IGS/SCT 530K Term 1
Studies in Genre
Instructor: Paul Milton
Tales of Two Cities: Chicago, New York and the Modern American Urban Novel
Course Objectives
This three-credit graduate seminar will examine the relationships suggested by the interplay of the realist-naturalist urban novel and the developing study of urban sociology in the first half of the twentieth century. The course will also look at a variety of cultural theoretical statements on the city (Simmel, Benjamin, Debord, Lefebvre, DeCerteau) as a means of understanding the novel’s role in the development of ways of seeing the new city. For the sake of convenience, we will restrict our discussion to novels set in two cities which could be considered as exemplary of modernity: New York and Chicago.
The aim of the course is to explore the interrelation between literature and historical processes during a particular time period. Following the genre criticism of Mikhail Bakhtin, students will be expected to observe the dialogic interplay of social science and literature in the documentary narrative style of American naturalists and modernists. They will also observe the ways in which the novel contributes to an understanding of modern urban subjectivities in terms of racialized space and gendered space. We will examine narratives of the African-American ghetto and the immigrant ghetto, as well as narratives of urban migration. We will also examine the transformative relationship that other modern artistic practices (notably film) had on novelistic practice.
Students will be responsible for one presentation during the term in which they will contextualize and lead the class discussion on a given topic. They will also be responsible for providing written evaluations of their peers’ presentations which both respond to the content and comment on the presentation style.
The main grade in the course will derive from a 20-25 page term
paper which will be due at the end of term. I expect this paper to be
an evolving project over the term. To that end, the student will meet
with the professor some time in the first month of the term to discuss
lines of investigation that will allow the student to merge personal
academic interests with the themes of the course. By the end of the
second month, the student should have produced a two-page proposal
which outlines the context of the argument, the primary texts involved
and the method to be deployed. The proposal should have appended to it
a functional working bibliography.
Course format
The seminar will meet weekly for three hours. Each seminar will begin with contextualizing and agenda-setting remarks from the instructor, but the bulk of class time will be devoted to discussions of primary and secondary readings along with student presentations on key topics of interest in the class material.
Course requirements
Prerequisites
No specific prerequisites, but some familiarity with 20th century literature or American literature and history would be useful.
Assignments
A 20-minute presentation on the week’s topic; specific focus to be discussed with the professor in advance. 25 per cent
Written responses to the presentations of other students commenting on the content, future directions for investigation, presentation style. 15 per cent
Participation grade based on the student’s contribution to class discussions. 10 per cent
Seminar essay (20-25 pp) based on a topic negotiated with the professor. As part of the assignment, students must meet with the professor before Oct. 1 for a preliminary discussion of paper topic and produce a two-page proposal with a working bibliography by Nov. 1. 50 per cent
Required texts
- Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
- John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
- James T. Farrell, Young Lonigan.
- Ann Petry, The Street
- Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm
Other named texts will be available on library reserve or electronically.
Reading schedule
Week 1: Introduction to urban fiction
- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd.” Thirty-two Stories.
- Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings.
- Henri Lefebvre, “Social Space.” The Production of Space.
- Hana Wirth-Nesher, “Introduction: Reading Cities.” City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel.
Weeks 2 and 3: Naturalism and the Chicago School of Sociology
- Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
- Carla Cappetti, “Maps, Models and Metaphors: Theories of the City.” Writing Chicago: Modernism, Ethnography and the Novel.
- Richard Lehan, “Realism and Naturalism as the Expression of an Era.” Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition.
- ---, “Urban Powers.” The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History.
Weeks 4 and 5: The Flâneur and Fifth Avenue
- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
- Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life.” The Painter of Modern Life, and other essays.
- Walter Benjamin, “The Flâneur.” Charles Baudelaire: Lyric Poet in an Age of High Capitalism.
- Dana Brand, “The Flâneur in America.” The Spectator and the City in 19th Century American Literature.
- Deborah Parsons, “Mythologies of Modernity.” Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity.
Weeks 6 and 7: The polyphonic novel and the city
- John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
- Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, Manhatta (film)
- Walt Whitman, “Manahatta.” (WebCT)
- Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” (Online)
- Mikhail Bakhtin, ”Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Novel and Its Treatment in Critical Literature.” Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics.
- Bart Keunen, “The Plurality of Chronotopes in the Modernist City Novel: The Case of Manhattan Transfer.“ English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 82.5 (2001): 420-36. (EBSCO)
Week 8: The Ethnic Ghettos
- James Farrell, Young Lonigan
- Abraham Cahan, Yekl (Online)
- Michel Foucault, “Of Other Places.” Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22-27. (EBSCO)
Weeks 9 and 10: The “Race Capital”
- Ann Petry, The Street
- Ralph Ellison, “Harlem is Nowhere.” Shadow and Act.
- Rudolph Fisher, “City of Refuge.” The City of Refuge: Stories of Rudolph Fisher.
- James deJongh, “The Emerging Ghetto,” “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination.
- Maria Balshaw, “Consumer Desire and Domestic Urbanism.” Looking for Harlem: Urban Aesthetics in African-American Literature.
Weeks 11 and 12: The modern city in decline
- Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm
- Carlo Rotella, ”Closing Time: The Man with the Golden Arm.” October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature.
- Nelson Algren, from Chicago: City on the Make.
- Tom McDonough, “Situationist Space.” Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents.
- Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City.” The Practice of Everyday Life.
Last reviewed 
1/4/2008 7:24:19 PM
