CWL501 Rushing, Modern Critical Theory T 7:30-8:50 R 3-4:50

Nota bene: Despite what Banner says, this course does not require any languages other than English.

This course provides a historical survey of the foundational thinkers, texts, and schools that orient contemporary work in the humanities, from Kant and Hegel to Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Theory. As an “advanced introduction,” the course is intended primarily for first-year graduate students and for those who may not have covered the development of critical theory in a systematic way. The course will include significant discussion of figures, including: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Adorno, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Irigaray, Williams, Hall, Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Zizek, and Butler. Among the topics we will address: history, the subject, value, power, language, ideology, materiality, gender, sexuality, race, and colonialism. The purpose of this course is to ensure that graduate students receive a rigorous introduction to critical theories and methodologies central to a variety of fields in the humanities and to provide the basis for interdisciplinary conversation and intellectual community among graduate students and faculty members from across the university.

Modern Critical Theory will have an unusual format. The course will meet twice a week, once a week (the Tuesday evening meeting) in a public session that will include graduate students from Michael Rothberg’s English 581 course and once a week in a closed session limited to registered students. Drawing on the resources of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, we will invite to class “guest experts” from around campus (and occasionally from off campus); these guests will visit the public sessions of the seminar throughout the semester. Those Tuesday night sessions will meet at the IPRH Building (805 W. Pennsylvania, Urbana).

Requirements: Attendance at all sessions; active participation; 10-pages of analytical writing during the semester; a timed, 72 hour take-home essay exam of approximately 10 pages at the end of the semester.

We will meet for an unscheduled introductory session in the English Building on Wednesday, August 24, from 5:00-6:30 pm. For that session, please read: Jonathan Culler, “What is Theory?” from Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (pp. 1-17) and Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory,” in the Norton (pp. 2255-66). The Culler text will be available shortly before the semester begins on electronic reserves. More information about the course will be available by late summer on the Unit for Criticism website: criticism.english.uiuc.edu. Please contact me if you have any questions about the course: rrushing@uiuc.edu.

Texts ordered: Vincent Leitch, et al, ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism; Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (tr. Kaufmann); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. The Norton will provide the base readings for many of our sessions, but will be supplemented by many xeroxed readings.