U2 sums up pretty well a pervasive sense of crisis that currently surrounds the idea of literary or cultural "work" as well as the theoretical inquiries regarding otherness that it has occasioned. This course is designed to initiate a familiarity with some defining issues, key thinkers, and theoretical texts that have shaped the critical investigation of literature and literariness in the quarter century since the publication of Michel Foucault's Order of Things (1966) and Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1967).

This course will cover texts and vocabularies of such thinkers as Roland Barthes, Homi Bhabha, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Terry Eagleton, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Jean-François Lyotard, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and others. We shall also develop some familiarity with some of the major trends in late twentieth-century literary theory such as feminism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, Marxist criticism, postcolonial theory, psychoanalytic criticism, cultural studies and queer theory.

We shall try to understand why critical thinking has witnessed the progressive problematization and critique of all conceptual and foundational vocabularies, including such indispensable terms as "text," "sign" "writing" "meaning" "identity" "representation" "subjectivity" "self" "other" and also, why literary studies has been bedeviled by these inquiries. In addition to becoming familiar with the influential theorists and critical genealogies of the late twentieth century, I hope to make the pathos of theory a particular theme of this course.

Introduction to Critical Theory does not assume any prior knowledge of the authors or texts mentioned above; however, those of you familiar with these figures will know that this is not a course for the faint-hearted. The readings are often difficult and demand close and careful reading, but if you're looking for a challenge....

This course will require active class participation, short class presentations, two short papers during the semester as well as a final term paper (approx. 10 pages).