01:353:389
Issues and Problems in Literary Theory

02   TTH4  CAC   34923  WALKOWITZ   SC-115

01-Critical and Uncritical Reading

This course will explore the history and theory of critical and uncritical reading. Our texts will include exemplary works of literary criticism and theory as well as novels by Henry James and Kazuo Ishiguro, short stories by Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allen Poe, poetry by Langston Hughes, a manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, popular music by various artists, and a film by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner). Topics will include the genealogy of critique and the idea of “the critical”; texts and paratexts; psychoanalysis and deconstruction; biographical reading; evasion and the unwillingness to read; reading with and against the grain; the geography of reading; the history of the book; and the ethics and politics of translation.  There will be one short paper, one longer paper, a midterm exam, and a final exam.