Class Day(s):
MWF
Class Time: 12:00 pm
Course Description
In this course we will survey some of the American fiction and poetry that gave contour to the modernist aesthetic.
Our exploration will include the period influence of the Parisian avant-garde (painters Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Gris; poets Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Pound; performer Josephine Baker), some of the foundational figures of American jazz (Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, Mary Lou Williams, Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, et al.), and several exponents of the Harlem Renaissance (Alain Locke, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, Bruce Nugent, and Wallace Thurman).
The hope is to arrive at a contextual understanding of the disparate thematic, stylistic, and structural concerns of the modernist project in its plurivalent American incarnations. As always, the professor will rely upon the informed generosity of his students to promote a spirit of enthusiastic collaborative inquiry.
Requirements
Consistent in-class participation; one term paper (3000 words); midterm exam; final exam; weekly contributions (500 words each) to Canvas discussion forum.
Readings
Three Lives, Gertrude Stein, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore