During the 1980s, while the general public elected a b-movie start who promised economic prosperity and security for the presidency, some artists presented a darker and different vision of iconic American heroes. They explored the possibilities of genre fiction and their outsider point of view helped them to articulate a sharp political critique: William S. Burroughs published his homosexual western The Place of Dead Roads (1983), William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) changed science fiction and established the subgenre cyberpunk, while Kathy Acker used her studies of Burroughs and her reading of Gibson to create the violent world of Empire of the Senseless (1988). This seminar will look at these three novels and add some other works of art to get a sense how these books resonated within a larger cultural framework. Please sign up by e-mailing me at alexander.greiffenstern@uni-due.de before February 23.
Requirements:
- Reading the assignments.
- Handing in a response paper before March 14.
- Writing a short essay.
Course Readings:
William S. Burroughs. The Place of Dead Roads. Picador, 2001.
William Gibson. Neuromancer. Ace, 1986.
Kathy Acker. Empire of the Senseless. Grove Press, 1989. |
