Modernism and Avant Garde

This subject examines modernism, a revolution in literature and other arts that took place between roughly 1890 and 1950. Modernism was an international and experimental enterprise, at once highly local and truly global, emerging in sites as diverse as Paris, Tokyo, New York, and Buenos Aires — as well as between them. In lieu of surveying every major modernist writer, we will emphasize a number of significant figures and movements. Students will learn about movements and contexts such as Dada, Futurism, Surrealism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Francophone Négritude movement, and the queer enclaves of Paris’s Left Bank. Course readings will be drawn from a range of genres, including novels, short fiction, essays, poetry, plays, and manifestos by writers such as Walter Benjamin, Aimé Césaire, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein, and will touch on other arts, such as cinema, music, and painting.