Assignments

English 3900 Critical Approaches to Literature, Fall 2017

TR 2:00-3:15PM, Arts & Sciences 340A

Interpretation Survey

Spend a few moments writing all the questions you ask of every work of literature you read. We'll post your questions here, and throughout the semester we'll compare them to the questions the theorists we're reading would ask.

 

Here are the questions our class asks:

• Context: Why am I interpreting the work? Who asked me to do this and under what context? Is there an an overview or summary of the work?
• Author: Who is the author? What is the author's demographic information? Why did she make the choices she made? When was the work written and how might that have affected how it was written? How are the author's personal life experiences and emotions expressed in the work? What message is the author trying to convey? How much research did the author do? How long did it take to write? How do the author's ideas relate to the characters'? How do the author's views match her society's views?
• Reader: How do the character's or speaker's experiences compare to mine? How can I apply what I've learned from the work to my own experiences? Is there anything I like about the piece? How does the work speak to me?
• Character: How do (or if) characters grow and change? What are the motivations behind character's behaviors and decisions? Do they have a dark side that they accept or reject? How do family and childhood affect character?
• Conflict: Is there an individual vs society conflict?
• Setting: What is the setting? Does the work reflect the experiences of a culture?
• Imagery: What is the imagery?
• Symbol: What do the colors and patterns of the work mean
• Tone: What is the tone?
• Theme: What is the main theme? Are there multiple valid interpretations? What is significant or important about the work?
• Genre: What genre is this?
• Literary Quality: Are characters written consistently? Is the story well-written? Does the story have a unique plot or original characters?
• Feminism: How are women portrayed?
• Ableism: How is disability portrayed?

Here are the questions the theorists we're reading would ask any work of literature:

• Formalist Criticisms: Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, and Russian Formalism
  • Overview: What single interpretation of the text best establishes its organic unity from? In other words, how do the text's formal elements, and the multiple meanings those elements produce, all work together to support the theme, or overall meaning, of the work? Remember, a great work will have a theme of universal human significance. (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 150)
  • Cleanth Brooks, "Formalist Critics": Heeding the formal relations within the textual object while avoiding author biography, reader affect, and moralism, what ideas does the literary work deal with; in other words, what does the work mean?
  • William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy": Disregarding external, private evidence, what internal structure and public evidence points to the meaning of the work?
  • Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique": How does the difficult and complicated, the formed and tortuous, literary work defamiliarize our habituated, automatist perception of objects and ideas?
  • Sean O'Sullivan, "Broken on Purpose: Poetry, Serial Television, and the Season" : In what ways is the season of the television series structured like a sonnet, employing a dialectical tension of linear and circular patterns and of measures and countermeasures, and what is the meaning of the season, especially juxtaposed to the meaning of other seasons in the series?
• Psychoanalysis
  • Overview: How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work? That is, what unconscious motives are operating in the main character(s); what core issues are thereby illustrated; and how do these core issues structure or inform the piece?
    • Are there any oedipal dynamics—or any other family dynamics—at work here? That is, is it possible to relate a character's patterns of adult behaviour to early experiences in the family as represented in the story? How do these patterns of behavior and family dynamics operate and what do they reveal?
    • How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, regression, crisis, projection, fear of or fascination with death, sexuality—which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior—as a primary indicator of psychological identity, or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
    • In what ways can we view a literary work as analogous to a dream? That is, how might recurrent or striking dream symbols reveal the ways in which the narrator or speaker is projecting his or her unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts onto other characters, onto the setting, or onto the events portrayed?
    • What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author? Psychoanalyzing an author in this [psychobiographical] manner is a difficult undertaking, and our analysis must be carefully derived by examining the author's entire corpus as well as letters, diaries, and any other biographical material available. Certainly, a single literary work can provide but a very incomplete picture.
    • What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader? Or what might a critical trend suggest about the psychological motives of a group of readers?
    • In what ways does the text seem to reveal characters' emotion investments in the Symbolic Order, the Imaginary Order, the Mirror Stage, or what Lacan calls objet petit a? Does any part of the text seem to represent Lacan's notion of the Real? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 38-9)
  • Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams: If there is a dream in the work, what is the manifest content of the dream, and what might the latent content (of repressed wishes and traumas) be?
    • "The Uncanny": Does the work have an object that is alien yet seems familiar? From that object, what repressed knowledge returns despite and because of the character's anxiety regarding unconscious fears or desires?
    • "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego": With whom does the main character unconsciously identfy with and take as an ideal?
  • Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience": What mirror or image establishes and provides a character her sense of self? With whom or what does she identify?
  • D. W. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena": Do the characters have conflicts with their relationships between inner psychic reality and external reality that might be traced to transitional objects and transitional experiences? Do the characters have any psychopathologies (addiction, fetishism, pseudologia fantastica and thieving) that can be traced back to their maladaptive relationships with transitional objects and transitional experiences?
  • Julia Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language: How do the underlying drives of the text and character break through and transform the conventional symbolic order of the work?
  • Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Does the book shatter linear unity? Does the work deterritorialize (unbind and unbound) traditional Freudian circuits of desire?
  • Lisa Hinrichsen, "Trauma Studies and the Literature of the US South": Does the work include individuals or society traumatized in such a way that their individual memory or collective history is denied or dissociated, resulting in a literary aesthetic of disrupted narrative and representability crisis?
• Historical Criticisms: Marxism, New Historicism, and Cultural Materialism
  • Marxism Overview: Does the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist, or classist values?
    • How might the work be seen as a critique of capitalism, imperialism, or classism?
    • Does the work in some ways support a Marxist agenda but in other ways (perhaps unintentionally) support a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda? In other words, is the work ideologically conflicted?
    • How does the literary work reflect (intentionally or not) the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written and/or the time in which it is set, and what do those condtions reveal about the history of class struggle?
    • How might the work be seen as a critique of organized religion? That is, how does religion function in the text to keep a character or characters from realizing and resisting socioeconomic oppression? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 68)
    • How does the context and content of the work relate to the social-class status of the author?
    • How does the literary genre relate to the social period which produced it?
    • How is the literary form determined by social, economic, and political circumstance? (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory 161)
  • New Historicism Overview: How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical and cultural texts from the same period, for example, penal codes, birthing practices, educational priorities, the treatment of children under the law, other art forms (including popular art forms), attitudes toward sexuality, and the like? That is, taken as part of a "thick description" of a given culture at a given point in history, what does this literary work add to our tentative understanding of human experience in that particular time and place, including the ways in which individual identity shapes and is shaped by cultural institutions?
    • How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which the work has been interpreted? Put another way, how does the text promote ideologies that support and/or undermine the prevailing power structures of the time and place in which it was written and/or interpreted?
    • Using rhetorical analysis (analysis of a text’s purpose and the stylistic means by which it tries to achieve that purpose), what does the literary text add to our understanding of the ways in which literary and nonliterary discourses (such as political, scienti!c, economic, and educational theories) have influenced, overlapped with, and competed with one another at specific historical moments? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 300)
    • How does juxtaposing literary and non-literary texts aid the meaning of literary works?
    • How are state power and patriarchal structures maintained in literary and non-literary texts? (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory 172-3)
  • Cultural Materialism Overview: What does the literary work suggest about the experience of groups of people who have been ignored, underrepresented, or misrepresented by traditional history (for example, laborers, prisoners, women, people of color, lesbians and gay men, children, the insane, and so on)? Keep in mind that new historical and cultural criticism usually include attention to the intersection of the literary work with nonliterary discourses prevalent in the culture in which the work emerged and/or in the cultures in which it has been interpreted and often focus on such issues as the circulation of power and the dynamics of personal and group identity.
    • How has the work's reception by literary critics and the reading public—including the reception at its point of origin, changing responses to the work over time, and its possible future relationship with its audience—been shaped by and shaped the culture in which that reception occurred? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 300)
    • What is the context of power and exploitation in which the literary text emerged?
    • What history is lost, and what history can be recovered in reading the literary text in the context of original and contemporary power and exploitation?
    • What are the dominant (conservative) social, political, and religious assumptions in the culture that created the literary work that emerge in the literary work? (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory 180-1)
  • Karl Marx, from The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: How do the productive and social conditions depicted in the work of literature estrange the characters from other people and their own inner worlds as well as limit their independence and freedom?
  • from The German Ideology: Describe the character's consciousness, which is produced by "the material activities and material intercourse of men" in the literary work.
  • Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History": How does the author and/or the work of literature conceive of history? Is it universal (for everyone) or does it note particular class tensions in who owns the past and thereby controls the present? Does the work of literature go with the conventional flow of historicist history as progressive, or does the work "brush history against the grain"?
