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Twistin’ The Night Away: Perverted Nostalgia In How I Learned To Drive, Coco Mcneil

English Honors Theses

This paper situates Paula Vogel's 1997 play How I Learned to Drive as an American memory play that is representative of 1990s cultural and political discourses rooted in nostalgia for the 1960s. By examining each character--the Greek Chorus, Peck, and Li'l Bit--within Lauren Berlant's 'intimate public sphere,' 1960s iconography, and memory practices, I argue that Vogel offers an allegory in Drive that characterizes this nostalgia as perverted and traumatizing rather than idyllic.