WiSe 23/24: PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: It Didn’t Have To Be This Way: Literature of the 1910s
Claudia Lorraine Rumson
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The year is 1914 and war has been declared. No one yet knows that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand will set off a chain of events that will destroy the world as we knew it. Nothing would ever be the same, including literature.
After the First World War, literary modernism burst onto the scene to sweep away the old and ring in the new. Or did it? Was it so different from what came before? What did come before?
In this course, we explore a variety of texts, popular and unpopular, in different styles and genres, from between 1910 and the First World War. From girl’s literature to pornography, bad poetry to poetry about bad poetry, we will be looking at the literature of the last moments before the War. We will also explore the lasting impact of post-World War literary modernism, and imagine what our modern literary landscape might have looked like if different 1910s genres had taken hold.
Full credit can be obtained on the basis of regular participation in class discussions, reflection assignments, and the eventual submission of a research paper of approximately 2000 words. This course will include the novel The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery. I recommend beginning to read it before the course begins.
Further readings will be made available on Blackboard before the course begins.
close16 Class schedule
Regular appointments