  • Pierre Bourdieu, "Structures and the Habitus": What social structures in the setting of the work condition the characters' thought, resulting in the impossibility of challenging those social structures?
  • Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses": What ideological state apparatuses (religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade-union, media, cultural) in or of the literary work cause an imaginary relationship of the characters or readers to their real conditions of existence?
  • Michel Foucault, "Right of Death and Power over Life": How do social structures and institutions administer, regulate, and discipline characters' lives, for instance in terms of sexuality? What are the institutions of power and what procedural techniques do they deploy over the body to control subjectivity in the literary work?
  • Louis Montrose, "New Historicisms": How does the literary interpretation of the literary text relate to the historical interpretation of the literary text's time period? How is the interpretation of literary text and its historical context affected by the critic's ideological position? Are there ways in which the characters in the work, the author of the work, or the critic resist the dominant ideologies of their respective discursive networks?
• Feminism and Gender Studies
  • Overview: What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? How are women portrayed? How do these portrayals relate to the gender issues of the period in which the novel was written or is set? In other words, does the work reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology?
    • What does the work suggest about the ways in which race, class, and/or other cultural factors intersect with gender in producing women’s experience?
    • How is the work "gendered"? That is, how does it seem to deine femininity and masculinity? Does the characters' behavior always conform to their assigned genders? Does the work suggest that there are genders other than feminine and masculine? What seems to be the work's attitude toward the gender(s) it portrays?
    • What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy and/or about the ways in which women’s situations in the world—economic, political, social, or psychological—might be improved?
    • What does the history of the work’s reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operations of patriarchy? Has the literary work been ignored or neglected in the past? Why? Or, if recognized in the past, is the work ignored or neglected now? Why?
    • What does the work suggest about women’s creativity?
    • What might an examination of the author’s style contribute to the ongoing efforts to delineate a speci!cally feminine form of writing (for example, écriture féminine)?
    • What role does the work play in terms of women’s literary history and literary tradition? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 119-20)
  • Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women": Describe the sex/gender system in the literary work, especially with regard to how it does or does not oppress women. How do the relations of product compare to the relations of sexuality? Are women exchanged as gifts? Is there a double standard regarding male and female sexuality and psychologicial identity?
  • Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa": How does the text challenge the phallogocentric stereotype of the woman as Dark Continent; deconstruct both the masculine/feminine, mind/body, whole/lack, self/other dichotomies; and write possibilities of self?
  • Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination": How does the character performatively fabricate and construct her (gender) identity? Describe the character's psychic excess that is systematically denied by the social (gender) norms? Does the psychic excess erupt and cause a struggle between individual and heteronormativity?
  • Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts": Is characters' work, particularly women's labor, in the literary text gendered and hierarchical (for example, feminized and invisible)? In what ways do the gender, sexuality, race, and class of the characters intersect? Do the characters resist and oppose global capitalism's processes of exploitation and domination?
• Lesbian Criticism, Gay Criticism, and Queer Theory
  • Overview: What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in, for example, the work’s thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
    • What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer work? What does the work contribute to the ongoing attempt to de!ne a uniquely lesbian, gay, or queer poetics, literary tradition, or canon?
    • What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
    • How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are apparently heterosexual? (This analysis is usually done for works by writers who lived at a time when openly queer, gay, or lesbian texts would have been considered unacceptable, or it is done in order to help reformulate the sexual orientation of a writer formerly presumed heterosexual.)
    • How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer presence? That is, does the work have an unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer desire or conflict that it submerges (or that heterosexual readers have submerged)?
    • What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) of heterosexism? Is the work (consciously or unconsciously) homophobic? Does the work critique, celebrate, or blindly accept heterosexist values?
    • How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual “identity,” that is, the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories de!ned by the words homosexual and heterosexual? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 341-2)
  • Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence": How do the cultural institutions portrayed in the work, like patriarchy and heterosexism, control characters' sexuality? How does the work portray women-centered activities and sexual identities?
  • Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from Epistemology of the Closet: In what ways does the sexuality of the characters in the literary work challenge the heterosexual/homosexual binary in general and object-choice in particular? In what ways are the characters' sexuality distinct from their sex and gender? Where does the characters' sexuality fall on the continuum from intimacy to sociality?
  • Jasbir Puar, "'I Would Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess': Becoming Intersectional in Assemblage Theory": In what ways is the identity of the characters in the literary work exist not only at an intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality but also as an assemblage or arrangement that is in motion and in the process of becoming?
  • Jóse Esteban Muñoz, from Cruising Utopia, "Introduction" and "Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism": If the literary work includes gay characters and gay themes, do they pragmatically and rationalistically argue for assimilation and normalization of homosexuality, or do they idealistically and revolutionarily advocate for a future queer collectivist utopia?
• Postcolonial Criticism
  • Overview: How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression? Special attention is often given to those areas where political and cultural oppression overlap, as it does, for example, in the colonizers’ control of language, communication, and knowledge in colonized countries.
    • What does the text reveal about the problematics of postcolonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
    • What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anticolonialist resistance? For example, what does the text suggest about the ideological, political, social, economic, or psychological forces that promote or inhibit resistance? How does the text suggest that resistance can be achieved and sustained by an individual or a group?
    • What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference—the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity—in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live? Othering might be one area of analysis here.
    • How does the text respond to or comment on the characters, topics, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work? Examine how the postcolonial text reshapes our previous interpretations of a canonical text.
    • Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different postcolonial populations? One might compare, for example, the literatures of native peoples from different countries whose land was invaded by colonizers, the literatures of white settler colonies in different countries, or the literatures of different populations in the African diaspora. Or one might compare literary works from all three of these categories in order to investigate, for example, if the experience of colonization creates some common elements of cultural identity that outweigh differences in race and nationality.
    • How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology through its representation of colonization and/or its inappropriate silence about colonized peoples? Does the text teach us anything about colonialist or anticolonialist ideology? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 431-2)
  • Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness": How does the literary work portray a continent or race in general, especially a Western work representing Africa and Africans? Does the work create an image that others and challenges the humanity and equality of native peoples? Consider the psychology of the author and her society that engenders an imagination full of such stereotypes.
  • Edward Said, "Orientalism": Does the literary work reflect Western cultural hegemony, in other words does it engender an ideology and create a system of stereotypical representations in which its own discursive position the dominates the knowledge created in and by the so-called inferior East?
  • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism": If the literary text is feminist, does it advocate simply for female agency and individuality, or does it also explore feminine cultural identity over against imperialist oppression?
  • Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora": What does the work reveal about the ruptures, discontinuities, and differences due to the history of trauma, colonialism, and other? How does the work portray hybrid cultural identities in the process of becoming?
  • Arjun Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy": If the literary work portrays global cultural flows, how does it do so in terms of movement of ethnic peoples, media portrayal of cultural reality, technological fluidity of borders, financial disruption, and state ideologies? What are the disjunctures betweeen ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes?

