This course covers modern American Literature, especially the 20th century, with an emphasis on cultural changes from the 1960s. As the dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture weakened, alternative and diverse values emerged in fresh and dynamic literary forms: emphases on ethnicity in opposition to racism, along with liberation from the paternalistic sexism of  traditional family values" and individualistic rebellion against stereotypical genders. Sexual revolution," Black Nationalism, Asian, Jewish, Latino, and Native American cultural movements generated identity problems. Should one struggle primarily for a personal or collective identity―or possibly for changeable, multiple identities? Binary stereotypes of men and women, nature and culture, heterosexuality and homosexuality disintegrated as America changed from a modern to a postmodern nation. Such radical changes produced a conservative backlash symbolized, for example, by the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and both Bushes.
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