Department of English

This seminar is designed to introduce our more ambitious students to the field of literary and cultural theory.  It is organized in three parts:

1) The object of literary study
2) Beyond the "work"
    i) traditions, conventions, genre
    ii) culture and ideology
    iii) language, structure, semiotics
    iv) authors, contexts, discourse
    v) race and gender
3) Evaluation and the canon

Texts: Catherine Belsey, *Critical Practice*; Terry Eagleton, *Introduction to Literary Theory*; Lentricchia, *Critical Terms for Literary Study*; and a bulkpack with essays by Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Guy Debord, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roland Barthes, Raymond Williams, John Berger, Sandra
Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Gayle Rubin, J.M. Coetzee, and Toni Morrison.

The course will also have a literary component. We will read fiction by some of the following writers: Balzac, Denisen, Borges, Coetzee, Eco, and Auster. Requirements: a high level of commitment and preparation (the
readings are difficult); a few worksheets; one 10-page paper.

Note: This is not an upper-level seminar, but it is a difficult course. Students new to English should consider taking English 100; students well into the major should *not* take 100 and should take this course. English 204 is not a requirement of English majors but we urge all majors to consider taking it. Students considering graduate school in English should surely take English 204.