Introduction to Graduate Study (410-0-20)

Instructors

Justin Mann

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Wed 10:00AM - 12:50PM

Overview of class

This course will offer students an introduction to current theories and methods in literary studies. Students will grapple with key questions and debates that guide research and teaching in the humanities in the twenty-first century. The course begins with an inquiry into the history of the institution, the field(s) of literary studies, broadly conceived, and the questions of center and periphery that remain central to our work. We will then shift to an investigation of contemporary keywords guiding literary studies in the present.

Foregrounding the disorienting effects of the literary, the course begins by examining the history of the discipline and its institutions, including shifting definitions of our objects of study; the histories of exclusion and inclusion that accompany these shifts; and, issues of canonicity, especially as they relate to empire building both within and outside the academy. Then, we will explore the methods of literary critique, thinking about what is at stake in the objects we study and the ways we choose to read them. Finally, we will engage with challenges to the traditional organizing principles of our field, including its archives, geographies, periodization.

Class Materials (Required)

Texts include:

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish 978-0241386019
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark 978-0679745426
Chris Eng, Extravagant Camp 978-1479834662
Faith Barter, Black Pro Se 978-1469685977
Sarah Dimick, Unseasonable 978-0231209250
Maia Gil'Adí, Doom Patterns 978-1478031208
Noémie Ndiaye, Scripts of Blackness 978-1512826074