Steven Wexler
HOME  TEACHING  CV  BLOG

 
English 436-04: Major Critical Theories
Spring 2011
Jerome Richfield Hall 304
T 4:00 - 6:45
Office Hours: T 2:30 - 3:30, Th 2:30 - 4:30,
and by appointment

Books:
Leitch et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
(see suggested readings below)
 
Let’s get theoretical.
Where is the author in the polyphonic novel?  What came first, the Oedipus complex or Sophocles?  If Shakespeare invented the human, what is multiculturalism?  Does the death of man include the cyborg?  What do the English gentleman and coffee house have to do with British literacy and nationalism?  Gender is a social construction, but sex too? Why would Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky call Tristram Shandy “the most typical novel”—I mean, have you read this book? 

The answers to these questions might be found in critical theory and literary criticism, including new criticism, poststructuralism, psychoanalytic criticism, and Marxist theory.  We'll consider theory's beautiful, daunting language and scope with a transhistorical approach to the subject.  We'll leap across time, text, genre, and continent while never leaving our ostensible postmodern condition.  Readings include representative works from classical antiquity through the Enlightenment to postmodernity. 
 
Class Projects:
  • Seven Short Analyses 25%   
  • Group Presentation 20%
  • Final Exam 30%
  • Blog 25%
1.  Seven Analyses (25%)
These short papers (seven @ 250-500 words each, not including Works Cited) require that you apply a theoretical movement discussed in class to a specific primary text.  This text may or may not be provided by me.  Avoid summarizing your primary text and instead illuminate our critical theory by demonstrating how the theory explains the text.  Draw from our books, supplemental readings, and class discussions. The analyses should include:  
  • A logical flow of ideas with unified paragraphs and effective transitions
  • Effective incorporation of research materials, primary text(s), and other texts
  • MLA documentation including Works Cited page
  • Post on blog

These analyses will not be graded individually, but rather as a whole and at the semester's end.

2.  Group Presentation (20%)
In groups of five to seven lead a 30-minute class discussion on a theoretical movement, e.g., formalism.   Please note that your presentation is a discussion not a lecture. Help your classmates makes sense of the theory’s historical context (e.g., when the movement emerged and why), the cultural import (e.g., how the theory’s reception influenced literature or education), and/or the theory’s practical uses.  Your group presentation requires the following:
  • A classroom activity
  • Individual participation in the presentation and group activity
  • A 250-word reflection on your contribution posted to your blog. Your reflection will tell your classmates and me how you contributed to your group presentation.

3. Final Exam (30%)
Your final exam will consist of multiple choice and short answer questions representing the entire course content.  

4. Blog (25%)
During the first week of class, create a blog devoted to critical theory. NOTE: Your blog is important!  Each week, you'll post a 250-500-word reflection on our readings, discussions, and/or other issues related to critical theory. You’ll also post your 5 analyses to your blog. Your classmates will read your blogs as will scholars from around the world--anyone doing research on critical theory and/or issues related to theory could potentially land on your blog. Since this is your personal blog, it may be tempting to write informally, as if you’re chatting to a friend. All of your work, however, must meet high academic standards including a formal tone. Feel free to be creative; experiment with new media! In sum, your blog will feature the following:

  • Introduction to blog @ 500 words
  • Weekly 250-500-word reflections
  • Seven short analyses
  • Individual reflection on your contribution to group presentation

Please put your preferred email address on your blog. Begin here: http://www.blogger.com

Grades
You must complete all work to pass the course. Your short analyses will be graded as one project and at the semester's end. Your blog, presentation/reflection, and final exam will also be graded as individual projects and at the semester's end. I may email you a midterm grade range, though not all of you will have completed the same amount of work by midterm, e.g., presentations. Please feel free to come by my office or email me if you'd like to discuss your progress and/or other concerns during the semester.  

Attendance
This class is a workshop of peers and attendance is absolutely necessary.  Please do not come late to class since repeated late arrivals will count as a full absence.  You cannot pass this course if you miss more than two classes, miss an assignment, or plagiarize.

