British Culture and the Arts: London, 1900-1950

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

At about the same time that George Orwell declared that "all art is propaganda," Jawaharlal Nehru observed that the "art of a people is a true mirror to their minds." These sentiments will serve as something of a mantra for this course. Part aesthetic appreciation course and part cultural history, "British Culture and the Arts" uses artworks from the first half of the twentieth century as a window into modern British culture and identity. Students will learn how to approach and interpret a range of artistic forms and to relate them to the cultural contexts from which they came. We will learn about the cultural institutions that supported these artworks, the artists that conceived them, and the audiences that consumed them. We will explore how British artists and audiences responded to movements and trends from across the globe, including continental modernism, American jazz, and music from the colonies. But we will also examine how British artworks reflected and refracted broader social and political concerns: race, empire, class, war, gender, among other themes. The set works have been selected in order to cover a diverse range of genres—from opera and ballet, through poetry and novels, to painting and film. They have also been chosen with our London setting in mind. This will enable students to experience the artworks not just in the seminar room, but also live in performance in the original institutions, spaces, and cultures for which they were conceived. Last but not least, it will afford students the opportunity to take advantage of local libraries and archives in order to complete an independent and original research project of their own.