ENGL 373
Modern Critical Theory Spring 2010
Division I
Cross-listed COMP 343
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course will explore the work of a variety of contemporary theorists in terms of a few questions: What are we up to when we read texts, literary or otherwise? What norms or conventions inform even our most casual interpretive act, and where do they come from? What forms of pleasure and what forms of responsibility are entailed in reading and viewing, and how does interpretation bear on questions of sexual and political desire? What is the relation between aesthetic works and history? Although we will range beyond these authors, we will focus especially on the writing of Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin. In order to keep our own activities as readers at the forefront, we will enter into the critical fray by way of a variety of specific literary texts and films, including novels by Virginia Woolf, Margaret Duras, and Roberto BolaƱo, poetry by Alexander Pope, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath, films by Werner Herzog and Billy Wilder.
The Class: Format: discussion/seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 25
Class#: 3677
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: two 5-page papers and a final 10-page paper
Prerequisites: a 100-level English course
Unit Notes: meets Criticism requirement in English major only if registration is under ENGL
Distributions: Division I
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENGL 373 Division I COMP 343 Division I
Attributes: ENGL Criticism Courses

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