In Class Activities

1. Practice Interpretation Exercise

To prepare for the collaborative interpretation exercise assignment, let's divide into groups and practice the exercises in Lois Tyson's "Using Concepts from New Critical Theory."

 

Here are your groups:

1. "Appreciating the Importance of Tradition: Interpreting 'Everyday Use'" (45-51): Celestial Beltman, Rebeka Garner, Zak Obeidat
2. "Recognizing the Presence of Death: Interpreting 'A Rose for Emily'" (51-7): Abby Bishop, Thomas Lanthripp, Allie Owens
3. "Understanding the Power of Alienation: Interpreting 'The Battle Royal'" (57-63): Anna Check, Julia Lee, Will Smith
4. "Respecting the Importance of Nonconformity: Interpreting 'Don't Explain'" (63-9): Sophia DiCarlo, Olivia Martin, Michael Vaughan
5. "Responding to the Challenge of the Unknown: Interpreting 'I started Early—Took my Dog'" (69-74): Heather Evans, Julia Melvin

On your own outside of class, individual students will

1. read your assigned literary work,
2. read your assigned Tyson exercise, and
3. find textual evidence for a potential essay on the literary work using the Tyson exercise prompts.

As a group in class on Thursday, group members will

1. combine your textual evidence,
2. compose a thesis for a potential essay on the literary work using the Tyson exercise prompts,
3. create an outline for a potential essay, and
4. share their thesis and outline with the class.

2. Psychoanalytic Interpretation Exercise

Since the practice interpretation exercise on formalism helped us understand how to apply that critical approach, let's do the same process for psychoanalytic criticism by dividing into groups and practicing the exercises in Lois Tyson's "Using Concepts from New Critical Theory."

 

Here are your groups:

1. Walker: "Analyzing Characters' Dysfunctional Behavior: Interpreting 'Everyday Use'": Anna Check, Rebeka Garner, Michael Vaughan
2. Faulkner: "Exploring a Characters' Insanity: Interpreting 'A Rose for Emily'": Abby Bishop, Heather Evans, Julia Lee, Olivia Martin
3. Dickinson: "Understanding Dream Images in Literature: Interpreting 'I started Early—Took my Dog": Zak Obeidat, Will Smith
4. Gomez: "Recognizing a Character's Self-Healing: Interpreting 'Don't Explain'": Sophia DiCarlo, Thomas Lanthripp, Julia Melvin, Allie Owens

On your own outside of class, individual students will

1. read your assigned literary work,
2. read your assigned Tyson exercise, and
3. find textual evidence for a potential essay on the literary work using the Tyson exercise prompts.

As a group in class on Tuesday, group members will

1. combine your textual evidence,
2. compose a thesis for a potential essay on the literary work using the Tyson exercise prompts,
3. create an outline for a potential essay, and
4. share their thesis and outline with the class.

