Topics in the Literature of American Cultures

In this course we will explore the diversity of selected works of American literature, film, and music produced during the “long sixties” (1955-1975). Placing considerable emphasis on the relationship between artistic experimentation and the emancipatory social movements of the period, we will ask how innovative practices of language, image, and sound related to the more directly political actions associated with the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Movement, the Black and Red Power Movements, and the Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements.  How did writers, filmmakers, visual artists, and musicians used their work to question the dominant ideology of the post-war period and to challenge war, racism, social and economic inequality, sexual violence and gendered discrimination? What role did poetry, music, and visual art play in creating new collectivities and new potentials for social transformation? What new concepts, practices, and styles emerged from the encounters between artistic and social movements?

Given the persistence of the “sixties” in the U.S. cultural imaginary we will also seek to critically engage contemporary adaptations and representations of past works, events, and figures associated with the period. How and for what purposes does the present “revision” the past? What claims does that past still make on our own present?

Course materials include texts (poetry, fiction, journalism, manifestos), images (photographs, independent films, television clips, visual art), and sounds (music, recorded voice performances and political speeches) produced between 1955-1975 as well as more recent documentaries and critical essays addressing the period. Primary readings will likely include James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963), Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto (1967), Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) and N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1969) as well as selections from Ann Charter’s The Sixties Reader and Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry. Over the course of the semester we will also view several independent/experimental films including: The Cry of Jazz (1959), Dog Star Man IV (1964), Finally Got the News (1970), Letter to Jane (1972) and Nous Parlons, Vous Ecoutez (1975)

Written assignments include two short response essays, a formal analysis, and a final research paper.