What does it mean to say that American political culture is dominated by several mutually constitutive "political rationalities"? How do fictional depictions of the future reflect present social and political conditions, problems, and desires? How does pop culture legitimate, reinforce, or speak against power inequalities pervading the contemporary United States? Have we moved beyond the need to talk about racial and gender inequality in America today? How are we conditioned to think about the meanings of liberty, opportunity and equality in America today? What do various notions of the "post-" suggest, and what do they have in common?

This course will focus on the ways in which contemporary fiction, film and television reflect, reinforce, and perhaps resist three dominant and interrelated political rationalities of the early 21st-century United States: the rationality of neoliberalism, the rationality of the post-racial state, and the rationality of post-feminism.

Course readings and concepts will be drawn from the fields of political theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, cultural studies, and contemporary American literature.

Students will be required to purchase a course packet containing reading materials (drawn from political theory, critical legal studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, and the social sciences) as well as three novels: Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story (2011) Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, The Nanny Diaries (2002) Zadie Smith, On Beauty (2005)