Society's Mirror: Literature in 20th-Century America

Catalog description

This course looks at several key works of twentieth-century American literature and asks what they reveal about the society in which they were produced. The first half of our class will consider the many ways literature in the Jazz Age represented and critiqued the era - from stories published in popular magazines, which find their modern-day equivalent in streaming services, to authors of the Harlem Renaissance. The second half of the class will take us to the second half of the century, where we will consider how authors like Ken Kesey, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Atwood reveal and challenge prevailing conformity. To continue with our metaphor, the frame for our mirror will consist of the social, cultural, and material contexts in which these works were published, understood, and interpreted.