Hurricane Irma Make Up Work

In order to make up for the class missed due to Hurricane Irma, you will compose a thesis and outline for a interpretation exercise essay from Lois Tyson's Using Critical Theory and submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Make Up. This assignment counts toward your attendance record. Here is the schedule:

• Thursday, October 26: Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Theory (choose any exercise)
  • Anna Check
  • Rebekah Garner
  • Thomas Lanthripp
  • Olivia Martin
  • Zak Obiedat
  • Allie Owens
  • Michael Vaughan
• Thursday, November 16: Postcolonial Theory (choose any exercise)
  • Abby Bishop
  • Sophia DiCarlo
  • Heather Evans
  • Julia Lee
  • Julia Melvin
  • Will Smith

Article Summary and Article Application

Written Summary and Application

The informal article summary compels you to practice determining the key ideas of a specific theorist's essay and the informal article application compels you to apply a specific theorist's ideas when interpreting a work of literature.

 

The article summary, which will summarize a particular theorist's essay, should

• be 3-4 pages long,
• be formatted in MLA style in Word format (I suggest using this template),
• summarize the article's argument for approaching literature (if there are multiple articles on the syllabus by a single author, summarize only one),
• quote and explain at least two significant passage(s),
• define key terms,
• and include questions that the theorist would ask of the work of literature

The article application, which will crtically read a work of literature by applying a particular theorist's ideas, should

• be 3-4 pages long,
• be formatted in MLA style in Word format (I suggest using this template),
• briefly summarize the theorist's essay and explicitly pose questions that the theorist would ask a work of literature (about 1 page)
• respond to those questions for a single work of literature we're reading as a class this semester (about 2-3 pages): Dickinson's "I started Early—Took my Dog," Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Ellison's "The Battle Royal," Walker's "Everyday Use," or Gomez's "Don't Explain"

Informal Presentation

You will also be responsible for a brief, informal presentation. The article summary presentation should introduce the essay by defining key points and terms and broaching issues for class discussion (without simply reading your written summary) while the article application presentation should pose the theorist's questions and interpret the work in response to those questions (without simply reading your written response).

Due Dates

1. Your written assignment will be due in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Article Summary or Assignments > Article Application on the day before we are scheduled to discuss an article. Failing to submit to GeorgiaVIEW means failure of the assignment, as you will not be allowed to present in class unless you already submitted to GeorgiaVIEW and I have had a chance to read your response.
2. Your brief, informal presentation will be due on the day we discuss the essay in class. This date is approximate for we will sometimes fall a day behind. Failing to present the article to the class without providing a valid absence excuse will result in a two letter grade penalty.
3. I will return your graded assignment to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Article Summary or Article Application approximately one week after we discuss the article in class. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I am unable to return graded assignments to you unless and until you submit them to the Assignment dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
4. For example, we are scheduled to discuss Cixous on Thursday, 10-26. Therefore, someone's article summary and someone else's article application will be due in GeorgiaVIEW on Wednesday, 10-25. In class on Thursday, 10-26, one student will informally present the main ideas of Cixous's essay and another student will informally apply Cixous's essay to a reading of a work of literature. I will return the graded article summary to her the following week in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Article Summary.

Sign Up

Sign up for two slots: one article summary (sum) and one article application (app) at least three weeks apart.

 

Written Due Date	Oral Due Date	Reading	Student
W, 9-6	R, 9-7	Lacan	sum
			app
		Winnicott	sum
			app Sophia DiCarlo
W, 9-13	R, 9-14	Kristeva	sum Julia Melvin
			app
		Deleuze and Guattari	sum Julia Lee
			app Michael Vaughan
W, 9-27	T, 9-28	Benjamin	sum Anna Check
			app Rebekah Garner
		Bourdieu	sum Heather Evans
			app Abby Bishop
		Althusser	sum Olivia Martin
			app Julia Lee
M, 10-2	T, 10-3	Foucault	sum Will Smith
			app Zak Obiedat
W, 10-11	R, 10-12	Cixous	sum Sophia DiCarlo
			app
		Butler	sum Rebekah Garner
			app Olivia Martin
M, 10-23	T, 10-24	Sedgwick	sum Allie Owens
			app Heather Evans
		Puar	sum
			app Anna Check
M, 11-6	T, 11-7	Said	sum Zak Obeidat
			app Thomas Lanthripp
		Spivak	sum Abby Bishop
			app Will Smith
M, 11-13	T, 11-14	Appadurai	sum Thomas Lanthripp
			app Allie Owens
		Hall	sum Michael Vaughan
			app Julia Melvin

