ENG 3730H / PSY 3730H
Literature and Psychology
Prof. Michael Staub
M/W 12:50-2:05
3.0 Hours; 3.0 Credits
This course will focus on the psychology of literature, both classic and contemporary. We will read novels, plays, and short stories (as well as watch the occasional film) about dysfunctional families, alienated individuals, scapegoated persons, and sociopaths. We will discuss works that explore the psychic consequences of racial prejudice and bigotry. We will look at texts that examine how our biases cause us to see only what we choose to see. And we will read about hallucinations and madness. We will analyze stories about the psychic damages resulting from unequal gender relations, and we will look at how therapies (including talk, conversion, group, aversive) have been represented (and parodied) in literature. We will discuss the widespread impact of pharmaceuticals on selfhood. We will look at the problems of propaganda, torture, rumor, and mass hysteria. And we will discuss love, faith, and attraction (both normative and forbidden). Texts (in whole or in excerpted form) may include: Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain; Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Chesler, Women and Madness; Highsmith, “Not One of Us”; Jackson, “The Lottery”; James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; Kramer, Listening to Prozac; Larsen, Passing; Mann, Mrs. Packard; O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms; Palahniuk, Fight Club; Poe, “The Tell-Tell Heart”; Welch, Winter in the Blood; and Welles, “War of the Worlds.”
