As Jonathan Culler argues in literary studies these days there is a lot of talk about theory, not just theory of literature, but theory in a much broader context, theory of culture. This course is an introduction to literary and cultural theory. It captures what has happened in literary and cultural theory since the 1960s. It pays particular attention to the questions such as: what literature is, what is the relationship between literary and cultural theory, what is an author. It covers the major theory paradigms such as structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial theory.