English 409K, Section 002

Modern Critical Theories -- Performing Audience: Audiovisual Poetics

MWF, 9:00-10:00 BuB 322

Lecturer: Prof. Kevin McNeilly
Office: BuTo 401, Phone: 822-4466
e-mail: mcneilly@interchange.ubc.ca
Office Hours, September to December 2006: Mondays and Fridays, 10:00-11:00

Course Description
In this course, we will survey a range of contemporary critical and cultural theory, focusing especially on core versions of Marxism, Phenomenology, Semiotics and Post-Structuralism, and Queer Theory. Lecture and discussion will focus in particular on theorizing the concept of audience, in relation especially to the fields of visual culture and media studies.

Vincent B. Leitch, ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. (Norton, 2001)

Short essay 25%: Due in class on Monday October 16.; Click here for the essay topics for the short essay.
Term paper 40%: Due in class on Monday November 27. (Please note the change of due date.); Click here for the essay topics for the term paper.
Final exam 25%: Click here for the text of the final exam.
Participation and attendance 10%

Click here for "The Voice of the Shuttle," an exceptional website with a huge number of links to resources in critical and cultural theory.
Click here for "www.theory.org.uk," another very useful site of theory links.
Click here for "k.i.s.s. of the panopticon," a "dictionary of people and concepts involved in the field of cultural theory."


Literature and Vertical Hold: Keywords: media, literature, theory, praxis, history
Wednesday September 6: Literature at its end.; Click here for "J. Hillis Miller Online."; Click here for "J. Hillis Miller: A Bibliography."; Click here for a synopsis of comments (by Miller) on "The End of the Print Age."; Click here for "Moving Critical Inquiry On" by J. Hillis Miller.; Click here for the introduction to Miller's book Others (Princeton UP, 2001).; Click here for the transcription of a roundtable discussion of Miller's "Humanistic Discourse and the Others" (1994), featuring commentary by Jacques Derrida, Wolfgang Iser and others.
Friday September 8: Please read Eagleton (2243) and Moulthrop (2504); Click here for Terry Eagleton's homepage at the University of Manchester.; Click here for an electronic version of the 1882 edition of Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold.; Click here for "The ultimate postmodern spectacle," Terry Eagleton on Michael Jackson.; Click here for "Don't deride Derrida: Academics are wrong to rubbish the philosopher," by Terry Eagleton.; Click here for "The contradictions of Terry Eagleton" by Roger Kimball.; Click here for "Techno-femmes: Women, Hypertext and Literary Studies" by Karin Beeler.

Reading and Viewing 1: Keywords: phenomenology, ideal reader, mimesis, critique
Monday September 11: Please read Poulet (1320); Click here for A summary of Georges Poulet's "A [sic] Phenomenology of Reading"; Click here for an overview of the Geneva School, with which Poulet is associated.; Click here for a brief obituary for Poulet.
Wednesday September 13: Please read Iser (1673)
Friday September 15

Poetics and Performativity 1: Keywords: formalism, defamiliarization, detachment, semiology, philology, linguistics, structure, syntax, paradigm, synchronic, diachronic
Monday September 18: Please read Eichenbaum (1062); Click here for "English Formalism and Russian Formalism: Clive Bell and Viktor Shklovsky" by Trevor Pateman.; Click here for "Russian Formalism: The Systemic Nature of Literariness" by Radu Surdulescu.; Click here for an entry on formalism from textetc.; Click here for an overview / outline on Russian Formalism.; Click here for a brief entry on formalism from a glossary of literary theory.
Wednesday September 20: Please read Saussure (956)
Friday September 22: Please read Saussure (956)

Authority and Audience 1: Keywords: semiotic and symbolic, semiotics, deconstruction, rhetoric, figure
Monday September 25: Please read Barthes, from Mythologies (1461); Click here for a set of lecture notes on Barthes's Mythologies.; Click here for (part of) the entry on Mythologies from the Literary Encyclopedia.; Click here for a translation of "Myth Today," the afterword from Mythologies.; Click here for a set of web links on Barthes.; Click here for an overview of Barthes's career.
Wednesday September 27: Please read De Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric" (1514); Click here for an excellent bibliography on Paul de Man.; Click here for a brief biography of de Man.; Click here for a transcription of some notes for a seminar given at Harvbard by de Man.; Click here for Legacies of Paul de Man, edited by Marc Redfield.; Click here for a commentary on de Man's "The Rhetoric of Temporality."
Friday September 29: Please read Kristeva (2169); Click here for a summary of "Kristeva and Feminism" BY Kelly Oliver.; Click here for a web page on Kristeva's work.; Click here for a graduate student's introductory overview of Kristeva's work.; Click here for "Julia Kristeva: A Bibliography."

Authority and Audience 2: Keywords: author-function, God-author, reader, scriptor, image, imaginary, symbolic
Monday October 2: Please read Foucault, "What is an Author?" (1622); Click here for "The World of Michel Foucault" (!).; Click here for "Foucault resources."; Click here for "Foucault on the Web."; Click here for foucault links at [theory.org.uk].; Click here for the Foucault page at [popcultures.com].; Click here for the entry on Foucault from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.; Click here for an e-text/html transcription of the English translation of the "Panopticism" section of Discipline and Punish.; Click here for and entry on Jeremy Bentham from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Wednesday October 4: Please read Barthes, "The Death of the Author" (1466)
Friday October 6: Please read Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" (1285); Click here to link to [lacan dot com].; Click here for an overview of Lacan's work by Dr. Mary Klages.; Click here for Lacan Online.; Click here for the Lacan page at [popcultures.com].; Click here for a Lacan bibliohgraphy.

Poetics and Performativity 2: Keywords: performative utterance, locution, perlocution, illocution, Die Sprache spricht, poetry, ontology
Monday October 9: THANKSGIVING -- UNIVERSITY CLOSED
Wednesday October 11: Please read Heidegger (1121)
Friday October 13: Please read Austin (1430)

Poetics and Performativity 3: Keywords: deconstruction, parody, writing, body, queer, origin, "always already"
Monday October 16: Short Essay due in class.; Click here for the essay topics for the short essay.; Please read Derrida, from Of Grammatology (1822); Click here for audio files (mp3 format) of interviews with Jacques Derrida. (The sound quality is very poor.); Click here for an introduction, with an extensive bibliography, to Jacques Derrida's Presidential Lectures at Stanford University in April 1999.; Click here for :Remembering Jacques Derrida."; Click here for the Derrida page at popcultures.com.
Wednesday October 18: Please read Butler (2488); Click here for the homepage for In Touch weekly.; Click here for a page on Judith Butler from theory.org.uk.; Click here for a set of lecture notes on Judith Butler by Prof. Mary Klages at the University of Colorado.; Click here for an interview with Butler.; Click here for a bibliography of Butler's work linked to the Wellek Lectures site.; Click here for Butler's homepage at Berkeley.; Click here for a brief article on Jacques Derrida by Butler, from the London Review of Books.; Click here for an entry on Judith Butler from the Literary Encyclopedia.; Click here for a comparative review of work by Butler and Zizek.; Click here for "Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?" by Judith Butler.
Friday October 20

Reading and Viewing 2: Keywords: queer, bisexual, ecriture feminine, writing the body
Monday October 23: Please read Cixous (2039); Click here for the homepage for the 1998 Stanford Presidential lectures by Helene Cixous.; Click here for a page on Cixous from the European Graduate School.; Click here for an excellent bibliography on Cixous.; Click here for an interview with Cixous from 1996.; Click here for a Cixous bibliography.; Click here for an interview with Cixous from New Literary History, 1997.; Click here for an audio file of a presentation at a book-launch for Ex-Cities by Helene Cixous and Maria Chevska. (Cixous herself begins to speak at about the 40 minute mark.)
Wednesday October 25: Please read Sedgwick (2432); Click here for "The reeducation of a queer theorist," a 1999 profile of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick by Maria Russo.; Click here for a brief faculty profile (from the City University of New York) of Sedgwick.; Click here for a review of Touching Feeling by Sedgwick.; Click here for a set of links on queer theory from "popcultures.com".; Click here for a review by Jennie Chu of A Dialogue on Love by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Friday October 27

Culturing Texts 1: Keywords: ideology, culture industry, commodity, value, materialism, dialectic
Monday October 30: Please read Marx, from The German Ideology and from Capital Volume 1, Chapter 1 (767, 776)
Wednesday November 1: Please read Adorno and Horkheimer (1223); Click here for a good electronic version of "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception."; Click here for a page on Adorno at theory.org.uk.; Click here for "Dialectics at a Standstill" by Stephen Bronner.; Click here for the entry on Adorno from Wikipedia.
Friday November 3

Reading and Viewing 3: Keywords: technology, screen, fetish, uncanny, scopophilia, narcissism
Monday November 6: Please read Benjamin (1166)
Wednesday November 8: Please read Mulvey (2181)
Friday November 10

Culturing Texts 2: Keywords: organic intellectual, hegemony, cultural studies, nation, culture, race
Monday November 13: UNIVERSITY CLOSED in lieu of REMEMBRANCE DAY
Wednesday November 15: Please read Gramsci (1138)
Friday November 17: Please read Hall (1898); Click here for Stuart-Hall-o-rama from k.i.s.s. of the panopticon.; Click here for a page on Stuart Hall from "Marxist Media Theory" by Daniel Chandler.; Click here for "Cultural Studies Stuart Hall" by Robert T. Craig & Karen Tracy.; Click here for a brief profile of Hall.

Culturing Texts 3: Keywords: subculture, resistance, ideology, race, signifying, vernacular, popular
Monday November 20: Please read Hebdige (2448)
Wednesday November 22: Please read Baker (2227); Click here for Houston A. Baker's homepage at Duke University.; Click here for "Black Captive in a White Culture?" by EMILY EAKIN, a profile of Houston A. Baker.; Click here for "Failed Prophet and Falling Stock: Why Ralph Ellison Was Never Avant-Garde" by Houston A. Baker.; Click here for "Blue Men, Black Writing, and Southern Revisions" by Houston A. Baker.
Friday November 24

Authority and Audience 3: Keywords: postcolonial, hybrid, mestiza, race, place, identity
Monday November 27: Term paper due in class. Please note the change of due date.; Click here for the essay topics for the term paper.; Please read Bhabha (2379)
Wednesday November 29: Please read Anzaldua (2211)
Friday December 1: REVIEW

Monday December 11: A hard copy of the final examination must be submitted either to me in my office (BuTo 401) or to the main English Department office (BuTo 397) no later than 4:30 p.m.; Electronic submissions will not be accepted, and there can be no extensions of this deadline.; Click here for the text of the final exam.