English 410/510: Transnational Modernisms
McKENZIE HALL 229, MWF 12:00-12:50pm
Goals of the course:
This course will examine the foundations of modernist literature in systems of
transnational circulation. We will examine topics such as diasporas in modernism;
modernism and imperialism; modernism and primitivism; the significance of exile,
expatriation, and translation on modernist style; the globalization of American culture;
and modernism and global war. Artworks will include French Dada ‘invading’ New York;
the poetry of Claude McKay’s black diaspora; Ezra Pound and Chinese translation;
Joseph Conrad on Imperialism and surveillance; and the literature of the Spanish Civil
War. We will consider these texts alongside theories of how culture exists in relation to
national and transnational identities.
Course reading:
You must complete all the essential reading listed for each seminar, and come prepared
to discuss it. This is a discussion-based classroom, and I expect everyone to have
something to contribute in every session.
Every week, postgraduates are given additional theoretical reading as a guide to how
the primary texts relate to broader critical fields of inquiry. This reading is not
compulsory, but will help you get the most out of the course.
Assignments and grading:
Class participation 10%; presentation 10%, 2 short papers 40% (3-4pp each), final
paper 40% (8-10pp; 10-12pp for ENG 510).
Papers:
Questions will be circulated for papers two weeks in advance of the paper deadline.
Presentations:
You will work on presentations in groups to be established in the first week of term.
These should last for no more than ten minutes.
Class participation:
I will reward students who approach discussion in an enthusiastic, informed, and
collegial way. Both I and your fellow students will appreciate informed opinions, critical
insight, a willingness to take a few risks, and respect for others. I will occasionally set
small in-class activities and presentations which will also count towards this grade.
Attendance:
At the beginning of each class you should sign the attendance register. You are allowed
four unexcused absences. Missing three classes or more without adequate excuse and
documentation (such as a doctor’s note) will result in your overall grade being lowered
by 2/3 of a letter grade for each absence. Six such absences results in a failing grade.
Classroom Electronic Communications Policy:
In this class, cell phone use and the use of tablet devices is prohibited. All such devices
should be stored in your bags or left at home. Laptop computers are permitted but only
for activities related to the content of the class.
Plagiarism:
All written work should be either your own or contain clear references to your sources;
one of the hallmarks of good scholarship is being able to use the insights of others while
keeping your ideas distinct from theirs. I expect you to abide by university regulations on
the proper acknowledgement of source material, and to follow accepted conventions for
how to reference scholarship. I advise you to check on the university’s student conduct
code
(http://uodos.uoregon.edu/StudentConductandCommunityStandards/StudentConductCo
de/tabid/69/Default.aspx) for information about this; I recommend MLA style for the
presentation of your research papers. Information about how to prepare bibliographies
and citations in MLA style can be found at the Purdue Online Writing Lab
(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/), and at the Knightcite MLA citation
application (http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/).
Late papers:
Papers should be submitted in class on the day of the deadline listed. I will deduct 1/3 of
a letter grade for each day a paper is late. I will not accept any paper that is more than a
week late. Any request for extensions will be carefully considered, but should be made
as far in advance of the due date as possible.
Disability:
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this
course, please make arrangements to discuss this with me as soon as possible. Also
please request that the Counselor for Students with Disabilities send a letter outlining
your approved accommodations. [Disability Services: [email protected],
346-1155; http://ds.uoregon.edu/].
Office Hours: Mondays 4-6, Fridays 2-3.
ESSENTIAL READING: please purchase these texts or arrange access for them
for the duration of the course. These texts are available at the Duckstore.
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent. Penguin Classics, 2008. 9780141441580.
W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems and Four Plays. Ed. M. L. Rosenthal. Scribner. Fourth ed.,
1996. 0684826461.
Nella Larsen, Quicksand. Quicksand and Passing. Ed. Deborah McDowell. Rutgers UP,
1986. 0813511704.
Claude McKay, Selected Poems. Dover, 1999. 0486408767.
Ernest Hemingway, The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War. Simon
and Schuster, 9781416594932.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU BRING THESE BOOKS—AND PRINTOUTS OF
INDIVIDUAL STORIES OR POEMS FROM BLACKBOARD—TO CLASS. You should
also get into the habit of marking up these stories as you go along: it will help you focus
your reactions and ideas for class discussion, and will improve the detail and insight of
your written papers.
READING AND ASSIGNMENT SCHEDULE
WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTIONS, AND AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSATLANTIC
TASTE
M 4/2: Introductions.
W 4/4: Edith Wharton, “False Dawn,” parts I-VI (pp.3-53), on Blackboard.
F 4/6: Edith Wharton, “False Dawn,” parts VII-IX (pp. 54-74).
For graduate students: Lawrence Buell, “American Literary Emergence as a
Postcolonial Phenomenon.” American Literary History 4.3 (1992): 411-442. Available on
JSTOR and ProjectMUSE.
Michael Whitworth, “Introduction,” Modernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. On Blackboard.
WEEK TWO: THE INTERNATIONAL SURVEILLANCE STATE AND CONRAD’S
SECRET AGENT
M 4/9: The Secret Agent, Author’s Note and chapters 1-2
W 4/11: The Secret Agent, chapters 3-5
F 4/13: The Secret Agent, chapters 6-8
WEEK THREE: THE SECRET AGENT CONTINUED
M 4/16: The Secret Agent, chapters 9-11
W 4/18: The Secret Agent, chapters 12-13
F 4/20: The Secret Agent, conclusions
For graduate students, on Conrad:
Suman Gupta, “Movements and Protests,” Globalization and Literature (2009). Rpt. In
Literature and Globalization: A Reader, ed. Liam Connell and Nicky Marsh. London:
Routledge, 2011, pp.346-357.
“Introduction,” Modernism and Empire. Ed. Howard J. Booth and Nigel Rigby.
Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.
‘“The Shortcomings of Timetables”: Greenwich, Modernism, and the Limits of
Modernity.’ Adam Barrows. MFS 56.2, 2010. On ProjectMUSE.
Conrad in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Carola M. Kaplan Peter Mallios, and Andrea
White. NY: Routledge, 2005.
Raymond Williams. “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism.” The
Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. London: Verso, 1989.
WEEK FOUR: POUND, TRANSLATION, AND CHINA
M 4/23: Ezra Pound, poems up to Cathay section (on Blackboard), and “A Retrospect,”
available at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/retrospect.htm
W 4/25: Ezra Pound, Cathay, on Blackboard.
F 4/27: Alternative translations of “A River Merchant’s Wife,”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/othertranslations.htm
FIRST SHORT PAPER DUE
For graduate students:
Hugh Kenner, “Imagism,” “The Invention of China,” “The Persistent East,” in The Pound
Era, Berkeley: U of California P, 1972. On Blackboard.
Ezra Pound, “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry,” available at
http://www.pileface.com/sollers/IMG/pdf/The_Chinese_Written_Character_As_A_Mediu
m_For_Poetry_Ernest_Fenollosa-Ezra_Pound_.pdf
Edward Said, “Introduction,” Orientalism. Rev. Ed. London: Penguin, 1995: 1-28. On
Blackboard.
Barry Ahearn, “Cathay: What Sort of Translation?” in Ezra Pound and China, ed.
Zhaoming Qian. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2003. On Blackboard.
Jahan Ramazani, “A Transnational Poetics.” American Literary History 18.2 (2006):
332-359. Available on ProjectMUSE.
WEEK FIVE: DADA TAKES NEW YORK
M 4/30: Blind Man No. 2, available at http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/index.htm.
Wanda Corn, “Américanisme,” in The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National
Identity, 1915-1935. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999. 43-89. On Blackboard.
W 5/2: ‘291,’ issues 12, 5-6, 7-8, available at
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/291/index.htm
F 5/4: Dada manifestoes: Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, and Walter Arensberg, on
Blackboard. Also read collective manifesto, http://www.ralphmag.org/AR/dada.html.
Today we will also be doing a short Dada image-analysis exercise, which will
necessitate you researching a dada image to talk about. The archive at
http://arthistory.about.com/od/dada/ig/DadaatMoMAParis/ and
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/duchampmanraypicabia/resources.shtm, has
some good examples.
For graduate students:
Extract from Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, rpt. In Modernism, ed. Michael
Whitworth, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
Marjorie Perloff, “The Conceptual Poetics of Marcel Duchamp.” 21st-Century
Modernism: The “New Poetics.” Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
WEEK SIX: THE BLACK DIASPORA I: CLAUDE McKAY’S GLOBAL POETICS
M 5/7: Uncollected poems, in Claude McKay: Selected Poems
W 5/9: Harlem Shadows, in Claude McKay: Selected Poems
F 5/11: Harlem Shadows, in Claude McKay: Selected Poems
For graduate students:
Brent Hayes Edwards. “The Uses of Diaspora”, Social Text, 19: 1, 2001, pp. 45-74. On
Blackboard.
