The Jazz Age

4 credits · Undergraduate

The Jazz Age: an age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess and an age of satire. So wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald of that scintillating era of Hollywood, flappers, phonographs, tuxedos, and bob cuts. But did the East also ‘swing’? This course surveys the reception of jazz in Northeast Asia from the roaring twenties to the thunderous forties through examination of music, art, literature, and film. This was an era of upheaval, but people of all types, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, nevertheless found time to get down on the dance floor. We will read their stories, from the silver screen to the foxtrot, fashion to fascism, speakeasies to cabarets, cafés, and crimson gangs in Shanghai, Tokyo, Kyŏngsŏng, Harbin, and Taipei.