HONR-2130 : Representation and Culture

Starting roughly with the aftermath of WWI and culminating with the post-9/11 moment, this course examines the literary and artistic responses to technological modernity, historical trauma, and the rise of global capital. We will consider how artists and writers engage crucial forces that structure our world today through a variety of techniques, practices and media. Students will encounter: aesthetic fragmentation and Dadaist absurdity; the stream-of-consciousness novel and the Surrealist montage; the unspeakable nature of the Holocaust and the status of representation; the rise of consumerism, pop art, and metafiction after WWII; identity, race, and gender in the society of spectacle; postcolonial reassessments of history and the museum; the status of photography, painting, electronic media, and text in an era of terrorism and surveillance.