| I. Urbanization, industrialization & capitalism in the US: first literary responses. |
-- the growth & development of cities in the east and Midwest (Chicago, New York, Philadelphia)
-- the consequences of US industrialization: mass migration (1880-1925) , Capitalism: chain production & working conditions, the formation of urban slums and ghettoes, ethnic and socioeconomic divides.
-- ideological implications: the ‘success ethic’ and social Darwinism, social awareness of inequality: socialism and trade unions.
-- literature: realism & naturalism, sociopolitical literature
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| II. The City as Character/Persona: Chicago poets and Modernism. |
-- an urban culture and an urban rhythm: advertising, journalism, commuting and entertainment; from the city as background to the city as protagonist.
-- new artistic movements and cinema: influence on a new writing; formal experimentation and narrative techniques; polyphony, collage, private/public voices.
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| III. The Ambivalent Harlem Renaissance City. |
-- an urban culture and an urban rhythm: advertising, journalism, commuting and entertainment; from the city as background to the city as protagonist.
-- Harlem, ‘a city within a city’; race building: the new negro; from the rural South to cosmopolitanism; Harlem as real space / mythical space
-- connections with the city in Modernism
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IV. Jewish Immigrant Narratives
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-- industrialization and the city as source of oppression (precedents in I); the city as key influence in the individual’s formation: Bildungsroman, memoir, autobiography.
-- immigrant narratives; the city as racial and cultural mosaic: assimilation and cosmopolitanism vs. ethnic, cultural and religious heritage.
-- the Jewish Left in the Depression: the “proletarian novel” (M. Gold) vs Jewish modernism: Henry Roth.
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