2026-2027 Critical Theory Courses

2026-2027 GRADUATE COURSE OFFERINGS

Fall 2026

CRI200B - Problems in Critical Theory
Kathleen Frederickson
Monday 3:10 - 6:00
Location TBD

This course will offer a sampler of key texts in queer and trans critical theory from the 1970s to the present. We will examine how gender and sexuality are constituted in relation to racialization, political economy, and medicalization, while exploring such topics as embodiment, affect, identification, intimacy, and temporality. Readings will include work by Michel Foucault, the Combahee River Collective, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandy Stone, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Rod Ferguson, David Valentine, Lauren Berlant, Susan Stryker, C. Riley Snorton, Kadji Amin, Jules Gill-Peterson, and others.

Winter 2027

CRI200A - Approaches to Critical Theory
Charlie Hankin
 
CRI200B - Problems in Critical Theory
Kris Fallon

Pre-approved CRI200B
COM210 - Topics & Themes in Comparative Literature
Literature and the Archive
Toby Warner

What is an archive? What can practices of literary and historical reading stand to learn from each other? In this course we will consider how two interlinked kinds of objects – the archive and the literary text – raise fundamental questions of how and why we read. We will engage with a variety of literary texts that ask how it is possible to speak for the past in the wake of shattering historical phenomena of various kinds. We will also investigate what opens up when we read archives as literary texts, and ask what happens when literary works position themselves as alternatives to official historical records. To sharpen our archival thinking, we will supplement literary and theoretical readings with guided mini-archival assignments. Literary texts may include authors such Assia Djebar, WG Sebald, Amitav Ghosh, Aimé Césaire, and Mariama Bâ. Theoretical readings may include Walter Benjamin, Stephen Best, Michel Foucault, Simon Gikandi, Edouard Glissant, Saidiya Hartman, Lisa Lowe, José Esteban Muñoz, Christina Sharpe, Anne Laura Stoler, Diana Taylor, and Michel Rolph Trouillot.

Spring 2027

CRI200A - Approaches to Critical Theory
Xavier Lee

CRI200C - History of Critical Theory
Julia Simon