ENG32200 Sexuality & American Modernism

Academic Year 2020/2021

This module will explore American literary modernisms and modernity through changes in courtship, marriage and divorce, sexuality, race, and gender identity in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. We will cross the century’s early decades, following its lovers through rural towns, Greenwich Village bohemia, expatriate Paris, modernist Harlem, and the American south. We will explore the diversity of modern and modernist love, from courtship to the marital home and beyond—to divorce capitals, queer liaisons, utopias, and friendships. Readings will include novels and short stories; speeches and essays; readings in early sexology; local newspapers and legal history; and contemporary queer, gender, and sexuality studies. Course readings may include works by Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Kate Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, and Richard Bruce Nugent. The course will take shape around weekly discussions, close readings, and a final essay.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

● Demonstrate ability to discuss complex ideas in class and in written assignments
● Perform close-reading of texts leading to nuanced analysis
● Work with key insights in critical race theory, social history, narrative theory, gender & sexuality.
● Awareness of historical context, expression & regulation of gender, sexual, and racial identities
● Proficiency in American literary modernisms

Indicative Module Content:

The course will explore the effects of world wars, depressions, feminism, and changing cityscapes upon the form and range of narrated relationships. We will cross the century’s early decades, following its lovers through rural towns, Greenwich Village bohemia, expatriate Paris, modernist Harlem, and the American south. The course will take shape around weekly discussions. Readings from magazines, novels, and short fiction will be placed in dialogue with the journalists, psychologists, sexologists, activists, and reformers of the era. The course will proceed in three parts, “Courtship to Altar: The Evolution of Modern Marriage,” “Broken Bonds: Adultery, Divorce, Violence,” and “Beyond the Marriage Plot: Queer, Free Loving, and Single.” We will explore the diversity of modern and modernist love, from courtship to the marital home and beyond—to divorce capitals, queer liaisons, utopias, and friendships.

Course readings may include works by Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Kate Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, and Richard Bruce Nugent.

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24

Specified Learning Activities

80

Autonomous Student Learning

100

Total

204

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
The course will take shape around weekly discussions, close readings, and a final essay. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Essay: 3000 words Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

60

Assignment: Discussion Questions Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

15

Assignment: Close Reading Unspecified n/a Graded No

25


Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Online automated feedback
• Peer review activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Draft

Indicative Course Texts:

I have designed our course to include a broad array of (provided) cultural materials and a range of short fictional and nonfictional writings. I hope that this will offer broad access to American modernity and literary modernism.

Printed texts will still be required (in a paginated format), for weekly class meetings.
Nella Larsen, Passing
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
John D’Emilio, Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters (3rd Ed.)