123250 AR Literature Course - American/North American Lit./Studies (2012W)

"New York is a different country," the entrepreneur Henry Ford once quipped, "Everybody thinks differently, acts differently." Ford's remark, which describes New York City as an isolated space, distinct from 'the rest of America, is revealing in the light of the recent Spatial Turn with its focus on the cultural significance of urban spaces and the meaning of location and belonging as identity markers. Throughout its history, New York City has not only been characterized as an 'independent space' in its own right, but also as the epitome of the 'American Dream.' It is part of this ambiguous rhetoric that New York symbolizes both 'Americanness' (being the first U.S. capital) and globalization ('The World's Business Capital'). Perhaps more than any other city, NYC lends itself to contradictory projections that portray it either as a democratic 'melting pot' or as a misanthropic Moloch. The course will investigate a wide range of images and fictions based in the city of New York, from the early days of the U.S. republic to the heyday of immigration and finally the terror of 9/11. We will examine a number of influential texts about the 'Big Apple,' including short fiction (e.g., Stephen Crane's Maggie from 1893), longer prose (Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer from 1925), poetry (Hart Crane's "To Brooklyn Bridge" from 1930), comedies (Annie Hall from 1977), film melodrama (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close from 2011), and television shows (Sex and the City, 1998-2004). Our discussions will be grounded in scholarly works associated with urban studies and spatial theory (T. Bender, M. de Certeau, H. Lefèbvre, S. Sassen, E. Soja, E. Wheeler).