Course Overview: This class will focus on understanding and critiquing the presuppositions that we, as individuals and as a collective culture, hold when encountering a text. In order to think critically and practice discernment in our studies of the humanities, we must first attempt to make distinctions between cultural constructs and biblically informed truths (and focus on the often complex interrelationship of the two). Along with reading and discussing the implications of nineteenth and twentieth century critical theory, we will also use the questions raised as a springboard to hone writing and research skills.