| A striking feature of the United States is the weakness of its welfare state. One reason for this weakness is many Americans’ persistent belief that most welfare recipients fall into the category of the “undeserving poor”: lower-class citizens who, for an assortment of cultural and psychological reasons, are responsible for their own poverty. In this course, we will explore a broad range of literary, social scientific and journalistic texts that address the causes and effects of poverty, and that grapple with the problem of representing it. Our readings will focus on historical moments when poverty became a central topic of public debate and government policy: the Progressive Era, the Great Depression, the Great Society, and the Reagan Revolution. In each case, apart from discussing thematic connections between literature and welfare policy, we will also focus on the changing novelistic aesthetics of poverty: from the documentary naturalism of the 1930s to the process aesthetics of the 1960s. We will conclude by looking at the resurgence of poverty as a topic of public discussion in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. |
