American Literature and the Corporation

A study of the development of the American novel from the Civil War to the present in light of the emergence of the corporation as the principal unit of economic enterprise in the United States. We will survey corporate theory from Lippmann to Collins, and use it to frame the novel's development from realism through modernism into postmodernism. Corporate theorists to be considered: Lippmann, Dewey, Berle, Drucker, Mayo, Demming, Friedman, Coase. Novelists to be considered: Twain, Dreiser, Wharton, Stein, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Wright, Ellison, McCullers, Reed, Gaddis, Morrison. Enrollment limited to 20.