English 498: Senior Honors Seminar
From Rags to Riches: Cultural Capital and Social Mobility in 19th- & 20th-Century English and American Literature

This course will explore the cultural work performed by the “Rags to Riches” or “Rags to Respectability” narrative in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English and American literature and film.  Students will be encouraged to think and write about the history of this cultural narrative and about the way it shapes contemporary thinking about important social issues, including the place of the university, contemporary debates about “great books” and the literary canon, and modern media and advertising.  Beginning with key nineteenth-century versions of this narrative, particularly Samuel Smile’s Self-Help and the short stories of Horatio Alger, the course will also consider ways that the rags-to-riches myth is both represented and challenged in canonical literary works as well as works by immigrants, minorities, and members of the working classes, and in influential popular films.  These texts will be examined in the context of recent cultural theory, particularly essays that focus on the notion of cultural capital.  Creative and critical thinking, careful reading of texts, active engagement in exploration and discussion of ideas, and original research and writing on the part of all students will be imperative.  One short paper and one longer research paper, plus a reading journal and outside-of-class film viewings.  Literary works and primary texts:  Samuel Smiles, selections from Self-Help; Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick, and Struggling Upward; Charles Dickens, David Copperfield; George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion; Clifford Odets, Golden Boy; Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun; Louise Erdrich, Bingo Palace