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The crisis of the American presidency, the murder of African-Americans by police officers, the spread of COVID-19 in the USA, and the burden of Climate Change are an unfortunate but appropriate backdrop to our readings. Whether the American Dream in its many incarnations is slated to become the American nightmare, whether America as an idea or a nation will continue to exist, is a question that will be evolving as we read and study the problem. The hoped-for paradise of the American Dream often collapses in nightmarish visions. In the wake of the revolutionary promise of equality in the Declaration of Independence, in racial and feminist struggles to achieve that goal, in the years since 9/11, Americans have imagined dystopias in art, film, poetry, and novels. The course will trace some of the more prominent representations of the dystopic vision. We will begin with a five-part series of paintings created by Thomas Cole in the years 1833-36, moving on to Grant Wood's Spring in Town (1941) and other paintings. In film, we will examine segments of Rod Serlings Planet of the Apes (1968), Woody Allan's Sleeper (1973), and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1990). Writers whom we will read include Langston Hughes, Philip Roth, and Ray Bradbury. Students should purchase the following at the University bookstore or on the internet:
Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451 (1953)
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade (1969)
Dr. Seuss, The Lorax (1971)
Lois Lowry, The Giver (1993)
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (2004)
Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story (2010)
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