The Fifties in Color: Race, Empire, and U.S. Cold War Culture

Examines U.S. cultural texts of the `50s in relation to both domestic race politics and foreign policy concerns. Explores issues of assimilation, conflict, containment, development, and integration in a transnational as well as a national framework. Writers we study may include Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac, Phillip Roth, John Okada and Jade Snow Wong. This course is limited to 15 graduate students.