1) Outline the approach to the study of language as a formal system elaborated by
Ferdinand de Saussure in Course in General Linguists and discuss the application of
Saussure’s concepts to the study of literature and culture. In formulating your answer,
include the work of at least 3 theorists/critics who were influenced by Saussure. Conclude
by reflecting upon the strengths/weaknesses of the structuralist approach to symbolic
systems of meaning.
2) Discuss the idea of subject and language, especially with regard to
meaning/interpretation in Freud and Lacan.
3) From the vantage point of the subject as a site of cultural agency brought forth by
recent Cultural Studies’ theorists such as de Certeau, Hedbige, and Fiske, discuss the
weaknesses of the approach to texts that is exemplified by early phenomenological and
reader-response theory. In formulating your answer, include 2 theorists of your own
choosing from “Phenomenology and Reader Response”.
4) Discuss the role of minority discourses (i.e., from ethnic, race, and postcolonial
studies) in interrogating the Eurocentric, universalizing assumptions governing questions
of subjectivity, language, and culture. In formulating your answer, include at least 2
theorists associated with “Ethnic and Race Studies” and 2 theorists associated with
“Colonial, Post-colonial, and Transnational Studies.” Pay particular attention to the type
of assumptions about culture/literature/subjectivity that are put into question by minority
discourses.
5) Discuss how the developments of “Gender Studies,” particularly as they relate to gay,
lesbians, and queer theories, have modified some of the early theorizing of
“Feminism(s)”. In formulating your answer, refer to at least 2 early Feminist theorists
representative of the Continental and American traditions respectively and discuss the
limits of their visions from the premise of 2 Gender theorists of your own choosing. In
your answer, do account for issues such as canon/interpretation, literary history,
subject/writing.
6) After a brief discussion of the idea of culture as a repository of “universal values” for
the free, autonomous humanist individual that we encountered in the early portion of the
seminar (i.e., Arnold, Eliot, Richards, etc.) trace the evolution of culture as a site
determined by structures of power/knowledge, that is to say, of literary/cultural
production in relation to society. In formulating your answer, include a discussion of
Foucault and of at least 3 other texts encompassing “Marxist” and “Historicist” readings.
FORMALISM(S); STRUCTURALISM AND LINGUISTICS
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 3-6,
- Eichenbaum: "The Formal Method" 7-14,
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Shlovsky, "Art as Technique" 15-21, Brooks, "The Formalist Critics", 22-27
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Rivkin and Ryan, “Introduction”, 53-55;
Culler," Introduction" 57-58,
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de Saussure, sel. from Course in General Linguistics 59-71,
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Propp, “Morphology of the Folktale”, 72-75,
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Barthes, “Mythologies”, 81-89;
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Foucault, “The Archeology of Knowledge”, 90-96.
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(PDF) Jacobson: “Linguistics and Poetics”, “Two Aspects of Language and Two
Types of Aphasic Disturbances”
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(PDF): Levi-Strauss: “The Structural Study of Myth”
READER RESPONSE
- Rivkin and Ryan: “Introduction”, 127-130;
- Husserl, “Ideas”, 137-141;
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Austin, “How to Do things with Words”, 162-176;
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Fish, “Not so much a Teaching”, 195-216; “Interpretive Communities”, 217-221;
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(PDF) Iser, “Rudiments of a Theory of Aesthetic Response”, “The Reading Process: A
Phenomenological Approach”
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(PDF): Eagleton: “Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory”
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(PDF): Hirsch: “Faulty Perspectives”
Bourdieu, “Distinction”, 237-253
PSYCHOANALYSIS
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 389-396,
- Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams” 397-414; “The Uncanny”, 418-430; “Beyond
the Pleasure Principle”, 431-437;
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Fanon, “The Negro and Psychopathology”, 462-469;
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Chodorow, “Pre-Oedipal Gender Configurations”, 470-486;
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(PDF): Lacan, "The Mirror Stage", "The Instance of the Letter or Reason since
Freud,"
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(PDF): Eagleton: “Psychoanalysis”
MARXISM(S)
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 643-646,
- Hegel, "Dialectics," 646-649;
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Marx, “Grundrisse,” “The German Ideology”, “Wage Labor and Capital”, “Capital”,
650-672;
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Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel”, “Rabelais and His World”, 674-692;
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Gramsci, “Hegemony”, 673;
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Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" 693-702,
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Macherey, “For a Theory of Literary Production”, 703-711;
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Zizek, “The Sublime Object of Ideology” 712-724;
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Negri, “Difference and the Future”, 725-742
HISTORICISM(S)
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Rivkin and Ryan, “Introduction” 505-507;
Williams, “The Country and the City”, 508-532;
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Armstrong, “Some Call it Fiction”, 567-583;
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Foucault, “Discipline and Punish”, 549-566;
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Sundquist, "Melville, Delany, and New World Slavery" 620-640.
