This course addresses the literature and culture of the 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties, The Jazz Age, or the era of the Lost Generation. We will mostly focus on the 1920s in English literature, with a few selected excursions across the Atlantic. Our central readings will likely include novels by Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, and Evelyn Waugh; short stories by Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce; and poems by W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, and Mina Loy. In addition to these readings, we will consider the decade’s many developments in modernism: art, photography, cinema, and music. Our readings, presentations, and daily discussion will also attend to the period’s historical and cultural atmosphere, including such topics as World War I and its aftermath, women’s suffrage, city life, new technologies, and political changes. Each student will investigate and then present to the class materials from the University of Washington’s print and digital archives. In addition to presentations, this course requires in-class participation, essays, quizzes, and exams.

Crome Yellow (1921) by Aldous Huxley
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
Vile Bodies (1930) by Evelyn Waugh
Course Pack