Dream

The American Dream—it’s a refrain that’s constantly invoked at ballot boxes, on social media, in news feeds and across dinner tables. We think we know what that dream is, but do we really agree on its definition, its desirability? Ta-Nehisi Coates called the Dream a perpetual threat to black bodies, in the same year a president rose to office on the promise to “Make America Great Again,” his call haunted by the ghost of a lost American Dream. What are the harmonious and harmful parameters of this Dream? In this course, we’ll work toward a collective definition by examining the metaphor of dreaming and the notion of being “woke,” reading expressions of “the Dream” across multiple linguistic, national, and temporal borders of the 20th and 21st century imagination. Our discussions will pivot around works of literary nonfiction, fiction, poetry, standup comedy, and historiography, works that speak intimately from criminalized and neglected margins, shining a light on the relationship between institutions, ideologies and the lyric voice. Together, we’ll take the time to write our way toward a self-aware Dream state that, at least provisionally, gives us a sense of where we stand in this metaphoric state of consciousness.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP)