HMS-431A Topics in Cultural Studies: Modernism And Postmodernism Thought, Politics, and Creativity

3 Credits

This course examines literature, art, music, and architecture associated with modernism and postmodernism, along with their philosophical backgrounds. Topics covered include the aesthetic response to the rise of capitalism, differences between modernism and postmodernism, and concepts typically associated with postmodernism, including commodification, globalization, simulacra, pastiche, schizophrenia, paranoia, the decline of historical consciousness, challenges to the universal subject, and time-space compression. Authors covered may include Nietzsche, Proust, Kafka, Mann, Joyce, Woolf, Pynchon, Borges, and Morrison.