Course Protocol: Below I have provided a week-by-week schedule of readings and written assignments. Where possible, I have included links to electronic versions of the texts we will read. For each week's reading, I will provide an introduction and, where there are electronic texts, hypertext links with comments on the texts. Each week you will be expected to read the assigned texts and to respond with micro-essay "positions" (critiques, comments and/or discussion questions) on the course WebBoard by Thursday at 8:00 AM Central U. S. time. Subsequent responses to the initial positions can be posted throughout the week. I have provided some sample positions from a similar previous course for your examination.

Overview of the Course
Texts Required and Suggested
Written Work and Evaluation


First Week: Micro-essay Position due Jan 25
Intro to 1st Week Readings: Historical Materialism

Terry Eagleton, "Introduction (Part I)," (Marxist Literary Theory, 1-15)
From The German Ideology, (Materialist Conception of History)

Theses on Feuerbach
The Communist Manifesto, Part I (Bourgeois and Proletarians)

Second Week: Micro-essay Position Due Feb 1
Intro to 2nd Week Readings: Base and Superstructure

Drew Milne, "Introduction (Part II)," (Marxist Literary Theory, 16-30)
Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy

From The German Ideology, (Preface)
From The German Ideology, (Civil Society and History)
V. N. Volosinov, "Concerning the Relationship of the Basis and Superstructures" (Marxist Literary Theory, pp.60-68)
Raymond Williams,
from Marxism and Literature, pp. 11-44

Suggested Further Reading:
Stuart Hall, "Rethinking the Base and Superstructure Metaphor." In J. Bloomfield, ed. Class, Hegemony and Party

Third Week: Micro-essay Position due Feb 8
Intro to 3rd Week Readings: Labor Power and Surplus Value

From Value, Price and Profit (Address to International Working Men's Association)
Capital, Vol I, Ch. 1 Sec. 1 (Commodities: Use-Value and Value)
Capital, Vol I, Ch. 1 Sec. 2 (Labor Embodied in Commodities)
Capital, Vol I, Ch. 1 Sec. 3 (Form of Exchange Value)
Capital, Vol I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 (Fetishism of Commodities)
From Capital, Vol I, Ch. 6 (Labor-Power)
From Capital, Vol I, Ch. 7 (Surplus Value)

Fourth Week: Micro-essay Position Due Feb 15
Intro to 4th Week Readings: Literature and Ideology

From
The German Ideology, "Idealism and Materialism"
Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, London: Monthly Review Press, 1971), esp. pp. 127-48; 177-86
Synopsis of "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"
Raymond Williams, "Literature" (Marxist Literary Theory, pp 261-70)
Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey "On Literature as an Ideological Form" (Marxist Literary Theory, pp 275-295)
Terry Eagleton, "Towards a Science of the Text," (Marxist Literary Theory, pp. 297-327)

 

Fifth Week: Micro-essay Position Due Feb 22
Intro to 5th Week Readings: Modernism/Postmodernism

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno from The Dialectic of Enlightenment
Georg Lukacs, "The Ideology of Modernism" (Marxist Literary Theory, pp. 141-62)
Fredric Jameson, "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." From
New Left Review 146
Synopsis of "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
Alex Callinicos, "The Jargon of Postmodernity" (Marxist Literary Theory, pp.408-28)

Suggested further reading:
Levee Blanc, "The Antinomies of Melancholy"
Curtis Bowman, "Odysseus and the Siren Call of Enlightenment"
Stephen Bronner, "Dialectics at a Standstill"
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Ch. 2-3)
Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, "Postality: The (Dis)simulations of Cybercapitalism," from Postality: Marxism and Postmodernism

 

Sixth Week: Micro-essay Position Due March 1
Introductory Comments from Jerry Phillips


Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Part I
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Part II
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Part III

Suggested Further Reading:
Hal Draper, The Two Souls of Socialism

Seventh Week: Micro-essay Position Due March 8
Marx & Engels, Critique of the Gotha Program
Marx, Communist Manifesto, Part III

Netforum Exchange with Jerry Phillips March 9-10

Other Readings, TBA


Spring Break


Eighth Week: Micro-essay Position Due March 22
Introductory Comments from Barbara Foley

Barbara Fields, "Slavery, Race, and Ideology" New Left Review 1990: 95-118
Ted Allen,
"Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race," Part I
Ted Allen,
"Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race," Part II
David Roediger, Ch 7 from The Wages of Whiteness

Gregory Meyerson, "Marxism, Psychoanalysis and Labor Competition"

Recommended Further Reading:
Alexander Saxton,
"Introduction" from The Rise and Fall of the White Republic
B. Foley, "Roads Taken and Not Taken: Post-Marxism, Antiracism, and Anticommunism"
Gregory Meyerson and Jonathan Scott, "An Interview with Theodore W. Allen"
Lerone Bennett, Before the Mayflower, ch. 1-4.


 

Ninth Week: Micro-essay Position Due March 2
Cedric Robinson, from Black Marxism: The Making of a Black Radical Tradition
Chapter 3: Socialist Thought and Nationalism

Chapter 7: The Nature of the Black Radical Tradition
Chapter 11: Marxist Theory and the Black Radical Intellectual

Recommended Further Readings:
Omi and Winant, Racial Formation
Balibar Sections in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class and: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991)

(Netforum exchange with Barbara Foley March 29-30)

 More Online Essays by Barbara Foley

 

Tenth Week: Micro-essay Position Due April 5:

Intro to 10th and 11th Week Readings: Postmarxism
Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 1-92

Recommended Further Readings:
Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution
Interview with Laclau and Mouffe
Web Resources on Gramsci

 

Eleventh Week: Micro-essay Position Due April 12:

Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 93-148

 

Twelfth Week: Micro-essay Position Due April 19
Intro to 12th & 13th Week Readings: Materialist Feminism

Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham, "Introduction: Reclaiming Anticapitalist Feminism," from Materialist Feminism: A Reader, 1-14
R. Hennessy, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, Chapter 1

Suggested Further Reading:
Benston, "The Political Economy of Women's Liberation," Materialist Feminism, 15-23
Barbara Ehrenreich, "What is Socialist Feminism?", Materialist Feminism, 65-70
Martha Gimenez, "The Oppression of Women: A Structuralist Marxist View," Materialist Feminism, 71-82
Kuhn and Wolpe, "Feminism and Materialism," Materialist Feminism, 83-87
Barrett, "Ideology and the Cultural Production of Gender," Materialist Feminism, 88-94
Carol Stabile, "Feminism and the Ends of Postmodernism," Materialist Feminism, 395-408

Also of interest: R. Hennessy, "Feminist Standpoint as Ideology Critique"

Thirteenth Week: Micro-essay Position Due April 26:
From Rosemary Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism
Chapter 3, "Cultural Study, Commodity Logic, Sexual Subjects"
Sections 1-2

Sections 3

R. Hennessy, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, Chapters 3- 4
(Netforum Exchange with Rosemary Hennessy April 27-28)

Fourtheenth Week: Post abstract of final paper to Netforum by May 2

Netforum Responses to final paper abstracts by May 5 (You may respond to one particular abstract or to several at once).

Final Paper Due May12