This class combines film studies, cultural studies and economic history to analyze the role played in American history by the suburb. Though much of America is urban and rural it is the suburb with its promise of prosperous peace and harmony, that in the 20th C came to represent the American Dream, both within America and abroad. In this class we will use the tools of Discourse Studies to think through the suburb as an embodied historical phenomenon, and to view it critically from as many angles as possible, taking into consideration the many political, economic, social, and ecological nuances of our object of study. Rather than assuming that the suburb is a natural or necessary space,
one that is simply useful or innocently chosen as an effect of free preferences, we will explore the ways the suburb was in fact discursively constructed as an ideal way of life. What were the agents, forces and discourses at work in the construction of this ideal? Who benefitted from our belief in the suburb and who (or what) was damaged, forgotten or excluded in the process of building a world around this belief? The main objects of analysis in our class will be American films and it is through them that we will gain a better understanding of the economic history of the United States in the 20th C.