Academic Honesty
You must be scrupulously honest in documenting the work that you have drawn from others.  Like other institutions, CSUN maintains a strict academic honesty policy.  Plagiarism is illegal and dishonest.  All cases of academic dishonesty must be reported to the Dean, who may suspend or permanently dismiss you from CSUN.  You will receive a course grade of F if you plagiarize in E436.

SPRING 2011 Syllabus
Course requirements and policies are subject to change; not all readings and assignments are represented below. Work is due on the date it appears. 

1/25   
Introduction: Let’s Get Theoretical
Syllabus and Course Overview

2/1
Classical Literary Criticism
"Introduction"
Gorgias. Encomium of Helen
Plato. Republic Books II, III, X
Form discussion groups

Create a blog!

2/8
Classical Literary Criticism (cont'd)
NOTE: CLASS WILL MEET IN MZ 130 AT 4:00 FOR GUEST SPEAKER KEVIN O'NEILL
Aristotle. Poetics, On Rhetoric
Longinus. On Sublimity

Your first short analysis asks that you write an analysis of any YouTube clip based on our classical antiquity readings (i.e., Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus). Avoid summarizing your YouTube clip and instead illuminate the classical theory by demonstrating how the theory explains the text.  Draw from our readings and class discussions. Like the short analyses to follow, this one should include:  

  • 500 words (not including Works Cited)
  • A logical flow of ideas with unified paragraphs and effective transitions
  • Effective incorporation of critical readings
  • MLA documentation including Works Cited page
Please post on blog and bring in a paper draft for class review.

NOTE: To include your YouTube clip on your blog do the following:

1. Open a new post on your blog.
2. Find a YouTube clip at www.youtube.com.
3. Look for the word “Embed,” directly to the right of your clip.
4. Scroll over the Embed code and right click-copy with your mouse.
5. Paste Embed code in your blog’s new post.
6. Write/paste your YouTube clip classical theory analysis underneath embed code.
7. Click save and view blog.

2/15
DUE: Group Presentation #1 (Classical Literary Criticism)
DUE: Analysis #1 (Classical Literary Criticism)  
Enlightenment Theory and Criticism
Pope. An Essay on Criticism
Kant. Critique of the Power of Judgment
Kant. "What is Enlightenment?" < click on link for text
Burke. Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit; Lectures on Fine Art

2/22
Eagleton. "The Rise of English"
Formalism
Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” < click on link for text
Bakhtin. “Discourse in the Novel”
Bakhtin. “Rabelais and His World” < click on link for text

3/1
Structuralism and Semiotics
Saussure. “Course in General Linguistics”
Frye. "The Archetypes in Literature"
Todorov. "Structural Analysis of Narrative"

3/8 
DUE: Analysis #2 (Enlightenment Theory/Criticism, Formalism, or Structuralism)
DUE: Group Presentation #2 (Enlightenment Theory/Criticism, Formalism, and/or Structuralism)
 Psychoanalysis
Freud. “The Interpretation of Dreams ”
Freud. "Fetishism"
Lacan. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I”
Lacan. “The Signification of the Phallus”

3/15
Phenomenology and Reader-Response Theory
Heidegger. "Language"
Sartre. "Why Write?"
Iser. "Interaction Between Text and Reader"
Barthes. "Death of the Author"

3/22 
DUE: Group Presentation #3 (Phenomenology, Reader-Response Theory, and/or Psychoanalysis)
DUE: Analysis #3 (Phenomenology, Reader-Response Theory, or Psychoanalysis)
Marxist Theory
Marx. The German Ideology
Marx. The Communist Manifesto
Marx. Capital: "Commodities" and "The Working Day"
Williams. "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory"

3/29
DUE: Analysis #4 (Marxist Theory)
DUE: Group Presentation #4 (Marxist Theory)
Marxist Theory (cont'd)
Gramsci. “The Formation of Intellectuals ”
Althusser. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
Ross. "The Mental Labor Problem"   
     
