HIST-LIT 90HO: New York Modern

Instructor: Chloe Hawkey
Meeting time: Wednesday, 9:45-11:45 am

In the twentieth century, New York City found itself doubly modern, at once a center of global capital and the epicenter of modernist artistic movements. This class explores the literary, artistic, and intellectual life of this American metropolis against the backdrop of expanding mass culture and turbulent political and economic developments. How did fiction, film, and visual and performing art create community and belonging amidst urban alienation? And how did New York become the center of such a series of extraordinary cultural developments? We’ll begin by focusing on major figures from the literary flourishing of Greenwich Village in the 1910s and of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s alongside artistic milestones of the period, including the renowned 1913 Armory Show of modern art. Next, we’ll consider dance, from New York City Ballet to Alvin Ailey; abstract expressionist painting and pop art; Happenings and downtown performance art; the writings of canonical midcentury New York intellectuals; and the mainstreaming of 1970s standup through Saturday Night Live. Across these movements we’ll pay special attention to the place of immigrants and queer artists and their communities. With works by Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Randolph Bourne, Susan Sontag, Lionel Trilling, Jackson Pollock, George Carlin, and many others.