This document provides an overview of topics to be covered in an American Literature class spanning 1914 to 1945. It begins with noting a spelling error distinction between "then" and "than". It then lists the agenda which includes introducing teams, the time period of American literature being covered, and discussing questions from the historical context. Guidelines for team assignments and earning participation points are provided. Students are instructed to get into initial groups to discuss historical events between the wars, aspects of literary modernism, and social changes during this period. Finally, homework is assigned to read about modernist manifestos and post a discussion question. The document orients students to the structure and expectations of the class.

1. ELIT 48C
 Class 2

2. +
Spelling Error #1
Don’t Write “then” when you mean “than.”
The first is a description of time—―I wrote the
sales letter and then I wrote the
advertisement‖—while the other is used when
making a comparison—―I am nicer than you
are!‖

3. +
AGENDA
Teams
Introduction to American
Literature 1914-1945

4. 2. The teams will change on or near exam
dates.
3. You must change at least 50% of your team
after each project is completed.
4. You may never be on a team with the same
person more than twice.
5. You may never have a new team composed
of more than 50% of any prior team.
1. We will often use teams to
earn participation points.
Your teams can be made
up of 4 or 5 people.

5. +
Points will be earned
for correct answers to
questions, meaningful
contributions to the
discussion, and the
willingness to share
your work. Each team
will track their own
points, but cheating
leads to death (or loss
of 25 participation
points).
Answers, comments,
and questions must
be posed in a
manner that
promotes learning.
Those who speak
out of turn or with
maliciousness will
not receive points for
their teams.

6. At the end of each class,
you will turn in a point
sheet with the names of
everyone in your group and
your accumulated points
for the day.
It is your responsibility to
make the sheet, track the
points, and turn it in.
Sit near your team
members in class to
facilitate ease of group
discussions

7. + Your First
Group!
 Get into groups of
three or four. (1-2
minutes)
 If you can’t find a
group, please raise
your hand.
 Once your groups is
established, choose
one person to be the
keeper of the points.
 Write down members’
names
 Turn in your sheet at
the end of the class
period.

8. +
Take 10 minutes to discuss the
following:
Historical events that took place
between the wars
Aspects of literary modernism
Radical social changes that took
place during the interwar period.
Your QHQs

9. American Literature
1914–1945
An Introduction

10. +
QHQ Discussion
1. Q: Why did the book choose both World War I and II to be the primary
foci around our text?
2. Q: Must there be strife in order to obtain progress as a civilization?
3. Q: Where would literature be now if the authors of the World War eras
had decided to remain conformists?
4. Q: How does the time period of WWI and WWII affect many of the
technology used at that period?

11. + Historical events that took
place between the wars

12. +
 The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1920)
 American women’s efforts to win the right to vote were ―given a final push by women’s
work as nurses and ambulance drivers during the war‖ (NAAL 4).
 The Immigration Act of 1924
 ―prohibited all Asian immigration and set quotas for other countries on the basis of their
existing U.S. immigrant populations, intending thereby to control the ethnic makeup of
the United States‖ (NAAL 4).
 The Great Migration (c. 1910–1930)
 the American landscape was transformed by the internal migration of two million African
Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the Northeast, West, and Midwest
The Two Wars as Historical Markers
During the period of literary history that falls between 1914 (the
beginning of World War I) and 1945 (the end of World War II), the
United States grew and changed in radical ways.

13. +
The Two Wars as Historical Markers
 The first Red scare (1919–1920)
 Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the birth of the Soviet Union, American
leftists looked to socialism and communism as models for the labor movement in the
United States. Many Americans were intensely suspicious of European-style socialism,
and the first Red scare of the twentieth century took place during this time, a
generation earlier than the McCarthyism that took hold following World War II.
 The stock market crash (1929)
 The stock market crash of 1929 and the decade-long Great Depression that followed it
were also events both international and domestic in scope
 The Great Depression (c. 1929–1939)
 Unemployment in the United States reached a high of twenty-five percent during the
Depression years, international trade dropped off by fifty percent.

14. +
Aspects of literary modernism

15. +
Literary modernism
 tradition vs. innovation:
 ―One conflict centered on the uses of literary tradition. To some, a
work registering its allegiance to literary history—through allusion to
canonical works of the past or by using traditional poetic forms and
poetic language—seemed imitative and old-fashioned. To others, a
work failing to honor literary tradition was bad or incompetent writing‖
(NAAL 6).
―The two wars . . . bracket a period during which the
United States became a fully modern nation‖ (NAAL 6).
The aspects of social and political modernity that are laid
out in the previous slides have their counterpart in literary
modernism, which is better defined as a series of conflicts rather
than as a homogeneous set of characteristics.

16. +Literary modernism
 serious vs. popular literature:
 ―A related conflict involved the place of popular culture in
serious literature. Throughout the era, popular culture gained
momentum and influence. Some writers regarded it as
crucial for the future of literature that popular forms, such as
film and jazz, be embraced; to others, serious literature by
definition had to reject what they saw as the cynical
commercialism of popular culture‖ (NAAL 6).
 politics vs. aesthetics
 ―Another issue was the question of how far literature should
engage itself in political and social struggle. Should art be a
domain unto itself, exploring aesthetic questions and
enunciating transcendent truths, or should art participate in
the politics of the times?‖ (NAAL 6).

