ENG 5079 Goodman Spring 2021

This is a course about the history of ideas. It asks us to think about the frameworks we use to talk about and analyze literary and cultural texts. It therefore is deeply engaged in understanding the politics of interpretive frameworks. We carefully read texts that were ground-breaking in their day and try to consider what they can offer to our understanding of our own contemporary world and scholarly practices. In the first half of the course, we will read some of the bedrock authors of critical theory, from Marx and Freud to Foucault, Butler, and Adorno. In the second part of the course, we will consider how theory informs current scholarly and social concerns including but not limited to sexuality studies, feminism, the Anthropocene, technology, globalization, and race.