In this course, we will all
be examining our roles as critics who read, think, and write about literary and
cultural texts. As literary critics, we will begin by engaging in close
textual analyses of the ways that stories are told and the narrative strategies
writers use to challenge or transform the material conditions of their
lives. We will discuss basic literary terminology, concepts, methods, and
practices that illustrate the connections among people who read and write texts
and the larger conditions of production and systems of power in which their
texts are produced and read. We will be analyzing different genres of
writing (poetry, short stories, novels, films, autobiographies, personal
essays, inscriptions of mo‘olelo) and how these forms are used in ways that
respond to material conditions, including historical events and movements.
We will be focusing in
particular on definitions and discussions of ideology and the social relations
of power that underpin the ideological functions of literature. With this
in mind, we will compare different points of entry into analyzing a range of
texts assigned for the course, approaches that foreground issues of class,
gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, indigeneity, and location, and then we will
examine how these multiple and interlocking critical frameworks cannot be
separated from each other even as they are often made (problematically) to
compete with each other. Some approaches, like literary mapping
techniques, go beyond an emplotment of geographical spaces to mapping the
social relations between people, their relationship to land, and the epistemological
underpinnings of these relationships. We will also map out our own
positionality as readers as we engage in a careful examination of the processes
by which we “make meaning.”
Requirements: One two-page paper, two four-page
papers, peer-editing, short assignments, a final exam, attendance and
participation.
Required Texts (available
at Revolution Books, between Puck’s Alley and 7-Eleven):
Ross C. Murfin and Supriya Ray, eds., The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary
Terms, 2nd edition.
R.
Zamora Linmark, Rolling the R’s (1995)
Larry and Andy Wachowski, The Matrix: The Shooting Script (2001)
Toni
Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Brandy Nālani McDougall, The Salt-Wind / Ka Makani Pa‘akai(2008)
A required
course reader will include texts by Herman Melville, ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui,
Claude McKay, Louis Althusser, Ho‘oulumāhiehie, John Fiske, Slavoj Zizek,
Shakespeare, Judith Butler, Monique Wittig, Avery Gordon, Michel Foucault,
Roland Barthes, Norma Alarcon, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Jeff Chang, Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Puanani Burgess, Gwendolyn Brooks, Noenoe Silva, Hazel
Carby, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and others. The course reader will be available
during the second week of school.