Global Modernisms

Catalog description

“Modernism” is one of the most significant terms in the study of literary history, and also one of the most difficult and contested. Modernism attained prominence with 19th and 20th century avant-garde artistic and literary movements, but its uses and effects extend to many places, periods, and cultures. As recent scholars in the “new modernist studies” have shown, modernism has always been a global phenomenon. In this capstone seminar, we will read works from the rise of Anglophone modernism in the early years of the 20th century; examine writers who used the vocabulary of modernism to address war, decolonization, and migration at mid-century; and trace modernism’s rejuvenated influence in the 21st century in the work of contemporary novelists.