 8

Do some predatory reading from the libraries of the 3 theories below.
Useful link: Oxford Reference Dictionary for critical terms
I will explain in class exactly what is expected of your 5 Written Responses this term.
Assignment for Written Responses
Class notes from Feb. 1 and 8

No class (President’s day) - February 15

Library of Marxism texts:

*Peter Barry, Marxist criticism (Chapter 8)
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Jonathan Wolff, from Class, History, and Capital
*Slavoj Zizek, from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
*George Orwell, Bookshop Memories

Library of Freudian texts:
*Peter Barry, “Psychoanalytic Criticism,” Chapter 6 from Beginning Theory
Freud, Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming
Freud, Family Romances
Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Some Analyses of Sample Dreams
Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter
*Wordsworth, from The Prelude (skiff scene)
*Wordsworth, "Nutting" from Lyrical Ballads

Library of Feminist texts:
*Peter Barry, Feminist Criticism (Chapter 6)
*Virginia Woolf, “Shakespeare’s Sister,” from A Room of One’s Own
Sarah Gilbert & Sandra Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Explore Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
Check out these online archives: Equality Archive, Brown's Feminist Theory Archive, and Barnard's Feminist Collections.

Marxism, Feminism, Psychoanalytic theory Recap - February 22

Recap: Applying Marxist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and feminist theory to texts.
*Slavoj Zizek, from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
*George Orwell, Bookshop Memories
*Wordsworth, from The Prelude (skiff scene)
*Wordsworth, "Nutting" from Lyrical Ballads
*Virginia Woolf, “Shakespeare’s Sister,” from A Room of One’s Own
HW: Read Critical Race Theory readings more carefully. Please attend Thursday, Feb. 25 event on Black Latinx Cuir Revolutions if you are able. RSVP here.

critical race theory - February 27

*Delgado and Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction
*Toni Morrison,” Cinderella’s Stepsisters”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times
W.E. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Richard Rodriguez, The Third Man
*Madeline Sayet, Interrogating the Shakespeare System
In class: 2 poems by Harryette Mullen: “Dim Lady” and “European Folktale Variant”

Black feminisms - March 8

We’ll pick up our conversation where we left off on Richard Rodriguez’s The Third Man and discuss composition pedagogy, writing/grammar instruction and Standard American English in classrooms.

Richard Rodriguez, The Third Man

*Audre Lorde, essays from Sister Outsider: “Poetry is not a Luxury,” “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” “Uses of the Erotic,” “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” and “The Uses of Anger”
Rivkin and Ryan, “Feminist Paradigms”
bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory” and “Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression”
Audre Lorde, poems from The Black Unicorn

Grolier Lecture - March 22

"African-Americans Self-Publishing in the 19th Century: Forgotten Tools of Self-Expression"
Bryan Sinche, Professor and Chair of English, University of Hartford, Connecticut

Prof. Sinche will report on his monograph, Published by Himself: Self-Publication and Nineteenth Century African American Literature, about the little-known but extensive corpus of self-published African American writing in the long 19th century. Published by Himself recovers works by authors including Robert B. Anderson, Norvel Blair, Mattie Jackson, Jarena Lee, Thomas Smallwood, and Jacob Stroyer. Prof. Sinche's investigations shed light on the economic value and signifying power of printed books and the meanings of publication and authorship.

Bryan Sinche is Professor of English and chair of the department of English and Modern Languages at the University of Hartford, where he has taught American and African American literature since 2006.

Please register for the event here. (This will not be on our regular class Zoom link.) Or, I will email you the link and passcode next Monday afternoon, using the email you provided me on the first week of class. Email me if you do not receive a link by 5pm.

Happy Spring Break!
No class - March 29

Final Project Assignment

Cultural Studies, World lit & Translation studies - april 5

*Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Jennifer's Butt
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Chinua Achebe, The African Writer and the English Language
* Ngugi wa Thiongo, The Language of African Literature
Gayatri Spivak & David Damrosch interview, Comparative Literature/World Literature
Caroline Levine, How to Make Worlds
Wai Chee Dimock, Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time
Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English: Japan Times article
Gregory Rabassa, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Possibilities
Public Books article on new Kafka translation

Grolier Club lecture by frances negrón muntaner - april 12

"Here is the Evidence: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and Afro-Latino Visuality"
Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Columbia University, Professor of English and Comparative Literature. 
Register here, or I will share the link with you for this session via email on Monday the 12th.

