Topics in the Literature of American Cultures

If Los Angeles, at the center of the culture industry, is charged with representing America to the world, it is also obsessed with representing itself. According to its own mythology, there is no better place than L.A. to realize the quintessentially American dream of leaving the past behind and making one’s own destiny. And if L.A. considers itself the ideal setting for American self-fashioning, it also bills itself as the product of such a process: a city of big dreams and endless possibilities, built against the blank canvas of the desert.

Yet this utopian portrayal of Los Angeles obscures its long history as a site of imperial conquest, racial oppression, class struggle, and environmental devastation. This course aims not only to elucidate the various myths associated with the city—from the Hollywood dream of the postwar period to the contemporary celebration of L.A. as global city of the future—but also to allow a more critical understanding of these myths by asking how they intersect with racial and ethnic categories. To whose experiences does each myth give preference? By whom is it created, and for whom? Whose experiences does it exclude?

Most of our conversations will be devoted to specific neighborhoods of L.A. (like Hollywood and Watts) and particular traditions of representing the city (as white middle-class fantasy, as border community, as global city). However, we’ll also discuss how a critical understanding of the mythology of L.A. might allow us to reevaluate American myths of newness and self-fashioning more generally.

The course asks students to consider the extent to which our perception of a city is shaped not only by physical geography, but also by cultural representation: accordingly, although the syllabus includes readings in history and urban studies, our discussions will focus primarily on fictional depictions of the city. The course devotes special attention to film, a medium with unique ties to L.A.; students should plan to devote up to 6 hours per week to viewing the films.

Required screenings:

Charles Burnett, Killer of Sheep
Haile Gerima, Bush Mama
Gregory Nava, El Norte
Roman Polanski, Chinatown
Ridley Scott, Blade Runner
John Singleton, Boyz n the Hood
Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard
Robert Zemeckis, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Required text:

Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange (Coffee House Press, 1997)

A course reader will include short literary works and scholarly articles.