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HIST364: The Shock of the New - Modernity and Modernism in American Culture, 1877-1919

Special Subject (60 credits)

Many writers have described the years of unprecedented historical change that surrounded the turn of the twentieth century as a time of 'cultural crisis'. This interdisciplinary module in US cultural history explores that so-called crisis through the close reading and analysis of a variety of important written and visual texts, including fiction and non-fiction, architecture and urban design, painting, photography and cinema. Course themes include: technology and culture, labour and capital, imperialism and the 'myth of the west', immigration and urbanisation, celebrity and consumer culture, reform politics, the Great War, and cultural modernism. As we consider these various thematic constructions of modernity', we will pay particular attention to the assembly and representation of individual identities in relation to community notions of race, class and gender. We will also spend a great deal of time considering the meaning of cultural production, or, the relationship between expressive culture and the broader society which it both reflects and helps to bring into being. As such, the course asks questions about the past, but has direct relevance to the heavily mediated, 'post-modern' society that we allinhabit today.

Cognate Modules: HIST270 and HIST271 provide useful background to this Special Subject and are recommended, but not compulsory, modules.

For further information on HIST364 visit the Lancaster University Online Courses Handbook.

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