Interpretation Exercise

While the article summary compels you to practice determining the key ideas of a specific theorist's essay and the article application compels you to apply a specific theorist's ideas when interpreting a work of literature, both in an informal setting and by yourself, the interpretation exercise requires you to work with a partner to complete an interpretation exercise in Lois Tyson's Using Critical Theory and then 1) compose a formal essay that applies the general concepts of a critical approach in the interpretation of a work of literature, and 2) formally present your essay to the class. Your single, collaboratively written essay should be built from the interpretation exercise, guided by a thesis, and prove a theoretically informed interpretation of a work of literature using appropriate evidence. Your well-organized presentation should clearly convey how you are using concepts from the critical theory to interpret the work of literature, and each member should speak during the presentation.

Parameters

• Length: 4-5 pages, 7-10 minutes
• Format: MLA style in Word format (I suggest using this template)
  • This essay does not require a Works Cited page, unless it cites a source outside of the course syllabus.
• Due: The paper is due in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Interpretation Exercise on the presentation date.
• Group Policy: Each group member is responsible for staying connected with the group, attending meetings, actively participating in meetings, doing her delegated work, i.e., contributing her fair share to the project. In order to hold singular members accountable in a team project, each group member should individually compose and submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Interpretation Exercise - Individual Evaluation a paragraph that assesses their own performance and their peer's service to the assignment. If it becomes apparent that a group member did not participate (skipped meetings, didn't complete her assigned work, etc.), that member will be assessed individually rather than receive the group grade.
• Grade: Your assignment will be assessed in terms of thesis, usage of the critical theory concepts, and presentation skills; your project will be graded approximately one week after submission in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Interpretation Exercise. Here's how to calculate your course grade.

Sign Up

There must be at least one pair of students per critical theory.

 

Due Date	Exercise	Students
T, 9-19	Tyson, Psychoanalytic Theory: Walker, Faulkner or Dickinson	Zak Obeidat
		Will Smith
	Tyson, Psychoanalytic Theory: Gomez, or Ellison
T, 10-3	Tyson, Marxist Theory: Walker, Ellison, Faulkner
	Tyson, Marxist Theory: Dickinson, Gomez	Olivia Martin
		Anna Check
T, 10-17	Tyson, Feminist Theory: Ellison, Gomez, or Walker	Sophia DiCarlo
		Julia Lee
		Julia Melvin
	Tyson, Feminist Theory: Faulkner or Dickinson	Rebekah Garner
		Allie Owens
R, 10-26	Tyson, Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Theory: Gomez, Ellison, or Walker
	Tyson, Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Theory: Faulkner or Dickinson	Abby Bishop
		Heather Evans
R, 11-16	Tyson, Postcolonial Theory: Ellison, Walker, or Faulkner	Thomas Lanthripp
		Michael Vaughan
	Tyson, Postcolonial Theory: Gomez or Dickinson

Group Presentation

In the formal presentation, four groups of three to four students will collaborate to teach four of the following seven critical approaches to the class:

 

structuralism

deconstruction

cognitive criticism

existentialism and phenomenology

reader-response criticism

African-American criticism

ecocriticism

 

On Thursday, November 9, groups will inform the professor of their first and second choice; groups will also conference with the professor about the upcoming project.

 

One week before the presentation, the group should inform the class of what 1 overview article and 1 theoretical article it will teach as well as provide the professor with clean copies of the articles (if not in Barry's Beginning Critical Theory and Rivkin and Ryan's Literary Theory).

 

During the 25-35 minute presentation followed by 10 minute question and answer session, the group should

• provide an overview of the method (based on an overview article like Barry's) [see the professor if Barry doesn't provide overviews of your method]
• that compares and contrasts the method with at least 2-3 critical approaches previously studied, and also
• that defines both the theory of the method and describes the practice of the method
• teach one theoretical article by a specific theorists [articles can be found in Rivkin and Ryan's Literary Theory; see the professor if your method is not represented in the anthology]
  • If your group has four members, then your group should teach two theoretical articles.
• demonstrate the method with an interpretation of either one of the five texts in Tyson's Using Critical Theory (Dickinson, Ellison, Faulkner, Gomez, Walker).

