History of Criticism

This course studies some of the "greatest hits." We will read the most popular and influential texts in the history of "theory," defined here as philosophically informed, often politically committed modes, of interpreting everything from books, statues, buildings, cereal boxes, and historical catastrophes. We will study authors you hear a lot about but perhaps never had the opportunity to study in depth, much less in one setting: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Arendt, Benjamin, Baudrillard, Fanon, Derrida, and Jameson.