This course will introduce students to Marxian cultural criticism, a major strain of comparative literary studies. Marxian cultural criticism builds on the work and intellectual method of Karl Marx, who argued that any "society" is but a reflection of its mode of self-sustenance and social reproduction. Hence, modern European and American societies are for Marx merely a reflection of the capitalist mode of sustenance, what he terms its mode of production and consumption. From this perspective literature, like law, philosophy, and social customs, is inextricably tied to and controlled by the demands of and on societies dependent upon the capitalist mode of daily sustenance. And yet, literature for Marx is also a resource or archive for diagnosing and revealing how one is socialized to a capitalist mode or way of life. Besides Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps no other 19th century European intellectual has been so constitutive of contemporary literary studies as Karl Marx. Hence this course will introduce you to the work of Marx, specifically as it pertains to literary and cultural criticism, and to some of the major Marxian thinkers of literature in the twentieth century, such as Walter Benjamin, Frantz Fanon, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, and Lisa Lowe.

Books:
Required Texts:

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto
Peter Osborne, How To Read Marx
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
Toni Morrison, Bluest Eye
Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters
Fae Ng Bone