2017 Summer Courses

Description: This course introduces students to a range of American literature written between the end of the Civil War and the 1950s. We will pay close attention to the historical, social, environmental, and aesthetic contexts that both nurtured and challenged American identity during that period, including Reconstruction, the First and Second World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, Hollywood, and the Modernist movement. Our texts take place in a wide variety of American and international spaces, from the Deep South to California to New York to Paris, and we will explore the representation of these settings, noting particularly the possibilities that each one offers—or doesn’t—for social change and the reconfiguration of race relations in the post-Civil War era. Many of our discussions will focus on the fate of the American dream of freedom and possibility in this trying historical period; we will analyze the ways in which different writers responded to the sense of disillusionment and displacement that was, for some, pervasive in the early twentieth century. Engaged and dedicated students will leave this course familiar with the styles and themes of American literature from the late Romantic and modernist periods and equipped with the tools necessary to think and write critically about it.

Texts: 

• Nina Baym, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 8^th edition, Vol. 2 (1865 to the Present)
• William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) (Norton, 2014)
• Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust (1939) (New Directions, 2009)

Evaluation: (tentative)

Reading quizzes, 10%
Midterm test, 15%
Final essay, 25%
Final exam, 35%
Participation in class, 15%

Format: Lectures and discussion

Expected preparation: Previous university courses in English

Description: In this course we will read five major novels published between 1927 and 1956: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Their diverse genres and styles—from meditative lyrical elegy to biting social satire to hard-boiled detective story—will invite us to explore some of the key formal developments in early twentieth-century fiction. As we wander from the dusty sunlit streets of the Deep South to the shady back alleys of postwar Paris, we will see that, despite the disparity of their approaches, our authors’ shared thematic preoccupations were numerous, and pressing. They were all responding, in their own ways, to a socially volatile period during which class structures, gender relations, race relations, technology, psychology, and religious and political institutions changed dramatically throughout the Western world. In particular, all five novels ask what “compassion” means in the modern era. Engaged and dedicated students should leave this course familiar with some of the major voices of twentieth-century British and American fiction and equipped with the critical tools necessary to analyze these works and comprehend their powerful legacies.

**Please note: The reading load is HEAVY for this course. You are being asked to read five novels in a month, and you must also attend class sessions and complete assignments. Please ensure that you have enough time to keep up with the work before enrolling or continuing in the class.

Texts: 

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (1934)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

Evaluation: 

Reading quizzes, 15%
Essay(s): Option 1, two essays, one 4-5pp. due mid-month, 25%, one 5-6pp. due at the end of class, 35%; OR Option 2, one essay, 8-10pp. due at the end of class, 60%
Close reading exercise, 10%
Participation in class, 15%

Format: Lectures and discussion, with some time in class devoted to secondary material

Description: This course will ask how the gothic, a literary genre that originated in the 18th century as a response to modernity, has itself adapted to the past two centuries of modernization, and how its ghostly traces appear in the 20th century. We will examine sub-genres of gothic fiction, such as Suburban Gothic, with a particular focus on adaptations of the Female Gothic, which is characterized by woman's entrapment within domestic space, subjection to patriarchal authority, and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Using texts from a variety of popular media throughout the 20th century, we will ask: how does the genre change as gender roles do? When is the woman the victim, and when is she the monster? As conceptions of domestic space shift, how is the gothic plot extended beyond the home? How are twentieth-century movements like feminism and the struggle for civil rights reflected in the gothic? How has the genre has been adapted in various media, and how do new media technologies reveal modern houses to be already haunted?

By the end of the course, students will be able to relate developments in the genre’s narrative and form to their wider social and historical contexts.

Texts: 

I Am Legend (Matheson, 1954)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Jackson, 1962)
Course pack of critical readings and short stories 

Recommended Reading: Short Guide to Writing About Film by Timothy Corrigan

Required Film and Media Texts:

The Fall of the House of Usher (Webber and Watson, 1928)
I Walked With a Zombie (Tourneur, 1943)
Selected radio plays (1947-1949)
Selected episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)
Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968)
The Babadook (Kent, 2014)
Ex Machina (Garland, 2015)
​Get Out (Peele, 2017)

Evaluation: Participation (15%), weekly quizzes (3 x 10%= 30%), weekly response posts on the course blog (20%), final paper (35%)

Format: Lecture with discussion, screenings