- American Bestsellers and Popular Culture

Catalog description

An exploration of bestselling novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their relations to the social, political, and commercial preoccupations of American society. The course considers not only the novels themselves, but also illustrations, film and stage adaptations, critical reactions, and related cultural ephemera. Supplementary readings focus on such topics as early marketing and the emergence of bestseller lists; the development of "middlebrow" genres such as the romance, the western, and the detective story; and the role of the Book-of-the-Month Club.