Schedule

Week 1 – Overview & the War’s Beginnings

Tu 8/21

Intro, Charlie Chaplin, segment from Shoulder Arms (October 20, 1918): Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In-TMo3uFwI

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder_Arms

Th 8/22

The First World War: A Very Short Introduction, chs. 1-2 (pp. 1-26)

Stephen Kern, “Temporality of the July Crisis” (D)

Due: Blog post (1 paragraph) – Let’s try to see today’s readings in light of the big picture. What is one aspect of the lead-up to World War I that seems emblematic of 20th-century modernity, and why? Be sure to use a quotation from Howard or Kern to back up your point.

Week 2 – The War in History

Tu 8/28

The First World War, chs. 3-6 (pp. 27-80)

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – Based on your reading so far of The First World War: A Very Short Introduction, what aspect of the War or its culture is most surprising or interesting to you, and why? How might you continue to think about it in relation to the literary content we will read?

Th 8/30

The First World War, chs. 7-9 & Appendices (pp. 81-122)

Week 3 – The War in Experience: Vera Brittain and the Loss of Innocence

Tu 9/4

Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

  • Ch. IV “Learning Versus Life” Pts. 4-13 (pp. 150-204)
  • Ch. V “Camberwell Versus Death” Pts. 1-4 (pp. 205-24)

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – What aspect of Vera Brittain’s experience is the most significant to you, and why? What does it say about the War’s effects?

Th 9/6

Testament of Youth

  • Ch. V "Camberwell Versus Death" Pt. 7 (pp. 232-36)
  • Ch. VI “When the Vision Dies…”
    • Pts. 1-3 (pp. 239-49)
    • Pts. 8-13 (pp. 261-89)
  • Ch. VII “Tawny Island”
    • Pts. 11-12 (pp. 339-46)
    • Pts. 14-15 (pp. 355-61)
  • Ch. VIII “Between the Sandhills and the Sea” Pts. 4-5 (pp. 372-80)
  • Ch. IX “This Loneliest Hour” (whole thing) (pp. 427-63)
  • Ch. X “Survivors Not Wanted” Pt. 1 (pp. 467-74)
     

Week 4 – In Context: The Home Front & Propaganda Posters

Tu 9/11

Exhibit Workshop

Read: Pearl James, “Introduction: Reading World War I Posters” (D)

Look: Review the WWI poster images at McFarlin Special Collections

Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfspeccoll/sets/72157624742434942/

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – Pick one poster from the Special Collections exhibit at Flickr and embed the image in your post (see instructions handout). How do you “read” the poster in light of Pearl James’ chapter from Picture This? Can you tie it to Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth?

Th 9/13

Meet in McFarlin Library Special Collections (5th Floor, take elevator near café)

Reading gender in war posters: Pearl James, “Images of Femininity in American World War I Posters” (D)

Meg Albrinck, “Humanitarians and He-Men: Recruitment Posters and the Masculine Ideal” (D)

Week 5 – In Context: Race, Politics, and the Homefront/Warfront Divide

Tu 9/18

Jennifer D. Keene, “Images of Racial Pride: African American Propaganda Posters in the First World War” (D)

Read all of the June 1918 The Crisis (the “Soldiers Number” vol. 16 no. 2), paying special attention to the cover, the Editorial section (59-61), and Fenton Johnson’s “War Profiles” (65). We will discuss these three items in class. However, you are asked to take notes on something else you found interesting and be prepared to bring it up in class.

http://modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=129294798430500

Th 9/20

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front Chs. 1-4 (pp. 1-74)

Due: Poster exhibits.

Week 6 – In Context: The Homefront/Warfront Divide

Tu 9/25 -- All Quiet on the Western Front Chs. 5-9 (pp. 75-229)

Th 9/27 -- All Quiet on the Western Front Chs. 10-12 (pp. 231-96)

Week 7 – War Poetry

T 10/2

Central Powers

  • Ernst Stadler, “The Awakening” (“Der Aufbruch”) (Germany, 1913) (D)
  • Georg Trakl, “On the Eastern Front” (Austria, 1914) (D)

American

  • Alan Seeger, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” (1916) (D)
  • Florence Earle Coates, from Pro Patria (1917) (D)
  • Mary Borden, from “At the Somme: The Song of the Mud” (1917) (D)
  • Carl Sandburg, “Grass” (1918) (D)
  • Ernest Hemingway, from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (January 1923) (D)
    • “Roosevelt” “Champs d’Honneur”
    • “Chapter Heading”
  • Jessie St. John, “A War Bride” (1928) (D)

