ENGL 4650

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  • Schedule of Classes - January 19, 2016 6:14PM EST
  • Course Catalog - January 19, 2016 6:21PM EST

ENGL 4650
American Paranoia

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

Following the lead of Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," this course will examine the "paranoid style" in contemporary American fiction and film. The paranoias and plots we will encounter vary considerably (personal paranoias, political conspiracies, governments turned enemy, surveillance technology run amok, apocalyptic-millennial paranoia). Yet when viewed together they seem to cohere as a distinct style within post-WWII American narrative. We will ask how paranoid style responds to the contemporary American context and how the fears dominating these narratives shape their aesthetic form. Why has paranoia arisen as such a distinctively American attitude? What is the paranoid afraid of? (Should we be paranoid, too?) Novels by Nabokov, Pynchon, Reed, Dick, DeLillo, Didion, Roth; films by Coppola, Romero, Bigelow, Baldwin.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

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Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session.  Combined with: AMST 4650

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • 16272 ENGL 4650   SEM 101

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