Throughout the second half of the semester we have considered literary representations of postwar America that move toward and…
Concluding The Bluest Eye
Many of you are beginning to understand how The Bluest Eye both offers counternarratives (petite histoires) to the primer excerpts…
Beginning The Bluest Eye
Once you have listened to Mini Lecture 8, and read the linked notes, please respond to these questions: How…
Concluding (inconclusively) The Crying of Lot 49
When most people finish reading The Crying of Lot 49, they feel like they are in the same position as…
Beginning The Crying of Lot 49
As you begin Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, be patient with yourself and with the novel. It moves…
The New York School (mostly)
AFTER you listen to Mini Lecture 7 and read the linked notes, choose and respond to one of these questions…
Beginning Postmodern Poetry
AFTER you listen the (rather long) Mini Lecture 6, and read the linked notes, explore these questions as we begin…
Concluding The Sound and the Fury!
A central insight of the stream of consciousness technique – and of modernist fiction generally – is how deeply subjective…
Swimming (not Drowning!) in The Sound and the Fury
As we begin William Faulkner’s important Modernist novel The Sound and the Fury, a novel known for its masterful development…