Parameters

• Time: 25-35 minute presentation, 10 minute question and answer session
• Format: Use any audiovisuals you wish, like a Powerpoint, Prezi, or website
• Due: The presentation is due on the group's scheduled date. One group member should submit the presentation file (if applicable) to GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Group Presentation.
• Grade: Your assignment will be assessed in terms of understanding and presentatio of the theoretical overview, primary theories, and critical reading. Retrieve your graded assignment in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Group Presentation approximately one week after you submit. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I cannot return your graded assignment unless and until you upload a file to the Dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
• Group Policy: Each group member is responsible for staying connected with the group, attending meetings, actively participating in meetings, doing her delegated work, i.e., contributing her fair share to the project. In order to hold singular members accountable in a team project, each group member should individually compose and submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Group Presentation - Individual Evaluation a paragraph that assesses their own performance and their peer's service to the assignment. If it becomes apparent that a group member did not participate (skipped meetings, didn't complete her assigned work, etc.), that member will be assessed individually rather than receive the group grade.

Sign Up

You will sign up for 4 groups of 3-4 members on Thursday, November 2.

 

Date	Theory	Students
T, 11-21	Group 1 Existentialism and Phenomenology	Abby Bishop
		Heather Evans
		Allie Owens
T, 11-28	Group 2 Ecocriticism	Sophia DiCarlo
		Julia Lee
		Olivia Martin
		Julia Melvin
R, 11-30	Group 3 Structuralism	Anna Check
		Zak Obeidat
		Will Smith
T, 12-5	Group 4 Reader-Response	Rebekah Garner
		Thomas Lanthripp
		Michael Vaughan

Exam 1

Exam 1 will cover formalism (New Criticism and Russian Formalism) and psychoanalysis and will be taken in class on Thursday, September 21. There will be two essay questions. In the first essay, you will be asked to compare and contrast the formalist and psychoanalytic methodologies. The second essay question will ask you to demonstrate and practice the formalist and psychoanalytical approaches to literature on your choice of one text from the following, available in the GeorgiaVIEW course packet: 1) e. e. cummings, [rosetree,rosetree], 2) e. e. cummings, [but the other], or 3) Angela Carter, "Flesh and the Mirror." You may bring printouts of the literary works to the exam; but you may not use your textbooks.

 

Your theory essay will be graded on 1) your ability to balance a broad understanding of the general theory with a healthy amount of specific terms from particular theorists as well as on 2) your ability to assess similarities and differences between the two general theories.

 

Your application essay grade will be based on how you interpret the text; in other words, illustrate your understanding of the critical methodologies by making apparent the questions a New Critic and structuralist ask of a text.

 

If I were to study for this exam, I would 1) create an outline of key terms and compose their definitions, 2) write practice essays comparing and contrasting the formalist and psychoanalytic approaches using those keys terms, and 3) write practice essays interpreting the one literary work from formalist and psychoanalytic perspectives using those key terms.

Exam 2

• Essay 1: Theory
• Select Marxism and either Feminsm and Gender Studies or Lesbian/Gay Criticism and Queer Theory. Then compare and contrast 1) how two generic theorists (a generic Marxist/historicist theorist and a generic theorist, either Feminist theorist or a Queer theorist) approach art and literature in terms of meaning and 2) how two specific theorists (a specific Marxist/historicist theorist such as Marx, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Althusser, Foucault, Montrose; and either specific Feminist theorist such as Rubin, Cixous, Butler, Mohanty or a specific Queer theorist such as Rich, Sedgwick, Puar, or Muñoz) approach art and literature in terms of meaning. What is meaningful and what constitutes meaning inside or outside of a text? Use and define key terms that have significance and meaning for the general theory and key terms particular to a specific theorist.
• Note:Your selected option of Feminism and Gender Studies or Lesbian/Gay Criticism and Queer Theory must be consistent throughout individual essays and the entire exam. For instance, if you choose Feminism and Gender Studies, then you must discuss Feminist and Gender Studies theory in both essays and your specific theorists must be from the Feminist and Gender Studies unit.
• Your essay should cover
  1. a general overview of Marxist and historicist theory
  2. a specific understanding of a particular Marxist/historicist theorist (Marx, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Althusser, Foucault, Montrose)
  3. a general understanding of either Feminism and Gender Studies or Lesbian/Gay Criticism and Queer Theory
  4. a specific understanding of either a particular Feminist theorist (Rubin, Cixous, Butler, Mohanty) or a particular Queer theorist (Rich, Sedgwick, Puar, or Muñoz)
  5. a comparison and contrast of the two theories
• Essay 2: Interpretation
  • Choose either 1) Rich, "The Burning of Paper instead of Children", 2) Ginsberg, "Howl,"3) Hemingway, "The Sea Change," 4) Atwood, "Fiction: Happy Endings," 5) Oz's 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors (available through Apple, Amazon, and other streaming services), or 6) Haynes' 2015 Carol (available through Apple, Amazon, and other streaming services) and then write an essay that compares and contrasts a Marxist reading with either a Feminist and Gender Studies reading or a Lesbian/Gay Criticism and Queer Theory reading. 1) Discuss a specific Marxist theorist's method for analyzing literature and then interpret your selected work based on that approach. 2) Discuss either a specific Feminist or Queer theorist's method for analyzing literature and then interpret your selected work based on that approach. 3) Compare and contrast your two readings of the work of literature. How would the particular theorists (both of your choosing, but not repeating an author used in the first essay) interpret the work with their particular versions of the general method, and how might the readings be similar and different? Unlike a traditional literature essay exam which would only require you to elucidate the meaning of the work of literature, your answer in this exam should explicitly exemplify the methods that guide interpretation of meaning. In other words, your essay should illustrate the differing interpretive theories that underlie the practice of criticism.
  • Note: Do not discuss a particular theorist more than once on your exam. For example, if you analyze Cixous in Essay 1, you cannot apply her theory in Essay 2 and vice versa.
  • Your essay should cover
    1. a specific reading of the work of literature by defining and applying a particular Marxist/historicist theorist's methodology (Marx, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Althusser, Foucault, Montrose)
    2. a specific reading of the work of literature by defining and applying either a particular Feminist theorist's methodology (Rubin, Cixous, Butler, Mohanty) or a particular Queer theorist's methodology (Rich, Sedgwick, Puar, or Muñoz)
    3. a comparison and contrast of the two readings
• Due: GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Exam 2 on Tuesday, October 31
• Length: 5-7 pages per essay, 10-14 pages total, submitted in a single file
• Format: MLA style in Word format (I suggest using this template)
• Grade: You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four specific theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists. Your graded exam will be returned to GeorgiaView > Course Work > Dropbox > Exam 2 approximately one week after you submit it. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I cannot return your graded paper unless and until you upload it to the Dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.

