American Literature and the Visual Arts

With the publication of several recent studies of cinema and modernism, interest in the relation between literature and the visual arts has never been higher. We will chart the forms this relation takes in the modern era by reading both theoretical attempts to diagnose it (Benjamin, Barthes, Derrida, Rancière) and literary attempts to enact it (James, Stein, Ellison, Williams, Agee). Enrollment limited to 15 graduate students.