Modern/Postmodern American Poetry - Spring 2005 - Prof. Steve Evans

After Patriarchal Poetry? Feminism, Gender, and the Avant-Garde in 20th-Century American Poetry & Poetics

Course Description

This seminar will focus on the many convergences and contradictions between two powerful social and theoretical forces within modernity: avant-gardism and feminism. We will anchor our investigation in the works of four writers of the early 20th century—Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp, Mina Loy, and William Carlos Williams—but our collective researches will reach into the present as well, with a likely emphasis on the work of contemporaries like Lyn Hejinian, Alice Notley, Rosmarie Waldrop, Bernadette Mayer, and others. Scholars and theorists likely to be discussed include: Susan Rubin Suleiman (Subversive Intent), Peter Bürger (Theory of the Avant-Garde), Janet Lyons (Manifestoes), Cary Nelson (Repression and Recovery), Rachel Blau DuPlessis (The Pink Guitar), Judith Butler (Gender Trouble), Julia Kristeva (Revolution in Poetic Language), Juliana Spahr (Everybody's Autonomy) and others.

Required Texts

• Marcel Duchamp Writings of Marcel Duchamp
• Mina Loy Lost Lunar Baedeker
• Gertrude Stein Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein
• William Carlos Williams Imaginations
• William Carlos Williams Paterson
• Mary Margaret Sloan, ed. Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women

Evaluation

• Six 300-500 word annotations of articles, essays, or book chapters
• One 1000 word annotation with timeline of a biography of Stein, Williams, Loy, or Duchamp
• One 1000 word annotation and in-class presentation of a scholarly or theoretical monograph
• Research paper of approximately 20 pages

Disability Notice

If you wish to request an accommodation for a disability, please speak with me or with Ann Smith, Coordinator of Services for Students with Disabilities (Onward Building, 1-2319) as early as possible in the semester.