Literature in the TV Age: American Fictions, 1945-1994
Eric Wertheimer profile
W 2-5
This course will assess the status of literature and literary ideas in
the age of television. While not all of our readings will be about
television per se, we will attempt to read contemporary literature in
the context of a televisual world. Our primary questions must include
the way modernism and then postmodernism have responded to the social
effects of televised lives. From there, our probings can be as
pervasive as telvision itself. How, for instance, has the literary
counter-culture responded to, appropriated, and/or resisted the
effects of televised society? How have the culturally and economically
excluded in American society done the same? We also want to consider
more broadly how culture shapes our national/racial/sexual/class
identities--our perspectives and our interpretations--in a print and
video age.
updated 2006-03-29
