American Modernism 1880-1960
Academic Responsibility: Mr Bryan Hawkins and Dr Mandy Cooper
Module Aims
The main aim of the module is to develop a critical understanding of the artistic and literary responses to America in a period of enormous change. The course is intended to be interdisciplinary, whereby the spectrum of artistic and literary expression, moving from C19th Realism towards experimental Modernism, will be seen in the context of historical, socio-economic, cultural and intellectual developments. The module aims to develop a thematic approach to chosen works, exploring themes such as American identity, race, gender, the city, the American Dream and nature. In addition, the course aims to develop students' critical response to formal and stylistic innovations so that they can "read" works of art and evaluate them using appropriate art historical vocabulary or literary theoretical approaches.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
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identify and evaluate the important movements of American thought, literature, art and society and their global significance in this period;
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critically reflect upon a number of key artists and writers, within art historical and literary movements;
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identify and evaluate the diversity of Modernist stylistic developments applying an appropriate conceptual framework with critical terms and approaches;
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appreciate the relationship between art , literature and social and political change, with reference to basic critical theory;
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appreciate the significance of Abstract Expressionism to American art and western culture and Expressionist techniques in drama;
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demonstrate the cognitive, subject-specific and key skills, associated with American Studies at Level Two.
Module Content
The course builds upon the Literature and the Art sections in Year One, with students further developing their critical and evaluative skills. The course places writers and artists within a broad context of social and intellectual change. Such changes include, for example, industrialisation, immigration, the challenge to prejudiced views on ethnicity and to patriarchal views of women. Students will examine how certain writers and artists question old values and make ironic statements about The American Dream.
The first part of the course will examine realistic images of American society and portraits of Americans at the end of the C19th, as witnessed in the art of Sargent, and the literature of Crane and James. Students will then trace the movement away from representational realism with an in-depth analysis of the 1899 novel by Kate Chopin, The Awakening, a work which is on the cusp of Modernism in terms of its impressionist style and its feminist themes. Similarly, in terms of the visual arts, students will consider the emerging Modernist innovations in an analysis of the work displayed at the ground-breaking Armoury Show in 1908.
The module will then examine this flowering of Modernism; students will consider the range of influences, such as developments in psychoanalysis, on the diversity of expression. Innovations in the poetry of the early C20th, such as Eliot, Williams and Stevens, will raise questions about the extent of European influence or the specifically American aspects of the artistic responses. Likewise, the visual arts will be questioned and terms applied to art, such as Cubist or Surrealist, can, in turn, be extended to literature.
In a section of the module entitled The Imagined City, the artistic responses to New York will include the work of Georgia O'Keefe, Joseph Stella, Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. Such images of the modern, often industrialised, landscape will be compared to literary images of New York as an exciting hedonists' paradise or as a modern wasteland in the work of Jazz Age writer Scott Fitzgerald. The jazz-influenced art and literature of The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s will then be studied.
The discussion of how art and literature can challenge established views of The American Dream will be centred on particular texts such as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and Streetcar Named Desire by Tenessee Williams, both plays employing Expressionist dramatic techniques to explore themes concerning madness and the loss of old values. Abstract Expressionism in the art of Jackson Pollock will be analysed.
The main textbook for Literature is The Norton Anthology of American Literature, which contains most of the texts to be taught. The main textbook for Art is the Whitney Museum publication, The American Century – Art and Culture 1900-1950.
Learning and Teaching strategies
The module consists of short weekly lectures, based on set readings, and backed up by Blackboard or library exercises. Visits to the Tate Modern and theatres in London will be arranged. Small seminar work assignments will be given, using Blackboard where possible, to enable students to engage in critical analysis of a brief extract from a text, or a mode of curation, or a single picture.
Assessment
Assessment consists of three course work assignments. There is no examination.