Department of English

The economic, social, cultural and foreign policy crises of the 1930s led many to question traditional assumptions while others sought comfort in those same traditional ideals.   This course will investigate these different responses by asking the questions:  What role does art, particularly literature, play in a society undergoing a crisis?  To answer this question, this course will examine a wide variety of different authors and genres, possibly including novelists such as Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), William Faulkner (Light in August), John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath), Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep), and Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God),); short stories and essays by authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Tillie Olsen, and poems by authors such as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, h.d., Langston Hughes, and Kenneth Fearing.