4/5 
NO CLASS: Spring Recess

4/12  
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism
Lyotard. “Defining the Postmodern”
Foucault. “Discipline and Punish”
Baudrillard. The Precession of Simulacra

4/19
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism (cont’d)
Derrida. Of Grammatology: "Exergue," "The Exorbitant. Question of Method"
Habermas. "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article" and "Modernity: An Incomplete Project"
Deleuze and Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Scenes from American Psycho
     
4/26
DUE: Analysis #5 (Poststructuralism and Postmodernism)
DUE: Group Presentation #5 (Poststructuralism and Postmodernism)
Feminism and Gender Studies
Beauvoir. The Second Sex < click on link for text
Foucault. The History of Sexuality
Butler. Gender Trouble
Bordo. "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity"
Gilbert and Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic

5/3
DUE: Analysis #6 (Gender Studies and/or Feminist Theory)
DUE: Group Presentation #6 (Gender Studies and/or Feminist Theory)
Ethnicity Studies and Post-Colonial Theory and Criticism
Hughes. The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Said. Orientalism  
Anderson. Imagined Communities
Spivak. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"   
Anzaldua. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

5/10
DUE: Analysis #7 (Ethnicity Studies and/or Post-Colonial Theory)
DUE: Group Presentation #7 (Ethnicity Studies andor Post-Colonial Theory)
Conclusion: Cyborgs and Posthumans
Haraway. A Manifesto for Cyborgs
Hayles. How We Became Posthuman
Course Review

5/17
FINAL EXAM 05:30 PM - 07:30 PM

 

 
 
Much of the following list comes from Kristi Siegel's excellent theory site at
Suggested Readings:

Note: the following comes from http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm:

Formalism

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Austin: U Texas P, 1990.
  • ---. The Dialogic Imagination: Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.
  • ---. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: U of Indiana P, 1984.
  • ---. Speech Genres and Other Essays.  Ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael
    Holquist.  Trans. Vern W. McGee.  Austin: U of Texas P, 1986.
  • Bennett, Tony. Formalism and Marxism. London, 1979.
  • Ehrlich, Victor. Russian Formalism: History, Doctrine.
  • Garvin, Paul L. (trans.) A Prague School Reader. Washington DC: Georgetown Academic P, 1973.
  • Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge, 1990.
  • Jakobson, Roman. "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics." Ed. Sebeok, Thomas. Style in Language, pp. 350-377.
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction.
  • Lemon, Lee T. and Marion J. Reese. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays.
  • Lodge, David. After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. London: Routledge, 1990.
  • Medvedev, P.N. and Mikhail Bakhtin. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics.
  • Mukarovsky, Jan. Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts. Trans. M. E. Suino. Ann Arbor: Michigan State UP, 1979.
  • Thompson, E.M. Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Criticism.
  • Wellek, René. The Literary Theory and Aesthetics of the Prague School.

New Criticism

  • Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren, eds. Understanding Poetry. New York: Holt, 1938.
  • Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity. New York, 1955.
  • Lentriccia, Frank. After the New Criticism.
  • Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction.
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A
    Comparative Introduction.
  • Ransom, John Crowe. The New Criticism. New York: New Directions, 1941.
  • Richards, I. A. Practical Criticism. London: Routledge & Paul, 1964.

Archetypal Criticism

  • Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953.
  • Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry. London: OUP, 1934.
  • Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books, 1949.
  • Frazer, J. G.The Golden Bough.
  • Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism and Fables of Identity: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.
  • Graves, Robert. Greek Myths and The White Goddess.
  • Jung, Carl Gustav. Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature and various other works
  • Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearean Tragedy.
  • Lentriccia, Frank. After the New Criticism.
  • Pratt, Anais. Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.
  • Seboek, Thomas A., ed. Myth: A Symposium. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1955.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

  • Bloom, Harold. Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.
  • Elliott, Anthony. Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
  • Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction.
  • Ellmann, Maud, ed. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. London: Longman, 1994.
  • Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams.
  • Gay, Peter, ed.The Freud Reader. London: Vintage, 1995.
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction.
  • Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection.
  • Sarup, Madan. Jacques Lacan. London: Harvester, Wheatsheaf, 1992.
  • Weber, Samuel. The Legend of Freud.

