ENGL 7800 STUDIES IN CRITICAL THEORY
Instructor: Prof. Backscheider
Sections: 1:00-3:40
F
Hours: 3
This seminar will explore the uses of several
groundbreaking, recent methods of analyzing literature
and its place in society. The time will be almost equally divided among performance
theory,
reception theory, and representation theory. Each method contributes to the
practice of the others
and, although the seminar is organized in three parts, there will be obvious
cross-fertilizations. Briefly, performance theory provides the tools to reconstruct
a theatrical production, the conditions
that shaped it (such as members of a theatrical company and degrees of censorship),
and the work
that the production performed in the culture. Reception theory allows the tracing
of a writer's, a
text's, or a production's reception and reputation over time. In studying how
these things changed,
developing attitudes toward, for instance, women writers, war, and sexuality
can be mapped.
Representation theory, which benefits from an understanding of the first two,
is the study of images,
who has the power to create and control them, how they have been resisted,
and concerns itself with
existing and developing categories through which human beings understand the
world and make
judgments. Although the writers, authors, and performances we will use as case
studies come from
the long eighteenth century (1640-1830), the methods are transferrable to any
period of literature.
No special knowledge of the literary period is necessary for success in this
seminar.
This is a collaborative, heavily discussion-driven seminar. Among the theorists
that we will read are
Rudolf Arnheim, Richard Helgerson, E.H. Gombrich, Stuart Hall, bell hooks,
Naomi Schor, and
Joseph Roach, and we will work with drama, the novel, and poetry. Several short
reports, a finalpaper (18-25 pages) with presentation
of results will be required.