ENG 3014 Fall 2023 Trent

This course serves as an introduction to contemporary literary and cultural theory. In “The Race for Theory” Barbara Christian asserts that that minorities have always theorized in narrative forms and stories, using the literary to “[render] the world as large and as complicated” as we experience it and to explore how sensing and feeling are ways of knowing different truths of history, culture, and society (56). Kandice Chuh expands upon Christian’s idea and writes that ‘‘To imagine otherwise is not about imagining as the other, but rather, is about imagining the other differently’’ (9). Our class will take these assertions as points of departure and as invitations to deeply and thoroughly contemplate the worlds we inhabit, to critique existing conditions of injustice, and to imagine a more equitable future. Theory allows us not only to read literature more closely but to attune ourselves to the structures of power, social hierarchies, norms, and narratives that organize our understanding of identity, belonging, and home. Over the course of the semester, we will spend time unpacking and critiquing the central arguments and ideas of theoretical texts and scholarly discourses that include but are not limited to critical race studies, postcolonial theory, gender and sexuality studies, ecocriticism, affect studies, and biopolitics. We will also read a selection of short literary texts in order to better understand the theory and to make connections between the works we engage and the world around us.