Fall 2025 Critical Theory Courses
Law and Foundation
Instructor: Christopher Tomlins
Monday 2:10PM - 5:00 PM (instruction begins August 19) / JSP Seminar Room/2240 Pied 102
French 250A/ Comp Lit 250
Balzak and Critique
Instructor: Michael Lucey
Wednesday 2:00 PM -5:00 PM / 4104 Dwinelle
We'll have three major goals in this seminar: 1) to acquire a reasonable familiarity with representative works from the massive and massively influential "realist" novelistic project that Honoré de Balzac elaborated in the 1830s and 1840s; 2) to think about the way Balzac's project could be viewed as a version of critique by way of novelistic form; 3) to explore a range of major critical approaches (along with some of their theoretical underpinnings) from the last half century or so via the way they have taken up various texts by Balzac. Those approaches will include marxism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, speech act theory/performativity, and decolonial critique. Seminar participants will be encouraged to develop a writing project that involves exploring a bit further both in Balzac's corpus and in one of the critical literatures we will be engaging with. French Department students will be reading the Balzac texts in French. Other students are welcome to read in English. Texts by Balzac that the seminar will take up include: "Sarrasine", "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or", "La Duchesse de Langeais", Le Père Goriot [Old Man Goriot], Eugénie Grandet, Illusions perdues [Lost Illusions], La Cousine Bette [Cousin Bette], Les Paysans [The Peasants, aka Sons of the Soil]. Critical readings will probably include Lukács, Adorno, Auerbach, Barthes, Jameson, Shoshana Felman, Margaret Cohen, Naomi Schor, Barbara Johnson, Lisa Lowe, Aníbal Quijano, and some other contemporary criticism.
Education 290D
“Curriculum Theory and History: Education and the Cultural Politics of Knowledge”
Instructor: Zeus Leonardo
Monday 10:00 AM -1:00 PM
This graduate-level course is a survey designed to introduce students to the specialization of curriculum studies. It regards curriculum both as a field of thought and a contested area of politics. It necessitates looking into the steady and sometimes sudden developments in curriculum theory as part of a historical process. That is, changes in curriculum thought occur within a historical context that defines the meaning of “which knowledge counts and is most worth.” As such, curriculum debates are part of the cultural politics of knowledge. We will study schools of thought, including: social reconstructionism, scientific management or social efficiency, romanticism, and humanism. Over and beyond the curriculum as “the stuff” of schools, the curriculum is a way to promote or discourage certain social relations between people. To this end, the class will examine the social functions as well as possibilities of particular forms of curriculum. Also, the class challenges students to reflect on the political nature of the curriculum, or how human values figure into their creation. Finally, no understanding of the curriculum is complete without the critical and central factor of freedom. Simply put, what kind of world does a particular curriculum open up for students, often children, and what kind does it close off?
Education 280A
Socio-cultural Critique of Education: Or, Introduction to Educational Criticism
Instructor: Zeus Leonardo
Tuesday 10:00 AM -1:00 PM
This graduate-level course is designed to introduce students to a social and cultural critique of education and society by reading and analyzing classical and contemporary social theories. As a survey course, it examines both the theoretical and practical nature of a critical social theory of education. The concept or process of “critique” as well as discerning what it means to be “critical” will be central to the course. Together, they form the basic pillars of educational criticism. As a social practice, education is understood as something broader than schooling, the latter often understood as a function of the state, whether public or private. Some of the theoretical frameworks for study include: Marxism, feminism, antiracism and anticolonialism, and poststructuralism and postcolonialism. Additionally, the nature of power will be examined and the way that social groups position themselves in such relations. This understanding will be instructive for our ability to confront the structural contours of inequality and the everyday effects of privilege.