Department of English

In this course, we will read and discuss American poetry, prose, and drama of the first four decades of the twentieth century. Beginning with Edith Wharton's popular House of Mirth and ending with Chester Himes' angry If He Hollers, we will look at how writers tried to "make it new," while responding to the dislocations of war and urban migration, the changes in film and art, the challenges of suffrage and segregation. Authors will include Robert Frost, H.D., Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Clifford Odets, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, ee cummings, and Dawn Powell. There will be six short response papers and a final examination.