Modernism and Avant Garde

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2015:

Total expected time commitment is 170-hours across the semester, including class time.

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106-227 Modernism and Avant Garde

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

This subject examines the movement in literature and other arts that lasted from roughly 1890 to roughly 1930 and which we know as modernism. It will provide an overview of the social and intellectual context of modernism, and of its relation to other social movements. Rather than trying to survey every major modernist writer, however, it will work with close readings of a small number of key figures: the poets Yeats, Pound and Stevens, the novelist Joyce (on whose Ulysses, one of the central modernist texts, we will spend three weeks), and two figures who work in deliberately indeterminate genres, Breton and Stein. In addition, in the spirit of modernisms transcendence of conventional boundaries between art forms, we will spend time looking at Cubism and Surrealism, and at film (the work of Eisenstein and Chaplin), and we will pay close attention to the manifesto, one of the key modernist genres.

On completion of the subject students should be able to:

• demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of representative examples of Modernist and Avant-Garde texts;
• articulate the relationship between decadent literary works and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them;
• apply high-level analysis, conceptual sophistication and critical thinking to the study of Modernist and Avant-Garde texts and the controversies they;
• contribute to the understanding of Modernist and Avant-Garde texts in ways that engage the interests of the discipline of literary studies;
• effectively communicate an understanding of Modernist and Avant-Garde texts and their contexts in both written and oral formats;
• have gained an understanding of how to act as critically informed participants within a community of literature scholars, as citizens and in the work force at large.

Written work of 4000 words comprising one essay of 1500 words 40% (due mid-semester), and a second essay of 2500 words 60% (due in the examination period). This subject has a minimum hurdle requirement of 80% attendance and regular participation in tutorials. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day. In-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject.

• Selected Poems (Yeats)
• Selected Poems (Pound)
• Selected Poems (Stevens)
• Ulysses (Joyce)
• Nadja (Breton)
• Selected Writings (Stein)

• Illuminations (Benjamin)
• Modernism: 1890-1930 (Bradbury and McFarlane)
• Theory of the Avantgarde (Burger)
• The Modern Tradition (Ellmann and Feidelson, ed)
• The Pound Era (Kenner)

This subject potentially can be taken as a breadth subject component for the following courses:

• Bachelor of Biomedicine
• Bachelor of Commerce
• Bachelor of Environments
• Bachelor of Music
• Bachelor of Science
• Bachelor of Engineering

You should visit learn more about breadth subjects and read the breadth requirements for your degree, and should discuss your choice with your student adviser, before deciding on your subjects.

Students who successfully complete this subject will:

• be able to apply research skills and critical methods to a field of inquiry;

• be able to develop persuasive arguments on a given topic;

• be able to communicate oral and written arguments and ideas effectively and articulately.

Students who have completed 673-342 Modernism and Avant Garde are not eligible to enrol in this subject.