This course examines the universalism of major literary and cultural theories from the 20th century to the present with a focus on the centrality of comparative reasoning (commensurability/incommensurability, the logic of inclusion/exclusion, etc.) that sustains such universalism. Our goal is to develop methods for analyzing the literary and cultural productions of East Asian societies in conversation with other traditions and for understanding global processes in China, Japan, and Korea in particular.
Topics of discussion include, for example, text and context, writing and orality, genre, media technology, visual culture, problems of translation, social imaginary, imperial and colonial modernity. Our readings include narrative theory, structural linguistics, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, critical translation studies, postmodernism, and postcolonial scholarship. Select literary works and films are incorporated to facilitate our understanding of theoretical issues and to test the validity of all universalist claims we encounter in the course.
Students are strongly encouraged to think critically and creatively about any theoretical arguments or issues that emerge in the course of our readings and discussions rather than treat theoretical idiom as an instrument to be applied to a literary text. Our expectation is for students to develop interpretive and analytical skills that are essential to the task of interpreting literary, cultural, and historical texts as well as society and the world.
