The Aesthetics & Politics of
Radical American Literature
from the Great Depression

Course: ENGL 630K
When: July 17- August 4, MTWRF 9am-12pm
Where: Jerome Ritchfield Hall, room 319
Instructor: Anthony Dawahare
Phone: 818-677-3410
E-mail: anthony.dawahare@csun.edu

Required Texts
Course Description
Course Requirements
Course Outline



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Required Texts:

Agee, James & Walker Evans.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Dos Passos, John.
Nineteen Nineteen

Fearing, Kenneth.
Selected Poems
(handout; also available from libraries)

Foley, Barbara.
Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941.

Livingstone, Rodney, Perry Anderson, and Francis Mulhern, Eds.
Aesthetics and Politics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukph.
New Masses Anthology

Odets, Clifford.
Waiting for Lefty

Olsen, Tillie.
Yonnondio

Peters, Paul and George Sklar,
Stevedore

Wright, Richard.
Native Son

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Course Description:

This seminar will introduce students to the American Proletarian Literary Movement, a movement that produced a body of protest writing during the Great Depression. We will study both literature and literary theory in order to understand the aesthetics and the politics that informed the movement. We will consider how and why these writers aimed to give voice to the perspectives, concerns, and interests of the American working class, as well as the ways in which they theorized relationships between class, race, and gender. Since the movement was international in scope, we will also read essays from the debates about literature and politics taking place within the highly influential Frankfurt School and in the theoretical writings of Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukacs, and Ernst Bloch. Topics include the relationship between proletarian literature and "dominant" literary movements such as modernism and realism; the relationship between form and content; the value of cultural traditions; and the social function of literature.

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Course Requirements:

Assignments

This class will be conducted as a seminar. The requirements for the seminar include:

1) Creative presentation & essay. Each member of the seminar will a present selection of her/his own creative work and discuss it in relation to the issues of course. Afterwards, students will write an essay that summarizes and elaborates upon the presentation. (40%)

2) Critical presentation. Each member will teach one the works assigned for the seminar. (20%) A sign-up sheet will be circulated on the second day of class. Students must select one of the available "report days" for each presentation. Presentations will be limited to twenty minutes. You may work from notes or a written text that you read to the seminar. A twenty-minute talk at a conference is about eight pages in length. This is simply a guide.

3) Critical essay. Each member will write a 15-20 page essay that critically explores one or more of the theoretical issues raised by the readings and class discussions. Possible topics include the dispute over the value of modernism and social realism for the radical writer; the value of writing social conscious literature from a perspective attuned to issues of class (as well as race and gender); the problem of disseminating radical literature in a commercial market driven by the profit motive; the use and value of "traditional" or canonical literature for the writing of radical literature; the possible or necessary relationships of the writer to the mass movements of her time; and the problem of defining proletarian literature (40%).

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Course Outline:

Week 1: Theories of Proletarian Literature, Proletarian Fiction & Creative Non- Fiction

Monday: Introductions

Tuesday: Geismar, Introduction (New Masses anthology)

Spivak, A Letter to President Roosevelt (New Masses anthology)

Gold, A Night in the Million Dollar Slums (New Masses anthology)

Burnshaw, Mr. TubbeUs Morning Service (New Masses anthology)

Josephson, For a Literary United Front (New Masses anthology)

Foley, Chapter 1: The Legacy of Anti-Communism (from Radical Representations)

Chapter 3: Defining Proletarian Literature (from Radical Representations)

Wednesday: American WritersU Congress (New Masses anthology--Appendix)

Le Sueur, Salvation Home (New Masses anthology)

Wright, Joe Lewis Uncovers Dynamite (New Masses anthology)

Maltz, Man on a Road (New Masses anthology)

Maltz, Bodies by Fisher (New Masses anthology)

Foley, Chapter 4: Art or Propaganda? (from Radical Representations)

Thursday: Hemingway, On the American Dead in Spain (New Masses anthology)

Hayes, In Madrid (New Masses anthology)

Stavis, Barcelona Horror (New Masses anthology)

Barbusse, Writing and War (New Masses anthology)

Friday: Agee & Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Week 2: Proletarian Poetry and Drama

Monday: Fearing Selected Poems

Tuesday: Fearing Selected Poems

Rukeyser, Movie (New Masses anthology);

Olsen, I Want You Women Up North to Know (handout)

Wednesday: Odets, Waiting for Lefty

Gold, A Bourgeois Hamlet of Our Time (New Masses anthology)

Lawson, UInner ConflictU and Proletarian Art (New Masses anthology)

Thursday: Hughes, Scottsboro Limited (handout)

Foley, Chapter 5: Race, Class, and the "Negro Question (from Radical Representations)

Friday: Peters & Sklar, Stevedore (handout)

Week 3: Modernism v. Realism

Monday: Olsen, Yonnondio

Bloch, Discussing Expressionism (in Aesthetics and Politics)

Foley, Chapter 6: Women and the Left in the 1930s (from Radical Representations)

Tuesday: Dos Passos, Nineteen Nineteen

Lukalism in the Balance (in Aesthetics and Politics)

Wednesday: Dos Passos, Nineteen Nineteen

Foley, Chapter 11: The Collective Novel (from Radical Representations)

Thursday: Wright, Native Son

Brecht, Against Georg Lukacs (in Aesthetics and Politics)

Friday: Wright, Native Son

Adorno, Reconciliation under Duress (in Aesthetics and Politics)

Jameson, Reflections in Conclusion (in Aesthetics and Politics)