|
This module examines contemporary American literature through the theme and meanings of exposure—including vulnerability, revelation, experience, transparency, and the effects of lens-based and digital technology—to critically examine current American social and ecological realities. Employing a contemporary theoretical apparatus that includes a range of thinkers, the module considers some of the most pressing concerns for American writers, citizens and residents today, including: how identity narratives of state, gender and race shape structures of nationhood; how these narratives are played out on and through the human body; the affective implications of neoliberal and capitalist systems of control; enduring ideologies of exceptionalism; the precincts of the ‘real’ and of the ‘human’; the exigencies of visuality and the ethics of attention. Students will have the opportunity to work closely with their seminar leader on a range of contemporary American texts and to critically address exposure as a pressing area of inquiry for writers and artists today.
|