LTA2062 Suburban America in Literature and Culture
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
American suburbs are simultaneously reviled as physical spaces comprised of little boxes made of ticky tacky, churning out homogeneous values and people, and revered as mythically perfect imagined spaces in television sitcoms and advertising. This class aims to examine the American suburbs as constructed through popular texts, classic literature, and contemporary art. We will consider how the tension between utopia and dystopia is imagined and re-imagined over time and across genres and texts, reading and analyzing works such as the poetry of Anne Sexton, Richard Yates' novel Revolutionary Road, and the short stories of John Cheever. We will also examine representations of the suburbs in science fiction and film.
This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Fall
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)