Department of English

Beginning with a group of major writers from the early years of the century (Henry Adams, Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Joyce and Edith Wharton), the course will offer a broad-ranging survey of several important developments in twentieth-century literature and culture. Some of our specific topics will include: realism and modernism; the relationship between high culture and popular culture; theories of artistic representation; the meaning of history and historical memory. Our focus will be on literary work, but we will also take up painting, architecture, and film. Along with the writers named above, we will read work by Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Wallce Stevens, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Saul Bellow, Samuel Becket, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tom Stoppard, and Philip Larkin. Course requirements will include brief response papers, quizzes, a final exam, and a term paper.