Reading List for PhD Minor Exam in Postmodern Theory

Posted byJason W. Ellis

In June 2010, I will take my three PhD exams in the Kent State University English Literature PhD program.  For these exams, I convened a committee of trusted professors, each administering one exam. I choose to take my exams in these areas: 20th Century American Literature (administered by Kevin Floyd), Postmodern Theory (administered by Tammy Clewell), and the Philip K. Dick Canon (administered by Donald “Mack” Hassler). Below, I have included my Postmodern Theory reading list. Go here to read my 20th century American literature exam list, and here to read my Philip K. Dick exam list.

PhD Minor Exam Area:  Postmodern Theory

Director:  Tammy Clewell

Texts:

  1. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation.
  2. Berman, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.
  3. Bertens, Hans. The Idea of the Postmodern:  A History.
  4. Broderick, Damien. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction.
  5. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity:  The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction.
  6. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter.
  7. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life.
  8. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus:  Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
  9. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology.
  10. Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism.
  11. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1:  An Introduction.
  12. Habermas, Jürgen.  “Modernity: An Incomplete Project.”
  13. Haraway, Donna. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience.
  14. —. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.
  15. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity.
  16. Hassan, Ihab. The Postmodern Turn.
  17. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.
  18. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide.
  19. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction.
  20. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism:  Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
  21. —. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions.
  22. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern.
  23. Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition:  A Report on Knowledge.
  24. McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction.
  25. Norris, Christopher. What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?
  26. Perryman, Mark ed. Altered States: Postmodernism, Politics, Culture.
  27. Poster, Mark. The Information Subject.
  28. Vattimo, Gianni. The Transparent Society.
  29. Wilde, Alan. Horizons of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination

Published by Jason W. Ellis

I am an Associate Professor of English at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY whose teaching includes composition and technical communication, and research focuses on science fiction, neuroscience, and digital technology. Also, I coordinate the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, which holds more than 600 linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, and research publications.