English 189-1 - Winter, 2011

Seminar in a Major Writer

Topic: The American 1930's

Class Information

Instructor: Stratton, Matthew
CRN: 43929
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Location: 144 Olson

Description

The Great Depression of the 1930s looms uncomfortably large in the U.S. national imaginary: economic collapse, disillusioned revolutionaries, hopeful reformers, and vituperative conservatives seem both distantly past and disconcertingly familiar. This course will focus on "depressing fictions" of the period: realist, naturalist, and modernist prose fiction that examines the psychological, physical, economic, and political relationships of individuals and groups to one other, to the nation, and to the world in a period of profound crisis. We will also encounter a variety of different forms of writing and representation -- poetry, reportage, photography, film, and music -- in order to situate and understand the particularity of fiction as it was read in the 1930s and as we experience it today.

Grading

Participation 25%
Response Papers 25%
Two Essays 50%

Texts

Whose Names Are Unknown, Sanora Babb
Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
The Big Money, John Dos Passos
Now in November, Josephine Johnson
Unpossessed, Tess Slesinger
Uncle Tom's Children, Richard Wright