HL90CX: Stop Making Sense: America in the 1980s

The 1980s saw the convergence of American politics and economics to strengthen US interests abroad, but the decade was also a moment of social, political, and economic divergence at home. How compatible—or causal—was the end of the cold war with the end of the American cultural consensus? Did such a consensus ever exist, or was it a mere illusion and nostalgia for a “simpler time”? Three decades later, these questions remain essential to understanding the history surrounding the cold war and the culture wars. This course will look at how culture--including novels, films, plays, music, and more--both shapes and is shaped by social and political attitudes. As the 1980s experiences a pop culture comeback in the 2010s, how do we begin to critically make sense of a decade of contradictions? [Also offered Fall 2017]