ENGL 6225 - [What is Writing]

Fall. Next Offered: 2019-2020. 4 credits. Student option grading.

R. Kalas

For an up-to-date description, please see the syllabus link. This is a theory and literature course on the history and philosophy of writing for grads working in various fields (not just early modern). We will look at historical (Detienne, Ong, e.g.) and anthropological theories (Levi-Strauss, e.g.) about the development of writing in human history, as well as work on the social, philosophical, and cognitive aspects of writing. And we will read the work of recent critics who have taken up Derrida’s gesture towards a “grammatology”(Harry Berger, Juliet Fleming, Christopher Johnson, etc) as well as signal works that are especially fruitful for thinking though the aspects of writings (Plato, Sidney, Sterne…)