This seminar is designed to provide English majors with intensive and closely supervised work in critical reading and writing. Although sections of the course may address any literary question, period, or genre, they all provide an introduction to critical and methodological problems in literary studies.

What is phenomenology and what can we learn from it in the study of literature? In the very first years of the 20th century, Edmund Husserl began publishing on a topic that might seem paradoxical: he wanted to turn philosophy into a rigorous science by focusing on subjective experience. The project raised a host of difficult questions. How do we redirect our attention from everyday concerns to the style in which the world appears to us? What might such practices of attending reveal about the structure of experience? And how do we get from the seemingly solipsistic exercise of examining our subjectivity to the world outside of us? Indeed, to what extent is phenomenology an aesthetic practice, a method to see the world as a work of art? In the course of the past 100+ years, philosophers have provided countless answers to these questions. Our goal in this course is to learn from some of them and see what we might be able to do with their insights and practices in our own work. Assignments include weekly bCourses posts, two papers, and a final exam.

Book List:

Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception; additional readings will be posted on bCourses.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills