The fact that you are reading this handout means you must be a senior English major. You have spent a good deal of the last four years (or more) studying English. But what does it really mean to study "English," or even to study "literature"? In this course we will look at the long and rocky road that the study of literature has taken to get to where it is today. We will begin by looking at some of the thinkers and documents from the nineteenth century that helped shape our understanding of literature and literary study today. We will explore the rise of English as a discipline and the reasons that something as benign as poetry provokes such strong reactions in people otherwise unconnected to literature. Finally, we will throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the debates that have both threatened and enlivened the study of literature during the last quarter of the twentieth century.