Rosenbaum, Susan
R 11:10 AM
Park Hall 61
This course will explore poetry in the United States from 1918-1960. We will read some key works of American poetic modernism and will engage some current scholarship. But this will be less a survey of poets than an introduction to research in the dynamic fields of modernism and American poetry. As the canon has broadened to include popular and mixed-media works, works by lesser-known authors, and little magazines, the importance of various contexts for modernist poetry has emerged, alongside the necessity for archival research. We will track modernist poets' engagement with new forms of writing and circulation (little magazines; salons and art galleries; small presses; mass market magazines; paperbacks); modernism in the other arts (the visual arts, music, film, dance); scientific and technological innovations (mass production, psychoanalysis, the automobile, the skyscraper); and historical and political contexts (racial inequality and the struggle for civil rights, immigration and migration, the two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, U.S. imperialism, the great depression, regionalism, the modern city). To facilitate this kind of engagement, the course will devote significant time to research and use of sources at the UGA Museum of Art, Special Collections Library, and Little Magazines section of the Main Library.