Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0196 - American Lit Modernisms

Marxist writer Marshall Berman has argued, "To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world-and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are." In this introductory course, we will explore multiple aesthetic and cultural responses to the processes of modernization-colonialism, industrialization, urbanization, mechanized war, mass communication, mass migration, and mass social movements-by poets, fiction-writers, and intellectuals circulating in and out of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The course will include canonical and countercanonical figures, will examine multiple literary genres (prose fiction, poetry, essay) and movements (e.g., the avant-gardes, the Harlem Renaissance, the Popular Front), and will traverse a range of contexts (e.g., the World Wars, the Great Migration, the Great Depression). Authors will include W.E.B. Du Bois, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Claude McKay, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, John Dos Passos, H.T. Tsiang, Meridel LeSueur, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Anzia Yezierska, Americo Paredes, and others. This course is explicitly reading focused: we will read a new piece or pieces in every class in order to expose ourselves to a broad range of literary texts and contexts. In addition, students will contribute weekly to an online discussion forum, complete a collective research project in modernist periodicals, and create an annotated bibliography project.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research In this course, students are expected to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.