Jr. Seminar: Literary Theory

Reading involves more than just the reader and the text; when we read, our cultural and personal experiences inform our reading. This course considers different critical approaches to literature-from the history of English as a discipline onward - in an attempt to help contextualize reading practices. We will read primary critical texts, primary literary texts, and examples of literary criticism. We will discuss various schools of literary criticism, including (but not limited to) Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Queer Theory, Disability Studies, Postcolonial Theory, and Critical Race Theory. By the end of the semester, students will be able to use appropriate terminology, produce critically informed readings, and speak authoritatively about different critical approaches to literature.