Literature for Our Time
Times
Friday, 2 pm - 4 pm
Instructor Information
A. Hammond
E-mail: adam.hammond@utoronto.ca
Web Site Address: https://www.adamhammond.com/
Course Description
This course explores how recent literature in English responds to our world. The fall terms focuses on famous literary settings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from an investigation on Baker Street in London, to a rent party off 125th Street in Harlem, to an after-hours cabaret on Tauentzeinstrasse in Weimar-era Berlin, among others. In the spring term, our guides will be closer to our own time: living writers and new books from our century. In both terms, emphases will include literature’s reasons for being, the processes by which literature is produced and distributed, and literature’s formal qualities, historical contexts, relation to other media, and relevance to our moment in time.
Required Readings
Fall Term:
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Red-Headed League”
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss”
- T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Preludes”
- Selections from Wallace Thurman, ed., Fire!!
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
- Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark
- Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
Spring Term: TBA.
All physical books will be available for online ordering from the University of Toronto Bookstore; all other texts will be made available in electronic form.
First Three Authors/Texts
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Red-Headed League”
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss.”
Methods of Evaluation
- Four 1,000-1,250 word essays (50%)
- Tutorial participation (15%)
- Three-hour final exam (35%)