Seminar: 3.02.140 S Modernisms Across Media: Images, Sounds, and Texts (Blockveranstaltung) - Details

Seminar: 3.02.140 S Modernisms Across Media: Images, Sounds, and Texts (Blockveranstaltung) - Details

General information

Course name Seminar: 3.02.140 S Modernisms Across Media: Images, Sounds, and Texts (Blockveranstaltung)
Subtitle
Course number 3.02.140
Semester WiSe26/27
Current number of participants 0
maximum number of participants 36
Home institute Institute of English and American Studies
Courses type Seminar in category Teaching
Next date Tuesday, 09.02.27, 14:00 - 20:00 o'clock A05 0-054
Type/Form
Lehrsprache englisch
ECTS points 6

Rooms and times

A05 0-054

  • Tuesday, 09.02.27, 14:00 - 20:00 o'clock
  • Wednesday, 10.02.27, 10:00 - 18:00 o'clock
  • Thursday, 11.02.27, 10:00 - 18:00 o'clock

Module assignments

Comment/Description

Industrial modernity and its media-technological advances in the first half of the twentieth century determined the course of the aesthetic movements often grouped under the umbrella term “modernism.” Given the heterogenous nature of the forms of cultural production in connection with said movements, many scholars have been taken to think about them in the plural: there is no single modernism, but rather modernisms. Along these lines, one of the most salient features of the various modernisms was the cross-fertilization of media practices that shaped the developments of artistic expression in literature and the arts on both sides of the Atlantic. Any given form of art would become increasingly unthinkable without the others; meaning that there would be no modernist poetry without photography, no stream of consciousness-prose without cinematic technique, and so on. In American culture, poets, novelists, photographers, film makers, painters, and musicians such as Ansel Adams, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, John Cage, Charles Demuth, T. S. Eliot, Walker Evans, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Howard Hawks, Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ezra Pound, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Stieglitz, Orson Welles, Nathanael West, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky forged new and seemingly unprecedented aesthetic positions and heterogeneous forms of articulation. These forms would thus become contemporaneous with the cultural climates of imperialism, industrialism, accelerating capitalism, and the general sentiment within modern society that has been termed the “loss of the center.”
This seminar will trace the course and development of US-American modernisms across media: their historical events, seminal works, various avant-gardes, political standpoints, and aesthetic theories and practices from the early stages to late proponents. While emphasizing the imperative to “make it new” in these aspects, the tracing will proceed with a catalogue of issues that reflect on the poetics and politics of media, and what the notions of “image,” “sound,” and “text” might mean in the modernist context. Aside from the poems, short fiction, theoretical texts, and audiovisual material, which will be made available digitally at the start of the semester, please purchase and read the following books:

- Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition
- Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "ang612-615 Aufbau Lit/Cult".
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • A defined number of seats will be assigned to these courses.
    The seats in these courses will be assigned at 18.09.2026, 08:00.
  • The enrolment is possible from 14.09.2026, 06:00 to 31.12.2026, 23:59.
  • This setting is active from 14.09.2026 06:00 to 18.09.2026 08:15.
    Enrolment is allowed for up to 1 courses of the admission set.
  • This setting is active from 14.09.2026 06:00 to 31.12.2026 23:59.
    At least one of these conditions must be fulfilled for enrolment:
    • Degree is Anpassungslehrgang
    • Field of study is Anglistik
    • Field of study is Gender Studies
    • Field of study is English Studies
    • Degree is Erw.fach Gymnasium
    • Field of study is Englisch
Assignment of courses: