Code 22656
Level of study Second Year
Credit value 10
Semester 2
Other pre-requisites You must have completed at least one year of appropriate study in this discipline.
This course provides an introduction to the study of twentieth-century American culture, focusing on a range of modes of cultural production, particularly literary representations but also speeches and film. It examines issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and nation. Topics covered include: postwar counter cultures such as Civil Rights and feminism; postmodernity, and after 9/11. The course builds upon key critical and conceptual frameworks encountered in first year study and in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture-1. Texts studied on this course vary from year to year but have recently included Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola); Toni Morrison, Beloved; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.