Department of English

Literary studies continue to be reconfigured by a variety of theoretical and methodological developments.  Various forms of Marxist and post-structuralist enquiry, as well as the often confrontational debates between theoretical and political positions as varied as Deconstruction, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Queer Studies, Minority Discourse Theory, Colonial and Post-colonial Studies, Cultural Studies, and Ecological Studies, have altered disciplinary agendas and intellectual priorities for students embarked on the professional study of literature.  In this course we will study key texts, statements and debates that define these issues, and ask what it means to read in depth, on the surface, or somewhere in-between.