BASC62113 - Alumni Sequence: The Modern Tradition I

Course Description

This quarter’s seminar examines the legacies of slavery and racism in America through three classic testaments to the experience of social and political persecution and oppression and to the African-American struggle not just for rights and recognition but, more foundationally, for sense, self-understanding, and essential dignity. A contrasting text, by Spanish philosopher and social theorist Ortega y Gasset, describes a very different but parallel form of social polarization—”noble” and “mass”—and the potentially dehumanizing effects of the modern movement toward an inclusive, hyper-democratic, and “de-moralized” society. The tutorial takes up some of the most important poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries, reflecting on the ways in which modern innovations in poetic forms and practices have shaped modern sensibilities, experiences, judgments, and even the character of modern realities. Poems will be selected by the instructor in consultation with students.