Assignments

ENGL 3900 Critical Theory, Spring 2026

MW 3:30-4:45 p.m., Arts & Sciences 342

Interpretation Survey

Spend a few moments writing all the questions you ask of every text you read or watch: a poem, a short story, a novel, a play, a film, a television show, a graphic novel. We'll post your questions here, and throughout the semester we'll compare them to the questions the theorists we're reading would ask.

Here are the questions our class asked on Monday, January 12.

Author
- Who wrote this and what is the author's perspective? How does the author relate to the text?
- How does the author's/creator's background and culture contribute to the message or story being told? What influenced this? Did the author experience soemthing similar in real life?
- Why did the author write this? What inspires the creation of this piece of media? What historical event (pre/post/during publication) does this apply to?
- What emotions is the writer feeling?
- What is being unconsciously communicated?
- What does the main character's view on life and events reveal about the author's intention of the work?
- Does the author have a theme they stick to when writing? A particular style?
- What did the author intend for me to get out of it. How is the author setting up the piece?
Title
- How does the title relate to the work?
Length
- Why is this text this length?
Series
- Is it part of a longer series?
Setting
- What is the historical significance of when the work was produced and of the time period of when the central action of the work takes place?
- When does this take place? What is the historical context?
- How does the setting influence the overall message, and would there be a difference if it changed? Why does the setting of the story matter?
- Is is set in a fantasy world or our world?
Character
- What is the importance of the main character's name?
- Why did this character act this way, or why did they do something?
- Where do I see examples of the displayed character traits in real life and pop culture?
Narration
- Who is speaking?
Plot
- Why did this happen, and what led to it?
- Is the plot realistic?
- Is there a happy or sad ending?
- What type of rhythm and beats does the piece follow?
- For nonfiction, documentary, and based on a true story texts, how much of this story is true?
Symbol
- What is a recurring symbol and what does it represent? What is the symbolism?
Imagery and Visuals
- How do lighting, color, and camera angles effect the story? What types of shots and camera angles say about the scene? What does the costuming mean to the story?
Sound
- How does this text use music?
Style
- What is the purpose of the author's stylistic and aesthetic choices? Does it elevate their arts?
- Does it stick to archetypes and tropes or try to be experimental?
- How does the media convey its theme?
- Why did the author use this specific language?
Theme and Significance
- What is the deeper meaning behind this?
- What is the media trying to say? What is the message? What is the point?
- How does this piece work outside of the artist's intentions? Does it hold its own?
- Can I gain any value from critically thinking about the piece or is it the type of art that is just fluff?
Genre and Medium
- What genre is the text? Does it have more than one?
- Is this a remake or based on something else?
- How would the media be translated or received if it switch mediums?
Women and Minorities
- How does this media treat its women and minorities?
Audience
- Do I relate to the characters?
- How does this text make me feel?
- Does the text resonate with me? Should it?
- What can I learn from this?
- What type of reader does this effect?
- How did people respond to this?
- How do I interpret this text against the mass public? Do they see what I see?
- What is the rating?
- What does Letterboxed or Goodreads say about it?

Here are the questions the theorists we're reading would ask any work of literature:

Formalist Criticisms: Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, and Russian Formalism
- Overview: What single interpretation of the text best establishes its organic unity from? In other words, how do the text's formal elements, and the multiple meanings those elements produce, all work together to support the theme, or overall meaning, of the work? Remember, a great work will have a theme of universal human significance. (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 133)
- John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc.": Without considering external factors like Marxist and New Humanist morality or reader emotion, what does the scientific, systematic business of criticism reveal about the work of literature?
- Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase": Without paraphrasing the work, what is the essential and meaningful poetic/artistic structure of the literary text?
- William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy": Disregarding external, private evidence, what internal structure and public evidence points to the meaning of the work?
  - "The Affective Fallacy": Without considering the author's intention or the emotional effect of the work on the reader, what does the work say (as opposed to do)?
- T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent": Describe the meaning of the work of literature in relation to its literary tradition. What new emotions does the work of literature create from the raw material of personality that the writer seeks to escape?
- F. R. Leavis, from The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad: How does the work "not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and readers" but promotoes an "awareness of the possibilities of life"?
Structuralism
- Overview: . . . how should the text be classified in terms of its genre?
  - Analyze the text's narrative operations. Can you speculate about the relationship between the text's "grammar" and that of similar texts?
  - What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to "make sense" of the text?
  - What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or “texts,” such as high school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume (or any other consumer product), or even media coverage of a historical event, such as Operation Desert Storm, an important legal case, or a presidential election campaign? In other words, analyze the nonverbal messages sent by the "texts: in question. . . . What is being communicated, and how exactly is it being communicated? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 233)
- Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics: Describe the ways in which the literary work's differential, arbitrary language or sign systems (the unification of signifying sound-images and signified concepts) construct its characters' and readers' reality.
- Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics": Describe how the structure of the work depends on its predominant poetic function, and analyze how the other five functions (referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalingual) form the text.
  - from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances": What literary devices (such as metaphor and metonymy) does the literary work or literary genre tend to foreground and how so?
- Northrop Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature": How should the literary work be categorized in terms of season and genre (spring romance, summer comedy, autumn tragedy, winter satire)?
- Tzvetan Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative": What repeated narrative patterns undergird the literary text?
- Roland Barthes, from Mythologies: Describe the sign system of a large group of texts, like campaign photos or soap ads.
  - "The Death of the Author": Describe the codes and conventions of literary discourse that work through the writer and express themselves in the current literary text.
Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism
- Overview: How can we use the various conflicting interpretations a text produces (the "play of meanings") or find the various ways in which the text doesn't answer the questions it seems to answer, to demonstrate the instability of language and the undecidability of meaning?
  - What ideology does the text seem to promote—what is its main theme—and how does conflicting evidence in the text show the limitations of that ideology? We can usually discover a text's overt ideological project by finding the binary opposition(s) that structure the text's main theme(s). (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 265)
- Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text": Describe how the literary text is not just a finished product wrought from codes and conventions of literary discourse but also in process and in play.
- Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?": What is the meaning of the author and her work, and how are those meanings tied to the literary discourse surrounding the author?
  - from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison: What is the main character's subject position with regard to various institutions and discourses? How is the identity of the main character created by the institution(s) that discipline her?
  - from The History of Sexuality: How is the main character's interiority (her subjectivity, her sexuality) regulated by her discourse communities?
- Jacques Derrida, from Of Grammatology: How does the literary text produce excessive or exorbitant meaning? In what ways is the meaning of the literary text undecidable?
- Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric": What valid yet mutually exclusive readings of the text make interpretation undecidable? How does the reading of the text end up in indetermination (suspended uncertainty) or negative certainty? How does the literary text simultaneously assert and deny the authority of its own rhetorical mode?
- J. L. Austin, "Performative Utterances": Rather than the true/false dichotomy of literary reference, describe the ambiguity, meaning, and force of the literary statement.
- Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble: How is a character's body (and therefore interiority) culturally inscribed? How does the character performatively fabricate and construct her (gender) identity?
- Jean Baudrillard, from "The Precession of Simulacra": In what ways does the cultural setting within and of the literary text simulate reality without original reference; in other words, how does the text substitute signs of the real for the real itself and thereby create a hyperreal play of illusions, phantasms, and imaginary?
- Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa": How does the text challenge the phallogocentric stereotype of the woman as Dark Continent; deconstruct both the masculine/feminine, mind/body, whole/lack, self/other dichotomies; and write possibilities of self?
Psychoanalysis
- Overview: How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work? That is, what unconscious motives are operating in the main character(s); what core issues are thereby illustrated; and how do these core issues structure or inform the piece?
  - How can characters' behavior be understood in terms of core issues? What defenses seem to be operating to repress characters' awareness of their core issues? How does such an interpretation help us better understand the story?
  - Does the work illustrate sibling rivalry, the Oedipal conflict, or any other psychoanalytic family dynamics? That is, is it possible to relate a character's patterns of adult dysfunctional behavior to early experiences in the family as that family is represented in the story? How do these patterns of behavior and family dynamics operate, and what do they reveal?
  - How can characters' behavior, narrative events, or images be explained in terms of fear of death (which can manifest itself as fascination with death) or in terms of a destructive relationship to the sexual (which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior) as psychoanalysis understands these concepts?
  - In what ways can we view a literary work as analogous to a dream? That is, how might recurrent or striking dream symbols reveal the ways in which the narrator or speaker is projecting his or her unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts onto other characters, onto the setting, or onto the events portrayed?
  - What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author? Psychoanalyzing an author in this [psychobiographical] manner is a difficult undertaking, and our analysis must be carefully derived by examining the author's entire corpus as well as letters, diaries, and any other biographical material available. Certainly, a single literary work can provide but a very incomplete picture.
  - What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader? Or what might a critical trend suggest about the psychological motives of a group of readers?
  - In what ways does the text seem to reveal characters' emotion investments in the Symbolic Order, the Imaginary Order, the Mirror Stage, or what Lacan calls objet petit a? Does any part of the text seem to represent Lacan's notion of the Real? Do any Lacanian concepts account for so much of the text that we might say the text is structured by one or more of those concepts? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today, 3rd and 4th editions)
- Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams: What unconscious Oedipal guilt and castration anxiety might a character (like Hamlet) have? What unconscious fears and desires do the character's dreams symbolize?
  - from "The Uncanny": Does the work have an object that seems familiar yet alien? From that object, what repressed knowledge returns despite and because of the character's anxiety regarding unconscious fears or desires?
  - "Fetishism": Does a character disavow the reality of loss and the symbolics of castration by imbuing an object or idea with sexual potency?
- Harold Bloom, from The Anxiety of Influence: How does the author unconsciously misread her literary rivals, i.e., predecessors in order to create her own original work?
- Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage": What mirror or image establishes and provides a character her sense of self? With whom or what does she identify?
  - "The Signification of the Phallus": How do characters feign possession of phallic power?
- Julia Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language: How do the underlying drives of the text and character break through and transform the conventional symbolic order of the work?
- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Does the book shatter linear unity? Does the work deterritorialize (unbind and unbound) traditional Freudian circuits of desire?
- Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Leitch 2081-95): Describe which character the audience is supposed to identify with. When looking through the eyes of this character, do women function as femme fatales, in other words, as desirable yet castrating sex objects?
- Kaplan, from Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature: Do the characters suffer from "a breach in the protective shield [of] mental apparatuses"? How are characters motivated by unconscious traumatic triggers?
Historical Criticisms: Marxist Criticism, New Historicism, Cultural Criticism
- Marxism Overview: Does the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist, or classist values?
  - How might the work be seen as a critique of capitalism, imperialism, or classism? That is, in what way does the text reveal, and invite us to condemn, oppressive socioeconomic forces (including repressive socioeconomic ideology)?
  - Does the work in some ways support a Marxist agenda but in other ways (perhaps unintentionally) support a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda? In other words, is the work ideologically conflicted?
