Course Overview

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 is a watershed moment in American History; along with this dramatic economic decline came a natural calamity and political and social changes that define our understanding of the 1930s. A decade of explosive technological modernization and a devastating depression filled with questions about international entanglements and giant government projects, the 1930s seem somehow especially prescient and relevant to contemporary eyes.

One of the working subtitles for this course is “Propaganda, Art, and a Social Literature: The 1930s.” In this course, we will read novels from this turbulent American decade alongside significant works of literary criticism. We’ll look at objective and rhetorical theories of literature, talk about the much-contested political capacity of literature, and come to an understanding of the social, historical, and political contexts that shaped the “Modern Novel” of the ‘30s. As we go, we’ll explore an array of questions: Is good literature “art for art’s sake” or the “social novel”? What is the line between the social novel and propaganda? How does rhetorical theory help us understand narrative and how writers make their novels work for readers? How is literature shaped by the culture in which it is created, and how does it shape that culture in turn? How might this period help contemporary readers consider contemporary problems? The course will pay a great deal of attention to matters that still clamor for our attention: poverty, race, crime, socialism, capitalism, gender, and human agency.