The Jazz Age Revisited
Course Description
Summary
“It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his epitaph to the Jazz Age in 1931. It was something else too: a social and literary revolution fueled by new communications technology, mass popular entertainment, Jazz and the Blues, and a bold “collaborative energy” (Ann Douglas) between the Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance and the predominantly white figures who were grouped together as the Lost Generation. Together, these brave pioneers in Paris and in Manhattan, connected by affinities that crossed the color line, made up the “shock troops of Modernity.” We’ll start with Jazz, the Blues, and the long tradition of white appropriation—or theft by a nicer name—in American culture, and then we’ll pair readings of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Stein et al with their counterparts in Harlem: Nella Larson, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and George S. Schuyler.
Learning Outcomes
- 1) To gain a deep and nuanced understanding of the writers grouped together as the Lost Generation, with a particular emphasis on those revolutionary Black writers who have been left out of earlier, more monolithic versions of the story.
2) Explore the influence of musical forms like Jazz and the Blues with early Modernist experimentation in literature, painting and other visual media.
3) Gain comfort with the idioms of the time and the major works of the writers in the course.
4) Research and deliver paired presentations on research topics that will be discussed and approved by faculty.
5) Write frequent critical responses based in close reading of both primary and secondary texts.
6) In addition to the response papers and the presentation, students in this class will propose and execute a final project that incorporates archival research.