This course is a space for students to ask questions about language/s, culture, and power—and to actively relate them to the concrete, contemporary case study of racial injustice in the United States. At the same time, students will be introduced to related first principles of comparative literary analysis: what makes a text? What is language? How did we—readers, thinkers, and writers—become creatures of language? And how do these theories and politics of language enable different modes of reading and acting in the world? Throughout, we will be guided by the protean concept of “difference,” be it directed towards pleasure, aesthetics, power, social structures, or yet else. The thinkers on our syllabus have indelibly altered literary analysis by rethinking the ways in which differences are made and mobilized in language and politics. In following their lead, our aims are twofold: first, to practice reading theoretical texts in an attentive manner; second, to be exposed to key ideas in the development of literary and critical theory as it stands today. Informal prerequisites are: willingness to think carefully; and curiosity about literature, language, politics, and the world.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP)