Slackers and Hipsters: Urban Fictions, 1850-Present

Slackers and Hipsters surveys the cult of the cool and disaffected in literature and film over two centuries. Beginning with Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivner," but also sampling works as varied as Chatterjee's English August and Kunkel's Indecision, we'll examine both the aesthetic and political implications of the "slacker" in his/her ironic, apathetic, and peculiarly alienated view of the world.