In Ways of Seeing, John Berger says, “every image implies a way of seeing.” This course will start from his claim and extend it to different modes of reading. We will focus on theorists who are also very good readers, that is, who offer us not only useful interpretations of texts but also help us think about the very practice of reading and the assumptions that go into it. Although the theorists that we’ll be considering are not always focused on literary texts, they will serve as models for developing and complicated our own reading practices. Included in the course are Freud’s reading of the uncanny, Clifford Geertz’s cultural interpretation, “Notes on a Balinese Cockfight,” John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing,” and Michel de Certeau’s “Reading as Poaching.” We will use these essays to read Louisa May Alcott’s “Whisper in the Dark,” Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.