America Through the Looking-Glass: Questioning the U.S. as Superpower in Fiction

Course Description

“The Americans have never even heard of history, they still believe that legend created about the Far West, and cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers, and black and white, and good and evil…If the Europeans are afflicted by history, Americans are afflicted by innocence.”

—James Baldwin, from his 1965 debate with William F. Buckley

What does “America” mean to the rest of the world? This discussion-based literature course will consider this question through a study of two novels: Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955) and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). Both of these novels offer an outsider’s perspective on the United States’ position as a superpower since 1945. Though published fifty years apart, these novels share remarkably similar themes and structures, and raise unsettling questions about the effects of U.S. imperialism. Set at the end of French colonial rule in Vietnam, The Quiet American questions the U.S.’s early involvement in the region. Set fifty years later in Lahore at the height of the War on Terror, The Reluctant Fundamentalist follows the Pakistani narrator as he tells the story of his life in the United States, from his embrace of American culture to his later rejection of and by that culture in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. 

Although these novels received critical acclaim and have been embraced as modern classics, they were met with charges of anti-Americanism upon publication. Through examining these works, we will explore questions such as: How do these novels critique certain narratives central to American identity, such as the American Dream and American exceptionalism? Why is innocence a concept that has so often been associated with the United States, and what makes innocence so dangerous in these novels? When, if ever, is violence morally justified, either as a form of state intervention or as an act of resistance? What is the difference between patriotism and extremism? And what insights do these novels have to offer about the United States’ role on the global stage in our current political moment? In addition to the two novels, this course will also consider the film adaptations of the works.

Books to purchase:

Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)

Course Details