After considering some opening statements about the powers and limits of theory, we'll jump back to the nineteenth century and take a quick look at Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and Saussure. Then we'll zero in on three more recent figures: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Mikhail Bakhtin. In the last half of the term, we'll explore a number of even more recent developments: feminisms, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies. (Many of those developments had only begun to emerge when I first began teaching this course--back in 1993! In other words, this is a rapidly-changing field.)

OVERVIEW

• Week one: Introductions, elaborations, Marx
• Week two: Backgrounds: Freud, Nietzsche, Structuralism
• Week three: Derrida
• Week four: Foucault
• Week five: Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle
• Week six: Feminisms
• Week seven: Queer theory
• Week eight: Race
• Week nine: Postcolonial theory
• Week ten: Cultural Studies

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

(R) = item on reserve
(C) = item available from Conkey's

• Monday, March 29
  • Introduction: How should we read Futurama?

• Wednesday, March 31
  • Michael Berube, "Discipline and Theory," Public Access: 43-58 (R)
  • Stanley Fish, "Why Literary Criticism is Like Virtue," London Review of Books, 10 June 1993 (R)
  • Robert Scholes, The Rise and Fall of English: 2-36 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Friday, April 2
  • Karl Marx, from Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy: 42-6 (R)
  • Karl Marx, from The German Ideology, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy: 246-61 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Monday, April 5
  • Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: ch. VI, sects. A-C
  • For a handout on this reading, click here. (R)

• Wednesday, April 7
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, from "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense," The Portable Nietzsche: 42-7 (R)
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Twilight of the Idols ("The Problem of Socrates" and "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable"), The Portable Nietzsche: 473-86 (R, C)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Friday, April 9
  • Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics, Critical Theory Since 1965: 646-56 (R, C)
  • Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," Critical Theory Since 1965: 809-22 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Monday, April 12
  • Plato, Phaedrus (R, C)
  • Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," Dissemination: 61-84 (C)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.
  • For my "reader's guide to Plato's Pharmacy," click here.

• Wednesday, April 14
  • Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," Dissemination: 85-119 (C)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, April 16
  • Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," Dissemination: 120-71 (C)

• Monday April 19
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Preface, On the Genealogy of Morals (R)
  • Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," The Foucault Reader: 76-100 (R)
  • Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," The Foucault Reader: 51-75 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Wednesday, April 21
  • Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: Parts I, II, III (C)
    
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, April 23
  • Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: Parts IV, V (C)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Monday, April 26
  • V. N. Voloshinov, "Critique of Saussurian Linguistics," The Bakhtin Reader: 25-37 (C)
  • V. N. Voloshinov, "Language as Dialogic Interaction," The Bakhtin Reader: 48-61 (C)
  • M. M. Bakhtin, "Social Heteroglossia," The Bakhtin Reader: 73-80 (C)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Wednesday, April 28
  • Leo Tolstoy, "Three Deaths" (R)
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky, excerpts from Crime and Punishment (R)
  • M. M. Bakhtin, "Dostoyevsky's Polyphonic Novel," Bakhtin Reader: 89-96 (C)
  • M. M. Bakhtin, "The Dialogic Idea as Novelistic Image," Bakhtin Reader: 97-102 (C)
  • M. M. Bakhtin, "The Heteroglot Novel," Bakhtin Reader: 112-20 (C)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, April 30
  • Francois Rabelais, excerpts from Gargantua and Pantagruel (R)
  • M. M. Bakhtin, "Folk Humor and Carnival Laughter," Bakhtin Reader: 194-206 (C)
  • M. M. Bakhtin, "Carnival Ambivalence," Bakhtin Reader: 206-26 (C)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Monday, May 3
  • F. Engels, from Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (R)
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil (R)
  • Sigmund Freud, "Female Sexuality" (R)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Wednesday, May 5
  • Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa," Feminisms: 334-49 (R)
  • Luce Irigary, from This Sex Which Is Not One, Feminisms: 350-7 (R)
  • Annette Kolodny, "Dancing Through the Minefield," Critical Theory Since 1965: 499-513 (R)
  • Lilian Robinson, "Treason Our Text," Critical Theory Since 1965: 572-85 (R)
  • Francine Prose, "Scent of a Woman's Ink," Harper's June 1998 (handout)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, May 7
  • Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex," The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader: 3-44 (R)
  • Chandra Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes," Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: 196-220 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Monday, May 10
  • Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader: 307-20 (R)
  • Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: 1-34 (R)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Wednesday, May 12
  • Eve Sedgwick, "Axiomatic," Epistemology of the Closet: 1-63 (R)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, May 14
  • Essex Hemphill, "'In Living Color,'" Out in Culture: 389-401 (R)
  • Ann Pelligrini, "Women on Top, Boys on the Side, but Some of Us are Brave," College Literature 1997 (R)
  • Susan Gubar, "What Ails Feminist Criticism?" Critical Inquiry 24 (1998) (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Monday, May 17
  • Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Master's Pieces," Loose Canons: 17- 42 (R)
  • Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Writing, 'Race,' and the Difference it Makes," Loose Canons: 43-69 (R)
  • Cornel West, "The New Cultural Politics of Difference," The Postmodern Turn: 65-81 (R)
  • Cornel West, "The Postmodern Crisis of the Black Intellectuals," Cultural Studies: 689-705 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Wednesday, May 19
  • bell hooks, "Postmodern Blackness," Colonial Discourse and Post- Colonial Theory: 421-27 (R)
  • bell hooks, "Selling Hot Pussy," "Reconstructing Black Masculinity," and "Representations of Whiteness," Black Looks: 61-77, 87-113, 165-78 (R)
  • Michele Wallace, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," VLS November 1995 (R)
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, May 21
  • Richard Dyer, "Coloured White, Not Coloured," White: 41-81 (R)
  • Ann duCille, "The Shirley Temple of My Familiar," Transition 73 (1998) (R)
  • "I'm Ofay, You're Ofay," Transition 73 (1998) (R)

• Monday, May 24
  • Salman Rushdie, "'Commonwealth Literature' Does Not Exist," Imaginary Homelands: 61-70 (R)
  • Salman Rushdie, "The Courter," East, West (R)
  • Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: 66-111 (R)
  • Gayatri Spivak, "Reading The Satanic Verses," Outside in the Teaching Machine: 217-42 (R)

• Wednesday, May 26
  • Edward Said, from Orientalism, Colonial Discourse and Post- Colonial Theory: 132-49 (R)
  • Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism: xi-xxviii, 3-31
  • For a handout on this reading, click here.

• Friday, May 28
  • Homi Bhabha, "Signs Taken for Wonders," The Location of Culture: 102-22 (R)
  • Derek Walcott, "Names," Collected Poems, 1948-1984: 305-8 (R)
  • Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," The Anti- Aesthetic: 111-25 (R)
  • Homi Bhabha, "How Newness Enters the World," The Location of Culture: 212-35 (R)
  • For a handout on these readings, click here.

• Monday, May 31
  • MEMORIAL DAY -- NO CLASS!

• Wednesday, June 2
  • Michael Berube, "Cult Studs Fights the Power," Public Access: 137-60 (R)
  • Laura Kipnis, "(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler," Cultural Studies: 373-91 (R)
  • Constance Penley, "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture," Cultural Studies: 479-500 (R)

• Friday, June 4
  • DEADLINE FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WEBSITE
  • Bernard Welt, "Faster, Itchy and Scratchy! Kill! Kill!" Mythomania: 18-23 (R)
  • Lauren Berlant, excerpts from The Queen of America goes to Washington City: TBA (R)