Contemporary Literature ENGL 2040: Riding Off into the Nuclear Sunset

Robert Kennedy, MA
MW 1:25-2:45, ST 216

We will be reading the literature of the End of the American West. Until very recently, the
world imagined the apocalypse in the terms of nuclear war: sudden fire, fury, followed by a world
rendered fallow by radiation. Now, we tend to think of The End as something much more extended in
time; we think of it in terms of the slow disintegrating world of climate change. In both cases, the
American West plays a pivotal role in the American imaginary of the end. We will be reading and
watching fiction and non-fiction works about the legacy of the apocalypse in Utah and the Four Corners,
and the West in general, focusing on a diverse range of perspectives about the place of people in a
world that includes The Bomb.
In addition to reading horrifying and fascinating literature about the end of the world, students
will learn reading techniques that they will be able to apply to other cultural objects and disciplines.
Students will read a variety of auxiliary texts and gain a wider view of what constitutes the act of
reading. Students should be prepared to write two mid-length essays as well as shorter reflective essays
along with brief in-class and online assignments.

Required texts:
Silko, Leslie Marmon, Ceremony
D’Agata, John, About a Mountain
Miller, Walter M., A Canticle for Leibowitz
Le Guin, Ursula K., The Lathe of Heaven