Download American Literary Modernism in the Museum, Archive, and Historical

Dr. Susan Rosenbaum
English 4750 American Literary Modernism in the Museum, Archive, and Historical Site
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS:
This course will introduce students to modernist literature in the United States, and to research
on American literary modernism. We will study literary modernism as it engages modernism in
the other arts (the visual arts, music, film, dance); scientific and technological innovations (mass
production, psychoanalysis, the automobile, the skyscraper); and historical and political contexts
(immigration, migration north, the two world wars, the great depression, the modern city).
Modernist writers sought to “make it new” in their work and often in their lives, but not all have
been remembered. We will consider how cultural memory and sites of cultural commemoration
have been formed, even as we look at material in the museum and archive that asks us to expand
and transform our understanding of U.S. modernism.
The experiential learning component of this class will involve travel to relevant museums,
archives, and historical sites that illuminate particular features of and contexts for literary
modernism, and that offer materials that can lead to innovative research projects. Course
assignments will be organized around these visits: a short paper, journal, blog, or research
project will be required as an outcome of each site visit.
TEXTS:
All texts are required, and are available at the UGA Bookstore or Off-Campus Books. You may
be able to purchase inexpensive used copies on-line at www.abebooks.com or at amazon.com.
Please try to purchase the editions indicated, and when we’re discussing a text I’ve posted online, please bring a print-out to class.
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons 1914
W.C. Williams, Spring and All 1923
Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1952)
Lanston Hughes, The Weary Blues (1926)
Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (1925)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 1925
Jean Toomer, Cane 1923
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937
Alain Locke, Ed. The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance 1925
Federico Garcia Lorca, Poet in New York 1929-30
Mina Loy, Lunar Baedeker 1923
Week 1: Introduction to Modernism
Raymond Williams, “When Was Modernism?”
Henry Ford, Ch 5 & 7 from My Life and Work
Charlie Chaplin, part 1 of “Modern Times” (1936)
Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”
Unit 1: Modernism & the Visual Art (Weeks 2-5)
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons 1914
W.C. Williams, Spring and All 1923
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues 1926
Art and poetry from Alain Locke, Ed. The New Negro 1925
Mina Loy, Lunar Baedeker 1923
Local trips:
1. Athens: Georgia Museum of Art & UGA Special Collections [artists’ books]
2. Atlanta: High Museum of Art & Hammonds House Museum
Assignments:
A short analyis of a work that involves both image and text (e.g. a collaborative book), or analyis
of a literary text and a work of visual art to which it responds.
A site visit journal or blog.
Unit 2: Modernist Little Magazines (Weeks 6-9)
In Week 1 of this unit, the class will study, as a group, select issues of little magazines available
through the Modernist Journals Project Digital Archive. As a case study, we will look at how
stories from Hemingway’s In Our Time were published in little magazines.
In weeks 2-4 of this unit, students will work on the little magazines project.
For this project, students will study one issue of an American little magazine published during
the modernist era (roughly 1900-1945: if the magazine has a longer run, students will choose an
issue from the first half of the century). I have generated a list of possible magazines and will
help direct students based on their interests. During our visits to the UGA Library and MARBL,
students will have time to explore different magazines, and Reference Librarians will review
some particularly interesting and rare examples. I will supply a series of questions to think about
and to answer in a report (3-4 pages). The purpose of the report is for students to convey what
they have learned about the magazine and its relationship to modernism: an argumentative thesis
for this assignment is not required, but the report should be well-written and clearly organized. I
will assign students to a panel based on their magazine, and the entire class will participate in a
panel discussion.
Local trips to:
1. UGA Library, 2nd Floor collection of little magazines
2. Emory University MARBL: Special Collections, Raymond Danowski Poetry Library
[I have already made contact with the relevant reference librarian at MARBL]
Possible trips in the future if the logistics can be worked out
1. UNC Chapel Hill Special collections: archive of Contempo
2. LSU Special Collections: archive of The Double Dealer
Assignment: A report on a specific issue of a little magazine, which will be informed by
researching the background and entire run of the little magazine. Student will also work in
groups to present their little magazine to the class.
Future Assignment:
In the case of Double Dealer or Contempo, the class could aspire to create an original website
about the magazine, to be added to an existing digital archive or one that is sponsored by UGA.
Unit 3, Cultural Commemoration of Modernist Authors & Texts: Historical Sites &
Manuscripts (Weeks 10-14)
For this unit, the class will read and discuss a specific work, and then will visit the historical site
and/or archive. I would like the class to visit two sites if possible, so that we can compare them
and think about the history and politics of cultural memory. In the case of Toomer’s Cane, it may
be posssible to work with the Sparta community to begin thinking about and taking steps towards
establishing a Toomer Museum/historical site.
1. Wise Blood
Visits:
Flannery O’Connor, Andalusia Farm/Museum, Milledgeville GA
Papers at GA College & State University [Includes manuscript of Wise Blood]
2. Jean Toomer, Cane
Visits:
Sparta Georgia High School and/or Local Government Office
Sparta Hancock County Historical Society
Other Regional Possibilities:
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 1925 or Tender is the Night
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald Museum, Montgomery AL Museum of Fine Arts
2. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937
Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts, Eatonville FL;
ANH Institute for Documentary Studies at University of Central Florida
Rare Books & Manuscripts Collection, University of FL Gainesville
Assignment: How does the site visit and archive open up new perspectives on the text? This
assignment could involve a site journal and blog, including observations and notes taken while in
the archive. This visit may lead to independent or group research projects, resulting in research
papers, or an actual plan for a historical site in the case of Toomer.
Week 15
Reflecting on the Class. What have we learned? Which visits were most and least instructive,
and why? Which assignments were the most and least useful? How could the class benefit
from/incorporate these insights the next time it is taught?