Course Description
AMERICAN MODERNISM
- Novels taught will be handed out to registered students by the teacher
| This course will aim to examine various forms of American modernism that developed in the early years of the twentieth century and sought to perform a radical break from earlier conventions so as to reflect the socio-cultural, economic and financial turbulence of the first decades of the 20th century. Modernism saw an explosion of literary innovation and unfolded in conversation with several phenomena of modernity: new forms of social and economic integration, but also expatriate life and displacement; new modes of perspective and experience emerging from psychology, philosophy, and the visual arts; changes in urban structures; an ambivalence towards a technologically innovative mass culture; and new political discourses that altered understandings of race and gender. In view of all this, the course will pursue an interdisciplinary study of this moment by looking at literary and critical texts, but also painting and photography. In view of all this, the course will pursue an interdisciplinary study of this moment by looking at literary and critical texts but also painting, photography, architecture. Lectures will underscore the dynamic relationship between literature and history; they will consider a variety of topics, including the middlebrow and “high art” modernism, transnational mobility, and the shifting pressures of gender, race, ethnicity, and class during the modern era. |  |
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Course Objectives/Goals
Upon completion of the course students should have either learned or reinforced the following objectives:
- An appreciation for the full range of American literary and artistic production during the first half of the twentieth century, along with specific knowledge of certain works and authors.
- An awareness of historical events, socio-cultural developments, and artistic movements that provided material, themes, and inspiration for writers of this period.
- The ability to critically engage a variety of texts, both verbal and visual, to ask interpretive questions, to formulate arguments and claims and to react to others’ ideas about literary devices, styles, and structures.
- The skills to research critical responses, synthesize them with their own, and produce persuasive pieces of academic writing.
Weekly sessions will be conducted in the form of lectures structured around the selected material;
students are expected to come prepared to address the day’s material and participate in class discussions.
Evaluation will be based on the following criteria:
1. Class Participation: 20%
2. Two Research Papers (the first covering the material discussed during weeks 1- 6 and the second related to the material discussed during weeks 7-12): 20% each.
3. Final Exam: 40% *
* Please take into consideration that students must meet the requirements of 2+3 (submit both research essays and take the exam). Otherwise, you will not receive a passing grade for this course.
If you retake the exam in June without having submitted previously any research papers the maximum grade on the retake exam will be limited to 80%.
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Date |
Material |
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Week 1 |
General Introduction and Overview. American Modernism Definitions (Handout No1) Ezra Pound, from "A Retrospect" (1918) (Handout No2) Willa Cather, from “The Novel Démeublé” (1922) (Handout No3) |
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Week 2
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Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro” William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow" T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) (Handbook 4) and excerpt from “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) |
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Week 3 |
Sherwood Anderson, “The Book of the Grotesque,” “Hands,” "An Awakening,” from Winesburg, Ohio (1919) Marshall Berman, Intro to All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (15-36) |
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Week 4 |
High Modernism F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1926) Baz Luhrmann, The Great Gatsby (2013 film) Jack Clayton, The Great Gatsby (1974 film) |
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Week 5 |
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (cont.) |
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Week 6
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Experimental Fictions John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925); chapter 1 Ferryslip; chapter 5 Steamroller |
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Week 7 |
Nella Larsen, Passing (1929), part II Rebecca Hall, Passing (2021 film)
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Week8 |
The "Lost Generation"- Expatriate Fictions Gertrude Stein, "Melanctha," from Three Lives; Rita Felski, Intro to The Gender of Modernism (1-9) |
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Week 9 |
The Hollywood Novel Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust (1939) |
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Week 10 |
Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust cont. |
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Week 11 |
Late Modernism Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love (1954) Susan Stanford Friedman, “Definitional Excursions: The Meanings of Modern/Modernity/Modernism”
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Week 12 |
A Spy in the House of Love cont. |
Week 13 Review and Conclusion
Agenda
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