Course Schedule – English 645, Modern American Literature

Jan 17	Intro to course and course policies. Also, scene from It and The Jazz Singer. Also “The Great Figure” by William Carlos Williams. Daniel Joseph Singal, “Towards a Definition of American Modernism,” American Quarterly 39 (Spring 1987), 7-26.
22	Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio. See also little magazine for “Paper Pills” and for “Mother.”
24	Finish Winesburg. “Sherwood Anderson: Looking for the White Spot.” In The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History, ed. T.J. Jackson Lears and Richard Wrightman Fox. U of Chicago P, 1993.
29	Hemingway, In Our Time.
31	“Hemingway’s In Our Time: A Cubist Anatomy.” Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught. The Hemingway Review. Spring, 1998, 17.2, 31-47.
Feb 5	Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Babylon Revisited” (if that link doesn’t work, this one). “One Trip Abroad,” “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” ‘Winter Dreams.”
7	Check out the critical views in Bloom. Also, “Metafiction and the Ideology of Modernism in ‘Winter Dreams’” and “F. Scott Fitzgerald's "One Trip Abroad": A Metafantasy Of the Divided Self”
12	Larsen, Passing.
14	Read also Cheryl A. Wall, “Passing for What?: Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels” and Judith Butler, “Passing, Queering: Nella Larsen’s Psychoanalytic Challenge.” Please also read McDowell and DuCille essays as well as the Rhinelander Jones Case.
19	Selections from the Harlem Renaissance. Alain Locke, “The New Negro” (1925), Rudolph Fisher, “City of Refuge” (1925), Zora Neale Hurston, “The Eatonville Anthology” (1926), and “Sweat.” Also, Faulkner, “That Evening Sun.” Or, paper workshop.
21	Due: Close Reading.
26	Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
28	“The Porch Couldn’t Talk for Long: Voice and Vision in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Clarke, Deborah. African American Review. Winter, 2001, 35.4, 599-614.
Spring Break
12	Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury.
14	Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury.
19	Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury.
21	“Felt, Not Seen Not Heard: Modernist Suicide and Southern History.” Miller, Nathaniel A. Studies in the Novel. Spring 2005, 37.1, 37-49. Please also read the Appendix in the Norton.
26	Bring your source. And pimary text. Tentative thesis.
28	Allen, Frederick. Only Yesterday. (Divide up chapters). Due: Critical Context – Sunday Eve?
Apr 2	Loos, Anita. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
4	“One of the Few Books that Doesn’t Stink: Intellectuals, the Masses, and Gentlemen Prefer Blonds.” Hammill, Faye. Critical Survey. 2005, 17.3, 27-48.
9	Hammett, Dashiel. The Red Harvest.
11	Thomas Heise, “Going Blood Simple Like the Natives: Contagious Urban Spaces and Modern Power in Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest,” Modern Fiction Studies 51.3 (2005): 485-512. Also, “Going Blood-Simple in Poisonville: Hard-Boiled Masculinity in Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest” Men and Masculinities. July 2004
16	Wharton, Twilight Sleep
18	Secondary source . . .
23	Due: Cultural Context.
25	Prospectus jam due orally at exam time.