American Fiction Since 1945

3 units

This course is an advanced survey of the American novel from 1945 to 1999. We will consider a range of topics: the impact of America's growing superpower status during the Cold War; the usefulness of the nation as an organizing principle for studying literature in an increasingly globalized world; the presence of the Second World War and the Holocaust in American culture; the relationship between the social changes of the period (civil rights, feminism, counterculture, and the rise and fall of the new left) and literary history; the impact of technology on models of communication (literary and otherwise); and the relationship between large-scale demographic changes (immigration, the rise of the suburb, the movement towards a post-industrial economy) and literary practice.