Modernism and Postmodernism in American Fiction -- BA lecture
The title maps a problematic space to explore, so it starts out with a brief reflection on three notions. First, it looks into how fiction is defined until before Modernism. Second, it problematizes the concept of "Americanness" in the early twentieth-century US. Thirdly, it maps out key questions about the relation of Modernism to Postmodernism and vice versa. The lecture adopts a pragmatic approach to these difficulties of formulating definitions, and in its second part it sets out to survey a selection of novels written in English by US authors between 1920s-2000s to indicate a handful of issues and tendencies in the writing of fiction during this time. These issues include: the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression era, Jewish American, Black American, and Southern fictions, Postmodernist and multicultural fiction, versions of realism and affect in fiction. The series ends with case studies of postmodernist and postpostmodern texts recontextualizing modernist ones, and with an eventual feedback to the initial reflections on "postmodern American fiction." Requirements and evaluation: weekly optional tasks, in-class activities for bonus, in class written final test = 100%.