95 North: New York Fictions

In this course we will consider humanity’s fate in twentieth-century and postmillennial Gotham. Through a broad range of literature and film that treats New York as a destination unto itself, 95 North examines the city’s representational status as our nation’s de facto capital by focusing on its most undemocratic and antisocial features (e.g., widespread disaffection, racial animus, gentrification, vice, and criminality). Writers include James Weldon Johnson, Saul Bellow, LeRoi Jones, Frank O’Hara, Samuel R. Delany, Jay McInerney, Diana Son, and Teju Cole.