Graduate School of Humanities Department of Languages and Literature Western Literature Field English Linguistics & Literature Speciality (Credit 2) Intended Year: Intended School:

American Literature (Seminar VI) American Literature (Seminar VI) Sub Title　 Professor NAKAMURA Yoshio

Numbering Code: Course Code: 2026 FallTerm weekly Tue4 Ito Classroom E/J科目 (日本語, English)

Course Overview

The 1980s marked a critical turning point for understanding contemporary America. Reagan’s neoliberal policies, the Cold War victory, and the rise of neoconservatives and liberal imperialists convinced of democracy’s “end of history” positioned the U.S. as a global superpower. Yet the people living within it continued to lose their ideological and economic grounding—first through the postwar consumer society that produced countercultures, and later through the expanding global economy and widening domestic inequality of the 1980s. This transformative moment in modern America, and the lives shaped by it, can be explored through Paul Auster’s Ghosts, one of the works in his New York Trilogy.

Last updated

: 2026/3/6 (17:35)