US Literature: 20th-Century Beginnings to World War II

Catalog description

Students construct an overview of American literature from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of World War II, focusing on the historical contexts of literary production. The themes and formal and stylistic aspects of the different works under discussion are situated within the context of the political, social, scientific, technological and economic transformations in this period of American history. Examines the interactions between the development of modern American literature and key issues of the period including racial segregation and racial uplift, class inequality, labor and immigration debates, the feminist movement, global war, the invention of the atom bomb and the rise of mass entertainments and consumerism.