ENGL270

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ENGL270

Paris, London, Harlem: Metropolis, Modernity & American Modernist Writing ENGL270 FA

Crosslistings: AMST302

Not Currently Offered

This course will seek to understand the emergence of American Modernist writing by seeing it through three related prisms. We will focus on the importance to the modernist writers of the cities noted in the course title as simultaneously symbolic geographies, locations for literary work and bohemian life, and crucial nexuses of capital and publishing power. At the same time, we will attempt to place the imagined city of modernist writing in the context of theories of urbanization and modernization. Our working hypothesis will be that, on the one hand, the modernist obsession with the "unreal city" (as Eliot put it) indicates the crucial importance of a metropolitan social life for the emergence of modernist writing and that this literature thus celebrates the sense of freedom and possibility that the cosmopolis can offer. On the other hand, this course will suggest that modernist writing's frequent distaste for the city and its corresponding nostalgic desire for authentic experience serve as critical explorations of the paradoxes of modernity and urbanization.

MAJOR READINGS

Prose and Poetry of such authors as Pound,
Eliot, Williams, Hughes, Crane, Moore, Stein, Hurston,
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Toomer, Larsen.

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Requirements will include two brief essays and a research paper. Classes will depend on discussion and participation, and each student will be expected to lead at least one class session.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course counts toward the English Department's historical knowledge requirement. Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UG Credit: 1.00 Gen Ed Area & Dept: HA ENGL

Prerequisites: None

Last Updated on MAR-22-1999

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