Pavel Andrade, Ph.D.

Course Description

This course offers an introduction to modern and contemporary literary theory. Throughout the semester, students will familiarize themselves with different schools and methods of literary criticism, as well as some of the theories, ideas, and debates that have shaped the notion of the aesthetic from the late nineteenth century to the present. We will revisit foundational texts and study some of their critical appraisals to evaluate theory’s continued relevance for the assessment and interpretation of literary/artistic works. What does it mean to read a text as literature? What is the relation between the history of literary forms and the history of capitalism? How do cultural artifacts register the social, economic, and political forces that shape our world? What is the role of theory and criticism today?

Required Texts

• Juan Carlos Onetti, El astillero
• Elena Garro, Los recuerdos del porvenir
• Verónica Gerber Bicecci, La compañía

Reference

• Eric Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities

Course Guidelines and Requirements

This seminar carries a heavy reading load of complex texts. You can expect 100-150 pages of required critical texts each week, with literary works added on occasion. Students should set aside time to complete reading assignments, take notes, and consult relevant bibliographic material as needed (plug reading time into your calendar!). As you work through the readings, flag passages that you think deserve a closer look or that you would like to introduce for collective examination. Careful, annotated reading of assigned materials and active seminar participation are crucial for your success in this class.

Attendance, Annotated Reading, and In-Class Participation: 20%
Bring your notes to class. At the beginning of a session each student will be asked to introduce a passage from the assigned readings to the group and offer some remarks on the passage’s relevance and/or centrality. These remarks will serve as point of departure for our conversation. Respectful, thoughtful, and attentive participation is expected from all students.

Discussion Facilitation & Handout: 10%
Each student will facilitate a discussion (15-20min) based on a single critical text of their choosing. Discussion facilitation should include a short presentation on the reading’s main arguments, concepts, and categories, a commentary on how the text relates to previous readings/topics, and a moderated discussion based on a set of pre-circulated questions. Handout: you are free to use the format of your choosing, e.g. bullet points, annotated quotes, concept map, narrative summary, etc.

Keyword Project

Throughout the semester, students will work on an iterative project based on a keyword of their choosing (keyword bank available on Blackboard). You should consult with me about your topic and plan for work before September 26th (the sooner the better). Sample essays in the keyword genre: Keywords for American Cultural Studies, A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism, Keywords Project.

Midterm Draft Paper: 15%
5–8-page (double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman, in English or Spanish) draft paper on a keyword of your choosing, including a select bibliography. Due Oct. 17

Peer Review: 10%
Peer review of two draft papers using the “Review Questionnaire” (available on Blackboard, submitted in English) Due Oct. 31

Conference Paper Abstract: 5%
Submit a 250–300-word abstract, in English, for a conference paper based on your selected keyword. Due Nov. 7.

Conference Presentation: 10%
8-10min. conference paper, in English or Spanish, based on your keyword. Delivered at our Mini-Conference on Dec. 5 (details to follow).

Final Paper: 30%
10-15-page (double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman, in English or Spanish) final paper based on your selected keyword, including a 15-20 item bibliography for further reading (does not count toward assignment extension). Due Dec. 10.

Reading Calendar

Aug. 22 Intro: Criticism/Critique

Required:
Culler, “Introduction” and “The Literary in Theory”
Tally Jr. “The Enervated Imagination”
Guillory, “Critique of Critical Criticism”

Further Reading:
Sedgewick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading”
Felski, “Context Stinks!”
Kornbluh, “Extinct Critique”
Robbins, Criticism and Politics
Kramnick, Criticism and Truth
Noys, “The Crisis of the Present Moment and the Crisis of Contemporary Theory”
Center for Mark Twain Studies, “Criticism LTD” (16-episode 8^th season of The American Vandal Podcast)

PART I: Foundations

Aug. 29 Aesthetics I (Kant/Hegel)

Required:
Kant, Critique of Judgment (Excerpts)
Hegel, “The Master-Slave Dialectic” (From Phenomenology of Spirit)
Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art (Excerpts)
Burnham, “The Peculiarities of the Aesthetic Judgement”
Pinkard, “Self-Consciousness and Self-Sufficiency”
Collenberg-Plotnikov, “The Aesthetics of the Hegelian School”

Further Reading:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Concept of the Aesthetic”
Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies
Maker, Hegel and Aesthetics
Houlgate, Hegel and the Arts

Sept. 5 Sign/System

Required:
Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (Excerpts)
Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics” & “Sign and System of Language”
Jakobson & Tynjanov, “Problems in the Study of Language and Literature”
Jameson, “The Linguistic Model”
Bouissac, Saussure: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chapters 5-7)

Further Reading:
Cassedy, Flight from Eden: The Origins of Modern Literary Criticism and Theory
Barthes, Elements of Semiology

Sept. 12 Form

Required:
Eichenbaum, “The Theory of the ‘Formal Method’”
Shklovsky, “Art as Device”
Steiner, “Who is Formalism, What is She?” (From Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics)
Jameson, “The Formalist Projection”

Further Reading:
Shklovsky, “The Connection between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style” & “Literature without Plot”
Trotsky, “The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism”
Allen, “New Criticism”
Frow, “Russian Formalism and the Concept of Literary System”
Bennett, Formalism and Marxism
Ortega y Gasset, “La deshumanización del arte”

