ENG 337—20th Century Lit in the U.S.

This seminar concentrates on twentieth-century literature, examining eras, movements, and literary experiments. Readings and discussion will focus on various community, ethnic, and gendered forms of consciousness as they surface in representative works by Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Zora Neale Hurston. Students will ask how these writings address problems such as the mental and corporeal impact of the city on its inhabitants, the effect of industrialization on workers, the traumas of mechanized warfare on soldiers, contemporary efforts to come to terms with modern technology, as well as the problem of addiction in the era of Prohibition.