The American Novel Since 1945: A Free Yale Course on Novels by Nabokov, Kerouac, Morrison, Pynchon & More

Taught by pro­fes­sor Amy Hunger­ford, The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 offers an intro­duc­tion to the fer­tile lit­er­ary peri­od that fol­lowed World War II. The course descrip­tion reads:

In “The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945” stu­dents will study a wide range of works from 1945 to the present. The course traces the for­mal and the­mat­ic devel­op­ments of the nov­el in this peri­od, focus­ing on the rela­tion­ship between writ­ers and read­ers, the con­di­tions of pub­lish­ing, inno­va­tions in the nov­el­’s form, fic­tion’s engage­ment with his­to­ry, and the chang­ing place of lit­er­a­ture in Amer­i­can cul­ture. The read­ing list includes works by Richard Wright, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Ker­ouac, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pyn­chon, John Barth, Max­ine Hong Kingston, Toni Mor­ri­son, Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, Cor­mac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones. The course con­cludes with a con­tem­po­rary nov­el cho­sen by the stu­dents in the class.

You can watch the 26 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube and iTunes (video — audio). To get more infor­ma­tion about the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, vis­it this Yale web­site.

The main texts used in this course include:

• Richard Wright, Black Boy (1945)
• Flan­nery O’Con­nor, Wise Blood (1949)
• Vladimir Nabokov, Loli­ta (1955)
• Jack Ker­ouac, On the Road (1957)
• J.D. Salinger, Fran­ny and Zooey (1961)
• John Barth, Lost in the Fun­house (1963–68)
• Thomas Pyn­chon, The Cry­ing of Lot 49 (1967)
• Toni Mor­ri­son, The Bluest Eye (1970)
• Max­ine Hong Kingston, The Woman War­rior (1976)
• Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, House­keep­ing (1980)
• Cor­mac McCarthy, Blood Merid­i­an (1985)
• Philip Roth, The Human Stain (2000)
• Edward P. Jones, The Known World (2003)
• Jonathan Safran Foer, Every­thing is Illu­mi­nat­ed (2002)

The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ in Rare 1959 Audio

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce