Readings by session are available below.
Required Books
Whitman, Walt. Selected Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1991. ISBN: 0486268780.
Doolittle, Hilda. Trilogy. New York, NY: New Directions, 1998. ISBN: 0811213994.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York, NY: Picador, 2001. ISBN: 0312420099.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York, NY: Penguin, 2002. ISBN: 0142000663.
Williams, William Carlos. Early Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1997. ISBN: 0486292940.
Pound, Ezra. Early Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996. ISBN: 0486287459.
Blaisdell, Bob, ed. Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999. ISBN: 0486408752.
Supplementary Readings
Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. New York, NY: First Mariner Books, 2001. ISBN: 0618127496.
Doolittle, Hilda. Tribute to Freud. New York, NY: New Directions, 1984. ISBN: 0811208974.
Steichen, Edward. The Family of Man. Prologue by Carl Sandburg. New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 1983. ISBN: 0870703412.
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1982. ISBN: 0374521344.
Readings by Session
| LEC # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introductions, syllabi Daguerreotypes/Walt Whitman | Whitman, Walt. "There Was a Child Went Forth," selections from "Song of Myself." In Selected Poems. |
| No class, but reading assigned | Whitman poems from previous class. Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." | |
| 2 | The Civil War, photography, witness and motion | Whitman, Walt. Drum Taps. In Selected Poems. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Factoid (1) Matthew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and others Factoid (2) Stereographs Factoid (3) Eadweard Muybridge Alternate Factoid: Abu Ghraib photos and "testimony." (c.f., Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Reprint ed. New York, NY: Picador, 2004. ISBN: 0312422199.) |
| 3 | Poems by Robert Browning, Wilifred Owen, and Ezra Pound | Browning, Robert. "Andrea del Sarto," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "In a Spanish Cloister," and "My Last Duchess." Owen, Wilfred. "Dulce et Decorum Est," and "Strange Meeting." Pound, Ezra. Lustra. New York, NY: Knopf, 1917. ———. Cathay. London, UK: E. Matthews, 1915. ———. Early Poems. pp. 1-15 and 27-47. Factoid (4) Wilifred Owen poems Factoid (5) The social construction of postcards Factoid (6) Diane Arbus' "freak" photos |
| No class, but excursion assigned | Students were asked to visit either the photography show at the Harvard/Fogg Museum (Carpenter Center Collection) or the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. On the way, students should watch for paintings from the same period and think accurately and comparatively about how questions of "realist" representation changed theories and praxes of painting. Where for instance does Impressionism fit in? | |
| 4 | Film: Manahatta | Aldington, Richard. "At Night," "London," "Images," "Two Impressions," and "Amalfi." In Imagist Poetry. Williams, William Carlos. "Marriage," "The Young Housewife," "Tract," "Spring Strains," "To a Young Disciple," "The Widow's Lament in Springtime," "Smell," and "The Great Figure." In Imagist Poetry. Lawrence, D. H. "Fireflies in the Corn," "The Mowers," "Scent of Irises," "Green," "In Trouble and Shame," "Gloire de Dijon," and "Nostalgia." In Imagist Poetry. Factoid (7) Alfred Steiglitz and Modernist Photography Factoid (8) Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, Precisionism Alternate Factoid: Cindy Sherman and the "mechanical" polyvalence of postmodern personality Alternate Factoid: Robert Mapplethorpe and the "mechanical" formalism of the organic body |
| 5 | William Carlos Williams poems | Read more William Carlos Williams poems, especially "Spring and All" and "To Elsie." In Imagist Poetry. Stevens, Wallace. "Peter Quince," "Sunday Morning," "Metaphors of a Magnifico," "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and "O, Florida, Venereal Soil." In Imagist Poetry. O'Hara, Frank. Lunch Poems. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1964. ISBN: 0872860353. U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (Library of Congress) Factoid (9) Margaret Bourke-White and her changes Alternate Factoid: Poems by Frank O'Hara, "personalism" |
| 6 | Charlie Chaplin Film: Modern Times | Factoid (10) Chaplin's politics Factoid (11) Chaplin and sentimentality Factoid (12) "Films of Merit" |
| 7 | Films: The River, The Plough that Broke the Plains | Carl Sandburg, W.H. Auden, the text of The River |
| 8 | "The Migrant Mother" | Factoid (16) U.S. Farm Security Administration Factoid (17) Dorothea Lange and federal sponsorship Factoid (18) Walker Evans' photographs in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Factoid (19) James Agee's modernist experiments in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Alternate Factoid: Sally Mann's family photos |
| 9 | The Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. |
| 10 | Hilda Doolittle's Trilogy | Doolittle, Hilda. Trilogy. Doolittle, Hilda. "Hermes of the Ways," "Priapus," "Acon," "Epigram," "The Pool," "Oread," "Euridice," and "Fragment XXXVI." In Imagist Poetry. Factoid (20) H.D. and Freud (c.f., the "vision" from "Tribute") Factoid (21) Help us through the "visionary" ending of the Trilogy Alternate Factoid: Herb Blau's family photos |
| 11 | Student presentations of curatorial projects |