ENG 157 - American Modernism and the Art of Making it New

Institution:

Long Island University-C W Post Campus

Subject:

Description:

Something radical happened in the early twentieth century. Painters moved toward abstraction. Composers embraced atonality. And writers created a new literary aesthetic through fragmentation, stream of consciousness, and other experiments with language. So what were some of the social, cultural, and political forces that brought about these changes? How were twentieth-century artists rejecting the practices of the Victorian era? How were they responding to drastic changes in technology and science? And how were they challenging audiences to be new readers, viewers, and listeners? This class will examine this period (1907-1929) in American literature, art, and culture. We will read fiction, poetry, and drama, study visual art (Duchamp, Balla, Boccioni, Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne), listen to music (Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ellington), and do research on historical and social context, including topics such as lynching memorabilia, nineteenth- and twentieth-century etiquette manuals, World War I propaganda, and Diaghilev's Les Ballets Russes. This interdisciplinary approach will not only provide a richer understanding of the writings of Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, H. D., William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, but it will also challenge us to think critically about the social and cultural changes shaping modernism. Prerequisites of ENG 1 and ENG 2 are required.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.liu.edu

Phone Number:

(516) 299-2900

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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