2019 Summer Courses

Description: This course introduces students to a range of American literature written between the end of the Civil War and the 1950s. We will pay close attention to the historical, social, environmental, and aesthetic contexts that both nurtured and challenged American identity during that period, including Reconstruction, the First and Second World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, Hollywood, and the Modernist movement. Our texts take place in a wide variety of American and international spaces, from the Deep South to California to New York to Paris, and we will explore the representation of these settings, noting particularly the possibilities that each one offers—or doesn’t—for social change and the reconfiguration of race relations in the post-Civil War era. Many of our discussions will focus on the fate of the American dream of freedom and possibility in this trying historical period; we will analyze the ways in which different writers responded to the sense of disillusionment and displacement that was, for some, pervasive in the early twentieth century. Engaged and dedicated students will leave this course familiar with the styles and themes of American literature from the late Romantic and modernist periods and equipped with the tools necessary to think and write critically about it.

Texts:
Nina Baym, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 8th edition, Vol. 2 (1865 to the Present)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust (1939) (New Directions, 2009)

Evaluation: (tentative)
Reading quizzes, 10%
Midterm test, 15%
Final essay, 25%
Final exam, 35%
Participation in class, 15%

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected preparation: Previous university courses in English.

Description: In this course we will read five major novels published between 1927 and 1956: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Their diverse genres and styles—from meditative lyrical elegy to side-splitting social satire to hard-boiled detective story—will invite us to explore some of the key formal developments in early twentieth-century fiction. As we wander from the dusty sunlit streets of the Deep South to the shady back alleys of postwar Paris, we will see that, despite the disparity of their approaches, our authors’ shared thematic preoccupations were numerous, and pressing. They were all responding, in their own ways, to a socially volatile period during which class structures, gender relations, race relations, technology, psychology, and religious and political institutions changed dramatically throughout the Western world. In particular, all five novels ask what “compassion” means in the modern era. Engaged and dedicated students should leave this course familiar with some of the major voices of twentieth-century British and American fiction and equipped with the critical tools necessary to analyze these works and comprehend their powerful legacies.

**Please note: The reading load is HEAVY for this course. You are being asked to read five novels in a month, and you must also attend class sessions and complete assignments. Please ensure that you have enough time to keep up with the work before enrolling or continuing in the class.

Texts: 
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (1945)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

Texts are available in the McGill University Bookstore; you may use any edition, but we will refer to page numbers from the editions in the bookstore in lectures and discussion.

Evaluation: (tentative)
Reading quizzes, 15%
Essay(s): Option 1, two essays, one 4-5pp. due mid-month, 25%, one 5-6pp. due at the end of class, 35%; OR Option 2, one essay, 8-10pp. due at the end of class, 60%
Close reading exercise, 10%
Participation in class, 15%

Format: Lectures and discussion, with some time in class devoted to secondary material.