Fulfills Distributional Course in Arts and Letters

This course will survey a wide range of prose writing from 1945 to the present, situating this work within its social and political contexts: the rise and fall of the Cold War, the decisive shift from economic scarcity to abundance, the ever-greater prominence of mass culture in everyday life, and the powerful emergence of social movements organized around ethnic and racial categories. Authors we may read include: Richard Wright, E.L. Doctorow, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O'Connor, Don Delillo, Toni Morrison, Wendell Berry, James Baldwin, Sherman Alexie. Course requirements will include several 5-7 page papers, a research-based in-class presentation, and a final exam.