Purpose: Connect one of the theories of literary criticism that you were introduced to on the Introducing Literary Criticism page to some form of media – whether it be film, music, literature, etc. – that you enjoy or are otherwise drawn to. Then, explore and explain how you think the theoretical perspective is either expressed in or can be applied to your chosen work. Ideally, we’d like you to discuss these ideas with each other with the understanding that your classmates may see or experience media in a very different way then you do; practice curiosity over judgement.
Tasks:
Part 1. Choose one of the Schools of Literary Criticism from Unit 1, besides Reader Response (i.e. ethnic and cultural studies, feminist theory, queer theory, psychoanalytic theory, or structuralism and semiotics).
Part 2. Learn more about your chosen literary theory using the credible, scholarly sources included in this unit:
- Feminist Theory: Gregory Castle and Robert C. Evans
- Queer Theory: Gregory Castle and David Carter
- Psychoanalytic Theory: Gregory Castle and Robert C. Evans
- Structuralism and Semiotics: Gregory Castle and Robert C. Evans
- Ethnic and Cultural Studies: Gregory Castle and Robert C. Evans
Part 3. Select a media artifact (e.g. a text, video, artwork, etc.) that you want to apply your chosen theory to. Choose something that is interesting or exciting to you that you will enjoy thinking critically about.
Part 4. In your post, first briefly explain some of the key concepts, questions, or ideas of your chosen literary theory, including an in-text citation for your source(s). Remember that any time you use words or ideas from a source, you want to clearly indicate this in your post by enclosing exact words in quotation marks and including a parenthetical citation. Your in-text parenthetical citation would include the author’s surname, a space, and the page number (this is usually found at the bottom of each page of the PDF) in parentheses. A sample quote would look like this: Anthropological concepts such as “Lévi-Strauss’s study of kinship systems and mythology [can] illuminate[] the specific ways that Structuralism can be applied to symbolic social systems” (Castle187).
Part 5. Then, introduce your chosen media artifact, and provide a link to it. Finally, discuss how and why your chosen literary theory applies to your media artifact. How does viewing your artifact through the lens of a specific literary theory color the way that we respond to it? How does it change what aspects of the artifact we pay attention to?
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