Topic: Vital Interplay: Literature, Culture, Theory

Four credit hour course; meets 4:00-5:15 p.m., TR in BH 321.

The product of value we make in the humanities is discourse of a particular
kind: new values, new ideas (Hillis Miller).  How will the humanities matter
in the new millennium?  Our seminar discussions will explore certain clusters
such as:

1) intertextuality of cultural discourses, the world as text, literature as
system;
2) literature in the age of globalization and the lure of cyberspace; writing
as the Other, writing as cultural critique; the chaos function of the
literary text (Müller);
3) A case for a sensuous experience of the literary text (Anz, Barthes);
«construction» of the author (Barthes, Foucault, Lukacs, Rushdie);
4) Figures of end-century thought: allegory, the hybrid text, traveling
theory.

Grade requirements:
1 oral presentation, 1 research paper (overlap possible).

Texts:
Course packet available at Collegiate Copies, ca. January 12, 1999.