Authors: Tim Engles (Editor), John N. Duvall
ISBN-13: 9780873529198, ISBN-10: 0873529197
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
Date Published: January 2006
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Don DeLillo's satiric novel White Noise, prophetic in 1985 about American society's rampant consumerism, information overload, overreliance on the media, and environmental problems, may seem to today's students simply a description of their lived reality. The challenge for teachers, then, is to help them appreciate both the postmodern qualities of the novel and its social critique.
This volume, like others in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, "Materials," suggests readings and resources for both instructor and students of White Noise. The second part, "Approaches," contains eighteen essays that establish cultural, technological, and theoretical contexts (e.g., whiteness studies); place the novel in different survey courses (e.g., one that explores the theme of American materialism); compare it with other novels by DeLillo (e.g., Mao II); and give examples of classroom techniques and strategies in teaching it (e.g., the use of disaster films).
Pt. 1 | Materials | |
Pt. 2 | Approaches | |
White noise and American cultural studies | 19 | |
"Hijacked jet crashes into the White House" : teaching White noise after September 11 | 27 | |
No one sees the camps : Hitler and humor in White noise | 39 | |
An ecocritical approach to teaching White noise | 50 | |
Connecting White noise to critical whiteness studies | 63 | |
Technology, rationality, modernity : an approach to White noise | 73 | |
White noise as wake-up call : teaching DeLillo as media skeptic | 84 | |
White noise and the Web | 94 | |
White noise and the American novel | 103 | |
White noise, postmodernism, and postmodernity | 116 | |
White noise, materialism, and the American literature survey | 126 | |
Plot summary : motives and narrative mechanics in Underworld and White noise | 135 | |
Inventing hope : the question of belief in White noise and Mao II | 144 | |
Loyalty to reality : White noise, Great Jones Street, and The names | 158 | |
A Burkeian reading of White noise | 169 | |
Homicidal men and full-figured women : gender in White noise | 180 | |
"The natural language of the culture'' : exploring commodities through White noise | 192 | |
White noise as disaster movie | 204 |