ENG 4120 The Jazz Age
This course will examine American literature and culture during “The Roaring Twenties,” a time F. Scott Fitzgerald once described as “an age of art” and “an age of excess.” With its flappers, jazz music and free-flowing liquor, the decade’s extravagance and exuberance have become legendary, and its Art Deco design style once epitomized all that was glamorous and modern. Much of the decade’s energy was centered in Harlem where “Harlem Renaissance” artists such as Langston Hughes challenged racial stereotypes and turned the nations’ attention to the Black experience in America. The 1920s, however, were also shaped by The Red Scare, the Immigration Exclusion Act and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, the period was defined by fear as well as optimism and we will read a wide range of American writers to better understand the many elements of Jazz Age culture as well as its enduring legacy.
Prerequisite
English 1010 and English 1020 or English 1040