Week 5 and 6 Notes

We finished our Modernism work as partners led the class through short discussions of our Harlem Renaissance selections. We concluded how the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance reflects a blend of the Imagist and Disillusioned impulses of the other Modernist poetry we read. Each type of poetry represents a different response to the cultural, social, economic, and political transitions people experienced during this era. These discussions set the foundation for the transition we will make into the work of Postmodernism.

With Postmodernism, we will be concentrating on the short story and the variety of forms that this genre takes in the era marked by the end of WWII to the present. This variety is really a continuation of the value of the multiplicity of voices/responses that we begin to see with Modernist work. Our reading list for this unit will represent not just examples of those many voices, but it will show us different voices from different groups. As each group responds to the changes and shifts in our world, so each individual responds with even more diverse reactions. My, how complex our situation has become! And yet, this is the crux of understanding the nature of American literature: our literature and our people are multi-vocal.

We will explore what it means to be multi-vocal by continuing a thread we began with the Modernists: how do we experience our situation as individuals and at the same time as members of a group? Or as members of many groups? What are our individual responses to the world? What are our responses to the world as part of our family? Our friend group(s)? Our affiliations? Do these responses differ? Do they stay the same? What influences them?

We will also continue vocabulary practice and the development of our comparison paragraphs.