"Make it new" was Ezra Pound's view of the fundamental role of the Modernist writer, and William Carlos Williams wrote of the poem as a "machine made of words." In each, there is a sense of optimism that new subject matter, new forms of expression, and new ways of seeing the world were at hand. However, Pound's internationalism and Williams's localism indicate the complexity of American Modernism in that each directs our attention to the "new" in quite different ways.This course will introduce and develop an understanding of American modernism, both in terms of the particularities of American culture and its complex relationship with Europe. Particular attention will be paid to concepts of race/ethnicity, gender, politics and social activism as ways of emphasising the plurality of American modernism, as well as the diverse aesthetic forms which give it expression. In its geographical reach, the course encompasses writing from the American West, rural Wisconsin, New York (from Harlem to the Jewish American community of the Lower East Side), the American South, and expatriate experience in post-war Britain and France.