Problems in Criticism

This is a seminar in affect theory and the psychoanalytic strands of contemporary criticism, where the central question is less "what does a text mean" than "what do we attach to, desire, and feel through reading, and why does that matter ethically?" You'll move between primary theory (James, Klein, Winnicott, Lacan, Ahmed, Berlant, Sedgwick) and films like Vertigo and Belle de Jour, working through close discussion, a presentation, and a take-home final rather than coverage-style exams. It sits at the senior end of the ELIT theory track — after you've met the basics of literary criticism — and is the place where criticism stops being a toolkit and becomes a way of thinking about subjectivity itself.