ENG 390-01 - Literary Theory

4 credits (Fall)

Identity/Politics/Poetics: The Culture Wars and the Ends of Theory, 1966-1996 What does a lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins in 1966 have in common with Native Americans’ attempts to regain tribal status in the 1970s and 80s, a Nazi-tinged scandal in 1988, the obscenity trial of 2 Live Crew in 1990, or a hoax perpetrated by a scientist in 1996? Each implicates in significant ways aspects of literary or cultural theory in the hotly contested contact zone of politics, identity, and poetics that came to be known as “the culture wars.” In this seminar, we will take a historicist approach to exploring the impact of post-structural theories on American culture and the academy in the 1980s and 90s. By way of discussing the particulars of these and other cases, and in order to better tease out the cultural issues that animate them, we will explore essays or excerpts by various critics and theorists including Houston Baker, Allan Bloom, Judith Butler, James Clifford, Kimberle Crenshaw, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish, Henry Louis Gates Jr., David Hirsch, bell hooks, Steven Knapp and Walter Michaels, Catharine MacKinnon, and Alan Sokol. Grades will be based on class discussion, at least one collaborative presentation, a critical reading journal, and a final research paper of approximately 15 pages.

Prerequisite: Third-year or senior standing and at least one 300-level literature seminar in the English department.
Instructor: Andrews