This MA seminar explores key literary and cultural responses to the complex crises defining the 20^th- and 21st-century American experience, including political divisions, racial struggles, climate emergencies, migration issues, digital fragmentation etc. Using fiction, non-fiction, film, TV, and digital media (including games), the course investigates how contemporary American writers and artists narrate instability, reimagine community, and reconfigure identity. By combining close textual analysis with contextual discussions, we will examine how American culture negotiates anxieties about the future while remaining haunted by unresolved pasts. The second part of the seminar will be devoted to students’ MA projects.