Module Identifier | ENM0220 | ||
Module Title | PROBLEMS IN HISTORY AND THEORY | ||
Academic Year | 2001/2002 | ||
Co-ordinator | To Be Arranged | ||
Semester | Semester 2 | ||
Course delivery | Seminar | 5 Hours 5 x 2 hours, 1 seminar every other week | |
Assessment | Essay | 1 essay of 5,000 words |
SESSION 6
Theories of Hisotry and Historicism
Tutors: Tim Woods/Mike Smith
This workshop will focus on the ways in which Marxist theories of history have been challenged bypostmodernism. It will consider versions of the structural models of history offered by Walter Benjamin and Jean-Francoise Lyotard, and it will take the French Revolution as a case study of a grand narrative of history and the Enlightenment being challenged by poststructuralist accounts.
Primary Reading
Benjamin, Walter, "Theses of the Philosophy of History, in Illuminations", ed. Hannah Arendt (Fontana, 1973)
Extracts from; Lyotard, Jean-Francois, "The Postmodern Condition" (1979; Manchester, 1984)
Marx, Karl, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" (1848)
Secondary Reading
Sim, Stuart, "Lyotard and the Politics of Antifoundationalism", "Radical Philosophy 44" (Aut. 1986), 8-13
Paulson, Ronald, "Representing Revolution" (Yale UP, 1983), 1-36
Mehlman, Jeffrey, "Revolution and Repetition" (California UP, 1977)
SESSION 7
Race and National Identities
Tutors: Andrew Hadfield/Martin Padget
It is now virtually impossible to study literature without considering the racial or national identity of writers of both literature and criticism. We will consider some of the key contemporary debates through looking at four representative essays. Issues explored will include: debates about race and national identity; links between "first" and "third" world cultures; arguments concerning cosmopolitan and particularism; and the relationship between literature and culture.
Primary Reading
Tzvetan Todorov, "'Race', Writing and Culture", in "'Race', Writing, Difference", ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr., (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1986)
Henry Louis Gates Jr., "'Talkin' That Talk", in "'Race", Writing, Difference", ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr., (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986)
Homi Bhaba "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse", in "The Location of Culture" by Homi Bhaba (London: Routledge, 1994)
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, "The American Indian Fiction Writer: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, The Third World, and First Nation Sovereignty" in "Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice" by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Secondary Reading
Henry Louis Gates Jr, ed., "'Race', Writing, Difference", (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986)
SESSION 8
Feminist Literary Histories
Tutors: Patricia Duncker/Sarah Prescott
This session will consider the strengths and weaknesses of various feminist approaches to the construction of literary histories and the traditions of women's writing. We will also discuss the revaluations of genres within women's writing with particular reference to romance.
Primary Reading
Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One's Own" (1928)
Daphne du Maurier, "Rebecca" (1938)
Secondary Reading
Margaret Ezell, "Writing Women's Literary History" (John Hopkins University Press, 1993)
Ellen Moers, "Literary Women" (The Women's Press, 1978
Adrienne Rich "When We Dead Awaken": Writing as Revision, "On Lies Secrets and Silence": Selected Prose 1996-1978 (W W Norton & Co, 1979)
Elaine Showalter, "A Literature of Their Own" (Revised Edition, Virago, 1982)
Janet Todd, "Feminist Literary History" (Polity, 1988)
SESSION 9
Reading Texts in Contexts: Historicist Approaches to Literature
Tutors: Claire Jowitt/Paulina Kewes
This seminar will assess the advantages and limitations of historicist approaches to literature. We shall be discussing the contribution of New Hisotricism and Cultural Materialism and of more recent historicist scholarship to literary studies. We shall investigate how major and minor events affect the writing of texts and their reception by multiple audiences. The chief objective will be to compare the different kinds of historical evidence available in particular historical periods and to consider what uses might be made of such evidence in re-constructing contexts for the interpretation of texts.
Primary Reading
Robert D Hume, Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archaeo-Historicism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Chapters 2 and 4.
Michel Foucault, "La Meninas" from, "The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences" (London: Routledge, 1991)
Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach" in Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh, "Modern Literary Theory: A Reader, third edition" (London, Arnold, 1996)
H R Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory", in Rice and Waught, ibid.
SESSION 10
Dissertation Preparation
Tutors: Ffrangcon Lewis/Clive Meachen
This session will deal with the issue of choosing a dissertation project, paying particular atention to work length and the time that can be reasonably allotted to research. It will also cover the roles of the supervisor and researcher, focussing on the number of sessions that can be expected, together with a review of what these sessions can be expected to achieve. It will also look in depth at the practical aspects of producing a dissertation, such as footnotes, bibliography, submission procedures and general presentation.