Theories of Literary and Cultural Analysis: Narrative Theory - A Critical and Analytical Toolbox

3 units

This seminar familiarizes graduate students with concepts and methodologies that are foundational for research in the humanities. Our discussions will be organized around a range of conceptual categories that have constituted the focus of scholarly reflection in the past few decades, categories such as text, genre, image, medium, discourse, discipline, subjectivity, gender, race, culture, politics, and history. Our consideration of these categories will also require us to examine key currents in recent literary theory and cultural criticism, including (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, feminism and gender theory, postcolonial studies, cognitive science, book history, visual studies, and media theory. Although this seminar does not aim to offer an intellectual history, seminar members will acquire a sense of some of the key trends in cultural theory since 1945, as well as an awareness of the limits and possibilities that characterize each of them. The course also includes an introduction to the tools of scholarly research. Readings and discussions in English.