Welcome to EN 3695: Critical Theory! For the Spring 2025 semester, we’re meeting in the Museum of the White Mountains open lab from 2:00-3:40 PM on Tues and Thurs each week.
Professor Nic Helms (they/them) (nrhelms@plymouth.edu)
I’ll be in touch daily this semester via email and MS Teams (an Office 365 app available in my.usnh.edu). For drop-in appointments, I’ll be in my office in Ellen Reed 14 (top of the main stairs on the left) on Tuesday & Thursdays from 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM. If you’d like to schedule a meeting for another weekday or location, contact me.
I try to respond to all communications within twenty-four hours, except on weekends. (I treat the weekends as days of rest for me and for you! If something breaks over a weekend, let me know, but don’t worry: it can always wait until the following Monday.)
EN 3695: Critical Theory (4 Credits)
Catalog Course Description: In Studies in English students explored basic questions about texts, genre, authorship and the role of the reader in literary analysis. Critical Theory seeks to build on that general introduction and to acquaint students with specific modern and contemporary schools of literary theory including: Formalism, Reader Response, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Semiotics, Marxism, Poststructuralism, Feminism, Queer Theory, Postcolonial Theory and New Historicism. More importantly, students begin to develop their own theoretical approach, informed by what they learn from reading important literary theorists. Not open to students who have earned credit for EN 3690. Springs.
Prerequisite(s): EN 1600 or EN 2500.
Student Learning Outcomes for Critical Theory
Understand the major fields of modern and contemporary literary theory
Read difficult texts by literary theorists and identify in them major themes and questions that relate to foundational theoretical ideas
Read and think in multiple ways: as a close reader, a philosopher, and a theory practitioner
Develop an informed opinion about the role of literary theory in making textual meaning
Develop a personal theoretical orientation that is in dialogue with contemporary literary theory
Teach others about major theoretical concepts and reading practices
Identify and describe the particular relevance and resonance of theoretical concepts and approaches in your world today
Curate and disseminate your knowledge of critical theory, especially as it relates to your aesthetic, cultural, and political surroundings
Contribute to this course and to the field in ways that I, the professor, could not have anticipated at the beginning of the semester
From past iterations of Prof. Abby Goode’s Critical Theory courses at PSU
Student Learning Outcomes for all English courses
Use cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts to inform their understanding of all kinds of texts.
Display analytical skill in their written responses to texts.
Write fluently and understand writing as an artistic and/or intellectual process.
Understand the conventions of literary genre as creative writers and critics.
Capably use research to accomplish their reading, writing, and thinking goals.
Understand the role of emerging digital technologies in writing, literature, and communication.
Draw connections between literature and contemporary society, tracing back the roots of present-day systems of oppression.
Texts
Required:
Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory : A Very Short Introduction. Second edition, fully updated new edition, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Shakespeare, William, and Keir Elam. Twelfth Night or What You Will. Arden Shakespeare, 2008.
Optional:
If you’re feeling anxious about academic or literary writing, I suggest
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Brikenstein. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Sixth Edition. Norton (2024); ISBN: 978-0-393-63167-8 (any edition will do!)
Sprockets and Springes 