English 161

Other Readings and Media

Barthes, R.: Mythologies; Lodge, D., ed.: Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader; a course reader containing essays by Derrida, de Man, Marx, Adorno, Butler, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Spivak, and others

Description

This course will serve as an introduction to literary and cultural theory. We will read closely a number of important (and difficult) theoretical texts while thinking about what relations exist between the different intellectual projects that we call theory (structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and gender studies are only a few). We will also ask and ask again the more general question: what is theory anyway?