American Regionalism – BA Seminar

This seminar will focus on American regionalist writing (primarily in short-story and novella form) produced in or around the turn of the twentieth century. We will explore the tensions that arise in a genre that attempts both to capture the idiosyncratically local and to dramatize what William Faulkner called the “universal verities.” We will consider regionalism as a form of antimodernism, as an expression of egalitarian, anti-elitist sentiments, and as a mode of constructing a post-Civil War national identity. Issues of romanticism vs. realism, nostalgia vs. progressivism and peripheral vs. urban aesthetics will also figure in our discussions, as will questions of ethnicity and gender. 

Authors may include (tentative list): Bret Harte, Grace King, George Washington Cable, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Hamlin Garland, Sherwood Anderson, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather.