SJ5001 - History of Critical Thinking (2017/18)
Module specification | Module approved to run in 2017/18 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Module status | DELETED (This module is no longer running) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Module title | History of Critical Thinking | ||||||||||||||||||||
Module level | Intermediate (05) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Credit rating for module | 30 | ||||||||||||||||||||
School | School of Art, Architecture and Design | ||||||||||||||||||||
Total study hours | 300 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Assessment components |
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Running in 2017/18(Please note that module timeslots are subject to change) |
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Module summary
History of Critical Thinking asks students to engage with a number of topics which frame their study of literature in relation to both the contemporary world and the history of critical thinking and address questions of interpretation, signification, perspective and truth. Students will follow a number of separate but related syllabuses which will respond to developments in contemporary critical and academic debates. The module aims to provide students with a number of focussed critical discussions about making meaning from and through literary texts. The module may include such topics as: symbolism in the visual arts and literary texts; information networks, technology and truth; decolonising the imagination; language, meaning and mind.
The module examines a number of ideas about literary and aesthetic meaning in relation to claims to truth, and does so with reference to works written during and about a number of historical periods. Students will study texts and ideas from the Classical, Mediaeval, Enlightenment, Romantic, Modern and Postmodern eras. Theories of meaning that arise in these periods also form part of the discussion, such as classical aesthetics, rhetoric, rationalism, Romantic philosophy, political economy, narratology, humanism, liberalism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, postcolonialism and postmodern criticism.
Some of the material encountered on the module will be challenging. However, it will be presented and worked through in an accessible way. Theories will be explained clearly and also explored and elucidated through readings of literary texts that involve or are open to interpretation by them. Various other media and genres will be used to illustrate, elaborate and explore ideas engaged with on the module.
The module syllabus accompanies discussions on other level 5 modules such as The Craft of Fiction, Writer’s World, Genre Fiction and Victorians to Moderns and anticipates work done on level 6 modules, especially Why Literature Matters.
Module aims
History of Critical Thinking aims to:
● examine key ways in which literary signification and interpretation have been understood
● critically discuss particular philosophical and theoretical ways of thinking about literature
● explore literary texts and literary theory in terms of four critical problems which literature poses: the nature of image, truth, self and language in literary texts
● engage with equivalences and extensions of literature and literary theory (e.g., digital culture, philosophy, art)
Syllabus
Frances Yates, The Art of Memory; Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing; G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on Aesthetics; Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols; Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension; John Berger, Ways of Seeing; W.J. T. Mitchell, Image Science; Ted Striphas, The Late Age of Print; Robert Seyfert; Algorithmic Cultures; Alexander Galloway, Protocol; Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees - Abstract Models for Literary History; Matthew Jockers, Macroanalysis; Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble; John Macleod, Beginning Postcolonialism; Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; Edward Saïd, Orientalism; Ella Shohat, Robert Stam: Unthinking Eurocentrism; Bill Ashcroft et al, The Empire Writes Back
Learning and teaching
The module will be taught in weekly sessions that combine lectures, seminar discussion and small group activities, plus additional scheduled online or face-to-face tutorials. Lecture summaries will be available on Weblearn along with other electronic resources that support the course. Students will have set reading that will include novels, short stories, poems, poetry, literary criticism, literary theory, critical theory and philosophy. Class teaching may be enhanced by activities such as guest speakers and screenings.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
1. identify and understand some key critical topics in the contemporary discussion of literature critically evaluate literary texts
2. use and explain literary and critical theories
3. compare, evaluate and judge different forms of criticism, theory and philosophy
4. relate literature and literary theory to wider intellectual and cultural forms and practices
Assessment strategy
Formative activities and assessment:
● weekly reading comprehension and summary exercises
● individual or small group seminar presentations
● staff feedback on seminar discussions
● staff feedback on written assignments
● peer evaluation by students
Summative assessment:
Assessment one
– 1500 word written assignment
Assessment two
– 1500 word written assignment
Assessment three
– 2000 word written assignment
Assessment total = 5000 words
Bibliography
Baudrillard: Simulations (Semiotexte, 1983)
Eagleton, T., Literary Theory, An Introduction (Blackwell, 1996)
Easthope, A. and McGowan, K., A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader (OUP, 2004)
Kearney, R. and Rainwater, M. The Continental Philosophy Reader (Routledge, 1996)
Jockers, Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History (Topics in the Digital Humanities), (U. of Illinois Press, 2013)
Lodge, D., The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature, (Edward Arnold, 1977)
Mitchell, W.J. T., Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics (ISI Books, 2006)
Moretti, Franco, Distant Reading (Verso, 2013)
Morville, Peter, Intertwingled (Semantic Studios, 2014)
Seyfert, Robert, Algorithmic Cultures: Essays on Meaning, Performance and New Technologies, (Routledge, 2016)
Stiegler, Bernard, States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century: Pharmacology of the University (Polity Press, 2014)
Wright, E., Psychoanalytic Criticism (Polity, 1998)
Web Resources:
The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/
Critical Theory Resources:
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/crittheory/