ENGL 302 A: Critical Practice

The only guarantee any theory can give about itself is to expose itself as a passionate fiction.

-- Theresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love

 Cultural Studies of the Novel: Historicism and FormalismThis course provides a follow up to English 202, the Introduction to the English major. It is a practicum of critical methods. This particular 302 will provide in-depth practice in cultural studies of the novel. Our focus on cultural studies will include attention to the following methodological questions: what is the “form” in formalist approaches to the novel? What is the ”history"" in historicist approaches to the novel? What kinds of critical practices – close reading, archive development, historical research – are important to cultural studies methodologies? Does narratology (the study of narrative form) have a role? What about ethnography or other research methods from anthropology, sociology, or the empirical human sciences?   By the end of the course, students should have a grasp of various approaches to the study of culture and narrative forms.   Students will also have been exposed to a range of social and political questions related to cultural studies methodologies, including theories of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

COURSE READINGS:

Henry James, Daisy Miller

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Caryl Philips, Crossing the River

Course Reader: Critical readings will be available on the CANVASS Website. They will likely include works by Michael McKeon, D.A. Miller, Gérard Genette, Gertrude Stein, Georg Lukacs, Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Nancy Armstrong, Barbara Christian, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Lisa Lowe, Sianne Ngai, Henry Louis Gates, Catherine Gallagher, Paul Gilroy.

Course Homepage: There will be a course webpage available on Canvas before the start of the quarter.