Explore the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and learn more about Arturo Schomburg here and here.

Professor Negron-Muntaner will speak via Zoom, exploring the achievements of American collector, curator and historian Arturo Schomburg (1874-1938) as an arts patron, critic and art lover. Dr. Negron-Muntaner, a scholar and artist herself, is currently writing an in-depth intellectual biography of Schomburg that delves into fascinating and little-known aspects of his life and works. Schomburg’s collection of rare books, manuscripts, and other printed materials about the global Black experience included more than 10,000 items by 1926, when he sold it to the New York Public Library. It eventually formed the founding core of the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Harlem, NY). As important as the “word” was to Schomburg, he was also an avid collector of paintings, prints, etchings, and steel engravings, and had a no-less-complex relationship to art, artists, and visuality more generally. Visuality shaped his collecting methods and modes of public engagement, defining in some cases how narratives in Black history have been perceived and disseminated, and rescuing material that might have otherwise gone overlooked. 

disabilities studies / ecocriticism - april 19

*Berger, Introducing Disability Studies (read quickly and in predatory fashion!)
*Lennard Davis, Construing Normalcy
Julie Avril Minich, Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now
Ben Mattlin, "Cure Me? No Thanks"
*Lennard Davis, “In the Time of Pandemic, the Deep Structure of Biopower is Laid Bare”

*Peter Barry, Chapter on Ecocriticsm
Jay Parini, "The Greening of the Humanities"
*Rob Nixon, "Slow Violence". Full book version available here.
Cheryl Glotfelty, The Ecocriticism Reader introduction
William Howarth, Some Principles of Ecocriticism or William Rueckert, Literature and Ecology (reader's choice)
16 Position Papers answering "What is Ecocriticism?" (skim quickly and in predatory fashion!)
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, "Nutting," and The Lucy Poems

HW: You may wish to attend Prof. Julie Maybee’s lecture, “Making and Unmaking Disability,” on Tuesday at 1pm. Register here.
Please email me by Sunday night the author/title/link to one or two of your favorite LGBTQ/queer texts. The text might deal with LGBTQ themes or simply be written by a queer author.

Queer Theory: Audre Lorde The Black Unicorn event - April 26

*Barry, Chapter on Lesbian/Gay Criticism
Eve Sedgwick, Between Men
Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet
Lee Edelman, No Future (review by Carolyn Dever)
Audre Lorde, Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving
*Matt Brim, Poor Queer Studies: Class, Race, and the Field. (Book introduction version here.)
Kenji Yoshino, Covering
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol poem & video
David Henry Huang, M Butterfly 

University studies | Reflections & THeory Wrap-up - May 3

*Rachel Buurma and Laura Heffernan, “The Classroom in the Canon: T. S. Eliot’s Modern English Literature Extension Course for Working People and The Sacred Wood” PMLA 133, no. 2 (March 2018): 264–281.
*Jessica Yood, “Inventing Critical University Studies”
Jeffrey J. Williams, “Deconstructing Academe: The Birth of Critical University Studies,” Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb 19, 2012) - create a free login to view full article
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For the teachers and soon-to-be teachers: Kevin Gannon, “Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto”
Citizens Budget Commission, podcast interview with Felix Matos Rodríguez
Wrap-up; Time Capsule Letter Activity
Intro to Critical Theory class notes

FInal Project: CONFERENCES & Working Groups - may 10

Sign up here for a meeting or working group.
Participation this week is optional. You may choose to spend it working independently on your final project. Please read Zami passages for next week!
Sort out assignments in your Dropbox before May 10. Your entries should look like this.
Grade Book Template

ZAMI: A New Spelling of my name (A Biomythography)

Audre Lorde, Zami: Chapters 1-11; Chapters 16-19; Chapters 23-28 

All 5 Weekly Responses are due in your Dropbox by Monday, May 10.
Final projects are due as PDFs on May 20.