Few figures in the twentieth century have had as much influence, and yet, so uneven a critical response, as Gertrude Stein. Often glibly dismissed, or simply misunderstood, Stein nevertheless returns ("again and again," as she might say) in the writings and polemics of such varied movements as the Black Mountain and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, and in media as different as the nouveau roman and popular television. Still, it is more likely that one will have heard of Stein rather than have read her. Stein does not fit with the usual categorizations of twentieth-century writing. She is "properly" neither modernist, nor postmodernist in any easily definable senses. The past twenty years have seen her star rise once more as revisions of the notion of modernity have proliferated. Her work has been reprinted, and her texts reassessed from various critical perspectives: by postmodernisms of various kinds, feminism(s), interdisciplinary studies (especially the relation between her texts and modern painting -- an area of long-standing interest, and one which continues to be intensely explored), gender studies, cultural critiques of modernism, etc. We will also be looking very closely at both of Stein's operatic collaborations with composer Virgil Thomson. Her two opera librettos constitute some of her best-known - and yet most superficially assessed -- works, and we will be reexamining these in regard to Stein's evolving conceptions of culture, history, and the subject. The goal of this course is actually to read Stein, and to touch upon, and come to understand as much as possible, the various theoretical perspectives from which Stein has been, and is being, read.
REQUIRED TEXTS MAY INCLUDE:
(Recordings will be held on reserve, as will copies of the piano vocal scores for the operas.)