Dr. Brian Deyo 

This course will serve as an introduction to the field of literary studies. We will attend to a variety of the more salient historical and contemporary developments in literary criticism and theory. Though the course will provide the student with a sufficient understanding of the historical and institutional contexts that shape such developments, our primary objective will be to learn how to apply traditional methods of literary scholarship to literature with an appropriate measure of theoretical sophistication. The student will become intimately acquainted with a select range of concepts from the following theoretical/critical discourses: psychoanalysis; Marxism; structuralism; post-structuralism (deconstruction); feminism; ecofeminism; ecocriticism; postcolonialism; critical race studies; animal studies. As the student becomes equipped with a foundational knowledge of the field she will write several reflective papers that will prepare her to conduct a research project. The research project will ultimately evolve into a formal seminar paper that will be due at the end of the semester.