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Academic Year 2003/2004

Technical Fictions: Machines and the 20th-Century American Novel
ENGL 244 SP

This course examines twentieth-century American fiction and the special status it accords new technologies and novel machines. How do burgeoning technologies - from assembly lines to cinema to computers - reshape narrative form and the expectations of readers? We will discuss the historical and economic conditions to which new technologies give rise, as well as the desires and fears they come to bear. We will pay particular attention to how machines mediate changing relations of class, race and gender.

MAJOR READINGS

Texts may include DAY OF THE LOCUST, Nathaniel West; INVISIBLE MAN, Ralph Ellison; WHITE NOISE, Don DeLillo

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Mid-term and final exam, one long essay

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course is open to majors and non-majors. Many of these novels are long and challenging. Students should be prepared to do extensive reading each week.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-19-2004

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