  - How does the literary work reflect (intentionally or not) the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written and/or the time in which it is set, and what do those condtions reveal about the operations of capitalism, classism, history of class struggle (the conflict between underpaid workers and the wealthy ruling class) at that point in history?
  - How might the work be seen as a critique of organized religion? That is, how does religion function in the text to keep a character or characters from realizing and resisting socioeconomic oppression? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today, 4th ed. 57)
  - How does the context and content of the work relate to the social-class status of the author?
  - How does the literary genre relate to the social period which produced it?
  - How is the literary form determined by social, economic, and political circumstance? (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory 161)
- New Historicism Overview: How does the literary work interact with (support, question, undermine) a particular belief prevalent at the time and place the work was written . . . as that belief was circulated in various cultural artifacts of the period?
  - How can we use a literary work to help "map" the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged? Put another way, how does the text promote ideologies that support and/or undermine the prevailing power structures of the time and place in which it was written?
- Cultural Criticism Overview: What does the literary work, in tandem with evidence from the popular culture of the period during which the work was written, suggest about the experience of—or debates about—groups of people who have been ignored, underrepresented, or misrepresented by traditional history, such as working-class people, prisoners, women, people of color, LGBTQ people, children, the homeless, and the mentally ill? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today, 4th ed. 258)
  - What is the context of power and exploitation in which the literary text emerged?
  - What history is lost, and what history can be recovered in reading the literary text in the context of original and contemporary power and exploitation?
  - What are the dominant (conservative) social, political, and religious assumptions in the culture that created the literary work that emerge in the literary work? (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory 180-1)
- Karl Marx, from The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: How do the productive and social conditions depicted in the work of literature estrange the characters from other people and their own inner worlds as well as limit their independence and freedom?
  - from The German Ideology: Describe the character's consciousness, which is produced by "the material activities and material intercourse of men" in the literary work.
- György (Georg) Lukács, from The Historical Novel (Leitch 905-21): What is the essence or totality of the work in terms of the dialectic between immediate subjective experience and objective reality of historical, economic living conditions?
- Terry Eagleton, "Categories for a Materialist Criticism": What are the social relations among the general mode of production and the literary mode of production? What are the relations among the general ideology, the authorial ideology, and the aesthetic ideology that produce the literary text?
- Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility": Does the literary work have an authenticity or aura, a ritualistic or cultic quality surrounding its experience? Is the work exhibited to the masses (the cineplex of mass reproducibility and mass consumption) or the individual (museum of the sacred experience of art)?
- Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, from "The Culture Industry": What does the literary work suggest, either intrinsically in terms of ideological theme, or extrinsically in terms of the relationship between the work and reality, about the relationship between pleasure and labor (or, more classically, from Marlowe, profit and delight)? What does the literary work do to the thinking individual, the viewer or reader (or, more classically, from Socrates, the contemplative life)?
- Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory": Inside the text, how does the ideological superstructure reflect the economic base ("the real social existence of man") of the society portrayed in the work of literature? Does the work portray one group in authority dominating over another ideologically and economically (hegemony)? Outside the text, what is the relationship of the literary work to the conditions of cultural and ideological practice in the world? Does the literary work express the dominant hegemony or an alternate practice?
- Fredric Jameson, from The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act: How does the text, as a political act, reflect the historical events of the time period in which it was written? How does the text represent the class conflicts of the characters inside the text and the external social tensions that produced the text? What is the relationship between the form of the text and the ideology of the time period that produced it?
- Louis Althusser, from "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses": What ideological state apparatuses (religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade-union, media, cultural) in or of the literary work cause an imaginary relationship of the characters or readers to their real conditions of existence?
- Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies": Examine the representations of power—politics, race, class, and gender subjugation, domination, exclusion, marginality, Otherness, etc." in the text.
- Dick Hebdige, from Subculture: The Meaning of Style: If there is a subculture group represented in the text, what are its signs and how does it challenge the symbolic world of the dominant culture?

