Uncommon Arrangements: Love in Modernist Fiction

This seminar will examine the representation of love and relationships in modernist novels published between 1910-1945, a period spanning the two world wars in which a radically new order of gender, sexuality, and class relations coincided with innovations in literary representation. We will look closely at a range of affectionate relationships including: traditional marriage, unconventional domestic arrangements, same-sex couplings, friendship, childlike relationships, and creative attachments of emotional or political necessity. Beginning with some early essays and short stories on the topic of love and romance, we will generate a series of problems and questions in order to ask: Did the sexual frankness of the moderns contribute to cultural stability or disorder? Do unconventional arrangements work? How is romantic experimentation depicted? Can betrayal be channeled into something that strengthens the tie between people? Is it possible that some extraordinary arrangements are more enduring than ordinary marriage? By exploring such questions we will attempt to understand why the topic of love was such an enduring source of cultural fascination for modernist writers.

Taught by Jane Garrity ONLINE during Maymester (May 11 - May 29, 2020).

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Students hone their writing skills by closely analyzing the language in literary texts. The course will focus on the nuances of sentence structure and grammar, in order to help students become better writers and readers. Students will learn how to perform research in literary criticism and will write and revise a research paper, as well as a number of other short papers for different audiences. Students will learn and use citation methods within the discipline and will discuss the reasoning behind citational practice.

Taught by Thora Brylowe ONLINE during Augmester (August 3 - 20, 2020).

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Augmester

The historical period known as Georgian England runs from 1714-1830. That period encompassed a time of extraordinary change:  Great Britain has by 1800 arguably become the most powerful nation in the world; it had gained an empire in the new world that it then lost with the American Revolution; cities (especially London) grew explosively; the IGeorgian England is a dynamic moment in British history.  It covers the literature, life, and history during the reign of four King Georges (1714-1830).  It was a time of the revival of Greek classicism’s serenity and in contrast a time of explosive revolutions. It begins with conservative ideas and values and ends with radical ones which challenge conventional gender constructions, social hierarchies, slavery, women’s rights, and tyranny. Nature and Poetry reign supreme!

Possible texts include novels by Austen and Mary Shelley and poetry by Finch, Pope, Swift, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley.

Taught by John Stevenson ONLINE during August 3 - August 20, 2020.

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Maymester

Surveys the major literary trends from 1900 to the present in the Anglo-American tradition of modern, postmodern, and contemporary literature.  It will provide a basic grounding in two important moments in literary history:  modernism and post-modernism. Quite a bit of the focus of the course will be on poetry—we will be looking at modernist poets like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and Hilda Dolittle (H.D.) to post-modernist poets (poets coming after modernist poets) like Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop to contemporary poets like Thom Gunn and Seamus Heaney. I will make every effort to make you fall in love with poems as well as equip you with tools to decipher and critically respond to them.

Taught by Ali Hasan ONLINE from May 11 - May 29, 2020.

A-term

Section 102 (ONLINE):

For an hour the procession of grotesques passed before the eyes of the old man, and then, although it was a painful thing to do, he crept out of bed and began to write.  Some one of the grotesques had made a deep impression on his mind and he wanted to describe it.” (Sherwood Anderson, “The Book of the Grotesque”)

Many American writers have been moved by the impulse that grips Anderson’s old man.  What is the grotesque and why has it dominated the work of so many twentieth and twenty-first-century writers?  In this course we will try to find out.  Our reading will include fiction and poetry by William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, T.S. Eliot, Nathanael West, Flannery O’Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, Grace Paley, and Karen Russell.  Please contact me for further information (Jeremy.Green@Colorado.EDU).

Taught by Jeremy Green ONLINE during A-term (June 1 - July 2, 2020).

Section 120 (ONLINE):

Whether it’s the war on terrorism, global markets, tourism, or population diversity, we can’t escape the effects of globalization; they are indeed everywhere. This course will trace the rise of globalization as written about by early and late 20^th and 21^st century writers.  For writers in the so-called third world, globalization often means a very different experience from that represented in the U.S. and European media. This course will first explore how early twentieth-century writer Joseph Conrad saw empire and globalization and then how contemporary writers from the Caribbean, West Africa and South Asia negotiate between the lived effects of globalization and the failed dreams of liberation.  How are they reimagining history so as to create new possibilities and communities for an alternative future? What is our role in the first-world university as readers of these texts? What critical opportunities do they afford us? 

Novels include: Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness, Caryl Phillips Crossing the River, Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things, Jamaica Kincaid A Small Place, Chris Abani GraceLand, and Aravind Adiga White Tiger.   

Taught by Laura Winkiel ONLINE during A-term (June 1 - July 2, 2020).

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Tales of love, lust, and betrayal; greed, jealousy, and murder; revenge, mercy, and redemption—welcome to the world of Shakespeare! You’ll discover how Shakespeare’s characters have beguiled audiences for over 400 years. We’ll read two comedies, a history play, a tragedy, and a romance:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Hamlet or Othello, and The Tempest.

Assignments include weekly discussion posts and reading quizzes, two Zoom conferences, two papers, and a creative project on Shakespeare’s relevance in the 21^st century.  

Taught by Teresa Nugent ONLINE during B-term (July 7 - August 7, 2020).

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Poetry is alive. Poets have written for more than a thousand years and continue to study, write and perform poetry today. Poetry is not meant to wither and die in dusty pages on forgotten shelves. It is meant to be heard, read and voiced—aloud and alive. This course will introduce you to a great variety of poems written and composed in English from the very beginning of the English language until recently, and provide you with tools to help understand them. We will discuss terminology, themes, forms and formal innovation, as well as the many ways that poetry lives in the world now--from sonnets and sestinas to concrete poetry and epic poetry, from slam to Instagram. Representative poets: Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, Phillis Wheatley, Sharon Olds, Lucille Clifton, Jamaal May, Joy Harjo, Natalie Diaz, Gabriel Hirsch, Patricia Smith, Myung Mi Kim, Fatimah Ashgar, Kiki Petrosino, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Rupi Kaur, Mark McMorris, TS Eliot, Gertrude Stein, many others.

Taught ONLINE by Khadijah Queen during B-term (July 7 - August 7, 2020).

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