Sept. 19 Structure

Required:
Todorov, “Structural Analysis of Narrative”
Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature”
Greimas, “Elements of a Narrative Grammar”
Barthes, Writing Degree Zero (Part I) & “The Death of the Author”
Culler, “Poetics of the Novel”
Schleifer, “The Axiology of Science” (From Intro to Greimas’ Structural Semantics)

Further Reading:
Jameson, “The Structuralist Projection”
Berman, “Structuralism I: Theory and Method”
Levi-Strauss, “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology”

Sept. 26 Aesthetics II (Bloch/ Lukács/Adorno/Benjamin)

Required:
Bloch, “Discussing Expressionism”
Lukács, “Realism in the Balance”
Adorno, “Art, Society, Aesthetics” (From Aesthetic Theory)
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Jay, “Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of Mass Culture” (From The Dialectical Imagination)

Further Reading:
Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”

PART II: Keywords

Oct. 3 Novel (Class Visit Anna Kornbluh)

Required:
Lukács, Theory of the Novel (Chapters 3-4)
Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel”
Kornbluh, “The Realist Blueprint” (From The Order of Forms)
Kornbluh, “Totality”
Cunningham, “Capitalist Epics”
Levine, “In Praise of Happy Endings”

Further Reading:
Lukács, “Narrate or Describe?”
Moretti, “History of the Novel, Theory of the Novel”

Oct. 4 Special Session: Infrastructure and Eco-Criticism
A workshop with Dr. Anna Kornbluh
12-2pm Formby Room of the Southwest/Special Collections Library

Required:
Kornbluh, “Climate Realism, Capitalist and Otherwise”
Levine, “Toward an Affirmative Instrumentality” (From The Activist Humanist)
Hyoung Song, Intro to Climate Lyricism

Further Reading:
Balkan, “Why Can’t a Rogue Be a Hero?”
Nersessian, Intro to The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life

Guest Lecture
Anna Kornbluh, “Climate Counteraesthetics: Middling Mediations in a World Ablaze”
4-5:30pm Formby Room of the Southwest/Special Collections Library

Oct. 10: Nation

Required:
Onetti, El astillero
Culler, “The Novel and the Nation”
Anderson, Imagined Communities (Chapters 1-2)
Sommers, “Irresistible Romance” and “Love and Country” (From Foundational Fictions)
Karatani, “Empire and Nation: An Introduction”

Further Reading:
Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation”

Oct. 17: Modernity

Required:
Jameson, “The Four Maxims of Modernity”
Wegner, “Genre and the Spatial Histories of Modernity”
Lisi, “The Aesthetics of Modernism” (Intro to Marginal Modernity)

Further Reading:
Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air
Anderson, “Modernity and Revolution”
Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity
Anker, “All That Is Solid Melts into Paradox: The Idea of Modernity”

Oct. 24 Space/World (Class Visit Robert Tally Jr.)

Required:
Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”
Jameson, “Cognitive Mapping”
Massey, “Space/representation” (From For space)
WReC, “World-Literature in the Context of Combined and Uneven Development”
Tally Jr., “Place in Geocritical Theory and Practice” (Part I of Topophrenia)

Further Reading:
Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature”
Casanova, “Literature as World”
Soja, “The Trialectics of Spatiality”
Hayot, On Literary Worlds
Jelly-Schapiro, Moments of Capital

Oct. 31 Gender

Required:
Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”
Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” (From Gender Trouble)
Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectives”
Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color”
Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System”
Franco, Intro to Plotting Women

Further Reading:
Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism”
King, “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology”
Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”
Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamonix – Performing Transgender Rage”
Collins, Black Feminist Thought

Nov. 7 Postcolonialism/Subalternity/Decoloniality

Required:
Parry, “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse”
Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
Beverley, “Territoriality, Multiculturalism, and Hegemony” (From Subalternity and Representation)
Moraña, “The Boom of the Subaltern”
Mignolo, “Coloniality of Power and Subalternity”
Larsen, “The Jargon of Decoloniality”

Further Reading:
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Said, Orientalism
Said, Culture and Imperialism
Larsen, “Imperialism, Colonialism, Postcolonialism”

Nov. 14 Latinamericanism

Required:
Garro, Los recuerdos del porvenir
Rama, “Regiones, culturas y literaturas” (De Transculturación narrativa en América Latina)
Ramos, “Masa, cultura, latinoamericanismo” (De Desencuentros de la modernidad)
Franco, “Dependency Theory and Literary History: The Case of Latin America”
Beckman, Intro to Capital Fictions

Further Reading:
Candido, “Literature and Underdevelopment”
Schwarz, “Misplaced Ideas”
de la Campa, “Latin Americanism and the Turns Beyond Modernity”
Beverley, Latinamericanism after 9/11
Siskind, “The Global Lives of Genres and the Material Travels of Magical Realism”

Nov. 21 Anthropocene

Required:
Gerber Bicecci, La compañía
Moore, “Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis”
Pratt, “Anthropocene as Concept and Chronotope” (From Planetary Longings)
Fornoff, “Environmental Rewriting” (From Subjunctive Aesthetics)

Further Reading:
Povinelli, “The Three Figures of Geontology”
Foster, Clark, and York, “A Rift in Earth and Time” (Intro to The Ecological Rift)

Dec. 5 Keywords Mini-Conference