ENGL4022 · English
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences
A course on major European novelists of the early twentieth century: Proust, Gide, Musil, Rilke, Mann, Kafka, Pessoa. We will read modernist theory and ask: What is modernism? What is modernist temporality? How is interiority reflected? We will put modernist writers into relation with philosophy developing during this period (e.g., Heidegger, Benjamin) as well as with contemporary theory (Marxism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis), responding in particular to Badiou's sense of modern art in <i>The Century.</i> Does modernism's passion for the Real express itself through formalizations pointing to cracks in the Symbolic or in a less circuitous manner? A mid-term and final paper.
Course experience
Averages use the original five-point historical evaluation scale.
Organization
4.4 / 5
How well the course was organized
Challenge
4.9 / 5
How intellectually challenging students found it
Attendance
4.8 / 5
How necessary attendance was
Assignments
4.7 / 5
How helpful assignments were
Weekly effort
~5
hours per week
Estimated from the original workload response buckets. Individual sections may differ.
Instructor options
Ratings below reflect only recovered evaluations connected to this course.
Across time
Section-level results available in the recovered archive.
Spring 2024
1 section