#  HL90CX: Stop Making Sense: America in the 1980s 

 





 Semester:   Fall 

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 Year offered:  2018 

 

 

 

 **Instructor:** [Angela S. Allan](/people/angela-allan)  
**Meeting time:** Wednesday, 9:45 - 11:45

   ![Stop Making Sense](/sites/g/files/omnuum4926/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/histlit/files/stop_making_sensecd.jpg?itok=JDbm7YG5) 

 

The 1980s saw the convergence of American politics and economics to strengthen U.S. interests abroad, but the decade was also a moment of enormous social, political, and economic divergence at home. How compatible—or causal—was the end of the cold war with the end of the American cultural consensus? Did such a consensus ever exist, or was it a mere illusion and nostalgia for a “simpler time”? This course will look at how culture—including novels, films, plays, music videos, and more—both shapes and is shaped by social and political attitudes. As the 1980s experiences a pop culture comeback in the 2010s, how do we begin to critically make sense of a decade of contradictions?