Kenneth Warren, Appeals for (Mis) recognition: Theorizing the Diaspora," in Donald
Pease and Amy Kaplan, eds. Cultures of U.S. Imperialism. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1993.
William J. Maxwell, “Introduction,” The Collected Poems of Claude McKay. Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 2004. On Blackboard.
WEEK SEVEN: THE BLACK DIASPORA II: NELLA LARSEN, QUICKSAND, AND
MODERNIST PRIMITIVISM
M 5/14: Chapters 1-11
W 5/16: Chapters 12-16
F 5/18: Chapters 17-25
SECOND SHORT PAPER DUE
For graduate students:
Chapter 1, Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990, 3-41. On Blackboard.
Doyle, Laura. "Transnationalism at Our Backs: A Long View of Larsen, Woolf, and
Queer Racial Subjectivity in Atlantic Modernism." Modernism/Modernity 13.3 (2006):
531-59. On ProjectMUSE. Or, her longer essay (solely on Larsen) in Geomodernisms,
"Liberty, Race, and Larsen in Atlantic Modernity: A New World Genealogy," 51–76.
Lunde, Arne, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. "Helga Crane's Copenhagen: Denmark,
Colonialism, and Transnational Identity in Nella Larsen's Quicksand." Comparative
Literature 60.3 (2008): 228-43. On Blackboard.
WEEK EIGHT: YEATS AND IMPERIALISM
M 5/21: “The Stolen Child,” “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “Who Goes with Fergus,” “To
Ireland in the Coming Times,” “The Hosting of the Sidhe,” “The Man who Dreamed of
Faeryland,” “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” “Adam’s Curse,” “September 1913,” “The
Wild Swans at Coole.”
W 5/23: “Easter, 1916,” “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” “An Irish Airman
Foresees his Death,” “The Second Coming,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” “Leda
and the Swan.”
F 5/25: “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Byzantium,” “Lapis Lazuli,” “Under Ben Bulben,” “The
Circus Animals’ Desertion,” “Politics.”
For graduate students: Edward Said, “Yeats and Decolonization,” in Culture and
Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993. On Blackboard.
“Yeats and the Idea of Revolution.” Seamus Deane. In Celtic Revivals: Essays in
Modern Irish Literature, 1880-1980. London: Faber and Faber, 1987. On Blackboard.
Gregory Castle. Modernism and the Celtic Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
WEEK NINE: LITERATURE OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
M 5/28: MEMORIAL DAY: NO CLASS.
W 5/30: Spain. Read Cary Nelson’s overview of the Spanish Civil War at
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/overview.htm. W.H. Auden, “Spain,” “Musée
des Beaux Arts,” “Here War is Simple Like a Monument,” “The Unknown Citizen,” “The
Shield of Achilles,” “September 1, 1939,” “Epitaph on a Tyrant,” “Refugee Blues,” “In
Memory of W.B. Yeats.”
F 6/1: Auden, “On this Island,” “England to Me is My Own Tongue,” “In Praise of
Limestone.”
For graduate students: Stephen Burt, ““September 1, 1939” Revisited: Or, Poetry,
Politics, and the Idea of the Public.” American Literary History 15.3 (2003): 533-559. On
ProjectMUSE.
Cary Nelson, “Poetry Chorus: How Much for Spain?” in Revolutionary Memory:
Recovering the Poetry of the American Left. Routledge: New York, 2001. 181-243.
Joshua Esty, “Introduction,” A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in
England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003.
WEEK TEN: LITERATURE OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
M 6/4: Ernest Hemingway, “The Denunciation,” “The Butterfly and the Tank,” “Night
Before Battle,” “Under the Ridge.” All in The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the
Spanish Civil War. New York: Scribner’s, 1998.
W 6/6: Langston Hughes. “Open Letter to the South,” “Cubes,” “Always the Same,”
“Good Morning Revolution,” “One More ‘S’ In the U.S.A.,” “Ballad of Roosevelt,” “Song
of Spain,” Letter from Spain,” “Postcard from Spain,” “Air Raid: Barcelona,” selection of
journalism from Spain.
F 6/8: Conclusions.
M 6/11: FINAL LONG PAPER DUE
For Graduate students: Brent Hayes Edwards, “Langston Hughes and the Futures of
Diaspora.” American Literary History 19.3 (2007): 689-711.