Course details

Name: ENGL - 300

Title: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO ENGLISH

Section: 05

Semester: Spring - 2023

Credits: 3

Description:
This course takes up the nature of literary study: its subject matter, methods, and underlying goals. We expand our ways of reading, interpreting, responding to, and writing about texts; we trace the difference between literary criticism and theory, and we ask a lot of questions: how does literary study reflect issues of political power? How and why do mainstream critical approaches change over time? Against that mainstream, how do we develop independent habits of thought, research, discussion, and analytic writing? By the end of the course, we understand how a single text can have multiple meanings depending on the theoretical lenses we choose. We recognize that interpretive strategies are constructed, learned, and chosen. We learn to recognize the assumptions behind those perspectives, to study and dismantle the myths about them, to respect, intellectually and ethically, different theoretical approaches to literature, and finally, to actively reflect on ourselves as writers, thinkers, and readers. Our laboratory texts will be two Shakespearean plays that have invited some of the widest (wildest?) ranges of theoretical "digging." The main questions throughout our study will be "How?" and "Why?"--and maybe also "Why not?" Requirements include three carefully written and responsive essays and active class discussions.

Last updated on 2022-11-11 By Liebler Naomi (lieblern)

Schedule: Wednesday From 10:45 am To 1:15 pm

Graduation requirements:

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Teaching Faculty: Liebler Naomi (lieblern)

Is course canceled: No