Combining various strands from Marx, Freud, and Saussure, the "Frankfurt School" produced the foundation for theoretical model now known as "Critical Theory."

This course has three purposes:  1) to introduce select fundamentals of Critical Theory;  2) to survey seminal contributions of the Frankfurt School and their intellectual descendants, particularly those relevant to cultural critique in general and literary analysis in particular; and 3) to examine some of the theoretical contexts, debates, and controversies that have arisen during the past 70+ years.

Syllabus Spring 2009

Reading Schedule

Mid-term Exam

Final Exam

Term Paper guidelines

Texts
Adorno, The Adorno Reader
Barthes, Mythologies
Benjamin, Illuminations
Jameson, The Jameson Reader
Marcuse, The Essential Marcuse

Additional Readings
Benjamin, "Author as Producer"

Marx: The German Ideology (Part I.A)
          "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life."

Althusser: "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"

Freud, Civilization and its Discontents: extracts

Optional but recommended: Lukacs, Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat: extract

Handouts

Hegel's Model of Consciousness

"Critical Theory of Society" chart

Adorno, "Subject and Object Study Guide"

Adorno and Cultural Analysis: A Beginner's Guide

Jameson on Cultural Logic of the PM: Lecture Outline

Work of Art as a Commodity

Bourdieu Chart:  Social Space and Symblic Space

Tony McNeill's lectures notes on Barthes' Mythologies

Links

Voice of the Shuttle Frankfurt School page

Frankfurt School site

Dennis Redmond's translation of Negative Dialectics
           keywords (useful definitions and contexts)

theory.org

ctheory.net

Marxist Internet Archive

Postmodernism (a web page by Martin Irvine, Georgetown University)

Fredric Jameson

"The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"

Pierre Bourdieu

Roland Barthes