This is a course in the problematics of reading, by which I mean attention to the fascinations, affects, processes, identifications, and mysteries that happen when we read. We'll ask such questions as: What forms do the weird pleasures, wild emotions, and secret seductions of reading fiction take as texts and as psychic structures? How, exactly, do we "take in" fiction? How much control does the author have over how the reader feels while reading? Do we read differently when we're reading across gender or sexuality or ethnicity? Why do some readers choose puzzle novels while others prefer love stories? Can we love novels if they are about things we hate? How do films "read" stories differently from books? Do we identify with characters who seem in many ways to be our opposites? We'll read modern and contemporary fictions and essays to try to get some tentative answers to these questions. Discussion will be at the heart of what we do, so come expecting lots of talk and lively differences of opinion.

Authors whose essays or fictions we'll read will probably include Roland Barthes, Ian McEwan, Virginia Woolf, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Cunningham, Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson.

Texts:

• Theresa Cha. Dictee.
• Nicole Krauss. The History of Love.
• Colson Whitehead. Apex Hides the Hurt.
• Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway.
• Michael Cunningham. The Hours.
• Ian McEwan. Atonement.
• Alison Bechdel. Fun Home.

Additional essays in theories of reading.