Elective

CLIT7030 Critique and Criticism

Critique’ and ‘criticism’ are usually words associated with complaints and fault-finding, but the history of critique is much more generous and capacious than this. Criticism can include book reviews, film reviews, literary analysis, and analyses of popular culture. Critique, relatedly, is a practice that seeks to understand its object of study entirely within its own terms, and to make sense of the world that a text or practice imagines for itself. Consequently, a critic is neither an author (auteur) nor a reader (viewer), but a curious figure somewhere in between.

This course introduces students to the long traditions of criticism and critique across the world with a focus on critical writing in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The course will take a global approach to understanding the practices of criticism as they emerge and circulate. This includes (among others) German thinkers who founded the Frankfurt School; French thinkers engaged in debates about poststructuralism; American thinkers interested in popular culture, race, and gender; Chinese thinkers who were a part of the May Fourth Movement; Arab writers committed to the renaissance of Arabic literature (Nahda); and Caribbean thinkers determined to reimagine poetry. The writers associated with these various movements/collectives produced criticism – of literature, of art, of film, of music, etc. – that interrogated the very task of critique itself. They also sought to define, and redefine, what it meant to be a critic.

Throughout the course, our guiding questions will be: What is criticism? What is critique? What does it mean to ‘do’ criticism? What does it mean to be a critic? What is the purpose of criticism? Who is criticism for? Students in the course will be asked to interrogate their own position as critics (of literature, of film, of music, of popular culture, etc.), and to cultivate their own approach to critical writing. For this reason, the course is both an introduction to critical theory/cultural criticism as well as a writing workshop.

Assessment: 100% coursework