COURSE:

AMERICAN PASTORAL, PARODY AND PARANOIA: THE SUBURBS AS U.S. IMAGINED COMMUNITY

PROFESSOR: DR. SONIA TORRES

FRIDAYS, 2-6PM

COURSE ABSTRACT

Representation of the U.S. suburbs in fiction and film, at different historical moments. Keywords: THE
AMERICAN DREAM; FAMILY RELATIONS; NEIGHBORS; IMAGINED COMMUNITIES.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Although the U.S. suburb had what one might call its first boom in the 1920s, with a great part
of the population fleeing the industrial city to live outside its lines, it was after World War II
that the suburbs were projected to be the manifestation of the American way of life. In 1947,
when Abraham Levitt and his two sons William and Alfred projected what would become the
prototype for the suburb of the 1950s (Levittown) transforming what had once been farmland
into a planned community, little did they know the suburbs would become iconic. The fusion
of space and identity reinforced the myth of the normal, healthy family living in a normal,
healthy nation. [1] But in truth the sphere of isolation and domesticity separated these
communities from the rest of the nation, not only spatially but functionally. Also, beneath the
surface of homogeneity usually associated with these communities there are race and class
diversity and their resulting conflicts. In the mid-20th century the traditional image of suburbia
started to undergo a process of critical revision, not only in academic and fictional works but
also in films. Franco Moretti wrote that “each space determines, or at least encourages, its
own kind of story”. [2]. Using the suburb as the central trope in our course, we will examine
different representations of the “burbs” in fiction and film – from works that represent post-
war economic optimism and celebratory nationalism to those that parody this representation,
or even represent the suburbs as a nightmare or perversion of the American Dream – for ex.,
individuals with broken dreams or repressed and obscure desires, and dysfunctional families.
[1] WRIGHT, G. Building the Dream
[2] MORETTI, F. F. Moretti. Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 (London: Verso, 2007), p.
70.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

FICTIONAL WORKS [IN READING ORDER]

CHEEVER, John (1964). “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill” Pdf

CARVER, Raymond (1971). “Neighbors” pdf
COOVER, Robert (1969). “The Babysitter” pdf
OATES, Joyce Carrol (2006) [1968]. Expensive People. New York: Modern Library.
Available in Kindle edition
NAYLOR, Gloria (1986). Linden Hills. New York: Penguin.

FILMOGRAPHY

It’s a Wonderful Life [1946 ], dir. Frank Capra, RKO.

The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit [1956], dir./screenplay Nunnally Johnson,
Twentieth Century Fox. Based on the homonymous novel by Sloan Wilson.
Poltergeist [1982], dir. Tobe Hooper, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.
The Ice Storm [1997], dir. Ang Lee, Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Happiness [1998], dir. Todd Solondz, New Films International.
Pleasantville [1998], dir. Gary Ross, New Line Cinema.
The Virgin Suicides [1999], dir. Sofia Coppola, Paramount Pictures.
Little Children [2006], dir. Todd Field, screenplay Tom Perrotta [author of the
homonymous novel] and Todd Field, New Line Cinema.

CRITICAL/THEORETICAL SUPPORT

[texts marked with an asterisk are mandatory reading for presentations in

seminar form]

ARAÚJO, Susana. “Space, Property and the Psyche: Violent Topographies in

Early Oates Novels.” Studies in the Novel, v. 38, n. 4, 2006, p. 397-413. pdf *

AUBRY, Timothy. “John Cheever and the Management of Middlebrow Misery.”

Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, n. 3, 2003, p. 64-83. pdf *

BAINBRIDGE, Jason. "Soiling Suburbia: Lynch, Solondz and the Power of Dirt."
M/C Journal, v. 9, n. 5, 2006. <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/11-
bainbridge.php>. *

BEAUREGARD, Robert A. When America Became Suburban. Minneapolis: U of

Minnesota P, 2006.

BEUKA, Robert. “Cue the Sun”: Soundings from Millennial Suburbia. In _____
SuburbiaNation: Reading Suburban Landscape in Twentieth-Century American
Fiction and Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004. pdf*

COLLINS, Robert G. “From Subject to Object and Back Again: Individual

Identity in John Cheever’s Fiction.” Twentieth-Century Literature, v. 28, n. 1, p.
1-13, 1982. pdf *
COLOGNE-BROOKES, Gavin. Dark Eyes on America: The Novels of Joyce Carol
Oates. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2005.

_____. WRITTEN INTERVIEWS AND A CONVERSATION WITH JOYCE CAROL

OATES. Studies in the Novel, v. 38, n. 4, JOYCE CAROL OATES, 2006, p. 547-568.

COONTZ, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the
Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Av. in Kindle

DYER, John. “John Cheever: Parody and the Suburban Aesthetic”. Project
Crossroads, Virginia University. Available at Crossroads Project page:
<http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma95/dyer/cheever4.html> *

JACKOBSON, Kristen J. Neodomestic Fiction. Columbus: The Ohio State UP,

2010.

JURCA, Catherine. Introduction. White Diaspora: The Suburb and the

Twentieth-Century American Novel. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.
hardcopy *

LEE, Sue-Im (2009). A Body of Individuals: The Paradox of Community in

Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: The Ohio State UP.

LOEWEN, James W. “Dreaming in Black and White.” In The American Dream in

the 21st Century, eds. Sandra L. Hanson e John Kenneth White. Philadelphia:
Temple UP, 2011, p. 59-76.

MUZZIO, Douglas; HALPER, Thomas. “Pleasantville? The Suburb and Its

Representation in American Movies”. Urban Affairs Review, v. 37, n. 4
[March], 2002, p. 543-574 pdf *

REYNOLDS, Arnold (2014). The Secret History of Sprawl: Joyce Carol Oates's
Expensive People and the Deterritorialization of Suburbia. Genre, v. 47, n. 2, p.
199-229. pdf *

SHAIN, Barry Alan (1994). The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant
Origins of American Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton UP.

WADENIUS, Adam (2010). “The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection and Todd

Solondz’s Happiness”. Wide Screen, v 1, n. 1, [April], 2009, p. 1-11. pdf *

WILHITE, Keith (2006). “John Cheever’s Shady Hill, Or: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Suburbs.” Studies in American Fiction, v. 34, n. 2, p.
215-239. pdf *

WRIGHT, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in

America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983. Av. in Kindle