581 R SEMINAR LITERARY THEORY, Rothberg. Thurs 1-2:50; additional meeting: Tues 7:30-9 p.m.
TOPIC: Modern Critical Theory: An Advanced Introduction

This course will provide a historical survey of the foundational thinkers, texts, and schools that orient contemporary work in the humanities, from Kant and Hegel to Cultural Studies, Queer Theory, and Postcolonial Theory. As an “advanced introduction,” the course is intended primarily for first-year graduate students and for those who feel they have not covered the development of critical theory in a systematic way. The course will include significant discussion of figures such as: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Adorno, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Williams, Hall, Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Zizek, and Butler. Among the topics we will certainly address are: history, aesthetics, the subject, value, power, language, ideology, materiality, gender, sexuality, race, and colonialism. The purpose of this course is to ensure that graduate students receive a rigorous introduction to critical theories and methodologies central to a variety of fields in the humanities and to provide the basis for interdisciplinary conversation and intellectual community among graduate students and faculty members from across the university.

Modern Critical Theory will have an unusual format. The course will meet twice a week, once a week in a public session that will include all interested graduate students and once a week in a closed session limited to registered students. Drawing on the resources of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, we will invite to class “guest experts” from around campus (and occasionally from off campus); these guests will visit the public sessions of the seminar and lecture on particular topics throughout the semester. Public sessions will include students from Robert Rushing’s Comparative Literature 501 course and Laurie Johnson’s German 570 course as well as all other interested students.

Note: For the first class meeting, students should read Jonathan Culler’s “What is Theory?” from Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (which will be available on e-reserves) and Barbara Christian’s “The Race for Theory” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Requirements: Graded work will include a 10-page midterm paper and a 72-hour take home essay exam. Active participation will also be expected.

TEXTS: Vincent Leitch, et al, ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism; Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (tr. Kaufmann); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction; Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic. The Norton will provide the base readings for many of our sessions, but will be supplemented by xeroxed readings. As a recommended secondary text, we will refer to William Schroeder, Continental Philosophy: A Critical Approach.

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Public Lectures with ENGL581

For more information about these open sessions, please contact Michael Rothberg,
Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory (mpr@uiuc.edu).

Schedule

Week 1
August 29: Kant
Barbara Sattler (Philosophy)

Frederick Beiser, “The Enlightenment and Idealism,” from Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (e-reserves)

Week 2
September 5: Hegel
William Schroeder (Philosophy)

G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Introduction, “Sense-Certainty,” and “Self-Consciousness” [through “lordship and bondage”], pp. 46-66 & 104-119; xerox)

Week 3
September 12: Marx and Marxism
Philip Wegner (English, University of Florida

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, selections from Norton (e-reserves)

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Norton) (e-reserves)

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (Norton) (e-reserves)

Fredric Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” (e-reserves)

Week 4
September 19: Nietzsche
Richard Schacht (Philosophy)

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals. Selections: Preface, Essay 1, Essay 2

Richard Schacht, "Of Morals and Menschen: Nietzsche's Genealogy and Anthropology,” in Making Sense of Nietzsche (e-reserves)

Richard Schacht, “ Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morals, and Menschen: A Commentary on GM II:16-25” (unpublished essay; e-reserves))

Week 5
September 26: Freud
Lilya Kaganovsky (Slavic/Comp Lit) and Rob Rushing (Italian/Comp Lit)

Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism” and selections from The Interpretation of Dreams (Norton)

Sigmund Freud, other selections from Interpretation of Dreams (e-reserves)

Sigmund Freud, “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis” (1918; the “Wolf Man” case study) (e-reserves)

Week 6
October 3: Foucault
Matti Bunzl (Anthropology)

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction

Secondary:

Foucault readings from Norton

Week 7
No lecture

Week 8
October 17: Lacan
Nancy Blake (Comp Lit)

Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,” “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious,” & “The Signification of the Phallus” in Norton

Week 9
October 24: Derrida
Eleanor Kaufman (Comp Lit, UCLA)

Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences,” “Differance,” and Archive Fever (pp. 1-47) (Xerox)

Week 10
October 31: Cultural Studies of Science
Robert Markley (English)

Karen Barad, "Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialization of
Reality," differences 10 (1998)

Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, "Remediation," Configurations (1996).

Richard Lewontin, "Facts and the Factitious in the Natural Sciences," Critical
Inquiry, 1991.

Week 11
November 7: Feminist Theory
Deborah Nelson (English/Gender Studies, U of Chicago)

Luce Irigaray, “This Sex which is not One”

Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women”

Adrienne Rich, “Compulsively Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”

Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book”

Week 12
November 14: Postcolonial Theory
Jed Esty (English)

Frantz Fanon, "The Negro and Recognition," from Black Skin, White Masks (pp 210-222; xerox)

Edward Said, “Introduction,” from Orientalism (Norton)

Homi Bhabha, “The Commitment to Theory” (Norton)

Gayatri Spivak, from Critique of Postcolonial Reason (pp. 112-140; xerox)

Secondary:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Critical Fanonism,” from Critical Inquiry (1991)

Week 13
November 28: Queer Theory
Stephanie Foote (English)

Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” and “Critically Queer” (Xerox)

Eve K. Sedgwick, “Introduction: Axiomatic,” from Epistemology of the Closet (Xerox)