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(PDF): Greenblatt, “Towards a Poetics of Culture”;
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(PDF): Montrose, “Professing the Renaissance”;
Gallagher, “Marxism and the New Historicism”
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(PDF): Lentricchia, “Foucault’s Legacy-A New Historicism?”
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POST-STRUCTURALISM, DECONSTRUCTION
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 257-261,
- Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying”, 262-265; Heidegger, “Identity and Difference”,
271-272;
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Derrida, "Différance" 278-299; “Of Grammatology”, 300-331; “Semiology and
Grammatology”, 323-339;
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Johnson, “Writing”, 340-347
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(PDF) Barthes, “The Death of the Author”
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(PDF): Foucault, “What is an Author?”
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(PDF): Derrida, “Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences”
FEMINISM(S)
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 765-769;
- Rubin, “The Traffic of Women,” 770-794;
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Irigaray, “The Power of Discourse”, 795-798;
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Khan, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle”, 826-837,
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Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts,” 838-853;
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Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex”, 854-860; Heng, “A Great Way to Fly”, 861881
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(PDF): “Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”
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(PDF): Irigaray, “This Sex Which is Not One”
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(PDF): Gilbert and Gubar, “Sexual Linguistics: Gender, Language, Sexuality”
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(PDF): Fuss, “Reading like a Feminist”
GENDER STUDIES
- Rivkin and Ryan, “Introduction” 885-888;
- Rubin, “Sexual Transformations”, 889-891; Foucault, “The History of Sexuality”,
- 892-899;
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Butler, “Performative Acts”, 900-911;
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Sedgwick, “Epistemology of the Closet”, 912-921;
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Moon, “A Small Boy”, 922-934; Halberstam, “Female Masculinity”, 934-956
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(PDF): Butler, “Imitation and Gender insubordination”
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(PDF): Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”
ETHNIC AND RACE STUDIES
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 959-963;
- Lopez, “Social Construction of Race,” 964-974;
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Fishkin, “Interrogating Whiteness”, 975-986;
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Gates, “The Blackness of Blackness,” 987-1004;
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Morrison, “Playing in the Dark” 1005-1016,
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Anzaldua, “Borderlands”, 1017-1030;
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Lowe, “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity”, 1031-1050;
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Dale Parker, “Tradition, Invention”, 1051-1067.
COLONIAL, POST-COLONIAL STUDIES, TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction", 1071-1074;
- Walder, “History”, 1075-1089;
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Lomba, “Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies”, 1100-1111;
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Said, “Jane Austen and Empire”, 1112-1125;
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Thiong’o, “Decolonizing the Mind”, 1126-1150;
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Brathwaite, “1151-1166;
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Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders”, 1167-1184;
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McClintock, “The Angel of Progress,” 1185-1196
CULTURAL STUDIES
- Rivkin and Ryan, "Introduction" 1233-1234;
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Benjamin, “The Work of Art”, 1235-1241;
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Horkheimer and Adorno, "The Culture Industry as Mass Deception" 1243-1246,
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de Certeau, “The Practice of Everyday Life”, 1247-1257;
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Hedbige, "Subculture: The Meaning of Style," 1258-1267;
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Fiske, “Culture, Ideology, Interpellation”, 1268-1273; “Television culture” 12741284;
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(PDF): Brantlinger: "From Althusser to Gramsci," Crusoe's Footprints, 68-107;
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Naremore and Brantlinger, “Six Artistic Cultures,” Modernity and Mass Culture,
1-23
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(PDF): Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms”
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