1960s American Fiction - Einzelansicht

Second only to the decade in American history that saw the Civil War, the 1960s were the most cataclysmic, exhilarating, controversial, action-packed, and divisive ten-year period in our nation’s history. It was a time full of contradictions working toward resolutions that were always dramatically and painfully accomplished; extremes manifested themselves in every identifiable facet of American life. Dormant tensions, both historical and contemporaneous, repeatedly surfaced only to become worse, much worse, before stabilizing. At some early point after the end of the decade, we realized that our nation had been transformed:  What it meant to be an American had changed; our nation’s people were living our lives a different way—the underpinning complexities of our basic myths had been altered if not redefined. This course will explore these changes by studying the fiction written in America during the decade. For each of the 7-hour course sessions, we will read one short novel and a few short stories.

Students are asked to buy and read the following editions - please make sure you get exactly these editions; they are the most inexpensive and most easily available editions [generally the first entry on amazon.de, for instance]:

MON JULY 18 “The Antiwar Movement”:  Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five. Dell/Laurel Publishing.

TH      JULY 21 “Women’s Issues and Feminism”: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Faber and Faber Classics.

MON JULY 25 “Black/White Racial Issues”: Ernest J. Gaines, Catherine Carmier. Vintage Contemporaries.

TH      JULY 28 “Science Fiction and the Future”: Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  Gollancz.