[CLEN W4902] Intro to Literary Theory

Gourgouris is an extremely well-rounded intellectual. He is fluent in many languages, and knowledgeable about many things, including all areas of literary theory, political theory, modern and ancient philosophy, and music. He is a very friendly and likeable guy, and extremely willing to meet with students to discuss anything. As for Gougouris's teaching style, his lectures and discussions were usually very interesting. Instead of reading from a script, he improvised his lectures from a set of notes. So as you can imagine, the quality of the lectures varied. His lectures on Plato and Derrida were very good.
His approach to the class was probably unique (from what I could tell, comparing his syllabus to the syllabus of Bruce Robbins’ intro to Lit Theory class). We read many texts that inform lit theory, but don't necessarily fall under the domain of literary theory. For example, we read sections from Plato's _Republic_, Kant's "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals”, Nietzsche's "Untimely Meditation" on history, Kant's and Foucault's essays, both titled "What is Englightenment?" and an essay by Judith Butler about free speech and the Supreme Court. We did read some more straightforwardly theoretical texts, including selections from Freud's writings about art and literature, Benjamin's _Illuminations_ , Adorno’s _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ and essays by Derrida and Paul de Man. On the negative side, these texts did not really form a coherent whole, that really gave me a sense of what literary theory was. On the positive side, each one of these texts was absolutely brilliant. This class had one of the best reading lists I have ever seen. I doubt that I would have gotten exposure to these texts in any other class, especially one with a more conventional approach to literary theory.
So again, one caveat: if you want to take this class to get an answer to the quesiton, "what is literary theory?" don't expect to walk away satisfied. But then again, you don't really need a whole semester-long class to answer that question for you. Just read Terry Eagleton's book. This class is not really a standard introductory course. It really caters more to graduate students than undergrads, though as an undergrad, I got a lot out of it. It is just a discussion of some very interesting theoretical readings about history, art, politics and literature. But as I said, the readings are all enlightening, unique, and memorable, and so is Gourgouris.

I just want to echo the previous positive reviews. Robbins has an amazing command of the material and his ability to explicate is wonderful. Some of the writers we read are nearly incomprehensible, but Robbins made them lucid and interesting. He does really interesting intellectual history and goes off on a lot of tangents, which are interesting, especially if you have a general interest in theory. Friendly and inviting in office hours and seems to genuinely care about students and the material. Some of the theories we do in class are incredible and may just change the way you think and live. The only negative side were the papers, which were somewhat boring topics. Otherwise, highly recommended

This is the best class I’ve ever taken. Robbins is brilliant, self-effacing, inspiring. Go into it with an open mind, listen hard, do some reading, go to office hours, do some thinking. It will change the way you look at the world.

Man, is Professor Robbins pretentious, but he's so damn cool anyway! Theory's his thing and he obviously loves it, but sometimes it's hard to tell what he's getting at. He tries really hard to make us understand him, but sometimes he's a little scattered. But any class with him is worth taking. And he puts together a hell of a reading list.

Bruce Robbins is the best professor I've had at Columbia. In his Intro to Literary Theory class during Fall 2002, he didn't seem to have any of the problems mentioned in earlier reviews. After trying to have an open discussion the first day of class, he quickly realized that he would have to give lectures and then did the class as a lecture course from then on. He did allow for questions and comments, but not too much. And it's a good thing because his ideas were far more interesting than those of the people in the class. He really knows his stuff and really helped me understand the big names in literary theory. I highly recommend this class to any English major.