Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Schedule of Readings


Week One Introduction to the Course

8/30-9/1 3 page Diagnostic Assignment due Wednesday

Handout: “The Culture of the Market”



Week Two

9/6 Holiday – No class

9/8 Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice – Acts 1-3 pg.3-54

Oxford English Dictionary, entries for “Market” and “Theatre”

Writing Analytically pg.42-61 (“The Method”)



Week Three

9/13 Agnew, Worlds Apart pg.17-56 (“The Threshold of Exchange”)

2 page close reading of Shakespeare due Tuesday

9/15 Merchant of Venice – Acts 3-5 pg.54-75



Week Four

9/20 Worlds Apart pg.57-100 (“Another Nature”)

Writing Analytically pg.12-34, 300-308 (“Thesis”)

9/22 Thesis for Paper One due Thursday

Worlds Apart pg.101-148 (“Artificial Persons”)





Week Five

9/27 Franklin, Autobiography pg.3-56

Writing Analytically pg.197-217 (“Revising the Thesis”)

9/29 Paper One due Thursday



Week Six

10/4 Franklin, Autobiography pg.56-93

10/6 Worlds Apart pg.149-194 (“The Spectacle of the Market”)



Week Seven

10/11 finish discussing Franklin

10/13 Thesis and Draft of Paper Two due Thursday

Melville, The Confidence-Man



Week Eight

10/18 The Confidence-Man

Writing Analytically pg.275-294

Peer Workshop

10/20 The Confidence-Man



Week Nine

10/25 Paper Two due Tuesday

The Confidence-Man

10/27



Week Ten

11/1 Style exercises

finish discussing Melville

11/3 Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof”



Week Eleven

11/8 Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

11/10



Week Twelve

11/15 Horkheimer and Adorno, “The Culture Industry”

11/17 Thesis and Draft of Paper Three due Thursday



Week Thirteen

11/22 Style exercises

Peer Workshop

11/24 film: Double Indemnity (screening time TBA)



Week Fourteen

11/29 discuss film

12/1 Paper Three due Thursday

Course summary and conclusions