First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-21)

Topic

Reality Bites

Instructors

Anna Zalokostas

Meeting Info

Harris Hall L04: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Topic: Reality Bites: Multiculturalism, Consumer Culture, and the 1990s

What does it mean to say that a decade feels a certain way? In the 1990s, Francis Fukuyama announced the end of history, Britney Spears, Princess of Pop, sang "my loneliness is killing me," and MTV gave way to a self-styled generation of slackers. Even as Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize and the Whitney Biennial became the most diverse exhibit by a major American museum, Operation Gatekeeper militarized the US-Mexico border and the Los Angeles riots brought widespread attention to anti-Black violence. This course will read deeply and diversely across the period, with an emphasis on African American, Asian American, and Latinx literature, in order to grapple with the contradictions between ostensible cultural tolerance, the explosion of consumerism, and the persistence of structural and economic inequality. Working together, we will produce our own account of recent history, as it affects us. We will ask: Is there a mood, feeling, or affect readily identifiable as "The '90s," and what social transformations does this mood express? How did narratives about race, class, and nation clash and diverge? What is it about our own period that necessitates '90s nostalgia, and how does this require remembering the '90s in a certain way? Were the '90s just the '70s all over again? Possible authors and primary texts include Clueless, Karen Tei Yamashita, Nirvana, Percival Everett, Paul Beatty, Seinfeld, Pavement, Harryette Mullen, Ernesto Quioñez, Twin Peaks, Sex and the City.

Class Attributes

WCAS Writing Seminar