Topics in the Literature of American Cultures

From cowboys to captains of industry, from old-money gentlemen to new-world adventurers, from uniformed soldiers to mold-breaking mavericks, Americans have long looked up to masculine heroes. Meanwhile, those who fail to conform to conventional standards of masculinity – effete intellectuals and stay-at-home dads, cuckolded husbands and 40-year-old virgins – earn society’s mockery and scorn. In this course, we’ll ask how assumptions about masculinity (and femininity) inform representations of men in texts, films, songs, and images, and what contradictions complicate them. We’ll also consider the roles that race, class, religion, sexuality, and nationality play in these representations and our reactions to them.

Our texts may include Thoreau’s Walden, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, James’ The American, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and Walker’s Meridian. We’ll also look at films like The Philadelphia Story, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Top Gun, Do the Right Thing, The Big Lebowski, and Grizzly Man. And we’ll consider selected episodes of Mad Men, The Wire, and Breaking Bad; the U.S. Senate hearings on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy; critical works by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Lee Edelman, and Camille Paglia; and lyrics by Bob Dylan, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West, among others.