Studies in Literary History: Modernism, From Nietzsche to Fellini
Modernism's break from a stable, ordered worldview to a decentered, Einsteinian one is the organizing thread of this MIT literature course. Readings and screenings move across countries, media, and genres, pairing philosophical texts like Nietzsche with novels, poetry, and film, including works by Fellini, to trace how artists responded to shifts in science, politics, and daily life across the twentieth century. The course materials, available through MIT OpenCourseWare, include a syllabus, reading list, and assignment prompts asking students to analyze how form and technique change alongside the ideas being represented. It suits students interested in the history of ideas as much as literary analysis, since philosophy and cinema are treated as equal partners with fiction and poetry in mapping the era's changed sense of reality. No lectures are recorded, but the course structure supports independent study of the primary works.