Literary Knowledge
UIC English PhD Proseminar: Literary Knowledge
Professor Kornbluh Fall 2026
This course introduces English PhD students to conversations about literary knowledge and critical knowledge. How does literature think? What does it know? What kind of knowledge does literary criticism offer? What’s involved in advanced study of literary and cultural production, and what is its own product, besides sensibility? What are you here for anyway?
requirements
- active seminar participation: careful reading, careful notetaking, thoughtful contribution to discussion in person as well as in our class chat for the Shadow Syllabus and Connective Links and Ongoing Questions
- discussion facilitation, one session
- writing assignments as detailed below
guidelines
Criticism is the art of noticing, and the downpayment for noticing is attention. Attend class, attend to one another in conversation, attend to the readings, attend to objects around you, attend to writing as process and practice. There are no stupid questions. Ask yourself, ask your colleagues. We make ideas together in the seminar room to practice making them in bigger rooms and on the page.
This orientation to advanced study and criticism in English orients you to the workload and work practices of reading many complex texts at a time and juggling the ideas, echoes, and dissents among them. We will approach the seminar space as a laboratory for experimenting with collective reading and discovering as much as we can about advanced study of literary and cultural production and why anyone wants to do that anyway. Cultivate processes of reading and writing that prepare you to contribute to those collective endeavors.
Participation: Seminar sessions will often commence by asking every student to indicate ideas or forms or phenomena in the readings that call for unpacking, and to supply page numbers where possible. Come to class with annotated textsand commonplace books. Discussion participation is key to a strong seminar and an important basis for your evaluation. Outside of class time, participate by sharing recommended readings, events, memes and more in our chat document.
Discussion Facilitation: Sign up to lead a chunk of discussion time in a given session. Take pedagogical liberties as far as activities, lesson plan, concept map, etc, but be sure to include at least 3 of the day’s text and at least these 3 steps:
First step: substantive paraphrase aimed at educing the value of the critical arguments or the
ideas in the creative works.
Second step: highlight at least 1 passage of interest / vexation for further unpacking.
Third step: pose 3 questions for discussion pertaining to theoretical questions in the course,
aesthetic examples in the course, or other avenues of inquiry that strike you.
With these guidelines, it should be clear that this course is designed to cultivate skills, knowledge, values, and, above all, processes that are antithetical to generative AI. No such tool will build your attention, reading, argument, or expression. A large and increasing body of evidence indicates its use is cognitively debilitating. Just as the professor vows that the ideas, words, lectures, assignments, and feedback in this class are human generated, students are prohibited from using Gen AI; any student voluntarily matriculating in an advanced degree program in English who finds this a stricture should reassess their life plans. Human writing is thinking. Think!
writing assignments
consult schedule of reading and writing below for due dates
rapid writing
7 prompts for 7 days before the semester starts
write continuously for 20 minutes or 250 words, whichever comes first, about the following, one day at a time:
- What was some good culture (literature, film/tv, art, architecture, performance) you encountered this summer? What made it more than bad and less than best, just fine rather than fine art or slop?
- What was your favorite class you ever took, either individual session or term-long?
- What is something you learned from once reading a book review, an episode recap, a pitchfork rating, a social media movie hot take? What made it stick?
- What is a cultural object – novel, poem, photograph, show, album, etc – to which you are attached but which you do not know much about? What is the difference between attachment and knowledge?
- What are your writing habits and routines and superstitions and tricks?
- What do you like to think about?
- What did you learn doing this rapid writing?
critical commonplaces
more of a process for critical knowledge making than an assignment
dedicated analog commonplace book (part scrapbook part curio cabinet; a structured collection
leaning toward synthesis)
weekly clipping and scribbling of beloved and behated extracts from readings (at least two quotes
per week)
freewriting / annotating /bulleting observations about the quotes and springboarding toward
broader questions
transcribing or gluing external material that connects (readings from other courses, readings for fun,
news items, memes, pics); transcribing or summarizing comments from peers in class
drawing, diagramming, word-clouding
meta commonplace 500-1000 words reflecting on this practice. what patterns do you observe as you look back over the semester? what new interests have you developed? what’s the connection between process and knowledge?
intellectual self-description
500 words profile of what you think about a lot, what you have learned a lot about already, what you want to learn a lot more about, the writerly/readerly activities /networks /communities in which you participate, and the paths that led you to these interests
space mapping
250-1000 words conjuring a locale in Chicago; real or imaginary; present, past, or future
what is your critical knowledge for?
