|
COURSE ARCHIVE
Annual Class Photos:
LITS3303
LITS2307
Please make sure, when registering at Cave Hill
Online (CHOL), to change the e-mail address listed under Personal
Information to the one you normally use.
(The Computer Centre
automatically assigns you a cavehill.uwi.edu address of which you may
not even be aware and for which reason you might not receive emails
which I send.)
|
This course shares a website with its
undergraduate equivalent
LITS3303 Modern Critical Theory.
THUMBNAIL DESCRIPTION
This course introduces students to several
schools of Continental philosophy and critical theory (chosen from
Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Phenomenology) as well as Feminist,
Post-colonial and African American thinkers who have engaged with these
schools.
DETAILLED DESCRIPTION
This semester, we will focus on
three overlapping Continental schools of thought known as
Phenomenology, Existentialism and Hermeneutics
as well as several Feminist, Post-colonial
and African American theorists who have engaged with these schools.
We will begin by exploring
general philosophical issues concerning the nature of reality, identity,
knowledge and language advanced by the school in question. We will then
investigate its main critical tenets and interpretative strategies. We will explore in particular what, if
anything, its major theorists have to say about the following issues:
Representation: the nature of the relationship between the
(literary) work and the world;
Audience: the nature of the relationship between the
audience and the (literary) work;
(Literary) Form: the nature of the formal
structure and genre of (literary) works;
Authorship: the nature of the relationship between the author
and his / her (literary) work; and
(Literary) History, Intertextuality,
Canonicity: the nature of the relationship
that links (literary) works to each other and the wider soci-historical
context.
To these ends, we will also compare the views of key
Continental thinkers with seminal Feminist, Post-colonial
and African American interventions on the same topics. For
example, we may compare Sartres Existentialism and Humanism with appropriate
excerpts from De Beauvoirs The Other Sex and Fanons The
Wretched of the Earth.
Through close examination of practical illustrations of
these theories (especially with reference to Post-colonial literatures),
students will also be encouraged to apply the paradigms discussed in their own
critical writings. LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the semester, students should
have:
- become acquainted with the views of key thinkers in the
Continental tradition (e.g. Hegel, Heidegger) as well as those of
Feminist, Post-colonial and African American theorists who have
engaged with these schools;
- acquired a more nuanced and complex view of key concepts, debates and issues in the field,
including:
- Representation,
- the Audience,
- Literary Form
(structure, genre, etc.),
- Authorship,
- Literary History, Intertextuality,
Canonicity,
- Literature,
- Wider Philosophical Topics:
- the nature of reality,
- the nature of human
identity,
- the nature of knowledge,
- the nature of language,
- the
nature of human society and polity;
- acquired the ability to apply the insights of literary theory
to the study of works.
PREREQUISITES
None, though a
knowledge of the fundamentals of philosophy and critical theory from
the undergraduate level is assumed.
ASSESSMENT
Seminar participation and / or presentation(s)
and / or response(s):
40%
Research Paper (15-20
double-spaced pages; topic to be approved by course director): 60%
|