Arts of Affluence [1]: Wealth and the American Dream

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For better or worse, one version of the American Dream has long equated “success” with “material wealth”. This course will explore that equation through the close reading and discussion of important fiction and non-fiction works from America’s Gilded Age and the consideration of two films on wealth in America (Citizen Kane by Orson Welles and Born Rich by Jamie Johnson). Texts will include: Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick, Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as well as Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth”, and Thorsten Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Texts
  • Alger, Ragged Dick and Mark, The Match Boy
  • Lewis, Babbitt
  • Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby and “The Rich Boy”
  • Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth” Essays and Other Writings
  • Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
  • George Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon
Films
  • Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941, 119 min, English)
  • Born Rich (Johnson, 2003, 75 min, English)
TAUGHT: SUMMER 2013, AUTUMN 2013, AUTUMN 2014, SPRING 2018