Introduction to Critical Theory CLIL 1 3301-L2ICT-CLIL1

The course is meant to provide students with methodological tools useful for the analysis of both literary and cultural texts, with emphasis on the application of concepts from philosophical discourses to analyzing literary/cultural texts and comprehending cultural and social processes (the emergence of mass culture, changes in the popularity of certain genres and media, links between shifts in the economy and cultural production, etc.). The thinkers discussed on this course include: Plato, Aristoteles, Karl Marx, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, Hayden White, and Raymond Williams. The understanding of the notion of critical theory within the framework of the course is broad. The range of texts that can be analyzed using these tools is also purposefully broad: the purpose being to teach students to trace certain philosophical concepts across different media.

The course is taught using CLIL methodology with emphasis on the acquisition of new vocabulary and academic writing skills by the students. To achieve these goals, students will be asked to submit one summary (c. 150 words), two critical summaries (400-500 words), and a critical response that is to be based on the texts discussed in class (2-3 pages).The course involves extensive practice in the use of spoken and written English for academic purposes.

The course instructor chooses the obligatory reading (up to two per meeting). The texts can be found in the anthologies listed in the course bibliography.

Class Schedule:
1. Course introduction. This meeting will provide an overview of the course and outline the requirement for the written tasks
Reading: introduction to Theory Toolbox.
2. The Beginnings. Reading:
Plato, The Republic, Book X
Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1, chapters 2, 3; Poetics
3. Marxism. Reading:
Karl Marx,, Grundrisse; A Contribution to a Critique of Political E,conomy; German Ideology (Eagleton)
Friedrich Engels, “Against Vulgar Marxism”; “Subjugation of Women”
4. Psychoanalysis. Reading:
Sigismund Freud, “An Outline of Psychoanalysis”, “Creative Writers and Daydreaming”, “The Interpretation of Dreams”.
5. The beginnings of literary theory and New Criticism. Reading:
T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy"
6. Early Literary Theory: Russian Formalism. Reading:
Victor Shkolvsky, “Art as Device”
Boris Eichenbaum, “The Theory of the Formal Method”
Roman Jakobson, "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles"
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale
7. Marxist approaches to cultural studies - Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School. Reading:
Theodore Adorno & Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility”
Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of the Intellectuals”
Georg Lukacs, “Ideology of Modernism”
8. Structuralism. Reading:
Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”
Roland Barthes, “Myth Today”
Umberto Eco, “The Myth of Superman”
9. Poststructuralism: Derrida and deconstruction.
Jacques Derrida, “Differance” or “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”
Roland Barthes, “Poe’s Valdemar”, Image, Music, Text (a fragment)
10. New Historicism. Reading:
Hayden White, “The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact”
Stephen J. Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder”
11. The beginnings of cultural studies. Reading:
Raymond Williams, fragments from Marxism and Literature “Traditions, Institutions and Formations”, “The Structures of Feeling”
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies”
12. Ideology. Reading:
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”