Ceci n'est pas une pipe (René Magritte, 1926)

LITERARY CRITICISM
ENG 350

Fall 2007

Dr. Tamara O'Callaghan

Office: LA 547
Email: ocallaghant@nku.edu
Telephone: 858-572-6977

 
Syllabus

Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography
Podcasting Project
Research Paper

Schedule

Please note: This syllaweb will be frequently revised and updated as the course progresses and I find more useful online material to add. Therefore, do not print off a copy of the syllaweb and assume you have the definitive "final" version. I will try and let you know when I have made changes/additions; however, ultimately, it is your responsibility to consult the syllaweb online and know what readings and other work you need to have prepared for class. Due dates for assignments will only be changed with the agreement of the class.

Week 1 Introduction
August 22

Introduction to Course

  • D.G. Myers, "Bad Writing" (handout)
  • V. Cunningham, "Theory, What Theory? (handount)

 

Introduction to theoretical movements:

Formalism: How did we get here?
New Criticism: What's so new about it?

New Criticism (Department of English, Lawrence University)

 

 

Week 2

Formalism and New Criticism

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Eichenbaum, "The Formal Method"
  • Schlovsky, "Art as Technique"
  • Brooks, "The Formalist Critics"
  • Wimsatt, "The Structure of the Concrete Universal"
  • The Matrix
August 29

Formalism: How did we get here?

  • Eichenbaum, "The Formal Method"
  • Schlovsky, "Art as Technique"
New Criticism (Department of English, Lawrence University)

New Criticism: What's so new about it?

  • Brooks, "The Formalist Critics"
  • Wimsatt, "The Structure of the Concrete Universal"

I. A. Richards: (John Constable, Kyoto Univ., Japan) Introduction, chronological list of publications, and links.
The I. A. Richards Web Resource: A chronology, bibliography, and list of resources on the influential critic.

Introduction to theoretical movements:

  • Structuralism & Linguistics
 

 

Week 3

Structuralism & Linguistics

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Jonathan Culler, "The Linguistic Foundation"
  • Ferdinand de Saussure, "Course in General Linguistics"
  • Roman Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language"
  • Roland Barthes, "Mythologies"
  • Casablanca


September 5

Jonathan Culler, "The Linguistic Foundation"
Ferdinand de Saussure, "Course in General Linguistics"
Roman Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language"
Roland Barthes, "Mythologies"

 

Introduction to theoretical movements:

  • Poststructuralism & Deconstructionism

 

 

Week 4

Poststructuralism & Deconstructionism

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense"
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Will to Power"
  • Martin Heidegger, "Identity and Difference"
  • Jacques Derrida, "Différance"
  • Jacques Derrida, "Of Grammatology"
  • (Georges Bataille, "Heterology")
  • The Birds (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
September 12

Poststructuralism

Some Post-Structural Assumptions (John Lye, Brock University)
Structuralism/Poststructuralism (Mary Klages, University of Colorado)

Deconstructionism

10 Ways of Thinking about Deconstruction (Willy Maley, University of Glasgow)
Deconstruction: Some Assumptions (John Lye, Brock University)
Jacques Derrida: "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (Mary Klages, University of Colorado)

Introduction to theoretical movements:

  • Psychoanalysis & Psychology

 

 

 

Week 5

Poststructuralism & Deconstructionism

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense"
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Will to Power"
  • Martin Heidegger, "Identity and Difference"
  • Jacques Derrida, "Différance"
  • Jacques Derrida, "Of Grammatology"
  • (Georges Bataille, "Heterology")
  • The Birds (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)


September 19

 

 

 

 
   

 

Week 6

Psychoanalysis & Psychology

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Sigmund Freud (all essays in anthology)
  • Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986)
September 26   Applications of Psychoanalysis (Introductory Guide to Critical Theory, Dino Felluga)
ENGLSH MAJORS MEETING
3:00 to 5:00 pm
LA 506

 

 

Week 7

Psychoanalysis & Psychology

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I"
  • Jacques Lacan , "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious"
  • Nancy Chodorow, "Pre-Oedipal Gender Configurations"
  • Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986)
October 3

Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I"
---, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious"
Nancy Chodorow, "Pre-Oedipal Gender Configurations"

   Jacques lacan/lacan dot com: An extensive, scholarly, and (appropriately) bizarre site devoted to Lacan, with bibliographies of his primary works (and those of Zizek, Miller, Ayerza, Fink, Copjec, and Badiou), a chronology of his career, links, and news.
Lacan.org: The Lacianian School of Psychoanalysis
Jacques Lacan (Mary Klages, University of Colorado)

 

 

 

Week 8

Historicism to New Historicism
Marxism to Cultural Materialism

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish"
  • Stephen Greenblatt, "Shakespeare and the Exorcists"
  • The Official Story/La Historia Oficial (dir. Luis Puenzo; 1985)
  • Karl Marx, "Wage Labor and Capital"
  • Slavoj Žižek, "The Sublime Object of Ideology"
  • Working Girl (dir.Mike Nichols; 1988)


October 10  

 

 

 

  

 

Week 9

Midterm
Reception & Reader-Response Theory

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Stanley, Fish, "Not so much a Teaching as an Intangling"
  • Stanley Fish, "Interpretive Communities"
October 17
Midterm Test
 

 

Students are to turn in 7 annotated bibliography entries for initial evaluation of Annotated Bibliography project.

 

 

Week 10

Feminism

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic of Women"
  • Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "Madwoman in the Attic"
  • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism"
October 24  

 

 

 

 
   

 

Week 11

Gender Studies

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Michel Foucault, "The History of Sexuality"
  • Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution"
October 31

 

Week 12

Ethnic & Race Studies

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Henry Louis Gates, "The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey"
  • Toni Morrison, "Playing in the Dark"
  • Gloria Anzaldua, "Borderlands/ La Frontera"
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001)
November 7

 

 

 

 

Week 13

Postcolonial & Transnational Studies

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Edward Said, "Jane Austen and Empire"
  • Homi K. Babha, "Signs Taken for Wonders"
November 14

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

Week 14

Thanksgiving Break

November 21

Thanksgiving Break (no class)

 

Week 15

Cultural Studies

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
  • Adam Krims, "Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity"
November 28

 


 

 

 

 

 

Week 16

Postmodernism & Hypertext Theory

Assigned Readings and Viewing:

  • Jean-Francois Lyotard, "The Postmodern Condition"
  • Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulation"
  • Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "A Thousand Plateaus"
  • Memento
December 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Revised 28 November 2007
Tamara O'Callaghan
Northern Kentucky University