A word from the instructor
My name is Tim Spurgin, and I've been teaching in the English Department at Lawrence since the fall of 1990. I'm a native midwesterner--raised in Mankato, Minnesota--and I graduated from Carleton College. After finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, I came here to teach Romantics, Victorians, and the novel. I've now taught this theory course three different times, and I've always enjoyed it immensely.
To some, the need for such a course may not be readily apparent. Why mess with theory, they'd ask, when there's so little time for literature? Besides, they might add, isn't theory supposed to be dead?
These are not unreasonable questions. In response to the first one, I'd say
that a person's experience of literature is almost always enriched by some
exposure to theory. To become a more active reader, you must first become a
more self-conscious and self-critical one; and that's what studying theory can
help you to do.
In response to questions about the "death of theory," I'd say that reports of
its death are--you guessed it--greatly exaggerated. It is true that the major
works of Derrida and Foucault are now at least twenty-five years old. Yet
it's also true that those same works have shown remarkable staying power--I
can assure you of their ability to engage and sometimes enrage my students.
Besides, how many works have had a greater impact on contemporary thinkers and
writers?
It seems to me, in fact, that if you want
to understand writers like Cornel West or Judith Butler or Homi Bhabha--or, for
that matter, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie--it really, really, really helps
to know something about the "grand theory" of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.
So despite the obituaries for theory, I still think that the ideas and
concepts treated in the first half of this course are about as vital as they
could be.
Before closing, I'd encourage you to check out the contributions of students to this site. If you hunt around here, you'll find students' responses to the readings, plus some websites designed by students. I'd also like to thank Pete Gilbert, research librarian and internet kahuna, for inspiring me to undertake these projects--and helping me to execute them. In this case, the cliche is appropriate: I couldn't have done it without him.
What next?