In this course students shall study key movements and figures representative of literary and cultural theory from the 20th-century to the present toward the goal of building a strong foundation and background in literary scholarship. The course will be both reflective (by encouraging students to think critically about literature and its intersections with philosophy, politics, ethics, psychology, and sociology, among others) and practical (by equipping students with a substantive critical vocabulary to productively participate in scholarly discourse within the broad field of literary and cultural studies). This course was designed to be both a historical introduction to the various schools of 20th-century criticism as well as an immersion in the theory and practice of literary and cultural criticism.

CILO-1: Demonstrate ample knowledge of major movements in 20th-century cultural criticism. CILO-2: Demonstrate familiarity with key theoretical concepts used in literary criticism. CILO-3: Apply key theoretical concepts in the practice of literary analysis. CILO-4: Develop critical reading and writing skills necessary to compose a formal academic essay of suitable sophistication using core ideas derived from this course.