General Education Requirements
Course Description
Have human beings ruined the entire world? Is “modern life” a life worth living? Can literary texts help us turn disaster into some sort of fulfillment? Questions like these were at the core of literary modernism, as exemplified by figures like T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather and William Faulkner. Beginning with a close examination of important works by these early 20th century writers, this class will trace the literary theme of apocalyptic ruination through the 20th century into the present, where what was once the concern of the cultural avant-garde has become a popular obsession. On the way from complex, experimental literary works like Eliot’s “Waste Land” to the latest stories of zombie apocalypse, we will note how different culprits—war, consumerism, environmental degradation, disease—are brought to the fore in contemplation of the fundamental problems of modern life and ask ourselves about the role that literary texts might play in orienting ourselves to the historically unique conditions of contemporary life.
Meet the Instructor: Mark McGurl
“I am a scholar of literature from the early 20th century to the present whose work often focuses on the relation of literature to popular culture, exploring the surprisingly intense interactions between “high” and “low” cultural forms. Part of the appeal of the class called “Wastelands,” it seems to me, is in how it brings together some of the most complex literary works of the 20th century with concerns–such as environmental apocalypse–that simply couldn’t be more current or more widely shared. What I love about the literary texts brought together in this class is how fundamental and even extreme their concerns are: week after week, in so many different ways, we are presented with fictional worlds where literally everything is at stake."
