Fall 2004

HUMS 637 (AMST)
American Modernisms

McCann,Sean

09/13/2004 - 12/18/2004
Thursday 06:00 PM - 08:30 PM

285 Court Street

In the early decades of the 20th century, a remarkable generation of writers gave birth to a major renaissance in American literature. This course will consider the work of some of the important figures of the era, including Djuna Barnes, Willa Cather, Hart Crane, John Dos Passos, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Henry Roth, Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, and William Carlos Williams. We will investigate the striking aesthetic innovations introduced by those writers, the widely shared philosophical premises that often informed their work, and some of the political and social contexts that helped inspire it. We will also look for the differing interests and convictions that made the new literature of the period a movement of aligned but idiosyncratic voices.

Sources studied will include novels and poems of the authors listed above.

Students will be required to write several short papers and a research essay of 10-15 pages.

For the first class meeting, students should read Edith Wharton's THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and bring a copy of the text to class.


Sean McCann (B.A. Georgetown University; Ph.D. City University of New York) is professor of English and American studies. He is author of A Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and Presidential Government, (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2000). He was awarded Wesleyan's 2004 Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Click here for more information about Sean McCann.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Consent of Instructor Required: No

Format: Seminar

Level: GLSP Credits: 3 Enrollment Limit: 18

Texts to purchase for this course:
Djuna Barnes, NIGHTWOOD (New Directions Publishing), Paperback

Willa Cather, THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE (Vintage), Paperback

Hart Crane, THE BRIDGE: A POEM (Liveright Publishing), Paperback

T.S. Eliot, THE WASTE LAND (W.W. Norton), Paperback

William Faulkner, THE SOUND AND THE FURY (Vintage), Paperback

F. Scott Fitzgerald, TENDER IS THE NIGHT (Scribner), Paperback

Ernest Hemingway, THE SUN ALSO RISES (Scribner), Paperback

John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (Library of America), Paperback

Henry Roth, CALL IT SLEEP (Farrar Straus Giroux), Paperback

Gertrude Stein, THREE LIVES (Penguin), Paperback

Jean Toomer, CANE (W.W. Norton), Paperback

Edith Wharton, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (Modern Library), Paperback

William Carlos Williams, SPRING AND ALL in IMAGINATIONS (New Directions Publishing), Paperback

READING MATERIALS AVAILABLE AT BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 BROAD STREET, MIDDLETOWN, 860-685-7323

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