SF-1168 The Real Thing: the Pursuit and Problems Of Authenticity
This course will focus on the concept of authenticity in American culture, from its origins in the early 19th century to the present. When the advertising gurus of Coca-Cola branded it as "The Real Thing," they were exploiting something powerful: the idea of something real, stripped of any falsity or illusion. Humans have always desired to know the world and others "as they really are," but this desire is particularly strong in the modern world: witness the eagerness to discover one's "true self," cut through the B.S., obtain the genuine article, and "live authentically." In this course we will interrogate this pursuit of the Real Thing. In various ways, the texts we study both embrace authenticity as an ideal and also question its goodness, usefulness, or even its very possibility. We will thus confront a number of interrelated questions: Where does this desire for authenticity come from? What counts as "authenticity," in life and in art? Is authenticity really a virtue to live by? How does it shape artistic and literary expression? Is there even such a thing as "the real you" This course will be divided into three units. In the first unit, "Counterfeiters and Self-Made Men," we will study how a commitment to authenticity arises in antebellum American literature and culture during a time of rapid national expansion and invention. Readings will include texts by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and P.T. Barnum. In the second unit, "Authenticity and Contamination,"we will consider two major ways in which authenticity becomes idealized around the turn of the 20th century: as artistic ideal set against fears of mass cultural production, and as a cultural ideal set against fears of racial and cultural mixing. Readings will include texts by Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, and William Carlos Williams. In Unit Three, "Buying and Selling Authenticity," we will examine how authenticity becomes commodified (associated with products and "lifestyles") in post-WWII American culture. Texts will include works by Andy Warhol, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Banksy, and the TV series Mad Men. Final projects will ask students to consider authenticity today: how is the pursuit of the Real Thing affected by technologies of reproduction, by commodification, and by the increasingly virtual world of the 21st century?