Please note: Places on this module are limited to 20.
This module combines the study of literature, film, and art to give students a thorough and creative insight into the aesthetic practices and cultural contexts of international modernism.
The modernist arts were vitally shaped by the experience of metropolitan life. In this module we will try to map modernism by revisiting its urban space. As we shall see, modernist works of art did not only describe the pertinent place(s), but also took the form of imaginatively structured urban-space narratives: they spoke in an urban voice, innovatively representing the acceleration of time and the kaleidoscopic vistas of city-dwellers, as well as their modernist emotions and thoughts.
Our readings and discussions will be structured around the following three cultural capitals of modernism, settings of vibrant artistic and political activities: Paris, Berlin, and New York. To recreate and explore the cultural and historical space of each city, we shall be watching fiction films and documentaries, reading literary texts, look at paintings and photographs, and consult city maps of the period relevant to each city. Our discussions will be complemented by the reading of pertinent theoretical texts.
At the end of this module, students will have 1) been introduced to, and given the opportunity to analyse in depth, a range of cultural texts in the contexts of the major cosmopolitan cities from which they originate or which they address; 2) developed a sophisticated understanding of the following key categories and concepts: modernity, modernism, the avant-garde, dada, surrealism, post-modernism, flâneur/flâneuse, dérive, montage, mechanical reproduction, city-symphony, Weimar cinema, “American Dream”.
Assessment
100% Coursework: 3000 words + 5% Participation Mark
Module Supervisor's Research into Subject Area
Professor Littau is a distinguished scholar of technological modernity and its effects on aesthetics, literature, and cinema, who has published widely on the topics studied on this module.