This course explores the literature of “Modernism,” a cultural upheaval in Europe and the United States during the early twentieth century. Modernist artists and writers challenged long-held conventions of form and content, with new voices of women and writers of color entering the conversation. 

• We start with a look at the waning nineteenth century and the European colonization of Africa, which sets the stage for the racial and gender politics of the century to come. Our primary reading here is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
• Next, we examine the avant-garde movements that flourished before World War I, such as Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism, which revolutionized artistic styles and the relationship of writer to audience. We will inquire into the role of women in the avant-garde, with case studies of the collaborations of Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso, Mina Loy and the Italian Futurists, and Rebecca West and the Vorticist movement.
• After looking at the traumatic impact of World War I as represented by poets who served in the war, we turn to the three authors whose distinctive voices came to define modernism: James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. Registering the war and society’s collective and individual losses, these authors attempted to make sense of a radically changed world, pioneering new ways of writing and thinking that still shape our culture.
• Finally, to round out our discussion of the new voices of modernism, we turn to Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer’s Cane, an experimental collection of poems and short stories about race and relationships, and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, a novel about the modern complications of gender and sexuality. 

Coursework includes reading poetry, fiction, and criticism; Canvas discussions on varied topics; short paper; longer research paper (or other project based on student need).

Goals that you should be able to achieve by end of semester:

• Articulate the characteristics of modernism, including debates about gender and race; identify major works in this movement; explain how they exemplify its traits; and place them in historical context 
• Select appropriate topics for discussion and analysis, articulate interpretations clearly in writing, and provide textual evidence for your views