Middlebury

AMST 0263

American Psycho

American Psycho: Disease, Doctors, and Discontents (Pre-1900 AL)
What constitutes a pathological response to the pressures of modernity? How do pathological protagonists drive readers toward the precariousness of their own physical and mental health? The readings for this class center on the provisional nature of sanity and the challenges to bodily health in a world of modern commerce, media, and medical diagnoses. We will begin with 19th century texts and their engagement with seemingly "diseased" responses to urbanization, new forms of work, and new structures of the family and end with contemporary fictional psychopaths engaged in attacks on the world of images we inhabit in the present. Nineteenth century texts will likely include stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Later 20th-century works will likely include Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, and Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho.
Subject:
American Studies
Department:
Program in American Studies
Division:
Interdisciplinary
Requirements Fulfilled:
AMR LIT
Equivalent Courses:
ENAM 0263
ENGL 0263 *

Sections

Spring 2024

AMST0263A-S24 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2023

AMST0263A-S23 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2021

AMST0263A-S21 Lecture (Newbury)
AMST0263Y-S21 Discussion (Newbury)
AMST0263Z-S21 Discussion (Newbury)

Fall 2020

AMST0263A-F20 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2020

AMST0263A-S20 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2019

AMST0263A-S19 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2018

AMST0263A-S18 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2017

AMST0263A-S17 Lecture (Newbury)

Spring 2014

AMST0263A-S14 Lecture (Newbury)