Extra Credit

If you want or need extra credit, here's your extra credit assignment:

1) choose any poem or poems (totaling at least 16 lines) that we've looked at in class;

2) practice reading the poem/poems;

3) log into our class YouTube account (username: English528@gmail.com; password: 1600holloway);

4) record your reading of the poem - - upload or save the video and publish it.

Don't just impersonate a zombie reading a poem - - use your performance of the poem to interpret the poem.

Due date: noon, Tuesday, December 15, 2009.

"Paper Doll"

Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers swinging "Paper Doll"

Final short paper (due: Thursday 12/10)

Your final piece of formal writing for the class is a two-page essay that simply answers the following question: in what ways is the Harlem Renaissance (as referenced by our reading of Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, and Alaine Locke) related to literary modernism?

Alfieri and Eddie

For Tuesday, December 1

Read and finish Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge."

Enjoy your holiday!

For Tuesday, November 17

Read the Jean Toomer selections from the Heath Anthology, including:

Karintha (1923)

Blood-Burning Moon (1923)
Box Seat (1923)
Seventh Street (1923)
Song of the Son (1923)

For Thursday, November 12

You'll want to read the following from the Heath anthology: Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Alaine Locke, “The New Negro.”

Modernist recap

For Thursday, November 5, think about all the modernist poetry and prose we've read in class. Write down at least three things that make these texts "modernist." I.e. what are the criteria - -thematic, technique - - that make a text "modernist"?

Many historians point to the Armory Show of 1913 as an authentic starting point for American modernism. From February 17th to March 15th, 1913, organizers presented an exhibition of about 1250 paintings, sculptures, and other works in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue in New York City. Many critics and viewers were shocked by the show; many, especially younger, artists and critics were energized and inspired by the show.

For next class, instead of meeting in Burk Hall, we'll meet in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. Virtually, of course. Instead of coming to class on Tuesday, November 10, point your browser to: the Armory galleries. Take a tour of the show - - browse through as many rooms as you can. Afterward, write a 3 page review (typed) of the show.

Address your review to a classmate who asks the question: what makes this stuff modern? E.g. think about all the modernist poetry and prose that we've read. What connections do you see between the artwork in the Armory Show and the texts we've read in class? Think about our "Modernist recap" on Thursday where we tried to arrive at four broad ways of describing the modernist ambition and aesthetic.

Don't try to write about the whole exhibition; instead, focus on two or three works of art - - sculpture or painting - - that seem particularly related to the poetry and prose that we've read. What similar subject matter do they share? What similar techniques? What similar approaches to the reader, to the art work, to the artistic effect, and to tradition?

Hand in the review on Tuesday, November 17.

Secrets of Google Sites revealed . ... .

Many of you have had trouble logging into the Eliot wiki and accessing the edit functions. I worked a bit with some of you after class on Tuesday, and I think this is the problem: in order to accept the invitation to the wiki and gain full access, you must sign up for google with your SFSU email address. I.e. I sent the invitations via the batch function on my SFSU roster page, so google is inviting you via your SFSU email. You are identified by this email, not any existing gmail account.

So . . . if you're still having trouble: go to the original message from me inviting you to join the Eliot wiki; click on the link to access the wiki; when you are asked to create a google account, use your SFSU email to create your account. This should get you into the wiki . . . if not, email me.

Using the wiki

Some of you have reported that you're having some issues with the wiki. Here's a brief guide to how to use the Eliot wiki. Enjoy!

For Tuesday, October 27

For Tuesday, let's finish up Hemingway's In Our Time.

Also, surf over to our Eliot wiki. Click on your motif to open up your wiki page. On the wiki page for your motif: click on "edit page" at the top of the page; select an example of your motif from the poem; quote the example; then, explain the example - - what is happening with the motif at this point in the poem? what is the motif signifying at this point in the poem? how does this instance of the motif relate to other instances of the motif? Write as much as you can - -bonus points for length - - and type your name after your comments; click on "save."

For Tuesday, October 20

Don't forget, for Tuesday, you want to select one motif from the 15 or so that we collected from "Burial of the Dead" in The Waste Land. Find as many instances or examples of that motif in the rest of the poem as you can. Cite the lines where you find the motif. Remember - - you are looking for concrete examples of the motif and/or its variations. Bring this list into class.

Here's the list of motifs from our last class:

Seasons/natural time

life-in-death; undead; zombie

plagiarism/cultural pastiche

exile

voices/ventriloquy/polyphony

nostalgia/memory

dryness/drought vs. wetness/water

roots/plant/organic

"broken images"/isolate flecks/fragments

sailors/voyages/ocean

hyacinth girl: men and women; impotence

crowds

"unreal city"/ city/London

"hypocrite lecteur"/the reader

deaf/mute/blindness

mixing

The Waste Land

For Thursday, we'll continue with Eliot's "The Waste Land."

Here's a nice recording of Eliot reading the poem:

You might also want to check out this very interesting annotated, multimedia version of the poem.

Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946). A radical modernist in literature and life, Stein was both an avant garde textualist and a central organizing figure for expatriate modernists in Europe. Here's a link to her "The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind."

Masters and Robinson

Edgar Lee Masters ( 1868 - 1950) Trained as a lawyer (and a one-time law partner of legal legend, Clarence Darrow), Masters made his literary bones with the publication of Spoon River Anthology (1915). Neither Masters' conceit (a kind of collectively voiced collection) nor his subject matter - - small town American life - - were new. What was new about Masters' collection was the way in which it approached small town life in America on the eve of World War I - - resisting sentimentality while refusing to give in to scorn or cynicism. It was probably this ambivalent stance which helped to create the novel poetic voices that Masters conjured up via his literary seance.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935). Robinson is one of the most compelling of the "transitional" figures that spanned the close of America's "Victorian" culture and the rise of modernism. He left behind a troubled family and youth in New England to make his literary way in New York City - - one of the earliest exemplars of the "bohemianism" that would come to define Greenwich Village in the American literary consciousness. Until Teddy Roosevelt picked up Robinson's second collection of poems, Robinson was in dire straits. Thanks to the economic stability provided by Roosevelt's patronage, Robinson could continue to write poetry until, eventually, he gained the ear of the American public and literary critics. While apparently straightforward on the surface, like is New England peer, Robert Frost, his poems are complicated - - not so much formally as in tone and stance. Like Frost, Robinson attempts to reckon "modern" experience within more traditional forms and structures. His efforts remain under-appreciated.

But what is one to do?

The four texts (Adams, Du Bois, Bourne, Gilman) we've looked at over the past couple of weeks share a common theme: a crisis is rocking American society and culture as the nation moves into the 20th century. The particular setting of each text varies, and each text seems to take up this crisis in different terms (science and technology, race, ethnicity, gender).

Despite these differences, are there commonalities in the way these texts imagine crisis? For instance, several of the texts share a concern with dysfunctional epistemologies - - problems with the way we know the social and personal world. Likewise, several of the texts focus on subjectivity - - what kinds of people does the new world of modernity produce?. And, several of the texts seem more concerned with how people experience the modern world rather than the dynamics of that world itself. Most of the texts also experiment with different ways of representing the crisis of modernity - - different textualities and forms.

What common motifs, themes, images, conflicts, literary techniques, or plots of crisis can you see among the four texts we've read? Which is most interesting? Which warrants further discussion and development?

Your goal in your first short paper is to describe, explain, and analyze the connections between the "critical" imagination of at least two of the texts we've read. That is, show me how two of the texts we've read seem to use some common motifs, images,conflicts, and/or plots, etc., to imagine and elaborate their sense of national crisis.

Your essay should be typed, no more than two pages, double-spaced. Proofread for typographical, spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. The essay is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, September 17, 2009. Enjoy!

Randolph Silliman Bourne ( 1886 – 1918) Bourne is one of the great, unacknowledged intellects and writers of American cultural history. Born with severe physical disabilities, Bourne went on to join the generation of American progressives - - like John Dewey, Jane Addams, Charles Beard, and William James - - who struggled through the first decades of the 20th century to bring American consciousness up to speed with the demands of modernity. He was a radical pacifist who broke with many of his fellow progressives in denouncing the First World War. His essay, "War Is the Health of the State" remains a powerful argument against war and militarism. Bourne was especially interested in education, nationalism, and redefining cultural democracy. His life was cut short by the influenza epidemic (or Spanish Flu) of 1918.

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868 -1963) Du Bois was a giant of American letters, culture and politics for most of the modern era of U.S. history. He was the first African American to be granted a PhD from Harvard University (1895) and one of the founders of the N.A.A.C.P. He was, by turns, a sociologist, an activist, an essayist, an editor, a novelist, a nationalist, and a prophet of post-colonialism. His early tour de force, The Souls of Black Folk was published hard on the heels of the Supreme Court case, "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896), that signaled the absolute demise of post-Civil War Reconstruction and the inauguration of America's "modern" period of race relations - - apartheid in the South and segregationism in the North. Du Bois joined the Communist Party in 1961, two years before his death in the newly created African nation of Ghana.

For Tuesday, read Chapter 1, "Of Our Spritual Strivings," from The Souls of Black Folk (in the Heath anthology).

Dynamo and Virgin

Henry Adams (1838 - 1918). A few interesting things to consider about Adams: Adams was a member of American political royalty - - the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams. The Education of Henry Adams, from which "The Dynamo and the Virgin" is excerpted, was published privately in 1907 but only released to the public after Adams' death in 1918. Although often read as an autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams omits what some might consider to be very pertinent events in the life of Henry Adams, including the 1885 suicide of his wife, Marian Hooper Adams.

Welcome

This will be the motherblog for our course - - English 528.01 American Literature, 1914 to 1960. Here you'll find copies of our syllabus, announcements, assignments, and any other general information relating to the class. Enjoy!