This course provides a limited introduction to psychoanalysis and its impact on twentieth and twenty-first century literary and cultural studies. No ten week course could possibly synthesize the diverse origins and trends attributed to psychoanalytic thought, so we will simply touch on some of the field’s basic tenets and key disputes. The opening section of the course will focus on primary works by Sigmund Freud and secondary materials situating Freud in his historical context. The second section will explore early and mid-twentieth century responses to Freud, including possibly work by Joan Riviere, Sándor Ferenczi, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan. The final section will examine a few representative late twentieth and twenty-first psychoanalytic commentators chosen from among the following: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Judith Butler, Anne Cheng, Joan Copjec, Ranjana Khanna, Kaja Silverman, Hortense Spillers, Antonio Viego, and Slavoj Zizek. Students will be expected to write one 5 page review of psychoanalytic criticism in their own field and one 12-15 page paper on a relevant debate in psychoanalytic theory and/or a primary text.

Required Texts:

Sigmund Freud. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995. ISBN-10: 0393314030

Sigmund Freud. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Trans. James Strachey. Basic Books, 2000. ISBN-10: 0465097081

Jacques Lacan. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. Bruce Fink. W. W. Norton, 2007. ISBN-10: 0393329259

Course Reader: A course reader will be required. Materials will either be reserved online or made available at Ave Copy, 4141 University Way NE. Phone: 206/633-1837.