2024-25

Module Convenor: Dr Michael Meeuwis

This module pairs slow and sustained readings of Austen’s primary novels with extended readings in the culture of what we call “theory,” both eighteenth century and contemporary (mostly post-1995). Beginning with Marilyn Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975), we will situate Austen’s novels securely within intellectual history. A particular focus will be how novels can be sources of freestanding ideas; and then, in turn, how freestanding ideas can give structure to plots and characters within the novel itself.

More information: full-year module, 30 CATS. Seminars meet once a week for 90 minutes.

Assessment:

Intermediate Year students:
100% assessed (2 x 3500-word essay)

Final Year students:
100% assessed (2 x 4000-word essays)

Essays that you develop yourselves as independent research projects.

Syllabus:

Dear students: Please note that you will be responsible for bringing a legible version of these texts to class with you, and on something larger than a cell phone screen. I recommend Oxford World Classics editions, which are recycled every few years with new introductions; don't worry if your edition is from a different year or has a different introduction. I would also recommend buying your own copies of the Locke and Smith--these are dense books, which you will need to read slowly and carefully. Locke's Enquiry on a bookshelf will impress visitors to your home for years to come: I recommend the stern-looking Nidditch edition. I'll be teaching from electronic Project Gutenberg texts, which are available here; but I read the novels in physical form, which I'd recommend to you as well.

Mandatory Primary Texts, recommended editions:

Austen, Jane. Persuasion (OUP, 2004).

---. Mansfield Park (OUP, 2008)

---. Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon (OUP, 2008)

---. Pride and Prejudice (OUP, 2008)

---. Sense and Sensiblity (OUP, 2008)

First paper prompt (revised 25 Oct)

Term One: Austen, Philosophy, Theory

Week	Primary Text	Secondary Reading	PowerPoint*
1	Lady Susan (in Oxford Northanger Abbey collection, or online)		T1W1
2:	Northanger Abbey	John Locke, "The Epistle to the Reader" and "Book I, Chapter II: No Innate Principles in the Mind" (from the Essay Concerning Human Understanding)	T1W2 Handout
3:	Northanger Abbey	John Locke, "Book III, Chapter I" and "Book III, Chapter V" (from the Essay Concerning Human Understanding)	T1W3 Handout
4:	Sense and Sensibility	Adam Smith, from the Moral Sentiments	T1W4 Handout
5:	Sense and Sensibility	Smith, from the Moral Sentiments	Handout
7:	Pride and Prejudice	Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1-74	T1W7 Handout
8:	Pride and Prejudice	Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, Elizabeth Miller, Extraction Ecologies, Recommended: Graeme Macdonald, "Research Note: The Resources of Fiction"	T1W8 Handout
9:	Mansfield Park	Postcolonialism: Edward Said, from Culture and Imperialism, particularly "Jane Austen and Empire" Recent readings in Austen and slavery: Tricia Matthew, "On Teaching, but Not Loving, Jane Austen"; Jasmin Malik Chua, "The Battle Over Jane Austen's Whiteness"
10:	Mansfield Park	Achille Mbeme, "Of Commandement," in On the Postcolony  Handout

 

Term Two: Austen in "Theory"

Week	Primary	Secondary Reading	Powerpoint*
1:	Mansfield Park	Kathleen Stewart, from Ordinary Affects: "Ordinary Affects" (1-7), and fragments pp. 9-38 Lauren Berlant, "Cruel Optimism," from Cruel Optimism
2:	Emma	William Galperin, "Nostalgia in Emma"	T2W1 Handout
3:	Emma	Sianne Ngai, "Zany," Our Aesthetic Categories	T2W3 Handout
4:	Emma	Structuralism and high deconstruction: Ferdinand de Saussure, "The Object of Study"; and Jaques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play in the Human Sciences"; William Galperin, Emma chapter, The Historical Jane Austen	T1W4 PowerPoint T1W4 Handout
5:	Persuasion	Catherine Malabou, The Ontology of Accident, 1-38	T1W5 Handout
7:	Persuasion	José Esteban Muñoz, "Race, Sex, and the Incommensurate: Gary Fisher with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick", in Cruising Utopia	T1W6
8:	The Watsons	Judith Butler Memorial Week: Kadji Amin, "We Are All Nonbinary"	Handout
9:	Juvenilia (as much as you wish)	Jane Bennet, "The Force of Things" and "The Agency of Assemblages"	PowerPoint Handout
10:	Sanditon	D.A. Miller, Jane Austen; or, the Secret of Style	Handout PowerPoint

*A note on PowerPoint: these are teaching aids, rather than in any sense a transcript or summary of the class session. I will update these in the week of instruction, but until we have arrived at a week these may be last year's PowerPoint, and as such might reflect a different reading than that which we are doing this year. Please use these PowerPoints for your review--but the class experience, summary videos, and interactions with the instructor in office hours are paramount.

Sample first paper, 2018/19: