New York Modern: Postwar Politics and the Arts
Professor Jennifer Homans
Fall 2014, Thursdays, 4-6pm: CEMS Conference Room
Office Hours: by appt., 20 Cooper Square, 2nd floor
Contact: email jah20@nyu.edu.
Phone: 646-242-8667 (cell)
Note : This syllabus is not yet set and may change, depending on performance
schedules and art exhibitions
In the years following the Second World War, New York City became the focal
point for modernism in the visual arts of painting, theater, dance, and film. This course
will examine the origins and evolution of modernism across these arts, with special
attention to dance and the work of George Balanchine.
Readings and seeing will range from plays, dances, and art, to criticism and
history. Students will also attend live performances and study dances and other
forms of art at Lincoln Center, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Museum of
Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum of Art. Grades will be based on a final
paper, class participation, and an in-class presentation analyzing a work of art in its
historical context.
FRAMEWORKS:
Week 1: Beginning: The Worlds We Have Lost
Pfc Lincoln Kirstein, “The Quest of the Golden Lamb”
W.H. Auden: September 1st, 1939
James Agee, “Comedy’s Greatest Era”
Week 2: New York City and Émigré Culture
E.B. White, Here is New York (1949)
Joseph Brodsky, On Grief and Reason, “The Condition We Call Exile” (1982)
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory, selections.
George Balanchine: Serenade (1934); Orpheus (1949)
Week 3: ‘High’ and ‘Low’ Culture
Lawrence Levine, American Culture Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural
Hierarchy in America, selection: Order, Hierarchy and Culture.
T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, selections
Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, selection: Middlebrow.
Week 4: Critical Themes
Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, selections
Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, selections
Meyer Schapiro, Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries, selections
Lincoln Kirstein: “A Ballet Master’s Belief”
The 1950s: CONFORMITY AND CRISIS
Week 5: Dance
Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels, selections
Jerome Robbins, The Cage (1951); Afternoon of a Faun (1953)
George Balanchine, Agon (1957)
Merce Cunningham, Summerspace (1958)
Week 6: Theater and Film
Arthur Miller, All My Sons (1949) or A View from the Bridge (1956)
Elia Kazan, A Life
Elia Kazan: On the Waterfront (1954)
Week 7: Film
Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957)
Week 8: Art
Joseph Cornell, Pavel Tchelitchew, and others.
Jed Perl, New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century, selections
Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism,
Freedom, and the Cold War, selections
The 1960s and 1970s: RELEASE AND CRISIS
Week 9: Dance
Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers, selections
HAIR (1967 musical; 1979 film)
Jerome Robbins, Dances at a Gathering (1969)
George Balanchine, Stravinsky Violin Concerto (George Balanchine, 1972)
Lucinda Childs and Robert Wilson Einstein on the Beach (1976)
Week 10: Theater
Kenneth Turan and Joseph Papp, Free For All
Peter Brook,
The Empty Space (1968), selections; Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970)
Week 11: Art
Andy Warhol
Week 12: Film
Denis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Easy Rider (1969)
Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver (1976)
Week 13: The End of All That?
Tony Kushner, Angels in America (1993)
Arlene Croce, “Discussing the Undiscussable” (1994)
TBD reading.