Department of English

This course will traverse the history of aesthetics in order to understand the complexities of contemporary literary theory.   In a sense, our subject is the fall-out of a paradox, virtuality, in its endless collisions with ideology.  The syllabus will include such canonic figures as Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Augustine, Sidney, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, Benjamin, Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida, Said, Irigaray, and Butler (in general, authors found on the Comparative Literature examination list in theory).  Course requirements: three short papers (7 pages), and a class presentation.

Primary Course Number is COML501:401.