In this course, we will cover the last 400 years of literary, artistic, musical and cultural heritage in the West, from the Enlightenment to the present day.  In lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays we will meet to put these works in a larger context, particularly trying to see how they relate to our contemporary situation (why do you have to read Marx, Nietzsche and Freud to properly understand Fight Club? How was Jane Austen inadvertently responsible for “chick lit,” and what does Bridget Jones’ Diary understand—and misunderstand—about Austen?  How is Goethe partly to blame for “masculine melodrama”? How does Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein affect how we imagine artificial life?). Students will meet with their TAs on Fridays to work in small sections for a more detailed analysis of the works, as well as working on writing.

This course satisfies the Comparative Western gen ed, the Literature and the Arts gen ed, and the Advanced Comp gen ed.

* not actually Mary, but inspired by her!