ENGL 354 A: American Literature: Early Twentieth Century

ENGL 354 Latinx Modernisms

Literary modernism has often been located in legacies of World War I trench warfare in Europe or in the fragmented poetics of American cities.  This course approaches the early twentieth century from another angle—through Latinx literary production.  This course is organized around a series of questions:  How might we conceptualize Latinx modernism?  How have Latinx intellectuals represented encounters with Western modernity as entangled with histories of racialization, colonization, migration, and enslavement?  What are the literary and aesthetic forms that Latinx writers deploy when reckoning with these concerns?  This course takes a hemispheric view of Latinx literature and includes US and Latin American writers.  Some possible authors include: Jose Martí, Rubén Darío, Julia de Burgos, Américo Paredes, Jovita Gonzalez, Maria Cristina Mena, Pura Belpré, Daniel Venegas, Jorge Luis Borges.  We will read a range of genres, such as novels, short stories, ethnographic essays, periodicals, poetry, letters.