Th 10/4

British

  • Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier” (1915) (D)
  • Isaac Rosenberg, “Break of Day in the Trenches” (1916) (D)
  • May Wedderburn Cannan, “Love, 1916” (1916) (D)
  • Eleanor Farjeon, “Easter Monday” (1917) (D)
  • Siegfried Sassoon, “They” and “Everyone Sang” (1919) (D)
  • Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est” (1917) (D)

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – Identify two or three poems from this week that go interestingly together. What do they have in common (or in difference), and what insight does that provide us?

Week 8: Martial Aesthetics & the Avant-Garde: Cubism, Dada, Vorticism

Tu 10/9

Marjorie Perloff, “The Great War and the European Avant-Garde” (D)

Guillaume Apollinaire, “Thunder’s Palace” and “It’s Raining” (D)

291 no.5-6 (July 1915) (New York dada magazine edited by Alfred Stieglitz):

http://bluemountain.princeton.edu/exist/apps/bluemountain/issue.html?tit...

Or go to

http://bluemountain.princeton.edu → Periodicals → 291

Also, have a look around at the other magazines there, such as Dada and the Cubist war journal l’Élan, among others. Note anything interesting that you’d like to bring up in class.

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – What do you make of the pictorial arrangements of text in Apollinaire or Stieglitz’s dada magazine? How might these pictorial texts somehow reflect upon the war?

10/11

Spot-read Mark Morrisson’s introduction to BLAST magazine, focusing on subject headings of interest to you:

http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=mjp.2005.00.097&view=mjp_object

Look through BLAST no. 1 (June 1914) to gain a sense of everything that’s in it. Stop to focus on any items that interest you, and prepare notes to share in class. Read closely the following items for in-class discussion: “Long Live the Vortex!” (pp. 7-8, right after the table of contents) and “Manifesto” 1 & 2 (pp. 11-43).

http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=1143209523824844&view=mjp_object

Look through BLAST no.2, “The War Number” (July 1915) to gain a sense of everything that’s in it. Stop to focus on any items that interest you, and note any differences that you might see from the first number. Read closely the following items for in-class discussion:

http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=1144595337105481&view=mjp_object

Week 9 – Processing the War’s Aftermath & Cultural Memory

Tu 10/16

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922) Parts I-II (D)

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – Talk about one poetic technique (i.e. juxtaposition, fragmentation, allusion, quotation, etc.) that is used in The Waste Land to create or address cultural memory. How does it work, and what does the poem seem to say about it?

Th 10/18

The Waste Land Parts III-V (D)

Due: Print/photo/artifact exhibits.

Week 10 – The Novel and Post-Traumatic Stress

T 10/23 -- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) (epigraphs and pp. 11-95)

Th 10/25 -- The Sun Also Rises (pp. 96-156)

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – Based on your reading of The Sun Also Rises so far, in what ways does post-traumatic stress affect the characters? Why do this in a novel as opposed to another form?

Week 11: The Novel, Time, and Perspective: and Attempting to see the (W)hole

Tu 10/30 -- The Sun Also Rises (pp. 157-250)

Th 11/1 -- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (pp. 3-62)

Due: Special Collections exhibit project & paper.

 

Week 12: The Novel and Vision

Tu 11/6 -- To the Lighthouse (pp. 62-143)

Due: Blog post (1-2 paragraphs) – Based on the first two parts of this novel, “The Window” and “Time Passes,” what do you think Woolf is doing with narrative time, and why is she doing it?

Th 11/8

To the Lighthouse (pp. 145-209)

Week 13: The Rise of Fascism

Tu 11/13

Robert Paxton, from The Anatomy of Fascism – Ch. 1 “Introduction” and Ch. 2 “Creating Fascist Movements” (pp. 3-54)

F.T. Marinetti, “Futurist Manifesto” (1909), “Fascist Manifesto” (1919) (D)

Th 11/15 

Mussolini and Gentile, “The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932) (D)

Week 14: THANKSGIVING BREAK
 

Week 15: Resistance to Fascism

Tu 11/27 -- Virginia Woolf, from Three Guineas (1938) (D)

Th 11/29 -- Wrap-up

Due: Final papers.