Each session will begin with an introductory lecture dealing with the work’s main themes and techniques and its biographical, historical and cultural contexts. This will be followed by a discussion and exchange of ideas. Although the focus of each of the classes will be on the works listed below, we will also discuss related works and ideas.
For example, when looking at Whitman’s poems we will also look at material by Thoreau and Emerson.
Similarly, when dealing with Klein’s No is Not Enough we will look at short excerpts from her previous books No Logo and Shock Doctrine along with material from Edward Bernays’s seminal Propaganda.
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale naturally invites comment on dystopian fiction. To facilitate this, we will look at short excerpts from similar works by the American writers Sinclair Lewis and Ray Bradbury.
In these and other cases, all excerpts will be emailed out to students in advance of the classes.
The Course will follow the sequence below:
- Poetry: Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
- Social Critique: No is Not Enough by Naomi Klein
- Fiction: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Poltical Treatise: The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- Drama: Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets
- Novella: They Shoot Horses Don’t They by Horace McCoy
- Art: Selected works by Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell and Edward Hopper
- Autobiography: Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
- Film: Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, Wilder’s Ace in the Hole
- Fiction: American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
