LIT 300 Modernism/Modernity: "Making It New"?
This course explores the meanings of "Modernism," the artistic tendency which sprang up in a profusion of forms in the first half of the twentieth century. This was a time of sweeping social change and radical innovation in literature. As students ask, "what is modernism?" they will engage with the contingencies, complexities, and contradictions of modern literature, and acknowledge the sheer diversity of the literary responses to modern times. Students will read works from a variety of modernist movements, and consider the relationship between literary modernism and developments in music and the visual arts. They will study works by such writers as Mulk Raj Anand, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, and Nella Larsen. As modern literature often broke with or transformed traditional concepts of literary realism, some of the course work will be challenging; it will ask students to pay close attention to narrative innovations such as stream of consciousness, irony, and multiple point of view. The course will consider various issues, including: emerging psychological theories, responses to imperialism, technological and scientific advances, the city, attitudes towards history, concepts of self and other, and changing relations between genders, cultures, and races.
Prerequisite
LC 110 and LC 110