ENGL 359 - Contemporary American Literature

Institution:

University of Richmond

Subject:

Description:

Close study of important recent texts (fiction, poetry, and/or drama by U.S. authors or other contemporary writers who strongly influenced them) with respect to their special social, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts. Prerequisite(s): English 297 or 298 or American Studies 201 with a grade of C or better. Unit(s): 1 Additional Information: This course examines major trends in American literature of the past fifty years - from the existentialist writing of the immediate postwar period and the development of literary postmodernism to the increasing prominence of ethnic literatures towards the end of the century. The syllabus pairs individual works by prominent late twentieth and early twenty-first century writers such as Saul Bellow, Thomas Pynchon, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Philip Roth with pertinent theoretical and critical writing. These pairings allow us to consider how these works engaged with some of the central preoccupations of the last half-century: the Cold War, post-American affluence and the problem of conformity, Civil Rights and the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the Vietnam War, the rise of postmodernity, and the omnipresence of technology in American culture.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.richmond.edu

Phone Number:

(804) 289-8000

Regional Accreditation:

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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