Literature and Society: Modernism and Material Culture ENG 775.2X, section 2SX http://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/material-modernism M, Th 12:30-3:00, James 5301 Instructor: Jeff Drouin, jdrouin@brooklyn.cuny.edu Office Hours: Boylan 2311, M/Th 11:30-12:15, after class, and by appointment. Bulletin Description Social factors conditioning the composition and enjoyment of literature. The place of literature (oral or written) as an institution in several historical periods or cultures. Abstract The innovations of literary modernism occurred in the early Twentieth-Century climate of intellectual, social, and technological upheaval. In that period of fervent cultural conflict, avant-garde magazines constituted the primary publishing forum for what was new in art and thought. Their pages juxtaposed poems with graphical advertisements from local businesses or other magazines; fiction installments appeared, perhaps, between social-critical essays and artistic manifestos; reader correspondence critiqued various elements of a publication s output. Those elements, in being editorially arranged, constitute a peculiar kind of unity that puts into conversation various genres and even conflicting ideologies in the same bound series. Most of the works now in the modernist canon such as H.D. s imagist poems and James Joyce s Ulysses were produced by that networked and discursive magazine culture. Jason Harding reminds us that every contribution to intellectual debate is conditioned by the means of its dissemination and reception: literary journalism is not a private speculation in a vacuum, rather an intervention in an ongoing cultural conversation, most immediately a dialogue with a shifting set of interlocking periodical structures and networks (1). This course will actively examine some of the periodicals, along with the works they contain, as they participate in this exciting culture of innovation. We will consider how social conditions influenced the media of dissemination among various networks of writers, arriving at a nuanced sense of how avantgarde literary cultures related to each other and to the mass print market. In that way, we will seek to arrive at an understanding of British and American literary modernism based on how its authors read and wrote, and how these networks interacted. As a corollary, Harding s statement will serve as a premise to examine the medium of our own reading and writing as it is performed on the course website. Course Website Our course website is not only an information hub but the place where collaborative work will happen. You will perform several research-oriented assignments in small groups, the results of which will be posted as pages on the website. In that way, you will make it an archive of scholarship and research ideas for this emerging branch of modernist studies. There might be an occasional reading response assignment on the website, but you are encouraged to write blog posts, insert links, and add or edit content at any time. Remember, it s your site, so make the most of it.
Resources Throughout this course, the Modernist Journals Project (http://modjourn.org), hosted at Brown University and led by Sean Latham (University of Tulsa) and Robert Scholes, will be a primary source. It contains digitized versions of British avant-garde magazines from the early Twentieth Century. We will also be using the Brooklyn College library and probably other CUNY and city libraries to look at original or reproduced materials in print. Required Texts Most readings are in the course packet, available at Far Better Copy (43 Hillel Pl.) for $23.50. Readings marked with a (D) are to be downloaded from the course website. Grading Class Participation 20% Presentations 20% Website Projects 25% Final Project 35% Attendance Since we have only ten meetings, each one counts. More than one absence will result in a failing grade for the course. Week 1: Modernism and Reading Publics M 6/30 Introduction. What is modernism? Reading, social networks and literary values in the early Twentieth Century. Reading a Wyndham Lewis poem/manifesto in isolation (anthology page) and in its original context of Blast. Overview of the course website and the Modernist Journals Project (http://modjourn.org), with some attention to advertisements. Th 7/3 Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, Preface (D) and Movements, Magazines, and Manifestos: The Succession from Naturalism (D); Peter McDonald, Introduction: The Literary Field in the 1890s ; Raymond Williams, When Was Modernism? (D). Field Trip! Computer lab (Library room 384), 1:45-3:00. You will compose an intellectual profile on the course website. Bring images of yourself or other media that pertain to your intellectual/personal interests (i.e. pictures of a favorite book, building, painting, illustration; a YouTube video to embed; your own video or multimedia files). Think of the profile as a professional introduction that also says who you are.
