01 TF2 CAC 25589 SMITH SC-103
03 MW6 CAC 31734 VESTERMAN SC-206
04 MW8 CAC 35298 FERGUSON SC-203
01-Three Modernist Cities: London, Paris, and Harlem
London, Paris, and Harlem have come to be known as centers of 20th century modernist culture. In this seminar we will look at the cities themselves and how they became the urban spaces that drew early 20th century writers and artists. We will look first at the London that attracted American writers such as Ezra Pound, H.D., T. S. Eliot, as well as writers and intellectuals who were part of the Bloomsbury Group, associated by the public with British modernism in the arts, as well as in politics, economics, and philosophy. Post World War I Paris and the expatriate literary colony centered on the Left Bank will be next. We will look at the painters who attracted and influenced writers like Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, as well as the proliferation of experimental presses, bookstores, and literary salons where writers and artists gathered. Finally, we will look at Harlem and the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance, including the close connection between Left Bank Paris and Harlem, and the cultural battles over the way black culture should be presented to the public.
Along with readings that examine the distinctive profiles of the arts movements of each city, we will focus our attention on a pair of writers, one male, one female, who were part of the cultural debates of each city and who, in some cases, used the cities themselves as a backdrop in the texts we read.
London: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Paris: Ernest Hemingway, A Movable Feast and The Sun Also Rises
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Harlem: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Attendance: Required
Means of Evaluation: Two short critical papers and one-page ungraded response papers
Exams: Take -home final exam
03- In the fall of 2007 a study of Joyce’s fiction with the exception of Finnegan’s Wake. We will trace the development of the author’s narrative art from the short stories of Dubliners through the autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to what William Empson has called ‘the ultimate novel’—Ulysses. One-page preparations for class discussion and a longer final essay will make up the written work of the course.
Attendance Policy: Attendance is required: no more than two cuts for any reason will be allowed without a reduction in the final grade.
Means of Evaluation: Preparations and Class Participation 50%, Quizzes 25%, Final essay 25%
Examinations: No final examination
04- Memoir Culture
This seminar will look at the cult and culture of modernist and contemporary memoir. While "life writing" (diaries, journals, essays, auto/biography) has long been a part of literature, the idea of memoir as a separate literary genre has only exploded in the last few decades. This takes us to two related concerns. First, why should we be interested in other people's lives, especially people who aren't already famous? Second, how should we best understand the value of "memoir," which lies somewhere between the "true" chronology of a person's life (auto/biography) and the author's "false" crafting of a meaningful story by using literary techniques (fiction). By examining a broad range of memoirs from different periods and voices, by peeking over others' shoulders as they reexamine parts of their lives, we will connect the idea of writing about life to the writing of a life.
Texts include: Woolf, Moments of Being; McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood; Slater, Lying; Wright, Black Boy; Morris, Conundrum; Bechdel, Fun Home; Satrapi, Persepolis; Lim, Among the White Moon Faces; and Roth, Patrimony.
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