Fall 2020

Comparative Lit Studies - Intro to Modernism

--> How do we define modernism and why, over a century since its arrival on the cultural scene, does it remain centrally critical as a movement? Our own era – postmodernist, post-nationalist, and globalized – by definition owes something to modernism and to modernity generally. But what are the major features of a modernist work? What is a modernist style or a modernist poetics? What did the modernists mean when they set out to “make it new”? What is the sense of fundamental crisis they felt and sought to address? In our critical survey of the movement we trace the major historical developments and undercurrents of modernist thought, specifically with respect to issues of form, identity, nation, class, and gender. To do so, this semester we will read seminal works of modernist fiction, together with background readings that aim to provide broader artistic, cultural, and political context, and a number of films. By assessing both the sympathizers and also some of the critics of modernism, we will seek to obtain a fuller picture of the movement as a set of beliefs, practices and principles with respect to the function of art - and artists - within society.

Intl Film Genres and Auteurs