Written work for the course will include three very short (600-word) essays, one of which will be made available to the class in advance, as well as a longer essay of 12-16 pages.
Our course listserver, which automatically distributes mail to every member of the class, is now active. If you send a message to english571@english.upenn.edu, your message will reach all of us. We will be using this listserver to distribute papers in advance of class, as well as to post changes and announcements that arise between class meetings. If you find that you are not receiving mail from the list, send a message to help at english-help@english.
All changes to the syllabus, as well as to the short paper schedule, will be made from this home page, so please look here, and not to the printed syllabus, for up to date information. The URL of this page is http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/571-s97-home.html
Reserve Books are in the Rosengarten Reading Room in the basement of Van Pelt Library:
Your aim in these short papers should be to situate the chosen text in relation to the general problematic or topic that we are discussing at that point in the couse. Try to indicate the specific character of the text, describing its central thesis or preoccupation and its mode of presentation in such a way as to clarify its differences from other readingswe have done. And try, as well, to indicate what you regard as the main weakness of the text, the point at which one might begin to marshall a critique of it.
It is more important to submit these short papers on time, so that they can be incorporated into our seminar discussions, than to refine them to the point of perfection. Short papers that arrive after the class meeting will not be accepted. Likewise, the research papers you write for this course should be regarded as first attempts at a topic, not as quasi-publishable articles. The research papers can be rather short (12 pages is fine) as well as tentative in their conclusions; you can always rework them later, after getting some feedback from me. But please submit them by the beginning of exam week, as indicated on the schedule. I am disallowing incompletes for this course except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Additional Written Assignment, added 1/30: In addition to the three short papers that you write for this class, please write brief responses to three of the short papers that are posted to our listserve/website. Try to spread these out over the course of the semester, and do post them to the listserve by the Wed evening before class, so that the rest of us have a chance to read them before we discuss the materials for that week. One or two paragraphs is sufficient length for these responses, but try to make them lucid and specific; broadly impressionistic responses aren't nearly as helpful as more surgical ones.
1. PRELIMINARIES
January 16: Introduction to course. Introductory discussion of
capital and cultural capital. Sign up for short
papers.
January 23: Intellectuals and the So-Called "New Class." The
Distribution of Power Today.
Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the
Rise of the New Class (distributed excerpts)
____________________________________________________________________________
2. FROM ECONOMISM TO THE ECONOMY
OF PRACTICES
January 30: Materialist economics, economism, and the critique
of bourgeois theories of capital.
Marx, Capital, Vol 1, chapters 1-8 (distributed
in class);
Marx, Theses on Feurbach and The German Ideology
(distributed in class).
February 6: Anti-economism or radical economism? the classical
sociological challenge to Marx.
Emile Durkheim, excerpts from Selected Writings
(blkpk);
Max Weber, excerpts from Economy and Society
(blkpk).
February 13: A general economy of practices.
Bourdieu, "On Symbolic Power" in Language and
Symbolic Power (blkpk);
Bourdieu, "Social Space and Symbolic Power" in In
Other Words;
Bourdieu, "Book 1: Critique of Theoretical Reason"
in The Logic of Practice.
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3. COMPONENTS OF THE ECONOMY OF
PRACTICES
February 20: Capital, Class
Bourdieu, "Pathways," part I of In Other Words;
Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital" (blkpk);
Bourdieu, "Social Space and the Genesis of
Classes" from Language and Symbolic Power
(blkpk).
February 27: Field, Habitus, Interest, Strategy
Bourdieu, "The Interest of the Sociologist" in In
Other Words (pp. 87-93);
Bourdieu, "A Reply to Some Objections" in In Other
Words (pp. 106-19);
Bourdieu, "The Logic of Fields" and "Interest,
Habitus, Rationality" (the Chicago Workshop),
from Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (blkpk).
_____________________________________________________________________________
4. CULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE
STUDY OF LITERATURE
March 6: The Literary Field
Bourdieu, "Three States of the Field," part I of
Rules of Art (pp.47-176);
Bourdieu, "Da Capo: Illusio and Illusion" in Rules
of Art (pp. 333-36);
SPRING BREAK
March 20: The Sociological Critique of the Aesthetic Disposition
Kant, from Critique of Judgment (blkpk);
Bourdieu, Postscript, Distinction (blkpk);
Guillory, "The Discourse of Value" in Cultural
Capital (pp.269-340).
March 27: Literary Critiism and Social Science
Bourdieu, "Foundations of a Science of Works of
Art," part II of Rules of Art (pp. 177-284);
Bourdieu, "The Intellectual Field, A World Apart"
in In Other Words (pp. 140-149).
_____________________________________________________________________________
5. CULTURAL INHERITANCE, EDUCATION,
AND POWER
April 3: Schooling, Discipline, Calculation, and RAT
Bourdieu, "A Book for Burning," and "Postscript"
to Homo Academicus (pp. 1-35, 194-226);
Foucault, excerpts from Discipline and Punish
(blkpk);
Becker, excerpts from Human Capital (blkpk).
April 10: The Educational Field vs. Educational ISAs
Bourdieu, Homo Academicus, ch 2-4 (pp.36-158);
Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses" from Lenin and Philosophy and
Other Essays (blkpk).
April 17: The Canon, the Star System, and the Journalistic Field
Bourdieu, Appendix 3 to Homo Academicus (pp.
256-70);
Guillory, "Canonical and NonCanonical" in Cultural
Capital (pp 3-84);
Bourdieu, 'The Uses of the 'People'" in In Other
Words (pp.150-55)
___________________________________________________________________
6. CONCLUSIONS: FROM A SCIENCE OF
CULTURAL PRACTICES TO A STRATEGICS
OF CULTURAL ACTION
April 24: Cultural Capital and the Radical Intellectual
Bourdieu and Haacke, Free Exchange