17. +
QHQ
Q: Is literature best suited as an art of its own
domain that transcends the world it’s taking
part of, or is it best suited to take part in the
social, and/or political movement of its time?

18. +
Radical social changes that
took place during the
interwar period.

19. +
Changing Times: How does Thomas Hart
Benton’s 1931 painting City Activities with
Subway reflect the radical social changes that
took place during the interwar period.

20. +
Changing Times: The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution
officially gave women the right to vote. Unofficially, the
amendment also opened up new arenas for women to explore—
politically, sexually, artistically, and socially.
Suffragists Audre Osborne and Mrs. James Stevens.

21. +
Changing Times: These two women illustrate the era's penchant
for both fun and recklessness by doing the Charleston on a
rooftop ledge. Their playful posturing also reflects the risks that
women were taking in an era of greater opportunity.
December 11, 1926, Chicago, Illinois.

22. +
Changing Times: The increasing mainstream popularity of African
American artists, writers, and performers in cities like Chicago and
New York during the interwar period is a complex phenomenon to
account for, stemming from a movement toward racial equality on
the one hand and an escalation in racially motivated violence that
contributed to the Great Migration of two million African Americans
from the South on the other.
An audience at Harlem's Cotton Club, a popular nightclub, watches a
performance. April 18, 1934.

23. +
Changing Times: ―Class inequality, as well as American racial
divisions, continued to generate intellectual and artistic debate in
the interwar years. The nineteenth-century United States had
been host to many radical movements—labor activism,
utopianism, socialism, anarchism—inspired by diverse sources. In
the twentieth century, especially following the rise of the Soviet
Union, the American left increasingly drew its intellectual and
political program from the Marxist tradition‖ (NAAL 8).
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, The
Bement Miles Pond
Company. A general
view of the plant and
some of its workers.

24. + Changing Times: The
Industrial Workers of the
World attracted working-
class men and women
frustrated with low wages
and long hours. It also
attracted writers, artists,
and intellectuals who were
sympathetic to socialist
movements across the
world.

25. +Changing Times: Gastonia, North Carolina,
April 5, 1929.
This photo shows a group of
female textile strikers attempting to
disarm a National Guard trooper,
who had been ordered to the Loray
Mills in an effort to stop the serious
rioting that took place following the
strike.
As evidenced in this photograph,
labor struggles often turned violent,
with strikebreakers (both military
and civilian) brought in to end labor
protests and return disgruntled
workers to their jobs.

26. +Science and
Technology
―Technology played a vital,
although often invisible, role
in all these events, because it
linked places and spaces,
contributing to the shaping of
culture as a national
phenomenon rather than a
series of local manifestations
. . . The most powerful
technological innovation
[was] the automobile (NAAL
10).
Ford Adds to Your Pleasure.
Poster ca. 1920.

27. + Automobiles put Americans on the road, dramatically reshaped
the structure of American industry and occupations, and altered
the national topography as well. Along with work in automobile
factories themselves, millions of other jobs— in steel mills, parts
factories, highway construction and maintenance, gas stations,
machine shops, roadside restaurants, motels—depended on the
industry‖
 The road itself became—and has remained—a key powerful
symbol of the United States and of modernity as well. Cities grew,
suburbs came into being, small towns died, new towns arose
according to the placement of highways, which rapidly supplanted
the railroad in shaping the patterns of twentieth-century American
urban expansion. The United States had become a nation of
migrants as much as or more than it was a nation of immigrants‖
(NAAL 10).

28. + The 1930s
Brokers line up to throw themselves out of the
window after the stock market crash of October
1929. Contemporary American cartoon.
One of the defining features of
the interwar period is the stock
market crash of 1929 and the
resulting depression. ―The
suicides of millionaire bankers
and stockbrokers‖—parodied
in this cartoon—―made the
headlines, but more
compelling was the enormous
toll among ordinary people
who lost homes, jobs, farms,
and life savings in the stock
market crash. Conservatives
advised waiting until things got
better; radicals espoused
immediate social revolution‖
(NAAL 11).

29. +
The 1930s
November 16, 1930,
Chicago. Notorious
gangster Al Capone
attempts to help
unemployed men with
his soup kitchen ―Big
Al's Kitchen for the
Needy.‖ The kitchen
provides three meals
a day consisting of
soup with meat,
bread, coffee, and
doughnuts, feeding
about 3,500 people
daily at a cost of $300
per day.

30. +
The 1930s
A man walks
past a
farmhouse in a
dust storm at
the height of the
Dust Bowl. Ca.
1937.

31. +
The 1930s
Migrant family
walking on the
highway from
Idabel, Oklahoma
to Krebs,
Oklahoma. Photo
by Dorothea
Lange, 1938.

32. +
Homework
Read ―Modernist Manifestos‖ pp. 335-350
Post #2 QHQ from one of the sections/authors
listed:
 Intro
 Marinetti
 Loy