Week 2: Discourse and Ideology in an Avant-Garde Periodical M 7/7 Sean Latham New Age Scholarship: The Work of Criticism in the Age of Digital Reproduction ; Latham and Robert Scholes, The Rise of Periodical Studies ; General Introduction to The New Age 1907-1922 by Robert Scholes and the MJP Staff (at MJP). Spend at least a couple of hours thumbing through the digitized New Age at the MJP in order to get a feel for the periodical genre and what this magazine is like (http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/mjp_journals.xq). For class discussion, take note of what dates you looked at and the things you noticed. Field Trip! Introduction to archival research, 2:30 3:00 in the Library s Special Collections department. Th 7/10 Project 1 Due Small group presentations on an aspect of The New Age (post to website by 8pm on 7/9). Ann Ardis, Introduction: rethinking modernism, remapping the turn of the twentieth century, Life is not composed of watertight compartments : the New Age s critique of modernist literary specialization, and Conclusion: modernism and English studies in history. Week 3: Magazines and Print Culture in the Archive M 7/14 Mark Morrisson, Introduction: Mass Market Publicity Modernism s Crisis and Opportunity and Epilogue ; George Bornstein, Introduction, How to read a page: modernism and material textuality, and Pressing Women: Marianne Moore and the networks of modernism. Th 7/17 Project 2 Due Bibliographic description and analysis of a periodical (post to website by 8pm on 7/16). Week 4: Literature and the Archive: Joyce s Ulysses in The Little Review M 7/21 James Joyce, Ulysses Chapter 10 Wandering Rocks (last item in packet); Raymond Williams, Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism (D). Th 7/24 Mark Morrisson, Youth in Public: The Little Review and Commercial Culture in Chicago. Spend some time reading vol. 6 nos. 1 & 2 (June & July 1919) of The Little Review (the issues containing Wandering Rocks ) (Download from course website or look up in Brooklyn College Library Periodical Stacks AP2.L6472). Final Project Proposals Due (post to website by 8pm on 7/23).
Week 5: Roundup and Research Workshopping M 7/28 Visit/Discussion with former MJP staff member Clifford Wulfman. Brief in-class presentations of final project proposals. Th 7/31 Jerome McGann, How to Read a Book ; Michel Foucault, What is an Author? ; and Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author. Final project Post to website by Monday August 18. Bibliography of Readings Ardis, Ann. Conclusion: modernism and English studies in history. Modernism and Cultural Conflict: 1880-1922. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002. 173-6. ---. Introduction: rethinking modernism, remapping the turn of the twentieth century. Modernism and Cultural Conflict: 1880-1922. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002. 1-14. ---. Life is not composed of watertight compartments : the New Age s critique of modernist literary specialization. Modernism and Cultural Conflict: 1880-1922. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002. 143-72. Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. Image Music Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142-8. Bornstein, George. Introduction. Material Modernism: The Politics of the Printed Page. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001. Bradbury, Malcolm and James McFarlane. Movements, Magazines, and Manifestos. Modernism 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin, 1990. 192-205. ---. Preface. Modernism 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin, 1990. 11-16 Foucault, Michel. What is An Author? The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon, 1984. 101-20. Groden, Michael. Contemporary Textual and Literary Theory. Representing Modernist Texts: Editing as Interpretation. Ed. George Bornstein. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1991. Joyce, James. Wandering Rocks. Ulysses. New York: Vintage, 1990. 219-55. McDonald, Peter. Postscript. British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice, 1880-1914. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 172-5. ---. The Literary Field in the 1890s British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice, 1880-1914. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 1-21. McGann, Jerome J. How to Read a Book. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991. 101-28. ---. The Rationale of Hypertext. Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. Ed. Kathryn
Sutherland. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. 19-46. Morrisson, Mark. Epilogue. The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception 1905-1920. Madison: U of Wisconsin P: 2001. 203-7. ---. Introduction: Mass Market Publicity Modernism s Crisis and Opportunity. The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception 1905-1920. Madison: U of Wisconsin P: 2001. 3-16. ---. Youth in Public: The Little Review and Commercial Culture in Chicago. The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception 1905-1920. Madison: U of Wisconsin P: 2001. 133-66. Latham, Sean. New Age Scholarship: The Work of Criticism in the Age of Digital Reproduction. New Literary History 35:3 (Summer 2004): 411-426. Scholes, Robert and Sean Latham. The Rise of Periodical Studies. PMLA 121:2 (March 2006): 517-31. Williams, Raymond. Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism. Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. New York: Verso, 1989. 37-48. ---. When Was Modernism? Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. New York: Verso, 1989. 31-5. Suggested Further Reading Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Greetham, David. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. Harding, Jason. The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain. Henry, Holly. Virginia Woolf and the Discourse of Science: The Aesthetics of Astronomy. Kenner, Hugh. The Pound Era. Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1922. Lentricchia, Frank and Thomas McLaughlin. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Levenson, Michael H. A Genealogy of Modernism. Rainey, Lawrence. Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Public Culture. Whitworth, Michael H. Einstein s Wake: Relativity, Metaphor, and Modernist Literature. Williams, Raymond. The Politics of the Avant-Garde. Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists.