The Making of the Modern and Postmodern Liberal Subject
- Autumn 2016
Additional Details:
Fall Honors Seminar: English 494
Course Description
“The Making of the Modern and Postmodern Liberal Subject”
This seminar will critically examine (re)constructions of the liberal subject from the mid 20th century to the present. It will pay particular attention to historically specific norms of embodiment and behavior on which this subject formation is predicated and the violence to which its constitutive “others” (eg., racial minorities, queers and “errant” women) are subjected. Expect to read 5 works of literature alongside critical theories representing anti-racist, feminist, queer, and Marxist scholarship, to participate actively in seminar discussions and to produce 8 one page single-spaced responses to assigned readings as well as a final 10-12 page analytical essay.
Required texts will include: a course packet, Foucault’s The History of Sexuality; Baldwin’s Another Country; Chua’s Gold by the Inch; Coates’s Between The World And Me; Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians; and Kinkaid’s Lucy.