Winter Storm GeorgiaVIEW Discussion Board

In accordance with modified campus operations due to the winter storm, today's class will be conducted asynchronously on the GeorgiaVIEW discussion board. To be marked Present, answer your assigned question in a 150-250 word response in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Discussions > Winter Storm Discussion Board by Tuesday, January 27, at 11:59 p.m. Here are the assigned questions:

Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy"
- "We mean to suggest by the above analysis that whereas notes seem to justify themselves as external indexes to the author's intention, yet they ought ot be judged like any other parts of a composition (verbal arrangement special to a particular context), and when so judged their reality as parts of the poem or their imaginative integration with the rest of the poem, may come into question." (1209)
- Using this quote as a guide, are author's footnotes (such as T.S. Eliot's footnotes in "The Waste Land" or David Foster Wallace's in Infinite Jest, internal to the text or external to the text, and should the New Critic use the author's footnotes to determine the meaning of the text?
- Students: Zoe Arters and Natalie Borbely
Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy"
- "Nevertheless, we submit that this is the true and objective way of criticism, as contrasted to what the very uncertainty of exegesis might tempt a second kind of critic to undertake: (2) the way of biographical or genetic inquiry, in which, taking advantage of the fact that Eliot is still alive, and in the spirit of a man who would settle a bet, the critic writes to Eliot and asked what he mean, or if he had Donne in mind. [. . .] Critical inquiries, unlike bets, are not settled in this way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle." (1211)
- Using this quote as a guide, what do you think New Critics would say about the meaning derived from interviewing the author of a text?
- Students: Mia Celone and Jacub Gonzalez-Labra
Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
- "The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material." (888)
- Explain Eliot's theory of impersonality using this passage.
- Students: Zach Kennon and Katherine Mikell
Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
- "[. . .] for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a 'personal' to express, but a particular mediumm which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways." (889)
- Explain Eliot's theory of impersonality using this passage.
- Students: Eowynn Miller and Westray Shultz
Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
- "The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him." (890)
- Explain Eliot's theory of impersonality using this passage.
- Students: Mackenzie Sheram and Riley/Shade Teschner
Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
- "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." (890)
- Explain Eliot's theory of impersonality using this passage.
- Students: Kate Whitehurt and Sam Yost

Article Summary and Article Application

The informal article summary compels you to practice determining the key ideas of a specific theorist's essay, and the informal article application compels you to apply a specific theorist's ideas when interpreting a text. In order to develop tentative understanding of sometimes difficult ideas, you will pair up to discuss the article, and then one person will summarize it and the other will apply it. Over the course of the semester, you will both summarize an article and apply an article.

Article Summary

The article summary, which will summarize a particular theorist's essay, should

be 3-4 pages long,
be formatted in MLA style in Word format (I suggest using this template),
summarize the article's argument for approaching literature (if there are multiple articles on the syllabus by a single author, summarize only one),
quote and explain at least two significant passage(s),
define key terms,
and include questions that the theorist would ask of the work of literature

Article Application

The article application, which will critically read a text by applying a particular theorist's ideas, should

be 3-4 pages long,
be formatted in MLA style in Word format (I suggest using this template),
briefly explicitly pose questions that the theorist would ask a text (about a half page)
select one work of literature below and respond to that work using the theorist's questions (about 2-3 pages):
- novel: Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem | 2 | 3
- poem: Rich, "Planetarium"
- play: Lori-Parks, In the Blood
- film: Wilder, Sunset Boulevard
- television show: Severance, season 1, episodes 1 and 2
- graphic novel: Moore and Bolland, Batman: The Killing Joke

Due Dates

Your written assignment will be due in either Assignments > Article Summary or Assignments > Article Application) two days before we are scheduled to discuss an article. Failing to submit to GeorgiaVIEW means failure of the assignment.
I will return your graded assignment to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Article Summary or Article Application approximately one week after we discuss the article in class. Due to GeorgiaVIEW limitations, I am unable to return graded assignments to you unless and until you submit them to the Assignment dropbox. Here's how to calculate your course grade.
For example, we are scheduled to discuss Frye on Monday, February 2. Therefore, someone's article summary and someone else's article application will be due in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Article Summary or Article Application on Saturday, January 31 and they will informally present on Monday, February 2. It is recommended that the two students who signed up to write the summary and application, respectively, meet to discuss article's main ideas and how to apply them in interpreting an in-class text such as the Rich poem, the Conde novel, etc.; however, the summary and application will be written and informally presented separately. I will return the graded article summary and application to the students the following week in GeorgiaVIEW > Course Work > Assignments > Article Summary or Article Application.

