ISHU 4040 - Authenticity: American Literature and Culture

This course scrutinizes several theoretical, dramatic and fictional responses to this crisis. We’ll read from Walter Benjamin who examines what happens to art in an age of mechanical reproduction. We’ll see how Oscar Wilde not only accepts but embraces in authenticity as a way to mock repressive late Victorian sexual and social norms. We’ll examine Jean Hegland’s scathing novelistic attack on modernity while pondering her radical solution: a return to primitivism. This class will take place in seminar form and will have a substantial writing workshop component.

Credits: 3