Postcolonialism, Globalism, and Globalization

  • Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . London: Verso, 1983.
  • Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, U of Minnesota P, 1996.
  • Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Helen. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
  • Ashcroft, Bill. Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader.
  • Bauman, Zygmunt.  Globalization: The Human Consequences.  New York: Columbia UP, 1998.
  • Berger, Peter L., and Samuel P. Huntington, eds.  Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.
  • Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture.  London: Routledge, 1994.    
  • ---. Bhabha, Homi, ed.  Nation and Narration.  London: Routledge, 1990.
  • Guneratne, Anthony R. The Virtual Spaces of Postcoloniality: Rushdie, Ondaatje, Naipaul, Bakhtin and the Others.
  • Harding, Sandra and Uma Narayan, ed. Border Crossings: Multicultural and Postcolonial Feminist Challenges to Philosophy 2. Indiana University Press, 1998.
  • Fanon, Frantz, Black Skin. White Masks. Trans. by Charles Lam Markmann. London: Pluto, 1986.
  • Said, Edward. Orientalism.
  • ---. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.
  • Smith, Paul. Millennial Dreams.  London: Verso, 1997.
  • Soyinka, Wole. Myth, Literature, and the African World.
  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London: Routledge, 1988.
  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. London: Routledge, 1990.
  • Trinh, T. Minh-Ha, Woman. Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
  • Zheng, Yongnian. Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity, and International Relations.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
    ---.  Globalization and State Transformation in China.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.

Marxism

  • Adorno, Theodore W.  The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture.  Ed. J.M. Bernstein.  London: New York, 1991.
  • Aglietta, Michel. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience. London: Verso,1979.
  • Althusser, Louis. For Marx. London: Verso, 1996.
  • Aronowitz, Stanley. How Class Works. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.
  • Bernstein, Eduard. The Precondtions of Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.
  • Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review, 1974.
  • Cary, Nelson, and Lawrence Gross berg, eds. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan, 1988.
  • Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology. New York: Schocken, 1978.
  • Gramsci, Antonio. The Prison Notebooks. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
  • Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT P, 1998.
  • Harvey, David. The Limits to Capital. London: Verson, 1999.
  • Jay, Martin. Marxism and Totality. Berkeley: U of California P, 1935.
  • Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: PUP, 1971.
  • Lukacs, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. London: Merlin, 1971.
  • Lenin, V.I. The Essential Works of Lenin. New York: Dover, 1966.
  • Therborn, Goran. The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology. London: Verso, 1980.
  • Marx, Karl. Capital I. London: Penguin, 1976.
  • ---. Communist Manifesto. New York: Norton, 1988.
  • ---. Economic and Philosphic Manuscripts of 1844. Amherst: Prometheus, 1988.
  • ---. Grundrisse. London: Penguin, 1973.
  • ---. The Poverty of Philosophy. Amherst: Prometheus, 1995.
  • Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage, 1966.
  • Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Penguin, 1979.
  • Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1996.
  • ---. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Free Press, 1964.
  • Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1977.

Feminism

  • Brooks, Ann. Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory, and Cultural Forms, 1997.
  • Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." 1993 .
  • Crow, Barbara A., ed. Radical Feminism: An Historical Reader, 1999.
  • Flax, Jane. Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West, 1990.
  • Gallop, Jane. The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis, 1982.
  • Grosz, E. A. (Elizabeth A.) Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Boston : Allen & Unwin, 1989.
  • Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Ithaca, N.Y : Cornell University Press, 1985. HQ1154 .I7413 1985
  • Kristeva (kris-TAYV-veh), Julia. The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi, 1986.
  • Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. New French Feminism. Brighton: Harvester, 1980.
  • Moi, Toril. Sexual/textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London ; New York : Methuen, 1985.PN98.W64 M65 1985
  • Oliver, Kelly, ed. French Feminism Reader. Rowman & Littlefield. 2000.
  • Showalter, Elaine, ed. Speaking of Gender, 1989.

