Forms: Cultural Studies and Close Reading (Wed 28 Nov 2018)

On Wednesday 28 November, we will read Angus Brown‘s essay “Cultural  Studies and Close Reading”. This essay uses a discussion of Caroline Levine’s Forms to explore the relationship between literature and lived experience, meditating, as Levine does, on the question of the distinction ‘between the formal and the social’. This week the doctoral seminar will be led by Dr Rona Cran.

• Angus Brown, ‘Cultural Studies and Close Reading’ (PDF)

“The ease with which Marx, Empson, Williams, Hall, Simon, and Levine work between method and theory, description and analysis, abstraction and detail feels ordinary. It feels like intuition. Their painstaking observations and ambitious conjectures reflect the prosaic and picaresque valences of everyday reading. The unpredictable movement of their work leaves behind a portable dialectic, threading the logic of close reading through the diverging methods of formalist criticism and cultural studies.”

Possible discussion questions: 

•  to what extent does close reading imply the exclusion of the political, social, cultural or historical dimensions of the text?
•  how does art/literature relate to politics?
•  how do forms shape our experiences?
•  what happens if we ‘broaden our definition of form to include social arrangements’ (Levine)?
• what counts as a text and what counts as criticism? (Thinking especially of The Wire)

Time & Place:

• 14:00-15:30, Wed 28 Nov 2018
• Shackleton Room (Arts 439)

About the Doctoral Seminar:

This is an informal weekly reading group run for postgraduates within the Department of English Literature. We select a short text to read in advance, often a work of theory, then meet to discuss it. The seminar provides an opportunity to consider aspects of the reading that were thought-provoking or challenging for you, think about how it relates to texts you may have studied or plan to read, and share aspects of your own research and academic practice. It’s also a chance to get together, try out ideas, and meet fellow postgraduate researchers. There will be tea, coffee and biscuits and you are very welcome!

If you would like to join us, please email Dorothy Butchard (d.butchard@bham.ac.uk).