In the first instance, this course surveys a range of thinking (by Elizabeth Grosz, Karen Barad, and Rosi Braidotti, among others) that has gone under the banner of ‘new materialism,’ emphasizing the vitality of matter and working to reject anthropocentrism. In the second instance, the course focuses on textual materialism within literary studies (both Susan Howe and Derrida, for instance), ultimately asking how we might begin to understand material texts within a new materialist frame. The widest frame for the course, though, will be provided by the question of how the materialisms of our moment (across fields and disciplines) can be understood through the analytics provided by historical materialism. We will read literary texts from different periods, and we will conduct at least two sessions in Special Collections. (20th/21st)