The readings for this course are thematically organized around works published from 1898 to 2014. The theme is a recurring feature of American life, going back to the original experience of European settlers encountering a “New World.” What is this place? What are its enticements? What are its threats? How do we go about inhabiting it? What can we expect? These and similar questions comprise the outlook of any traveler, and can be found rustling through the thoughts of anyone finding themselves out of their comfort zone. But as some of the works on our syllabus reveal, even someone comfortably at home, reflecting on the day’s events, can be unsettled by a seemingly stray reflection. The settings of the readings therefore vary dramatically. We begin with a classic ghost story, and end up in the mind of the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Along the way will be novels, poems, essays, and that unique mid-century genre, the photo-documentary.
In addition to the titles in the bookstore (listed below), electronically available works include "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, "Book of the Dead" by Muriel Rukeyser, essays by James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion. Other works are in the library.
Required texts:
Henry James, In the Cage & The Turn of the Screw (Modern Library)
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Norton)
Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (Vintage)
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (New Directions)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper)
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper)
Geoffrey O’Brien, Dreamtime (Counterpoint)
Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage)
Don DeLillo, Libra (Penguin)