Department of English

This course will introduce students to some of the American authors who published between 1900-1940. We will learn about the intellectual and cultural milieu of this period and examine how writers grappled with new dimensions of American life: the growth of cities, the emergence of mass culture and conspicuous consumption, the fault lines of immigration and race, attitudes about sexuality, and Depression-era culture. The authors we read may include: Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Katherine Ann Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and a range of poets.

Students will write two critical papers, among other smaller writing assignments, and will have the option to produce a creative project or an archival research project.