Ballif, Michelle
TR 2 :20 PM
Park Hall 144
This course will investigate the principles and practices of contemporary literary criticism. We will focus our attention on several major approaches within modern and contemporary literary criticism and the theories that sustain them. Our examination of these various approaches will focus not only on understanding the methodologies of each—and the application of each, but also on identifying what is at stake in any given reading. That is, by inquiring into a text's meaning, we will interrogate the ways and means whereby the act of literary criticism reproduces and institutionalizes as well as challenges and transforms cultural values.
Texts we will use:
Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today (3rd ed.)
Astra Taylor’s Examined Life: Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers
Julian Wolfreys' New Critical Thinking: Criticism to Come
Any edition of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises