This seminar will study modernist texts in the contexts of the little magazines in which they were first published. Modernist little magazines were typically low-budget, small-circulation, short-lived enterprises founded by individuals or small groups intent upon publishing the experimental works or radical opinions of untried, unpopular, or under-represented writers. Little magazines provided a venue for unknown writers like T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein to publish work deemed too radical and experimental—too bizarre, obscene, or even ridiculous—for mainstream publishing houses and mass-market magazines. By returning to these little magazines, we will seek to recover the connections, influences, affinities, debates, and disagreements that entangled these and other writers in the web of modernism. We will read Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as it appeared in The Dial, Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” as re-arranged in Poetry, Mina Loy’s futurist-feminist poems as presented in Others, and Gertrude Stein’s cubist experiments as they filled the pages of Camera Work. We will not confine our attention to the artistic avant garde, but will explore the political radicals of the same period, as they appeared in The Masses. We will also read the works of Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay as they appeared in Harlem Renaissance journals such as Opportunity, The Liberator, and The Messenger—little magazines in which aesthetic experimentation and political radicalism sometimes coincided and sometimes collided.

Students will contribute to the ongoing construction and expansion of the informational web-site, “Housing Modernism: A Bibliography of Selected Little Magazines” (http://www.davidson.edu/academic/english/modernism/index.html). Each student will write a research paper on a little magazine or on a modernist writer as seen through the contexts of a little magazine. This year for the first time, the website will include an journal of undergraduate research—featuring your final papers! No previous web-authoring experience required, though basic computer literacy and/or technological courage are desirable.

You will be expected to come to class with relevant texts and assignments, prepared to participate in a lively, informed manner. Because participation is crucial to a seminar, please try to attend every class. You may miss one class unexcused without directly lowering your grade, but use that absences wisely, because except in the case of verifiable hardship (e.g. Dean's or doctor's excuse), each absence after the first lowers your final grade by 1/3 of a letter. For instance, a student with a B- final grade who missed 4 classes would earn a C+ for the semester. You will also be required to attend several web-writing workshops. Dates are marked on the syllabus. Note them now in your academic calendar.

A distribution list is a common e-mail address. You will receive messages from me and can post messages to the entire class using this address: ENG487_F04@davidson.edu. Anything relevant to the class is relevant to the distribution list--reminders, announcements, questions, and continuations of a great discussion. But remember that a message posted to list goes to EVERYONE in the class, so it is not the proper forum for private or frivolous uses. Consider our distribution list a shared public space.

In order to keep our email boxes uncluttered, we'll be using Blackboard as an electronic discussion forum—in preparation for each week's class discussion. You will post brief, informal responses (1-paragraph min./1-page max.) to the readings by 6 a.m. on Wednesdays. These responses will not be graded, but they will be evaluated and figured into class participation. Their purpose is to serve as a warm-up for class discussion, as well as to keep your writing muscles limber for the final research paper.

In addition to reading all of the assigned texts, you will be expected to:
• post weekly responses to Blackboard,
• edit and correct an existing set of little magazine webpages,
• create a new set of pages for a little magazine not yet represented on the current site,
• prepare and present expert testimony for two class discussions,
• contribute to the design and implementation of an undergraduate web journal, and
• prepare a lengthy research paper for publication in our undergraduate web journal.
Successful completion of these assignments will require a good deal of independent and collaborative work outside class time, including attendance at required lab sessions for web training.

Expert Testimonials [ET]: In the course of the semester, you will research and present expert testimony about an author and a little magazine. You are encouraged NOT to think of this testimony as "background," but to present the material in a creative, theoretical, and provocative manner. If you are the expert witness for a little magazine [ETM], you should read around in its entire run in order to present a "character study." You should also provide bibliographic data about its location, size, budget, run, paper quality, audience, editors, means of publication & distribution, etc.. If you are presenting on the author [ETA], provide a brief critical history along with any biographical information or other material you think relevant. You may also chose to present on some other textual or extra-textual materials [ETX]—more on this topic later. Expert testimonials should not exceed ten minutes, so plan your presentation wisely and creatively. Besides the little magazines themselves, the little magazine bibliography, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, and the websites edited by Cary Nelson and Al Filreis may provide useful starting points for your research.