ENH3175

Reading Otherwise: Literature, Gender, Psychoanalysis ( 6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL)

Leader: Dr Rose Lucas

Offered:
Clayton First semester 2006 (Day)

Synopsis: This unit will provide students with a theoretical framework within which to undertake a psychoanalytic reading of a number of texts, across a number of genres. This will involve consideration of certain key concepts within psychoanalytic theory, accessed primarily through the reading of a number of essays by Freud and Lacan. Psychoanalysis will then be used as a primary lens for reading. This involves the consideration of texts which overtly make use of the ideas and/or methodologies of psychoanalysis- such as Woolf's Mrs Dalloway or poet Anne Sexton's "To Bedlam, and Part Way Back" - in addition to a wider range of differently motivated texts - eg crime fiction or the Hollywood melodrama.

Objectives: Students completing this unit have gained: 1. Knowledge and a working understanding of selected psychoanalytic texts. 2. Knowledge of a broad range of cross-genre literary texts. 3. Further skills of literary analysis, enriched by the application of certain psychoanalytic concepts. 4. Insight into the critical and theoretical debates concerning the production of a gendered subjectivity within literary texts. 5. The necessary skills for contributing to critical discussion and producing scholarly written argument.

Assessment: Seminar participation: 10% + Class paper (to be subsequently handed in as a 2500 word essay): 50% + In-class Test (1.5 hours): 40%

Contact Hours: 2 hours (1 x 2 hour seminar) per week and occasional 2 hour screenings

Prerequisites: A first-year sequence in literary studies or equivalent.