Twenty-first Century Critical Theory

Catalog description

Intended as an introduction to some influential emergent strains of literary-theoretical scholarship over the past two decades, this course will examine work in contemporary aesthetics, ecological and environmental thought, affective criticism, transgender studies, black studies, and debates around the prospects of a future for literary studies. In each case, a substantial 21st-century text will be considered alongside several canonical works (by figures such as Kant, Marx, Lukács, Du Bois, Haraway) with which it is in conversation. Contemporary authors include Lauren Berlant, Saidiya Hartman, Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, Jeffrey Nealon, Rob Nixon, Sianne Ngai, Paul B. Preciado, and Sylvia Wynter.