This course is designed to provide English majors with an in depth experience of the practice of literary study. Clearly there are many ways to study literature and our understanding of the “best” or “most useful” practice(s) continues to be contested and to change over time. In this course we will focus on one of the more important critical practices that is dominant in the contemporary academy and that informs scholarship done by members of the profession and the UW department, today: Marxist materialism and related forms of cultural theory that often fall under labels such as “critical theory,” “feminist theory,” “critical race theory,” and “postcolonial theory.” By contrast to earlier models of literary criticism, which sought to find in literary texts transcendent messages and universal meanings, Marxist materialism has sought to situate literary and cultural texts within their historical context of production and reception; to understand the power dynamics, including those of gender, race, and class, that necessarily shape textual meaning; and to understand how social and historical conflict impacts literature’s message, genre, style and form. Our study of Marxist theory will involve us in close, intensive reading of dense philosophical arguments about economics (aka: political economy), ideology, and culture. Along the way we will read several key texts by Marx and his collaborator Engels. Among other things, this course examines how a literary critical framework has been developed by literary and cultural theorists out of a body of economic and social theory that was not necessary concerned with literature per se. Over the course of the quarter we will also read several literary texts. We will consider how our understanding of each is shaped by the critical practice the course explores, and how literary texts in turn, reveal the (in)adequacy of this critical practice and/or suggests new ways of thinking about literary production and interpretation. Books will be available through the bookstore and there will be an ample course reader.