*Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (PDF Version)

• Also available on reserve at the Library: https://libguides.gc.cuny.edu/er.php?b=c  (Password:  CLAlsop)

Pardis Dabashi, “The Loose Garments of Argument”

Kyla Wazana Tompkins, “Some Notes On How To Ask A Good Question About Theory that Will Provoke Conversation And Further Discussion From Your Colleagues“

Matt Seybold et al, American Vandal podcast, “Criticism LTD,” S8:E1, “The Golden Age of the Working Critic,” 

Immanuel Kant, from Critique of Judgment

Terry Eagleton, “Conclusion: Political Criticism” (from Literary Theory: An Introduction)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, from Lectures on Fine Art

William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads“

Karl Marx, Excerpts from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, and Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (includes the Norton introductory preamble), and from Chapter 1 of Capital (parts 1, 2, and 4)

Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism” and “The Uncanny“; from The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter II and from Chapter V and VI (with Norton intro appended). NOTE: In Chapter II, you can stop at the “preamble,” but I’ve included the whole chapter

Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense“

T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent“

John Crowe Ransom, “Criticism Inc“

W.K. Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy“

Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan, from The Teaching Archives (“Introduction: A New Syllabus” and “Chapter 2: T.S. Eliot”)

Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics, Introduction, Ch 1-4 and Part One, Ch 1-2   (Due to Scanning Difficulties, I uploaded the Norton excerpt  — if you have already read the originally indicated portion, that’s fine!)

Mikhail Bakhtin, from Discourse in the Novel

Tzvetan Todorov, “Structural Analysis of Narrative“

Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling” and “The Face of Garbo“

Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?”

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”

Jacques Derrida, “The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing”  

Barbara Johnson, “Teaching Deconstructively“

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One s Own (entire PDF available here; please read Chapter 3 and 5, but feel free to read more than that. Chapter 2 feeling especially relevant right now…)

bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: The Black Female Spectator”

Barbara Johnson, “Muteness Envy“

Saidiya Hartman, “A Note on Method”

Fredric Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture”

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception“

Edward Said, from Culture and Imperialism, Chapter 2, “Consolidated Vision” (i-ii)

Toni Morrison, from Playing in the Dark, “Black Matters”

Franz Fanon, “On National Culture”

Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble

Michel Foucault, “We ‘Other Victorians’” from The History of Sexuality

José Munoz, “Introduction” from Cruising Utopia

Matt Brim, from Poor Queer Studies

Eve Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading”

Rita Felski, “Introduction,” from The Limits of Critique

Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”

Anna Kornbluh, “Anti-Theory,” from Immediacy

[Totally optional: Toril Moi of post-critical methods and in a review of recent books by Guillory, Kramnick, and Robbins — yet another turn in the methods war screw]

Sianne Ngai, from Ugly Feelings

Caroline Levine, “Introduction: The Affordances of Form”

Kandice Chuh, from The Difference Aesthetics Makes

American Vandal, “Empire of Criticism” (Three-part finale, episodes 14, 15, and 16)