ENGL 052A. U.S. Fiction, 1900-1950

“U.S. Fiction 1900 - 1950” focuses on selected well-known and newly recognized U.S. authors important for this period: L. Frank Baum, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anita Loos, Dashiell Hammett, and two writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance: Zora Neale Hurston and George Schuyler. We’ll read mostly novels, but also some short stories. There will be attention to innovations in fiction as a flexible and varied literary form, and to the ways in which these writers engage with their historical context-particularly regarding issues of immigration, race, redefinitions of gender roles, the rising influence of new commercial media, and contestations over the meaning of “American.” Selected background / historical material will also be assigned.

Novels on the syllabus: My Ántonia (Cather), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Loos), The Maltese Falcon (Hammett), Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), and Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933-1940 (Schuyler). Short stories: two episodes from Baum’s sequel to The Wizard of Oz, The Emerald City of Oz (1912); plus F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “Babylon Revisited,” and “An Alcoholic Case.”

This is a GATEWAY English Literature course open to any student without prerequisite. The course will be taught so that it is accessible to students who are taking their first English Literature credit at Swarthmore. But advanced students of literature, including potential or actual majors and minors, will find much of interest too.

20th/21st c.
GATEWAY English Literature.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Spring 2026. Staff.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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