1:00p-2:15p TR (30) 3 cr.
PREREQUISITE: L202 NOTE: The English Department will strictly
enforce
this prerequisite.
Students who have not completed L202 will not be allowed to register
for this course.
This course will provide a historical introduction to contemporary
critical methods and
practices in literary studies. Readings for the course will be
organized around the concept
of textuality, and we will focus on the question of where various
critical methods locate
textual meaning, as well as on the shifting boundaries of what counts
as a literary text.
The methods or critical schools that we will discuss are likely to
include formalism or New
Criticism; genre criticism and theories of intertextuality;
reader-response criticism;
structuralism and post-structuralism or deconstruction; various forms
of ideology critique,
including Marxism, feminism, critical race studies, and post-colonial
studies; and cultural
studies. We will discuss some short works of fiction and poetry, to
be determined, and we
will probably spend some time at the end of the semester considering
the impact of new media
and forms of electronic writing, including hypertext fiction.
Assignments will likely
include two short papers, a longer research paper, a midterm, and a
final exam.