MODERNISM LITERATURE, VISUAL ARTS AND CINEMA

Course Objectives:

Students completing this course will be able to:

• Understand key modernist notions and theories.
• Understand the ‘radical’ sociological, cultural and political changes brought by modernist notions. Examine and appreciate the modernist strategies in literature, visual arts and cinema.
• Have a basic knowledge of modernist movements like Dadaism, Futurism, Expressionism and Surrealism that changed the trajectory of 20th century.
• Discuss what it means to ‘modern’ today in 21th century in various fields. 
• Read, think and write critically.

Course Contents: 

This course explores the effects of modernist notions and practices in literature, visual arts, and cinema. At the beginning of the 20th century, the modes of thinking underwent a radical change and this resulted in new experimentations in various fields of literature and visual arts. To grasp this ‘radical change’ we will read key modernist thinkers (starting from Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, reaching to Benjamin, Adorno and others) and examine the radically new and ‘avant-garde’ movements like Dadaism, Futurism, Expressionism, and Surrealism which changed the trajectory of modern thought and practice. Writers like Baudelaire, Kafka, Beckett, and Woolf, groundbreaking artists like Duchamp, Malevich and Picasso and, filmmakers like Bunuel, Vertov and Godard will be among the ‘modernist’ practitioners examined to comprehend the full effect of modernism and modernity in contemporary thought. In the end, students will be asked to write comprehensive essays discussing modernism and what it means to be ‘modern’ through movements, writers, artists, or filmmakers examined throughout the course.