ENG 238a: Capitalism and the American Novel
Spring 2017
Friday, 9-11:50
Dr. Caren Irr: ; office hours = Thursdays, 11 am – 2 pm in 142 Rabb
****REVISED January 2017****
Course Description:
This graduate seminar asks how American fiction envisions the processes, conflicts, and ideologies associated with capitalism. These topics have had a major presence in the American novel since before independence, but they took hold with particular force during the rapid industrialization of the late nineteenth century as well as the crises of the 1930s and the turn to financial capitalism in the 1970s and 80s, and they continue to preoccupy many of the most important American novelists today. The course will be primarily concerned with examining the literary techniques various authors have used to represent capitalism as well as identifying ways that ficiton might indirectly register aspects of capitalism that prove difficult to visualize and narrate. To ensure students develop some familiarity with the vigorous debates surrounding the representation and meaning of capitalist economies, alongside the fiction, we will also spend time discussing and assessing influential theories of capitalism advanced by social scientists, philosophers, economic historians, and cultural critics. The central task of the seminar remains, however, a close examination of the literary techniques, genres, and movements that engage with capitalism in part or whole.
For spring 2017, the seminar will focus on the post-1945 period.
Learning Goals:
All students should leave the course with the following:
-deeper understanding of the techniques of the American novel
-familiarity with the outlines of the history of capitalism
-experience analyzing and using critical concepts
-enhanced writing, research and argumentation skills
Assignments for 2017:
1)preparation, attendance and participation; N.B.: please plan to spend at least 9 hours/week preparing for seminar.
2)presentation on an assigned chapter or article: summarize and evaluate
3)Scavenger hunt: for weeks 2, 6, and 10, locate examples that illustrate or contest concepts in the readings
4)Final project, normally a 25-page research essay analyzing a problem relevant to the theme of the course. The process for the research essay includes a required meeting with Zoe Weinstein (Humanities librarian) and the submission of a research plan in April. If you would like to do something other than a research essay (e.g., a detailed syllabus, annotated bibliography, or collaborative project), please discuss your idea with myself and Zoe Weinstein (the humanities librarian).
Course Schedule for 2017:
Introduction
1/20/17: The Story of Capitalism
Wolfgang Streeck, "How Will Capitalism End?"New Left Review87 (May-June 2014): 35-64.
recommended: Ch 1 of GiovanniArrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times
Consumption and Consumerism in the Mid-20th Century
1/27/17: Theories and Examples
Joseph E.Stiglitz, “Toward a General Theory of Consumerism: Reflections on Keynes'sEconomic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.”
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry" from The Dialectic of Enlightenment
excerpt from Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Nicholas Brown, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Real Subsumption to Capital.” nonsite.org. 2012.
**Find: an adthat exemplifies (or contradicts) a theme from one of the readings
2/3/17: Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)
Jennifer Burns. “Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Movement.” Modern Intellectual History 1: 3 (2004): 359-385.
2/10/17: Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
Nick Perry. “Catch, Class and Bureaucracy: The Meaning of Joseph Heller's Catch-22.” The Sociological Review 32: 4 (1984): 719-741.
2/17/17: John Updike, Rabbit is Rich (1981)
Judie Newman, “Updike's Golden Oldies: Rabbit as Spectacular Man.” Essays and Studies (2005): 123-142.
Primitive Accumulation in the 1990s
3/3/17: Theories and Examples
Adam Smith, “Of the Accumulation of Capital” fromThe Wealth of Nations
KarlMarx, “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation” fromCapital: Volume One;
DavidHarvey, “Accumulation by Dispossession” from New Imperialism
**Find: a piece of visual art that in some way documents, expresses, or editorializes on the theme of accumulation
3/10/17: Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, “The Properties of Desire: Forms of Slave Identity in Charles Johnson's Middle Passage.” Arizona Quarterly 50: 2 (Summer 1994): 73-108.
3/17/17: Jane Smiley,A Thousand Acres(1991)
Kyoko Amano, “Alger's Shadows in Jane Smiley'sA Thousand Acres.”Critique47: 1 (2005): 23-39.
3/24/17: Annie Proulx, The Shipping News (1993)
Herb Wyile, "Going Out of Their Way: Tourism, Authenticity, and Resistance in Contemporary Atlantic-Canadian Literature."English Studies in Canada34: 2-3 (June/September 2008): 159-180.
3/31/17: No class. Attend grad conference on consumption: post a comment on the conference on LATTE. We will make up this session on reading day.
Between 3/27/17-4/7/17: meet with Zoe Weinstein to discuss your research plan
21st-Century Subsumption and Financialization
4/7/17: Theories and Examples
MichelFoucault, lecture on neoliberalism,The Birth of Biopolitics
RandyMartin, Introduction toThe Financialization of Everyday Life(Temple UP 2002).
Postcrisis chapters from Dumenil and Levy,The Crisis of Neoliberalism(and review account of crisis, as needed: available in digital form through Brandeis Library).
**Find: a government document relevant to the rise of financial capitalism, neoliberal ideology, or capitalist crisis
4/14/17 = break; before this date, please submit a one- or two-paragraph plan for your final project.
4/21/17 : Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991)
Leigh Claire La Berge, Ellis chapter in Scandal and Abstraction: Financial Fictions from the Long 1980s (Oxford 2014).
4/28/17: Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (2001)
James Annesley, “Market Corrections: Jonathan Franzen and the 'Novel of Globalization.'” Journal of Modern Literature29.2 (2006) 111-128.
5/4/17 [study day]: Tao Lin, Taipei (2013)
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
5/15/17: Final project due