Fall 2016
The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory will offer a series of public lectures on the history of critical theory. These lectures, each of which will be followed by open discussion, will take place on Tuesdays from 5:15-6:45pm in 1092 Lincoln Hall. The lectures are coordinated with graduate seminars on critical theory in a number of departments, but are also open to other faculty or graduate students who may wish to attend.
For more information, contact Susan Koshy, Ted Faust, or Roman Friedman.
Students may wish to purchase the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Second Edition (2010).
NOTE: Participants who are not registered for one of the affiliated courses and who would like to read the supporting readings should email Roman Friedman (unitraroman@gmail.com).
Week 1: No Public Lecture
Week 2 (8/30): German Idealism
Lecture: Bruce Rosenstock Religious Studies, UIUC
Readings:
1. "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" WE 8: 33-42. (In Practical Philosophy, transl./ed. Mary Gregor, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996: pp. 17-22.) (link)
2. "On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but is of no use in practice" TP 8: 273-341. (In Practical Philosophy, pp. 277-309) (link)
Week 3 (9/6): Marx & Marxism
Lecture: Jim Hansen, English, UIUC
Readings:
1. Marx - Selections from Norton
2. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
3. Theodor W. Adorno, On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening
Week 4 (9/13): Structuralism
Lecture: Jessica Greenberg, Anthropology, UIUC
Readings:
1. Ferdinand Saussure (selections from Norton)
2. Levi Strauss. 1962. The Savage Mind, chs. 1-2, and Strauss - Selections from Norton
3. Roland Barthes (selections from Norton)
Recommended:
1. Roman Jakobson, (selections from Norton)
2. Louis Althusser (selections from Norton)
Week 5 (9/20): Psychoanalysis
Lecture: Andrew Gaedtke, English, UIUC
Readings:
1. Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams (selections: 311-315; 340-349)
2. Freud- The Uncanny (excerpts: 123-125; 135-151)
3. Freud - Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through (147-156)
4. Lacan - Selections from Norton and Lacan - Agency of the Letter.pdf
5. Zizek - The Seven Veils of Fantasy
Week 6 (9/27): Derrida and Deconstruction
Lecture: Marcus Keller, French & Italian, Emory
Readings:
1. Derrida, Jacques - Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (with notes)
2. Derrida - Signature Event Context
3. Derrida - Specters of Marx
4. Derrida - The Future of the Profession or the University without Condition
Week 7 (10/4): Biopolitics
Lecture: Penelope Deutscher, Northwestern U
Readings:
1. Michel Foucault - The History of Sexuality Vol I Chap 5
2. Foucault - Society Must Be Defended Ch3
3. Foucault - Society Must Be Defended ch. 11
4. Foucault - Political Technology Individuals
Week 8 (10/11): Postcolonial Theory
Lecture: Madhumita Lahiri, English, University of Michigan
Readings:
1. McClintock - The Angel of Progress
2. Stoler, Ann Laura - On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty
3. PMLA Editor_s_Column_The_End_of_Postcolonial
Week 9 (10/18): Indigenous Studies
Lecture: Mishuana Goeman, UCLA
Readings:
1. Mishuana Goeman - Mark My Words, Intro, Ch1
2. Mishuana Goeman - Disrupting a Settler Grammar of Place in Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie's 'Photographic Memoirs of an Aboriginal Savant'
3. McDowell, Linda - In and Out of Place
4. Crenshaw, Kemberle - Mapping Margins
Recommended:
1. Puar, Jasbir. "'I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess' Intersectionality, Assemblage, and Affective Politics," http://eipcp.net/transversal/0811/puar/en
2. Nash, Jennifer C. - 'Home Truths' on Intersectionality
3. Phoenix, Ann and Brah, Avtar - Ain't I a Woman
Week 10 (10/25): Critical Race Theory
Lecture: Paul C. Taylor, Penn State U
Readings:
1. Derrick Bell - Racial Realism
2. Nikhil Pal Singh - Racial Formation in an Age of Permanent War
3. Roderick Ferguson - On the Specificities of Racial Formation
4. Patricia Williams - On Being the Object of Property
Week 11 (11/1): Digital Humanities
Lecture: David Teho Goldberg, UC Irvine
Readings:
1. David Beer - Power through the Algorithm
2. Kate Crawford - Can an Algorithm be Agnostic
3. McQuillan, D - Algorithmic States of Exception
4. Tiziana Terranova, "Red Stack Attack! Algorithms, Capital and the Automation of the Common," http://www.euronomade.info/?p=2268
5. Michele Willson - Algorithms (and the) Everyday, Information, Communication & Society
Week 12 (11/8): Visual Studies
Lecture: Terri Weissman, Art History, UIUC
Readings:
1. WJT Mitchell - Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture
2. Tanya Sheehan - Looking Pleasant Feeling White: The Social Politics of the Photographic Smile
3. Ariella Azoulay - A Civil State of Emergency
4. Claudio Lomnitz - 2006 Immigrant Mobilizations in the United States
Recommended:
5. Ariella Azoulay "What is Visual Citizenship" (it's only 6 minutes long):https://vimeo.com/25369128
Week 13 (11/15): Queer Theory
Lecture: Siobhan Somerville, English/GWS, UIUC
Readings:
1. Michel Foucault - The History of Sexuality, Volume I (pp. 1- 49)
2. Cathy Cohen - Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics
Recommended:
1. Gayle Rubin - Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality
2. Judith Butler - Critically Queer