Week 10

Tuesday, October 23

• Gates.  “Introduction to The Signifying Monkey: A theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism”
• Hayles. “Speech, Writing, Code: Three Worldviews”
• hooks. “Essentialism and Experience”
• Christian, Barbara. "The Race for Theory" 
• Reflect on the class so far

Thursday, October 25

• Stevens. Chapter 7
• Foucault. “Panopticism” and “Introduction to Discipline and Punish”
• Hughes."Note on Commerical Theatre"

Mini Essay 5 of 5 

Due Saturday, October 27

Prompts TBA

Week 11

Tuesday, October 30

• Continue discussion from last week
• In-Class: some discussion of Digital Humanities, Book History, and Material Culture

Thursday, November 1

• Stevens Chapter 8: Twentieth and Twenty-first Century political approaches; Focus on Karl Marx 181-185
• Marx and Engels “from Manifesto of the Communist Party”
• Marx “From the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts” and “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof”

Essay 3 of 3 

Due Saturday, November 3

Prompts TBA

Week 12

Tuesday, November 6

• Kafka. “The Metamorphosis”
• In Class Exercise (not required reading beforehand): Williams. “Keywords”
• Veblen. Excerpt from The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions

Thursday, November 8

• Stevens Chapter 8: Review Early Marxist Theory and Criticism 186-93
• Required Viewing: Lang. Metropolis (1927)

Week 13

Tuesday, November 13

• Stevens Chapter 8 Review Postcolonial and Ethnic Studies 194-202
• Excerpts from:
  • Anzaldua. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.
  • Bhabha. “ On Mimicry and Man”
  • DuBois. Souls of Black Folk
  • Fee, “Writing Orality: Interpreting Literature in English by Aboriginal Writers in North America, Australia  and  New Zealand"
  • McKenzie. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts
  • Ngugi. “The Language of African Literature”
  • Said. Orientalism

Thursday, November 15

• Stevens Chapter 8: Review Feminist Theory and Criticism. Sexuality, and Queer Theory as well as Disability and Environmental Studies 203-201
• Crenshaw. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color"
• Puar. “‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’ Intersectionality, Assemblage, and Affective Politics”
• Sedgwick. “Introduction to Between Men”
• Walker. “In Search of our Mothers Gardens”

Week 14

Tuesday, November 20

• Stevens Chapter 9: Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Psychoanalytic Approaches
• Freud. “From Ego and Id” and “from On the Interpretation of Dreams”
• Cixous. “The Laugh of the Medusa.”
• Lacan. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’” and “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”
• Required Viewing: Hulme. Forbbidden Planet (1956)

Thursday, November 22

No Class Today. We are on break.

Week 15

Tuesday, November 27

• Required Viewing:
  • Peele. Get Out (2017)
  • Pontecorvo. Battle for Algiers. (1967)
    • Optional: Review earlier Fanon texts and “Algeria Unveiled”

Thursday, November 29

• Closing Discussion.
• Unessay workshop; bring in the work in progress

Unessay

Tuesday, December 11