ENGL 4920 - Honors Seminar II

Spring. 4 credits.

Enrollment limited to: students in the Honors Program in English or related fields, or by permission of instructor.

G. Hutchinson.

This course will focus on the literature and culture of the “Jazz Age,” with a special focus on the mixture of “high” and “low” cultures, ethnic and racial mixing and matching, and testing of the mores governing gender and sexuality in the period roughly from the end of World War I to the mid-1930s. Most of the course will focus on literary texts, including a number that use or refer to jazz music, but we will also learn some things about early jazz itself and its musicians and clubs, and about the art of the period. The course is organized by genre, and will include discussion of various kinds of modernist experimentation in the visual arts as well as fiction, drama, and poetry.