Presentation Schedule

Revised Reading Schedule

Purdue Online Writing Lab (This page has a link to an excellent and up-to-date MLA style manual)

Web Links for China Research

Virtual Shanghai Website (Interactive site full of old photos, history, etc)

Comparative Literature 240D "Writing in Comparative Literature"

Autumn 2007

Instructor: Laura Eshleman

M-F 12:30-1:20 Miller 302A

During the first few decades of the Twentieth Century, industrialized cities were emerging throughout the world, changing the landscape of global social, economic, cultural and political life.  Mass transit and communication, shifts in gender roles, consumerism, new types of employment and unemployment, overcrowded living conditions, class conflict, wars, reform efforts: these and other factors defined the "modern lifestyle."  In literature, the effects of these changes are seen in both form and content, as writers experiment stylistically with realism and naturalism, and topically with social Darwinism and ethics.

This course explores early Twentieth Century morality and city life in the fiction of the United States and China, using a comparative approach.  Emphasis will be placed on improving students' academic writing skills and critical reading skills through workshops, revisions, peer editing and discussions.

Chaplin silents at the Paramount Oct 1, 2007