ENGL 752 Literary Theory for the Teacher and Scholarly Writer

Dr. Kenneth Sherwood

M-F 10:15-12:15

(Ph.D. students only)

The everyday life of the teacher and critic involves the practices of reading, writing, interpretation, and commentary. In that they constitute a routine, such practices may come to seem so natural that they become invisible to us. Critics of everyday life aim to alter the relationship to the everyday by rendering the familiar strange or defamiliarizing it. This course presumes one virtue of theory to be its capacity to invite a similar process of defamiliarization in readers, leading to renewed self-consciousness and new practices.

Through close reading of texts associated with some of the main schools of critical theory (structuralism, marxism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, reception, identity), seminar participants engage in a very selective survey of essays and essay-length texts. We gain familiarity with the fundamental practices of particular schools and, at the same time, seek to establish connections through the lenses of such recurring concepts as the unconscious, structure, culture, ideology, gender and ethnicity. Students may expect to develop a facility at "trying on" and practicing within a handful of paradigms, rather than acquiring mastery of a single "method" or achieving an encyclopedic coverage. This should be valuable preparation for future research and aid in the development of a theorized pedagogy.

Last summer's syllabus and related materials are available for consultation on the web, where you can anticipate an updated page for this summer. Course texts: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (ed. Leitch et al.); Critical Terms for Literary Study (ed. McLaughlin and Lentricchia).  In addition, a selection of literary texts will be available through IUP E-reserve.   Requirements will include active oral participation, posting of online discussion questions, two experiments (pedagogical micro-lesson, performative text), and 15-20 pages of critical writing.   Students who have the opportunity to prepare through advance reading would be well advised to read Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction.  Contact Sherwood@iup.edu for more information; see webpages for updates: http://www.chss.iup.edu/sherwood/ 

NOTE: To ensure that there is space in the course for all new Ph.D. students, it is being listed as a closed section.  We have opened spaces in the class for all new summers-only Ph.D. students.  To register, these students need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter the CRN, which is 30963.  Other Ph.D. students (academic-year Literature & Criticism, or summers-only or academic-year Composition & TESOL) wishing to take the course this summer should contact the program director, Karen Dandurand (karenddd@iup.edu).