"Through a broad yet focused analysis of theories and practices of criticism in North America during the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, the course will introduce students to important literary concepts, “schools” of criticism, and ongoing debates regarding the reception, analysis, and interpretation of literary texts (and, by extension, art). The course will begin with early approaches to textual criticism (e.g., New Criticism, The Chicago School, The Yale Critics) and continue with Marxist literary criticism (Fredric Jameson), Edward Said’s Orientalism and American feminism(s) (and gender studies, more generally) before concluding with recent developments in Asian American Studies, Ecocriticism, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies. Literary theorists in North America draw on a range of disciplines, from philosophy and psychology to anthropology and political studies, as a way to better understand the nature and function of literature. Drawing on European traditions of literary theory, North American criticism can be understood as a reworking, selecting, hierarchizing, interpreting, and synthesizing of texts and ideas."