Schedule -- Fall 2014 (graduate)

Week 1 (8/27) – The War in History

Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction

Optional further reading: Stephen Kern, “Temporality of the July Crisis” (D)

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?

 

Week 2 (9/3) – The War in Experience: Vera Brittain and the Loss of Innocence

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)

List of people referred to in the memoir:

  • Edward – Vera's beloved younger brother and a soldier in the war. He was a gifted musician and composer.
  • Roland – A friend of Edward, later Vera's fiancé. He was a gifted poet and intellectual.
  • Victor (aka "Tah") – A friend of Edward.
  • Betty – A friend and fellow nurse.
  • Geoffrey – An injured soldier whom Vera befriends.
  • Nurse Hope Milroy (pseudonym) – An admired colleague.

What aspect of Vera Brittain’s experience is the most significant to you, and why? What does it say about the War’s effects?

 

Week 3 (9/10) – Brittain (con’t)

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” (pp. 427-63)
  • Ch. X “Survivors Not Wanted” Pt. 1 (pp. 467-74)

 

Week 4 (9/17) – The War in Context: Propaganda Posters & The Homefront

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/

Focusing on one of the posters, how do you “read” it in light of Pearl James’ chapter? Can you tie it to Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth?

Field Trip: Presentation of WWI materials at McFarlin Special Collections (4:00-4:45)

 

Week 5 (9/24) – The War in Context: Feminism & Politics

Claire Buck, “British Women’s Writing of the Great War” (D)

Read the Introduction to The Freewoman at the MJP:

http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=mjp.2005.00.116&view=mjp_object

Read all of The Freewoman of March 28, 1912 (vol. 1 no. 19), including ads, letters, etc., but focus particularly on Dora Marsden’s editorial “Creation and Immortality” (361-62) and the Correspondence section (373-78). *Remember that this is a pre-war publication when you read it.

http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=1301600832453127&view=mjp_object

Browse or search the Modernist Journals Project (http://modjourn.org) and choose one piece pertaining to suffrage or other women’s issues vis-à-vis WWI, to discuss in class. It can be an essay, a poem, a story, an advertisement, a photograph or other visual art – anything is fair game. Be sure to record the item title, magazine title, publication date, and page numbers of the item for everyone else’s reference.

 

Week 6 (10/1) – The War in Context: Race & Politics

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 Editoral section (59-61), and Fenton Johnson’s “War Profiles” (65). We will discuss these three items. 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

Browse or search for other content related to WWI in The Crisis at the MJP, using the Advanced Search tool. Pick one item such as an essay, a poem, a story, an advertisement, a photograph – anything is fair game – to “own” and discuss in class.

 

Week 7 (10/8) – Martial Aesthetics & The Avant-Garde

Read Mark Morrisson’s introduction to BLAST magazine:

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

Read all of BLAST no. 1 (June 1914)

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

Read all of BLAST no. 2, “The War Number” (July 1915)

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

What do you make of the stylistic experiments of BLAST and its violent rhetoric? Does it change in the second issue?

 

Week 8 (10/15) – War Poetry & Dada

Short War Poems

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

Dada

What do you make of the pictorial arrangements of text in Apollinaire or Stieglitz’s dada magazine? How might these texts somehow reflect upon the war?

 

Week 9 (10/22) – The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

How does Eliot use the technique of quotation and allusion to critique the Western tradition? How does that form a critique of WWI?

Due: WWI artifact curation project.

 

Week 10 (10/29) – The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926), epigraphs through chapter XII, to p. 130.

Based on your reading of The Sun Also Rises so far, in what ways has the War affected the characters?

 

Week 11 (11/5) – The Sun Also Rises (con’t)

Finish The Sun Also Rises.

 

Week 12 (11/12) – To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Part I “The Window”

 

Week 13 (11/19) – To the Lighthouse (con’t)

To the Lighthouse, Part II “Time Passes” & Part III “The Lighthouse”

What is Woolf doing with the narrative technique, and how does it speak to the War and its aftermath?

 

Week 14 (THANKSGIVING BREAK)

 

Week 15 (12/3) – Surrealism

Read transition no. 2 (May 1927) (D)

Selection from James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939) (D)

Watch short film by Man Ray, l’Étoile de Mer (1928) [The Starfish]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhphzu_l-etoile-de-mer_shortfilms

 

WWI Artifact Exhibit – Evening of December 9 or 10.