ENGL 7053 Seeing Things Hidden: Modern Literature and Visual Culture

In this class we will concern ourselves with the relationship between literature and the visual arts as it unfolded over (roughly) the last two centuries from the birth of photography in the early 1820s to the present. Rather than attempt to cover every manifestation of this unfolding--an impossible task--we'll limit ourselves to an in-depth study of three particularly dense moments: 1) the middle of the nineteenth century, the period during which photography was popularized, the detective story was invented, and (at least in France) modernism came into its own; 2) the early decades of the twentieth-century, the period of high modernism, with the latter's paradoxical coupling of a desire to make it new and a fascination with primitive art forms; 3) the post-war twentieth century, and the transition from modernism to postmodernism in the visual arts. Texts will include works of philosophy, literature, and visual. Assignments will include weekly web posts, a book review on a contemporary work of criticism, and a longer (roughly fifteen-page) paper.