FYSM 127 - American Dystopia

Institution:

Trinity College

Subject:

Description:

A need to further the cause of social justice, or a voyeuristic fascination with the other -- what is it that draws artists and writers into places, and towards lives, that often seem fraught with darkness and despair In this class we will take a multi-genre approach to this and other related questions, examining work by poets, essayists, photographers, and filmmakers in order to get at why so much of American art and letters from the second half of the 20th century finds, not only its home, but also a difficult beauty, in settings that seem to fall far short of the utopian. Whether considering Philip Levine's poems about Detroit autoworkers, Joan Didion's essays on California in the 60s, Mark Singer's documentary work about people living in tunnels under New York City, or Diane Arbus's photographs of marginalized characters in the same city, we will attempt to better understand why these artists and writers have chosen to tell their particular stories and how we might respond imaginatively and appropriately to those stories as writers and thinker 1.00 units, Seminar

Credits:

1.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.Trincoll.edu

Phone Number:

(860) 297-2000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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