Old Syllabus: 2018 to 2019
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 would also recommend buying your own copies of the Hume and Smith--these are dense books, which you will need to read slowly and carefully.
Mandatory Primary Texts (on order at bookstore):
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)
Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (OUP, 1987).
Term One: Austen in Theory, 1790-1810
Week, Primary Text (Secondary Reading)
1: (Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas; Barbara Johnson, "The Divine Miss A")
2: Sense and Sensibility (David Hume, "On the Origin of Ideas" (from the Enquiry)
(A note: this week’s class will need to be rescheduled—the instructor is away at a conference. Rescheduling to take place in class during week one. Students should come to class in week three having read S&S and the Hume “Taste” as scheduled for week three; there will be two classes, one as scheduled and one as rescheduled, during week four.)
3: Sense and Sensibility (Hume, "On the Standard of Taste")
4: Sense and Sensibility (Adam Smith, from the Moral Sentiments)
5: Pride and Prejudice (Smith, from the Moral Sentiments)
*N.b.: I've decided to do two weeks on the Moral Sentiments, at least in terms of the readings. I'll be summarizing The Wealth of Nations in class.)
7: Pride and Prejudice (Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first half)
8: Pride and Prejudice (Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, second half)
9: Mansfield Park (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1-74)
10: Mansfield Park (Burke, Reflections, 75-105, 204-end)
Term Two: Austen in Theory, 1995-Present
1: Mansfield Park (Postcolonialism: Edward Said, from Culture and Imperialism, particularly "Jane Austen and Empire"; and Gayatri Spivak, "Four Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism")
2: Emma (Structuralism and high deconstruction: Ferdinand de Saussure, "The Object of Study"; and Jaques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play in the Human Sciences")
3: Emma (Cultural Marxism: Raymond Williams, from The Country and the City; and Fredric Jameson)
4: Emma (Arjun Appadurai, "Commodities and the politics of value"; Bill Brown, "The Idea of Things and the Ideas in Them")
5: Persuasion (Performative feminism: Judith Butler, "Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions")
7: Persuasion (Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best, "Surface Reading"; Sharon Marcus, "Introduction," from Between Women)
8: Persuasion (Slavoz Zizek, from The Sublime Object of Ideology)
9: Lady Susan (from D.A. Miller, Jane Austen; or, the Secret of Style)
10: Lady Susan, course wrap-up (Michel Foucault, "What is an author?")