ENGL 2923 - D1 Topics: American Countercultures

Abstract

Course Description and Objectives The word “counter-culture” probably first calls to mind the counter-cultures of one’s own generation, usually music-related, whether hipster DIY culture, goth, hip-hop, or, if one is a bit older, grunge, punk, or even hippies and beatniks. Counter-cultures, however, have existed for as long as there have been groups of people unhappy with their present society. They have attracted musicians, artists, activists, poets, philosophers, rebels, and young people. Together, they have created alternate forms of culture that have profoundly affected both their own movements and the mainstream societies they rebelled against. This course focuses on the literature and counter-cultural expressions of Americans from the nineteenth century to the present. We will explore different formulations of cultural rebelliousness and redefinition: whether from the “proto-goth” of Edgar Allen Poe or today’s techno-horror and “steampunk” culture, from free-thinking, transcendentalist radicals like Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman to the beatniks and hippies of the 50s and 60s, or from the jazz countercultures of the 1920-40s to the cultural redefinitions of rap and hip-hop. Students in this course will examine and analyze the ways Americans have both rebelled and, what’s harder, created alternate forms of society and the culture that shapes it.