Thinking Literature: Creative Forms of Knowledge

Course goals

- Familiarity with the theory of discourse and discursive formations in relation to literature and literary theory;
- Ability to apply theoretical insights critically to particular cases and to formulate questions for research in the field;
- Ability to speak and write, using specialised vocabulary, about literature and literary studies as forms of knowledge production.

Content

This seminar focuses on the comparative study of literature as a site for the production of knowledge and ways of being in the world. How does literature relate to other discourses and other forms of knowledge? And what are the tools and concepts available for studying this relationship? Furthermore, this seminar will reflect on literature and literary studies as distinct yet interrelated forms of knowledge production. What are opportunities and challenges for the study of literature and the ways of knowing it proposes? How have other fields and disciplines looked to literature and literary theory for ways to address conceptual and methodological problems, and how has the study of literature in turn been influenced by these interdisciplinary and interdiscursive encounters? The focus of this seminar will vary from year to year, framed alongside questions of truth, knowledge and fiction, the relationship of knowledge to power, and the importance of perspective and positionality.

Additional information

This seminar is taught in English and forms a compulsory part of the Research MA Comparative Literary Studies. It is an elective for students in the following Research Master programmes: Gender Studies; Media and Performance; Nederlandse Literatuur en Cultuur and Religious Studies. This seminar is also open to exchange students with a humanities background.

Career orientation
This course serves as preparation for a PhD program in the Humanities, as well as non-academic careers, by training students in the following transferable skills: critical thinking and writing, discourse analysis, communication and presentation skills, peer-review and advanced language skills.