Penn Arts & Sciences Logo
 

The Twentieth Century

ENGL 104.001
instructor(s):
TR 10:30-12

This course surveys Modernism and Postmodernism in twentieth-
century western literature, painting, architecture, film, and
philosophy.  It considers abstraction and representation;
aesthetic pleasure and social commitment; the "woman question"
(and the "man question," too); nationalism versus postcolonial
diversity; mass communications and mechnical reproduction versus
the handmade, high-art object. Students will be expected to
experience the works of a great many artists and thinkers: Joseph
Conrad, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Adolf Loos, James Joyce,
Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald,
Reni Magritte, Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston,
Ferdinand de Saussure, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Albert Camus--and this list gets us only into the 1930s!  The
emphasis will be on exposure to the broad range of images, ideas,
and language that have created this century of conflict and
immense achievement.  Assignments: frequent quizzes, an essay,
and mid-term and final exams.

fulfills requirements