subject to slight change: check back here weekly for changes and updates
CTT = Critical Theory Today
| Week 1 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 8/27 | Introductions | Emerson, “American Scholar” (linked) + begin to read course syllabus and materials available on Creative Reading blog. | What does it mean to be a scholar who studies English? What critical practices do you bring with you, and what practices do you want to develop? What is creative reading? | |
| TH 8/29 | Thinking About Critical Theory and the Humanities | CTT Ch. 1 + Spivak, “Thinking about the Humanities” | Commonplace [description of assignment] |
| Week 2 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 9/3 | New Criticism | CTT Ch. 5 | Commonplace | |
| TH 9/5 | Critical Practice: Close Reading | T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
+ Cleanth Brooks, “History Without Footnotes” [You should also read Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” discussed by Brooks] |
Further Reading (Draft in class, final version posted by Friday noon) | Campus: Novelist Rebecca Makkai at Lit House (4.30 pm) |
| Week 3 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 9/10 | Structuralism and Deconstruction | CTT Ch. 7 & 8 (BEGIN EARLY) | Commonplace | |
| TH 9/12 | Critical Practice: Reading Signs and Playing the Text | Barthes, “The World of Wrestling” +
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Further Reading |
| Week 4 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 9/17 | Reader Response | CTT Ch. 6 + Fish, Surprised by Sin (excerpt) | Commonplace | |
| TH 9/19 | Critical Practice at WAC: Dr. Katie Charles |
Professor Charles, “‘Meeting Me’: Charles Dickens’s Moments of Self-Encounter” [optional: the Dickens texts Dr. Charles discusses are chapter Chapter VII and IX of this longer text, if you want to read the primary text] |
Further Reading | Large Group meeting Smith 221 |
| Week 5 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 9/24 | Psychoanalytic Criticism | CTT Ch. 2 | Commonplace | |
| TH 9/26 | Critical Practice: Affect and the Body | Lougy, “Filth, Liminality, and Abjection in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House”
[optional additional reading: Ngai, “Moody Subjects / Projectile Objects” |
No Further Reading due. Instead post to Creative Reading (by Friday noon) your initial “Elevator Speech” for a potential project. Identify your X,Y, Z variables (however hypothetical: Topic, Problem or Question, Response or Hypothesis), a critical theory you might call upon, and one Critical article that might be of use [provide citation and where you located the article]. Total: 250 words. | Professor Knight at Lit House, “Agents Wanted: Selling Racial Uplift at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” (4.30)
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| Week 6 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 10/1 | New Historicism | CTT Ch. 9; Buurma & Heffernan, “The Classroom in the Canon” | Commonplace | |
| TH 10/3 | Critical Practice at WAC: Dr. Courtney Rydel [Smith 221] | Further Reading | Campus: Production of “Or” by Liz Duffy Adams on campus |
| Week 7 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 10/8 | African American and Critical Race | CTT Ch. 11 + Fleissner, “Earth-Eating, Addiction, Nostalgia” | Commonplace (No Further Reading this week) | |
| TH 10/10 | Fall Break: No Class |
| Week 8 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 10/15 | Postcolonial Criticism | CTT Ch. 12 + Nixon, “Slow Violence” | Commonplace (on Postcolonial) | |
| TH 10/17 | Critical Practice: Doing Research, pt. 1 | Selections from The Craft of Research
and They Say/I Say |
No Further Reading. Instead update and post by Friday 5pm a revised Elevator Pitch (including another critical article that you might use) | Visit Miller Library
Campus: Playwright R. Eric Thomas at Lit House (4.30) |
| Week 9 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 10/22 | Feminist, Gender, Sexuality | CTT Ch. 4 + Halberstam, from *Trans | Commonplace | |
| TH 10/24 | Critical Practice: Doing Distant Reading | Cecire, “Ways of Not Reading Gertrude Stein” | Annotation due (submitted to Canvas by Friday 5 pm) |
| Week 10 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 10/29 | Marxist Criticism | CTT Ch. 3 Marxist Criticism | Commonplace | |
| TH 10/31 | Critical Practice: the politics of art and criticism | Required: Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Optional additional reading: Nealon, “The Poetic Case” |
Further Reading on Marxism [or if you wish, you can go back to Gender, Postcolonial, or African American] posted to CR by 5 pm Friday |
| Week 11 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 11/5 | Critical Practice: Audience and the “Public” | Readings by Barker & Murray; Neem; and Smith | Commonplace: note characteristics of these forms of writing for a larger public | Sophie Kerr Residency: Jason Fagone, Narrative Journalism [Tuesday and Wednesday events] |
| TH 11/7 | Literary Action (presentations) | Stokes, “Novel Commonplaces” | Abstract due in Canvas Friday 5 pm. Bring a draft to class |
| Week 12 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 11/12 | Critical Practice: Doing Research, Part 2 | Research and Read for your Literature Review | Work on Literature Review; prepare to share in class an update on your research. | Campus: Poet Monica Ferrell, Lit House [Wednesday 4.30] |
| TH 11/14 | Critical Practice: Doing the Literature Review | Read research for your literature review | Literature Review draft due in class (upload to Canvas). Draft should include at least half of the required sources so you can get useful feedback. We workshop, have access to draft in class. Peer response to Drafts will be due by Friday 5 pm. |
| Week 13 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 11/19 | Writing an Article: So What? Who Cares?–Clarifying and Complicating the Stakes. | Hayot, “Against Periodization” | Work on Literature Review; prepare to share a critical model (from your research or course reading) that offers a model of a strong SO WHAT? | Campus: First Year Reading (7 pm) |
| TH 11/21 | Writing an Article: Further Thoughts on Structure and Style | “Revising Style” (chapter 16 The Craft of Research) + Topic Sentences/Signposting (discussion from Harvard)
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Seminar Project: Literature Review (revised) due Friday. Bring latest draft to class for editing |
| Week 14 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 11/26 | Critical Practice: Translating our ideas and skills | Edmundson, “Against Readings” | Prepare to present to class your Keyword wikipedia entry: the most important or interesting keyword, how we should understand it, how you might use this keyword in your scholarship | Reviewing keywords and concepts |
| TH 11/28 | Thanksgiving |
| Week 15 | Class | Reading | Writing | Conversation |
| T 12/3 | Critical Practice: the Proposal | Bring to class your updated/revised abstract + ideas/questions for your Proposal | ||
| TH 12/5 | Final class: meet in Underwood Lobby at 1 for celebration with Dr. Gillin | Submit draft of proposal to Canvas by Friday noon; provide peer feedback in Canvas no later than Sunday evening | Meet with me for final conferences this week |
Seminar Project: Final version of Proposal due by Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 11.59 pm.
Creative Reading 