ENGL 009W. First Year Seminar: U.S. War Culture

The current moment in the U.S.-increasingly described in terms of a “new Civil War”-has been traced to U.S. wars abroad-most notoriously, the Vietnam War-that, it is said, are finally coming home. As indicated by the metaphor the “new Civil War,” however, the conflicts seemingly coming to a head in the present point not only to the return of war to the homeland but also to the ways in which home, to begin with, is a place of war. This course charts the history of U.S. wars through literary and cultural texts to study not only the wages of armed conflict but also the constitutive role of organized violence in American culture. This “war culture” is often attributed to the American Revolution, but in fact the most enduring texts of the time emphasize ideas over violence while tackling the complexity of independence. We will follow the persistence of this intellectual and critical spirit in accounts of U.S. wars-from the Civil War to the two World Wars to the Korean War to the Vietnam War to the War on Terror-to study not only war itself but also the culture of which it is an index: the war beyond/before the war. In reading about war, we will also consider how it has been countered through writing to learn how to be better writers ourselves, in hopes that persuasive argumentation is an antidote to war. Readings may include poetry from the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Vietnam War, The Unvanquished, Company K, “Hiroshima,” The Surrendered, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, The Face of War, We Should Never Meet, The Forever War, and The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
Humanities
Writing Course
Eligible for GLBL-paired, PEAC, ASAM
Spring 2024. Ku.
Fall 2024. Ku.
Fall 2025. Ku.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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