Modernism in the Magazines

That modernism was made in the magazines is one of the pivotal insights to take hold in recent modernist scholarship. Not only did works like James Joyce's Ulysses, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the poetry of Marianne Moore first see print in the pages of small- and large-circulation periodicals, but the culture of aesthetic innovation and social debate vital to modernism was sustained by networks of editors, artists, writers, and publishers who produced modernist magazines. By focusing on transatlantic periodical culture of the early twentieth century, this class will investigate modernist literature in conversation with its original publication contexts--often a heady mix of literary and non-literary genres, art, graphic design, and advertising. Authors we may encounter include Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Marita Bonner, Rebecca West, Wyndham Lewis, and Ford Madox Ford.

With the help of digitized magazines collected by the Modernist Journals Project (MJP; http://modjourn.org), this class will give you the opportunity to do primary archival research in an area of interest to you. More specifically, you will write a capstone research essay of 10-15 pages in which you will have the option to either focus on one magazine and a modernist poem or short story that it published, or to connect the construction of a social or aesthetic issue in the MJP archive to a major modernist text. In addition to the final research project, you will also complete smaller writing assignments and give two presentations (and perhaps lead discussion).

Some knowledge of literary modernism (or the period 1890-1945) would be helpful but is not required.