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Courses & Schedules
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