[the following is reposted from the 306 group forum from 2015]

Now that we’re ending the semester, I’m looping back to the start and thinking about how little I like the first week of my course. I’ve oscillated between the first couple of chapters of J. Culler’s excellent VERY SHORT INTRO TO THEORY (Oxford UP) and stuff from the Norton that seems intro-y, like Eagleton’s bit on the construction of “English” and (gasp) Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” I still think the Eagleton and the Eliot are great in their way, but the whole issue of canon formation and the politics of canons seems much less vital than it did when I was in graduate school.

At a cocktail party today, I got into a conversation with a geographer (!) about Foucault’s early essay (mid 60s) about Nietzsche/Marx/Freud. As we spoke, I had the strange realization that I’d actually structured my course around this essay–which I haven’t read since grad school–without realizing it. It’s a short essay and would teach very well, so I think it’s going to be the new Week One piece (along with the folksy and super-useful Culler) from here on out.

And I’ve started a list of supplementary readings to share using the excellent bibliographic management platform, Zotero. Here’s the URL. If you know the interface and/or are willing to spend (literally) 15 mins figuring it out, you can add stuff to it.