Exam 3

• Essay 1: Theory
  • Compare and contrast Postcolonialism and your choice of either Existentialism and Phenomenology, Ecocriticism, Structuralism, or Reader-Response Criticism. Be sure to address both the critical theory and the interpretive practice. Your essay should cover
    1. a general overview of Postcolonialism
    2. a specific understanding of a particular Postcolonial theorist
    3. a general understanding of the second theory
    4. a specific understanding of a particular theorist from the second theory
    5. a comparison and contrast of the two theories
• Essay 2: Interpretation
  • Select any work of literature (play, poetry, fiction, graphic novel, film, or television program; approved by your professor by Thursday, November 30) and read it through the lens of any two theorists in the course (articles marked theory, not articles marked overview, on the syllabus).
  • Your essay should provide
    1. a focused thesis that makes an overarching interpretive claim, controls your argument, and structures your paper
    2. textual evidence from the literary work
    3. literary analysis of textual evidence adhering to the critical approach of two particular theorists that we've read (not the general overviews by Barry and Rivkin and Ryan)
    4. sufficient explanation of the particular theorists so that the reader understands how and why you're applying them
• Due: GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Exam 3 on Tuesday, December 12
  • If I do not receive or cannot open your paper, I will email you the day after your paper is due. If I do not receive or cannot open your paper within two days of its due date, you will fail the paper and the class.
• Length: 5-7 pages per essay, 10-14 pages total, submitted in a single file
• Format: MLA style in Word or RTF format (I suggest using this template)
• Grade: You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four specific theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists.
  • You can access your final grade in the course via PAWS after December 20.
  • In order to read and assess all the exams and papers in my four classes by the final grade deadline, I will not be giving feedback on final projects this semester. I am glad to put your exam grade in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Dropbox > Exam 3 if you ask me to do so on your paper. I am happy to provide exam feedback at the beginning of spring semester if you email me to set up a conference. Here's how to calculate your course grade.

Student	Work of Literature	Theorists
Abby Bishop	Allers and Minkoff, The Lion King	Marx and Spivak
Anna Check	Shankman, Hairspray	Benjamin and Butler
Sophia DiCarlo	Angelou, "On the Pulse of the Morning"	Love and Montrose
Heather Evans	Adichie, The Arrangers of Marriage	Hall and Rubin
Rebekah Garner	Howard, How the The Grinch Stole Christmas	Bourdieau and Foucault
Thomas Lanthripp	Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Julia Lee	Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	Kincaid and Love
Olivia Martin	Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God	Cixous and Mazzel
Julia Melvin	Collins, The Hunger Games	Love and Mazzel
Zak Obeidat	The Killing (2011-2014)	Freud
Allie Owens	Erdrich, Love Medicine	Butler and Love
Will Smith	Moonlight	Butler and Sedgwick
Michael Vaughan	Adams, Watership Down	Hall and Kincaid