English 6029: Special Topics in Literature: 20th Century
American Writers in Paris (Study and Travel)
Spring 2015
Saturday 10:00-1:00 Richardson Seminar Room
Instructors: Professor Reinhard Sander and Professor Rick Swope
Offices: Edificio Pedreira, Department of English
Hours: Swope T, Th 1:30-2:30; Sander T, Th 2:30-4:00 or by appointment.
Email: reinhard.sander@gmail.com; rswope@gmail.com
Required Texts: Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises; James
Baldwin's Giovanni's Room; Richard Wright's Eight Men. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon
Revisited” (you can find this online or in the Norton Anthology of Am. Lit); Claude McKay’s
Banjo. We will also prepare a packet of photocopied materials (essays and poems) for the section
on the Beats and to supplement the primary texts for purchase at Promo Image.
Description: A combination of study and travel in which students will encounter both the
literature of American writers who spent significant portions of their careers in Paris as well as
the city itself. We will focus primarily on three groups of American writers: The Lost Generation
(Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald), the Beats (Ginsberg, Corso), and the black writers in Paris
(McKay, Hughes, Wright, Cullen, Baldwin). The travel portion of the course will allow students
to engage directly with the culture, language, history, art, and architecture of the City of Light
which served as both haven and source of artistic inspiration for so many of America's twentiethcentury writers.
Requirements: The first obvious requirement is that you READ in preparation for both our
discussions and the trip to Paris itself.
Students will also keep a Travel Journal. You should actually begin this journal prior to the trip,
noting issues or connections you make while reading, particularly those that link to Paris. For
each of our four meetings we will provide you a set of prompts from which you should generate
1-2 pages (typed, double spaced, 12pt font). Your observations need not be strictly limited to
mentions of Paris (some of the texts will not even mention Paris), but can address any number of
topics you find in the reading (i.e, expatriate experience, existentialism, modernist
disillusionment, travel and writing, notions of America, race in connection with the city, gender,
the 20th century city, etc . . .). While on the trip, we would like you to extend your responses to
include your own experience of Paris and the threads you have traced in the reading. After our
return, you should polish up your responses and hand them in by April 29. The journal or
collection of responses should total roughly 10-15 pages.
NOTE: While you need not mention every text in your journal (we actually prefer you establish
some focus), we encourage you to establish links between the writers and groups. Lastly, make
sure that your journal goes beyond "Then I noticed" or "Then I saw" type lists. We expect you to
engage with serious questions, beginning with the question as to why Paris in particular drew and
impacted so many American writers. What does that say about their own sense of literature, art,
America, identity, etc? (Prompts to follow shortly).
Graduate Students will hand in a Final Paper. For the final paper we would like you to focus on
one of the three groups of writers and extend your research beyond the required readings of the
course. It could address any number of topics so long as you can trace it to both the primary
texts/writer and to the Paris experience. The Final paper will be due by May 13.
Travel Journal
Final Paper
Participation
30%
50%
20%
Schedule:
2/21: The Lost Generation: Discussion of American writers exiled in Paris in the 1920s and
30s. Read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises; Fitzgerald's "Babylon
Revisited," and photocopied materials.
2/28:
From Harlem to Paris, 1920’s: Provides insight into the various African-American
writers and performers who brought bits of the Harlem Renaissance with them to France.
Read McKay’s Banjo and photocopied essays and poems.
3/7:
The Beat Generation: Introduction to the Beat writers (Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs)
and their time and writing in Paris. Read photocopied poems and essays.
3/14: Post World War II Black Writers in Paris: Background on black writers such as
Wright, Hughes, Himes, and Baldwin who spent time in Paris as well as discussion of the
social and artistic reasons for their pilgrimage there. Read Wright's Eight Men, Baldwin's
Giovanni's Room, and photocopied material.
3/26: Travel to Paris: Arrive at SJU airport 2hrs before flight.
Bibliography:
Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology. Ed. Adam Gopnik. New York: Library of America,
2004.
Anderson, Christian. Paris Reflections: Walks through African-American Paris. Omaha: U of
Nebraska, 2002.
Baldwin, James. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York: Dell, 1961.
---. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon, 1955.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. New York: Bilson, 1991.
Benneta, Jules-Rossette. Black Paris: The African Writer's Landscape. Champagne: U of Illinois
P, 2000.
Benstock, Shari. The Women of the Left Bank. Austin: U of Texas P, 1987.
Burke, David. Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light. Berkeley: Counterpoint,
2008.
Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch. New York: Grove, 1959.
Campbell, James. This Is the Beat Generation. Berkeley: U California P, 1999.
---. Exile in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank.
Berkeley: U of California P, 2003.
Fabre, Michel. From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840-1980. Urbana:
U of Illinois P, 1993.
Fitch, Noel. Walks in Hemingway's Paris: A Guide to Paris for the Literary Traveler. New York:
St. Martin's, 1992
---. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and
Thirties. New York: Norton, 1985.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Babylon Revisited and Other Stories. New York: Scribner, 1996.
---. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.
Foster, Edward Halsey. Understanding the Beats. Columbia, SC: Uof South Carolina P, 1992.
Hakutani, Yoshinobu. The City in African American Literature. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson
UP; London; Cranbury, N.J: Associated University Presses, 1995.
Himes, Chester. My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography of Chester Himes. New York:
Thunder's Mouth, 1995.
Jackson, Jeffrey. Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris. Durham, NC:
Duke UP, 2003.
Karnow, Stanley. Paris in the Fifties. New York: Random House, 1997.
Mellow, James. The Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company. New York: Holt, 2003.
Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-­‐1963. New York:
Grove Press, 2000.
Monk, Craig. Writing the Lost Generation: Expatriate Autobiography and American Modernism.
Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 2008.
Nicholls, Peter. Modernism: A Literary Guide. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.
Pitt, Leonard. Walks Through Lost Paris: A Journey into the Heart of Historic Paris. Berkeley:
Counterpoint, 2006.'
Pekar, Harvey and Paul Buhle. Beats: A Graphic History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010.
Rexroth, Kenneth. “Disengagement: The Art of the Beat Generation.” The Beat Generation and The Angry Young Men. Ed. Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg. New York: Citadel
Press, 1958.
Robinson, Marc. Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile. New York: Harvest, 1996.
Sawyer, Christopher. The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris 1944-1960. San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998.
Shack, William. Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars. Berkeley:
U of California P, 2001
St. Thomas, Kat. Kat Tracking Through Paris: A Guide Through Black Paris. Oakland, CA:
Regent Press, 2002.
Stein, Gertrude. Paris France. New York: Liveright, 1996.
---. Tender Buttons. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1991.
Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. New York: Houghton, 1996.
Stephenson, Gregory. The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.
Watson, Steven. The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944-­‐1960. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
Weiss, M. Lynn. Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright: The Poetics and Politics of Modernism.
Oxford: UP of Mississippi, 1998.