Reader Response Theory

  • Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. 1962
  • Bleich, David. Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism. 1978
  • Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. 1975.
  • Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare's Sonnets. New Haven: Yale UP, 1969.
  • Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. 1979.
  • Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.
  • Holland, Norman. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.
  • Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1974.
  • ---. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.
  • Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982.
  • ---. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. U of Minneapolis P, 1982.
  • Mailloux, Steven. Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction. 1982
  • Holland, Norman. The Dynamics of Literary Response. 1968, 5 Readers Reading. 1975
  • Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. New York: Methuen, 1982.
  • Richards, I.A. How to Read a Page. 1942.
  • ---. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment. 1929. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935.
  • Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. 1978.
  • Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader, the Text, the Poem. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978.
  • Suleiman, Susan R., and Inge Crosman, eds. The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton UP, 1980.
  • Tompkins, Jane, ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.

New Historicism

  • Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.
  • Brannigan, John. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. New York: St. Martin's 1998.
  • Brantlinger, Patrick. Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America. New York: Routledge, 1990.
  • Cox, Jeffrey N. and Larry J. Reynolds, eds. New Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts, Representing History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
  • Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1984.
  • Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
  • ---. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979.
  • ---. The Order of Things. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
  • Gallagher, Catherine and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.
  • Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
  • Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: PUP, 2001.
  • ---. Introduction. "The Forms of Power and the Power of Forms in the Renaissance." Genre 15 (Summer 1982): 3-6.
  • ---. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. New York: Routledge, 1991.
  • ---. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
  • Hunt, Lynn, ed. The New Cultural History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1989.
  • Levine, George. Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1988.
  • McCann, Jerome. The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory. OUP, 1985.
  • Montrose, Louis. "New Historicisms." Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: Modern Language Association, 1992.
  • Morris, Wesley. Toward a New Historicism. Princeton: PUP, 1972.
  • Vesser, H. Aram, ed. The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989.

Phenomenology and Hermeneutics

  • Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature.
  • Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs.
  • Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Crossroad, 1982.
  • Habermas, Jürgen. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon, 1968.
  • Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
  • Hirsch, E.D. The Aims of Interpretation.
  • Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1970.
  • Magliola, Robert R. Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction.
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1962.
  • Palmer, Richard. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schliermacher.
  • Ricouer, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics.

Postmodernism and Post/structuralism

  • Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Trans. R. Howard. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1972
  • ---. S/Z. 1970. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975.
  • Baudrillard, Jean. America. Trans. Chris Turner. London:Verso, 1988.
  • ---. The Mirror of Production. Trans. Mark Poster. St. Lois: Telos P, 1973.
  • ---. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.
  • Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation and Cool Memories.
  • Bloom, Harold, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and J. Hillis Miller. Deconstruction and Criticism. New York: Seabury, 1979.
  • Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. New York: Cornell UP, 1973.
  • Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
  • Doherty, Thomas, ed. Postmodernism: A Reader.
  • Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on LanguageNew York: Pantheon, 1972.
  • ---. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1995.
  • ---. Madness and Civilization. New York: Vintage, 1965.
  • ---. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1994.
  • Foster, Hal. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture
  • Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990.
  • Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism.
  • Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism.
  • Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
  • Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language and Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art.
  • Leitch, Vincent B. Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction. New York: Columbia UP, 1983.
  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked.1964. Trans. John and Doreen Weighman. New York: Harper, 1975.
  • ---. Structural Anthropology. Trans. C. Jacobson and B. G. Schoeph. London: Allen Lane, 1968.
  • Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
  • McHale, Brian. Postmodern Fiction.
  • Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. W. Baskin. London: Fontana/Collins, 1974.