76-337: American Literature and Culture: Capital Fictions
The turn of the last century in American culture - from the 1880s to the 1920s - has been branded with a number of labels: the gilded age, the progressive era, the age of realism, and the age of reform. It is still one of the most enigmatic periods in American history¿the period in which ¿nothing happened¿ but ¿everything changed.¿ In this course we will examine this period through the lens of ¿capital fictions,¿ the novels that tried to understand, to explain, and, indeed, to influence American culture. These novels addressed the pressing social, economic, and cultural controversies of the period: the rise of the professional-middle class, labor radicalism and unrest, the rise of competing forms of mass culture, the increasing dominance of advertising, racial and ethnic conflicts, and debates over the role of women. In addition to reading important novels from this period we will also look at the range of mass cultural forms with which these novels were in dialogue: mass-market magazines, film, newspapers and comic strips, theatre and opera, mass-marketed sheet music, and photography. We will read some of the classics from this period, such as William Dean Howell¿s Hazard of New Fortunes, Frank Norris¿s McTeague and Theodore Drieser¿s Sister Carrie, but we will also read some novels that are just now being ¿rediscovered¿ by contemporary scholars, such as Charles Chestnutt¿s The House Behind the Cedars. In our supplementary readings we will look at a German immigrant¿s photographs of San Francisco¿s Chinatown, early 20th century newspapers, muckraking articles, and a book containing selections from Winsor McKay¿s influential comic strip, ¿Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend.¿
| A | TR | 09:00 am - 10:20 am | CFA 206A | Newman |