University of California, Berkeley 1 credit Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies
This course examines the nature, function and status in contemporary American culture of a central metaphor and belief in American experience: human life as a journey to the west, to the east, or to nowhere. We will study the nature and extent of this motif in recent American culture (including its expression in literature, music, and popular idioms) as well as situate our discussions within the context of historical expressions of the American journey as cyclical, eschatological, or as a journey to oblivion. Drawing on selections from, among others, Walt Whitman, Josiah Royce, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, and Maya Angelou, we will discuss the notion of journey in terms of possibility, nostalgia, nectar, cynicism, self-deception, and disappointment. Students will be encouraged to consider--and write about--their own relation to this expressive tradition in American cultural history.
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