ENG 5079 Fall 2022 Jaffe

Enter Theory, with a capital T. This headword classifies a bewildering number of forms of intellectual inquiry in literary and cultural studies: structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, psycho-analysis, deconstruction, Marxism, critical race theory, queer theory, reader-response and reception theory, semiotics, systems theory, pragmatism, hermeneutics, New Historicism, Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Critical Theory, New Materialism, Affect Theory, Speculative Realism, Surface Reading, Thin Description, Distant Reading, Post-critique, and so on. Some of these schools of thought are complementary, others mutually exclusive; some brand new, others borrowed or recycled. Most are known for their stylistic and conceptual difficulty. Rather than muddling through the entire intimidating collection of Theory's -isms and sifting through an equally perplexing collection of proper names (Derrida, Foucault, Canguilhem, Cixous, etc.), we will selectively sample some of its most compelling texts, ideas, and questions, concentrating on a handful of its most compelling threads of inquiry about literature, about culture and about critical and interpretive practices. Along the way, we will delineate some useful maps of the issues and motives of literary and cultural theory that will expand the ways you read and think about literary, social, and cultural texts.