Sign Up

Sign up here for two slots: one article summary (sum) and one article application (app) at least three weeks apart. Note that you will discuss the article with the other person scheduled to write about it as well as coordinate your summaries and applications.

Group Presentation

In the formal presentation, groups of three or four students (formed on Tuesday, November 7) will collaborate to teach a critical theory to the class. Theories include, but are not limited to,

African-American Criticism & Ethnic Studies
Cognitive Criticism
Ecocriticism
Existentialism & Phenomenology
Feminism & Gender Studies
Gay Criticism, Lesbian Criticism, & Queer Theory
Postcolonial Criticism
Reader-Response Criticism

During the 30-45 minute presentation followed by 10-20 minute question and answer session, the group should

Provide an overview of the method (based on Tyson's Critical Theory Today overview and/or an additional overview provided by your professor).
- Compare and contrast the method with at least 2-3 previously studied critical theories.
- Define both the theory of the method and describe the practice of the method.
- See the professor if your method is not represented in Tyson's Critical Theory Today.
Teach one or two theoretical articles by a specific theorists articles can be found in Leitch's The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism;
- One week before the presentation, inform the class of the one or two theoretical articles from Leitch's The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism that your group will teach.
- 3 member groups teach 1 theoretical article.
- 4 member groups teach 2 theoretical articles.
- See the professor if your method is not represented in Leitch'sThe Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism.
Demonstrate the method with an interpretation of either one in-class text (Condé, Lori-Parks, Moore and Bolland, Rich, Severance, Sunset Boulevard).

Parameters

Time: 30-45 minute presentation, 10-20 minute question and answer session
Format: Use any audiovisuals you wish, like a Powerpoint, Canva, or the whiteboard.
Due: The presentation is due on the group's scheduled date. One group member should submit the presentation file (if applicable) to GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Group Presentation.
Group Policy: Each group member is responsible for staying connected with the group, attending meetings, actively participating in meetings, doing her delegated work, i.e., contributing her fair share to the project. In order to hold singular members accountable in a team project, each group member should individually compose and submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Group Presentation - Individual Evaluation a paragraph that assesses their own performance and their peer's service to the assignment. If it becomes apparent that a group member did not participate (skipped meetings, didn't complete her assigned work, etc.), that member will be assessed individually rather than receive the group grade.
Grade: Your assignment will be assessed in terms of understanding and presentatio of the theoretical overview, primary theories, and critical reading. Retrieve your graded assignment in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Group Presentation approximately one week after you submit. Here's how to calculate your course grade.

Sign Up

Exam 1

Exam 1 will cover formalism (liberal humanism, New Criticism, Russian formalism) and structuralism (semiotics, genre criticism, narratology, interpretive conventions) and will be taken in class on Wednesday, February 11. There will be two essay questions. In the first essay, you will be asked to compare and contrast the two critical theories (formalism and structuralism). The second essay question will ask you to demonstrate and practice applying those two selected theories in interpretations of your choice of one text from either the poem TBA , the short story TBA, the episode of the television show TBA, or the film TBA. You may bring printouts of the literary work to the exam; but you may not use your textbooks.

Your theory essay will be graded on 1) your ability to balance a broad understanding of the general theory with a healthy amount of specific terms from particular theorists as well as on 2) your ability to assess similarities and differences between the two general theories.

Your application essay grade will be based on how you interpret the text; in other words, illustrate your understanding of the two critical theories by making apparent the formalist and structuralist methodologies of interpretation.

If I were to study for this exam, I would 1) create a study sheet of key terms and key ideas from both the general theories and particular theorists), 2) write practice essays comparing and contrasting two critical theories (formalism and structuralism) using those keys terms and ideas from a few of those theorists, and 3) write practice essays interpreting the one literary/filmic text from two critical perspectives using those key terms and key theorists.

Exam 2

TBA

Exam 3

TBA