American Literature, 1865-1945: The Americanization of Power
ENGL 204
Fall 2021 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 235 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Urban Studies |
Together we'll explore not only the complexities of American literature from the 1860s to 1940s, but also how this literature is usable today and excels as critical equipment that can advance our understanding of the modern Americanization of power (put narrowly, we'll develop insights into a "democratic" capitalism, what some called a "Robber Baron" plutocracy, that pulled off and contrived to maintain systemic class, gender, and ethnoracial hierarchies to reproduce its power). As we unpack the relationship of literary form and social form, we'll trace connections between historical developments such as the gothic genre and gender ideologies, domestic romance and the social reproduction of labor, realism and mass-urbanism, naturalism and immigration, modernism and imperialism, and narrative experimentation and anti-racism. The creative works of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Charles Chesnutt, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neill, Nathanael West, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston will help teach us to be more imaginative readers of literature, ourselves, and what America was, is, and might be. While pooling ideas about this, we'll savor the pleasures of reading inspiring and transformative writing. This is very much a thinking-intensive course. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(ENGL)(ENGL-Literature) |
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