English 213 explores U.S. and British literary modernism and postmodernism as responses to distinct historical, political, social, and cultural contexts of the 20th century. The period witnessed two world wars—and the concomitant development of military technology that brought destruction on an unprecedented scale—economic depression, the refinement of mass production methods; continuing migration from rural to urban areas; civil and women’s rights movements; the development or proliferation of transportation, communication, entertainment and computer technologies; and the effects of globalization. Modern and postmodern literature reflects as well as shapes human perception of these phenomena. As we examine novels and poems of the era, we will focus on how artists experimented with language and form to represent the altered sense of space, time, and the self engendered by modernity and postmodernity. We will also pay attention to literary interrogations into the nature of narrative, history and memory.

Books

Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway
T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land
Jean Toomer. Cane
Don DeLillo. White Noise
Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Violent Cases
Ishmael Reed. Mumbo Jumbo
Shelley Jackson. My Body
Xeroxed course pack.