In this seminar, we will read four key works of fiction written in Ireland, England, and America during the famed “Modernist Movement” of the first half of the twentieth century. How did these authors, writing from different places, different moments, and different perspectives respond to their shared belief that the twentieth century was a time of unprecedented change and modernization which demanded new kinds of fiction—fictions that not only told new kinds of stories about the realities of living in a new, modern century, but that also told those stories in innovative modern forms?

Schedule:
Week 1: Joyce, Dubliners
Week 2: Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Week 3: Larsen, Passing
Week 4: Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

Course Texts (required; please use these editions if possible):
• James Joyce, Dubliners (1914; Dover, ISBN: 978-0486268705)
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925; Collins Classics, ISBN: 978-0007934409)
• Nella Larsen, Passing (1929; Dover, ISBN: 978-0486437132)
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930; Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-0679732259)

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Dr. Paul Peppis is a UO Professor of English Emeritus. An award-winning teacher and scholar of modernism, Dr. Peppis is an expert in early twentieth-century literary works and cultural productions whose teaching and writing examine modernism’s diverse engagements with the social, political, scientific, and popular movements of its time. The author of two books, Sciences of Modernism:  Ethnography, Sexology, and Psychology (Cambridge 2014) and Literature, Politics, and the English Avant-Garde (Cambridge 2000), he has also contributed chapters to the Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry (2007), and the Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster (2007), and published numerous articles on a range of modernist authors and topics

ABOUT CONTINUING EDUCATION SEMINARS
These courses are for people eager to engage in a studious seminar format. Each in-person only seminar meets weekly, over four sessions. The seminars are led by current and retired professors who provide formal study guides and lead college-level discussions, with participants actively contributing to each session. Seminars are noncredit and ungraded but include challenging homework. 
Participation is open to all adults; no previous affiliation with UO is required. Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) membership is not required, however, active OLLI members may register at a reduced fee.