250-500 words what have you learned in this class, what have you learned in your first semester, what do you hope your learning will do in your intellectual and creative communities
seminar paper
in 10-12 pages, critically engage a primary cultural object, or elaborate on theory / method issues raised by the seminar; incorporate secondary sources identified using the MLA database; the last few weeks of the semester have no or light reading to aid paper writing
texts for purchase
Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant, Close Reading for the 21st Century (listed as CR21 at intervals below)
Susan Choi, My Education
most required texts available in our dropbox
NB heed specific page selections or chapter titles on the syllabus; many of the dropbox pdfs are actually larger than the assigned portion
recommended texts for all PhD students (not required; not assigned):
Eric Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style
Jessica Calarco, A Field Guide To Grad School: Uncovering The Hidden Curriculum
schedule of reading and writing
25 Aug
literature as a mode of knowledge
Jonathan Culler, “What is Literature and Does It Matter”
Hillis Miller, “What is Literature”
Stathis Gourgoris, Does Literature Think 1-10
Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Literature 1-13
Zadie Smith, “Fascinated to Presume”
Adam Kotsko, “The Loss of Things I Took For Granted”
Matthew Seybold, “After Open AI” https://www.theamericanvandal.com/p/afteropenai
Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville “kitchenette building” “the mother” “the truth”
rapid writing due
1 Sep
criticism as a mode of knowledge
Joseph North, Literary Criticism A Concise Political History intro
Gerald Graff, Professing Literature “The Humanist Myth” 1-19
Eric Hayot, Humanist Reason Introduction and “The Humanistic Method”
Bruce Robbins, Criticism and Politics “Criticizing”
Andrew Miller, “Implicative Criticism”
Michael Dango, “Taxonomic Criticism”
Merve Emre, “The Critic As Friend”
Molly Templeton, “It’s Not The Death of Criticism Again”
intellectual self description due
8 Sep
close reading as a mode of knowledge
Rachel Buurma and Laura Heffernan, The Teaching Archive Chapter 3
John Guillory, “The Rise and Rise of Close Reading”
Jonathan Kramnick, Criticism and Truth “Close Reading”
Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant, Close Reading for the 21st Century “Introduction” and “Practical Materials”
John Keats, “To Autumn”
Jeff Dolven and Joshua Kotin (CR21) “The Poet’s Choices”
15 Sep
site specific knowledge: critical conditions in the university
Peter Coviello, Love in the Ruins, Or Should I Go To Grad School https://avidly.org/love-in-the-ruins-or-should-i-go-to-grad-school/
Chris Newfield, The Great Mistake “Holding Back Public Colleges”; “The University Retreat From Public Goods”
Edward Said, “Secular Criticism” 1-16
Oren Izenberg, “Near Monstrous Fidelity” (CR21)
Danica Savonick, Open Admissions intro
Matt Seybold, “Against Technofeudal Education” https://www.theamericanvandal.com/p/against-technofeudal-education
Ronald Purser, “AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself“
22 Sep
site specific knowledge: chicago
Stephen Frears and Nick Hornby, High Fidelityhttps://digitalcampus.swankmp.net/UIC271435/watch/B6BC16934AAA0103
Roger Ebert, “How To Read a Movie”
Fredric Jameson, “Cognitive Mapping”
Davarian Baldwin, “Chicago Has No Intelligentsia”
Liesl Olson, Chicago Renaissance intro
Frederik Kolert, The Literary History of Chicago intro
space mapping due
29 Sep
formalism as knowledge
Boris Eichenbaum, “The Theory of the Formal Method” 99-115
Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Device”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Concept of the Aesthetic”
Caroline Levine, Forms introduction
Marjorie Levinson, “What Is New Formalism”
Nicholas Brown, Autonomy intro
Dora Zhang, “Toward a Theory of Description”
6 Oct
judgment as knowledge
Guillory, “The Discourse of Value” (317-340)
these three in sequence:
Michael Clune, “The Humanities’ Fear of Judgement”
Gabrielle Starr, “Who Decides What’s Good and What’s Bad in the Humanities?”
Clune, “The Hypocrisy of Experts”
Becca Rothfeld, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”
Matthew Strohl, “The Good, The Bad, and The Good-Bad”
The Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
13 Oct
not knowing as a mode of knowledge
Sigmund Freud, “The Unconscious”
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams “The Dreamwork”
Alenka Zupančič, What is Sex “It’s Getting Strange In Here”
Dany Nobus, Knowing Nothing, Staying Stupid Intro and “The Punning of Knowledge”
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (excerpt)
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, “Dirty Projectors” (CR21)
20 Oct
periods as knowledge
Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher, Practicing New Historicism 1-19
Ted Underwood, Why Literary Periods Mattered 1-16
Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty intro
Jameson, “The Existence of Italy”
Rita Felski, “Context Stinks”
27 Oct
periodization as knowledge
Jameson, “Periodizing the Sixties”
Jameson, “Postmodernism”
Ted Martin, Contemporary Drift intro
Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism chapter one
Brian Glavey, “Vibe Theory” (CR21)
optional: Kornbluh, Immediacy Intro and Circulation
3 Nov
cultural sociology as knowledge
Joan Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture intro
Carl Wilson, “Let’s Talk About Taste”
Mark Mcgurl, The Novel Art intro
Mcgurl, The Program Era chapter one
Mcgurl, “Everything And Less”
Sarah Brouillette, Content Machines intro
10 Nov
some big ideas in literary knowledge today
Sianne Ngai, “Theory of the Gimmick”
Allen MacDuffie, Climate of Denial intro
Teagan Bradway, “Queer Narrative Theory and the Relationality of Form”
Jesse McCarthy, The Blue Period “Black and Blue at Midcentury”
Walt Hunter, The American House Poem intro
Steven Jackson, “Rethinking Repair”
what is your critical knowledge for due
17 Nov
Susan Choi, My Education
(24 Nov NO CLASS TURKEY DAY)
1 Dec
critical culminations / final party
final paper oral abstracts
meta-commonplace due
8 Dec NO CLASS FINALS WEEK
seminar papers due