Dr. Samuel Solomon (samuel.solomon@sussex.ac.uk)
School of English
University of Sussex
MA Module Rough Draft Outline
Literature in the Institution: The University and the Study of Culture
We live, work, and study in the midst of the large-scale transformation of education at
local, national, and international levels. A related (but not identicial) development is the
growing, (although certainly not new), "crisis" of the humanities characterised by myriad
explanations of just what it is that we do and by contentious justifications for just why do
we do it. As students and scholars of literature and culture, we may wonder how these
two interrelated phenomena came into being and what exactly the study of literatures and
cultures can contribute to their resolution. This module will take on these questions
through a range of approaches: we will consider the origins of the European research
university and its connections to moral philosophy, the relatively recent development of
the study of "English" in the UK and its former colonies, the relationship between higher
education and the twentieth century welfare state, the uses of literary and cultural study
as parts of social movements within and outside of the University, and contemporary
debates about the privatisation and market-rationalisation of education.
Summer Reading:
Sarah Brouillette, "Academic Labor, the Aesthetics of Management, and the Promise of
Autonomous Work." Available at http://nonsite.org/article/academic-labor-the-aestheticsof-management-and-the-promise-of-autonomous-work
Terry Eagleton, "The Rise of English," in Literary Theory: An Introduction. Available at
http://english.illinoisstate.edu/strickland/rsvtxt/eagleton.htm
Federici, Silvia. "African Roots of US University Struggles: From the Occupy Movement
to the Anti-Student-Debt Campaign." Available at
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0112/federici/en
Jeffrey J. Williams, "Deconstructing Academe: The birth of critical university studies."
Available at http://chronicle.com/article/An-Emerging-Field-Deconstructs/130791/
Any of the below would also be worth looking at to prepare for the module. Think about
what areas of study might be of special interest to you for your term papers!
POSSIBLE READING CLUSTERS (bolded texts are recommended for purchase, if
possible)
What are modern universities?
Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties
Humboldt, "Theory of human education"
Peggy Kamuf, "The University Founders"
Bill Readings, The University in Ruins
The Golden Age of the University?
"The Robbins Report": Higher Education: Report of the Committee appointed by the
Prime Minister under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins
Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University
Andrew Belsey on Snibborism (LTP)
Christopher Newfield, The Unmaking of the Public University
Aesthetic Education
Friedrich Schiller, Letter on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Excerpts)
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Excerpts)
David Lloyd and Paul Thomas, Culture and the State (Excerpts)
The Rise of ‘English’ and Literary Study
Terry Eagleton, ‘The Rise of English’
Chris Baldick, The Social Mission of English Criticism (Excerpts)
Macherey and Balibar, "On Literature as an Ideological Form"
Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest :Literary Study and British Rule in India
(Excerpts)
Alison Light, "Feminism and the Literary Critic" (LTP )
Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Excerpts)
Gerald Graff and Michael Warner, eds. The Origins of Literary Studies in America: A
Documentary Anthology (Excerpts)
Canon and Curriculum
Ann DuCille "On Canons: anxious history and the rise of black feminist literary studies"
John Guillory, Cultural Capital (Excerpts)
Cary Nelson, Repression and Recovery (Excerpts)
Students, Study, Debt, Resistance
Polygraph 21: Study, Students, Universities
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study
(Excerpts)
Roderick Ferguson, The Reorder of Things: The University and its Pedagogies of
Minority Difference (Excerpts)
Curtis Marez, "Seeing in the Red: Looking at Student Debt"
Situationist International, On the Poverty of Student Life
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/poverty.html
Kristin Ross, May '68 and Its Afterlives (Excerpts)
The Neoliberal University, Austerity, and Struggle
Jeffrey Nealon, "The associate vice provost in the grey flannel suit"
Zach Schwartz-Weinstein http://what-democracy-looks-like.com/not-your-academyoccupation-and-the-futures-of-student-struggles/
Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (Excerpts)
Piya Chatterjee, ed. The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent
(Excerpts)
"Creative Writing"
Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing
(Excerpts)
Chad Harbach, Ed. MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (Excerpts)
Sarah Brouillette, Literature and the Creative Economy (Excerpts)
Sarah Brouillette, "Academic Labor, the Aesthetics of Management, and the Promise of
Autonomous Work"
Periodicals and Websites:
Reclamations: reclamationsjournal.org
Remaking the University: http://utotherescue.blogspot.co.uk/
LTP (Literature Teaching Politics): 1980-1986, UK.
Chronicle of Higher Education
Times Higher Education
OTHER RECOMMENDED TEXTS
History/Philosophy of Education:
Louis Althusser - "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses"
Jacques Derrida - "The University Without Condition"; "Mochlos, or the Conflict of the
Faculties"; "Where Does a Teaching Body Begin?"
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Samuel Weber, Institution and Interpretation
Ian Hunter, Culture and Government
Robert Scholes, The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline
Neoliberalism:
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, (lecture of 14 March 1979)
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Wendy Brown, ‘Neoliberalism and the end of liberal democracy' (from Edgework)
The Neoliberal University and 'Alternatives':
Ruth Barcan, Academic Life and Labour in the New University
Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit
Jennifer Washburn, University, Inc
Henry Giroux, Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education
Federici, Silvia. "African Roots of US University Struggles: From the Occupy Movement
to the Anti-Student-Debt Campaign"
Federici, Silvia, et al, eds. A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural
Adjustment in African Universities
David Noble, Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education
Chris Lorenz, "If You're So Smart, Why Are You Under Surveillance?"
Ros Gill, "Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of Neoliberal Academia"
Gina Anderson, " Mapping Academic Resistance in the Managerial University"
Colleen Lye and James Vernon, "The Erosion of Faculty Rights"
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/05/19/the-erosion-of-faculty-rights/
Thomas Docherty, For the University
John Holmwood, A Manifesto for the Public University
Michelle A. Masse and Katie Hagan, eds. Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Service in
Language and Literature Workplaces