IHUM131 — Everyday Life in 20th C. Lit
You will explore representations of everyday life in 20th century literature and film, both in English and in translation. Everyday life seems a fairly obvious concept, but as Maurice Blanchot has argued, 'the everyday is what is most difficult to discover . the everyday escapes'. While the everyday is a profoundly democratic concept - everyone has an everyday life, after all - the everyday has also been the prime battle ground of ideology in modern times, the space in each our lives most thoroughly infiltrated by the values of those in power, mass media, and commodities. Exploring representations of everyday life in 20th century literature and film will help you gain insight into the production and development of modernity, the diversity of modern experience across cultures, and the ways in which our daily lives have been shaped over time by ideological myths. Throughout this module, you will engage with theories of modernity, aesthetics, and cultural politics to ask how literature and film represent, defamiliarise, and critique everyday life in the modern world. In keeping with the ephemerality of everyday practices and materials, you will also engage extensively with digital media and tools on this module. You will explore relevant digital archives, such as the Mass Observation Archive, Woolf Online and the BFI: Britain on Film archive, and learn to use digital platforms for learning, writing, and research. Indicative topics include: the everyday and the stream-of-consciousness novel, boredom in literature and film, avant-garde aesthetics and the extraordinary, archiving the everyday, war and the suspension of everyday life, gendered everyday practices, forms of protest, and non-western representations of the everyday.